LEGENDS OF THE CONQUEST OF SPAIN. BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE SKETCH-BOOK.” LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. MDCCCXXXVI. PREFACE. Few events in history have been so signal and striking in their main circumstances, and so overwhelming and enduring in their consequences, as that of the conquest of Spain by the Saracens; yet there are few where the motives, characters, and actions of the agents have been enveloped in more doubt and contradiction. As in the memorable story of the Fall of Troy, we have to make out, as well as we can, the veritable details through the mists of poetic fiction; yet poetry has so combined itself with, and lent its magic colouring to, every fact, that to strip it away, would be to reduce the story to a meagre skeleton, and rob it of all its charms. The storm of Moslem invasion that swept so suddenly over the peninsula, silenced for a time the faint voice of the Muse, and drove the sons of learning from their cells. The pen was thrown aside to grasp the sword and spear; and men were too much taken up with battling against the evils which beset them on every side, to find time or inclination to record them. When the nation had recovered in some degree from the effects of this astounding blow, or rather, had become accustomed to the tremendous reverse which it produced, and sage men sought to inquire and write the particulars, it was too late to ascertain them in their exact verity. The gloom and melancholy that had overshadowed the land, had given birth to a thousand superstitious fancies; the woes and terrors of the past were clothed with supernatural miracles and portents, and the actors in the fearful drama had already assumed the dubious characteristics of romance. Or if a writer from among the conquerors undertook to touch upon the theme, it was embellished with all the wild extravagances of an oriental imagination; which afterwards stole into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence the earliest chronicles which treat of the downfall of Spain are apt to be tinctured with those saintly miracles which savour of the pious labours of the cloister, or those fanciful fictions that betray their Arabian authors. Yet, from these apocryphal sources, the most legitimate and accredited Spanish histories have taken their rise, as pure rivers may be traced up to the fens and mantled pools of a morass. It is true, the authors, with cautious discrimination, have discarded those particulars too startling for belief, and have culled only such as, from their probability and congruity, might be safely recorded as historical facts; yet scarce one of these but has been connected in the original with some romantic fiction, and, even in its divorced state, bears traces of its former alliance.