[55] It is a ballad about money (Espinosa, Flores, 1605, f. 30), and is the only thing I know by Diego de la Chica. I might add ballads by other authors, which are found where they would least be looked for; like one of by Rufo, in his “Apotegmas,”--one by Jauregui, in his “Rimas,”--and a beautiful one by Camoens, (Rimas, 1598, f. 187,) worthy of Góngora, and beginning,-- Irme quiero, madre, A aquella galera, Con el marinero A ser marinera. I long to go, dear mother mine, Aboard yon galley fair, With that young sailor that I love, His sailor life to share. Nor could it be otherwise;--for ballads, in the seventeenth century, had become the delight of the whole Spanish people. The soldier solaced himself with them in his tent, and the muleteer amidst the _sierras_; the maiden danced to them on the green, and the lover sang them for his serenade; they entered into the low orgies of thieves and vagabonds, into the sumptuous entertainments of the luxurious nobility, and into the holiday services of the Church; the blind beggar chanted them to gather alms, and the puppet-showman gave them in recitative to explain his exhibition; they were a part of the very foundation of the theatre, both secular and religious, and the theatre carried them everywhere, and added everywhere to their effect and authority. No poetry of modern times has been so widely spread through all classes of society, and none has so entered into the national character. The ballads, in fact, seem to have been found on every spot of Spanish soil. They seem to have filled the very air that men breathed.[56] [56] There is no need of authorities to prove the universal prevalence of ballads in the seventeenth century; for the literature of that century often reads like a mere monument of it. But if I wished to name any thing, it would be the Don Quixote, where Sancho is made to cite them so often; and the Novelas of Cervantes, especially “The Little Gypsy,” who sings her ballads in the houses of the nobles and the church of Santa María; and “Rinconete and Cortadillo,” where they make the coarse merriment of the thieves of Seville. Indeed, as the puppet-showman says, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 26,) “They were in the mouths of every body,--of the very boys in the streets.” CHAPTER XXXIII. ROMANTIC FICTION.--CHANGE OF MANNERS PRODUCES A CHANGE OF THE FICTIONS FOUNDED UPON THEM.--PASTORAL ROMANCE AND ITS ORIGIN: MONTEMAYOR AND HIS DIANA, WITH ITS CONTINUATIONS BY PEREZ AND POLO: LO FRASSO, MONTALVO, CERVANTES, ENCISO, BOVADILLA, BERNARDO DE LA VEGA, LOPE DE VEGA, BALBUENA, FIGUEROA, ADORNO, BOTELHO, QUINTANA, CORRAL, SAAVEDRA.--CHARACTERISTICS OF PASTORAL FICTION.