The _Cancioneiros_ contain poems by high and low, prince and, one would fain say, peasant, noble _trobador_ and humble _jogral_, soldiers and civilians, priests and laymen, singers of Galicia, Portugal, and Spain, but more especially of Galicia and North Portugal. As in the case of C. V. 466, the interest of many of the poems is historical: C. V. 1088, for instance, written by a partisan of the dethroned King Sancho II; or C. V. 1080, a _gesta de maldizer_ of fifty-six lines in three rhymes, with the exclamation _Eoy!_ at the change of the rhyme, which was written by D. AFONSO LOPEZ DE BAYAN (_c._ 1220-80), clearly in imitation of the _Chanson de Roland_.[94] Almost equally prominent, though not from any historical associations, is the curiously modern C. A. 429 (= C. C. B. 314) among the _cantigas de amor_. It tells of a girl forced against her will to enter a convent, and who says to her lover: ‘My dress may be religious, but God shall not have my heart.’ (For the metre, cf. C. V. 342.) Its author was the _fidalgo_ D. RODRIG’ EANEZ DE VASCONCELLOS, one of the pre-Dionysian poets. But indeed no further proofs are needed to show that, even had King Dinis never existed, the contents of the early Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ would have been remarkable for their variety and beauty. When Alfonso X died his grandson DINIS (1261-1325)[95] had sat for five years on the throne of Portugal. Plentifully educated by a Frenchman, Ayméric d’Ébrard, afterwards Bishop of Coimbra, married to a foreign princess, Isabel of Aragon (the Queen-Saint of Portugal), profoundly impressed, no doubt, by the world-fame of Alfonso X, to whom he was sent on a diplomatic mission when not yet in his teens, he became nevertheless one of the most national of kings. If he imitated Alfonso X in his love of literature, he showed himself a far abler and firmer sovereign, being more like a rock than like the sea, to which the poet compared Alfonso. Far-sighted in the conception of his plans and vigorous in their execution, the _Rei Lavrador_, whom Dante mentions, though not by name: _quel di Portogallo_ (_Paradiso_ xix), fostered agriculture, increased his navy, planted pine-forests, fortified his towns, built castles and convents and churches, and legislated for the safety of the roads and for the general welfare and security of his people. Among his great and abiding services to his country was the foundation of the first Portuguese University in the year 1290, and in the same spirit he ordered the translation of many notable books from the Spanish, Latin, and Arabic into Portuguese prose, including the celebrated works of the Learned King, so that it is truer of prose than of poetry to say that he inaugurated a golden age.[96] Had he written no line of verse his name must have been for ever honoured in Portugal as the real founder of that imperishable glory which was fulfilled two centuries later. But he also excelled as a poet, _d’amor trobador_. It