and foretells the masterpieces of the national poetry in a way very different from any that can be said to be shown in Layamon or the _Ancren Riwle_, even in the Arthurian romances and the early lyrics. [Footnote 193: Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an extent commensurate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study of the older forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in English, and I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor's _History of Spanish Literature_ (3 vols., London, 1849, and reprinted since), in the early part of which he had the invaluable assistance of the late Don Pascual de Gayangos. Some scattered papers may be found in _Romania_. Fortunately, almost all the known literary materials for our period are to be found in Sanchez' _Poesias Castellanas Anteriores al Siglo XV._, the Paris (1842) reprint of which by Ochoa, with a few valuable additions, I have used. The _Poema del Cid_ is, except in this old edition, rather discreditably inaccessible--Vollmoeller's German edition (Halle, 1879), the only modern or critical one, being, I understand, out of print. It would be a good deed if the Clarendon Press would furnish students with this, the only rival of _Beowulf_ and the _Chanson de Roland_ in the combination of antiquity and interest.] [Sidenote: _Catalan-Provencal._] The earliest literature which, in the wide sense, can be called Spanish divides itself into three heads--Provencal-Catalan; Galician-Portuguese; and Castilian or Spanish proper. Not merely Catalonia itself, but Aragon, Navarre, and even Valencia, were linguistically for centuries mere outlying provinces of the _langue d'oc_. The political circumstances which attended the dying-out of the Provencal school at home, for a time even encouraged the continuance of Provencal literature in Spain: and to a certain extent Spanish and Provencal appear to have been written, if not spoken, bilingually by the same authors. But for the general purpose of this book the fact of the persistence of the "Limousin" tongue in Catalonia and (strongly dialected) in Valencia having been once noted, not much further notice need be taken of this division. [Sidenote: _Galician-Portuguese._] So also we may, with a brief distinctive notice, pass by the Galician dialects which found their perfected literary form later in Portuguese. No important early literature remains in Galician, and of Portuguese itself there does not seem to be anything certainly dating before the fourteenth century, or anything even probably attributed to an earlier time except a certain number of ballads, as to the real antiquity of which a sane literary criticism has always to reiterate the deepest and most irremovable doubts. The fact of the existence of this dialect, and of its development later into the language of Camoens, is of high interest: the positive documents which at this time it offers for comment are very scanty indeed. [Sidenote: _Castilian._]