But in the beginning it was not so. And if the Cid could possibly have been annoyed by Torquemada, his knights would have hanged the Inquisitor upon the nearest tree. No priests’ man, in good sooth, was Roderic of Bivar, nor, save in that he was a brave and determined soldier, had the great Castilian Free Lance anything in common with the more conventional heroes of United Spain. If history affords no reasonable explanation of his unrivaled renown beyond that which has already been suggested, we find but little in the early poetry to assist us. The Cid ballads impress us “more by their number than their light.” They are neither very interesting in themselves, nor are they even very suggestive. Only thirty-seven ballads are considered by Huber to be older than the sixteenth century. “La plupart de ces romances,” says M. Dozy, “accusent leur origine moderne”; and, according to Mr. Ormsby, they do but little toward the illustration of the Cid, either as a picturesque hero of romance or as a characteristic feature of medieval history. The great French dramatist scarcely touches the true history of his hero. The scene of the play is laid at Seville, where no Christian king set his foot for a hundred and fifty years after the death of Roderic. The title which he accepted from his employer, Mostain of Saragossa, is said to have been granted by Alfonso of Leon, after the capture of two imaginary Moorish kings, unknown to history, in an impossible battle on the banks of the Guadalquivir, which was never seen by the Cid. The whole action of the play turns upon the moral and psychological difficulties arising from the purely legendary incident of the killing of Chimene’s father by her lover, avenging an insult offered to his own sire, and of the somewhat artificial indignation of the lady, until she is appeased by a slaughter of Moors. Corneille’s drama abounds in noble sentiments expressed in most admirable verse; but it does not assist us to understand the character of the Cid, nor the reasons of his popularity in his own or in any other country. But certain at least it is that from the earliest times the story of his life and his career took a strong hold upon the popular imagination in Spain, and his virtues and his vices, little as they may seem to us to warrant the popular admiration, were understood and appreciated in the age in which he lived, an age of force and fraud, of domestic treason and foreign treachery, when religion preached little but battle and murder, and patriotism was but a pretext for plunder and rapine. Admired thus, even in his lifetime, as a gallant soldier, an independent chieftain, and an ever successful general, fearless, dexterous, and strong, his free career became a favorite theme with the jongleurs and troubadours of the next generation; and from the Cid of history was evolved a Cid of legendary song.