Of King Alfonso the Learned (for he does not seem to have been by any means very wise) much more is of course known, though the saying about the blessedness of having no history is not falsified in his case. But his titular enjoyment of the empire, his difficulties with his sons, his death, practically dethroned, and the rest, do not concern us: nor does even his famous and rather wickedly wrested saying (a favourite with Carlyle) about the creation of the world and the possibility of improvement therein had the Creator taken advice. Even the far more deservedly famous _Siete Partidas_, with that _Fuero Juzgo_ in which, though it was issued in his father's time, he is supposed to have had a hand, are merely noteworthy here as early, curious, and, especially in the case of the _Partidas_, excellent specimens of Spanish prose in its earliest form. He could not have executed these or any great part of them himself: and the great bulk of the other work attributed to him must also have been really that of collaborators or secretaries. The verse part of this is not extensive, consisting of a collection of _Cantigas_ or hymns, Provencal in style and (to the puzzlement of historians) Galician rather than Castilian in dialect, and an alchemical medley of verse and prose called the _Tesoro_. These, if they be his, he may have written for himself and by himself. But for his _Astronomical Tables_, a not unimportant _point de repere_ in astronomical history, he must, as for the legal works already mentioned and others, have been largely indebted. There seems to be much doubt about a prose _Tresor_, which is or is not a translation of the famous work of Brunetto Latini (dates would here seem awkward). But the _Cronica General de Espana_, the Spanish Bible, the Universal History, and the _Gran Conquesta de Ultramar_ (this last a History of the Crusades, based partly on William of Tyre, partly on the _chanson_ cycle of the Crusades, fables and all) must necessarily be his only in the sense that he very likely commissioned, and not improbably assisted in them. The width and variety of the attributions, whether contestable in parts or not, prove quite sufficiently for our purpose this fact, that by his time (he died in 1284) literature of nearly all kinds was being pretty busily cultivated in the Spanish vernaculars, though in this case as in others it might chiefly occupy itself with translations or adaptations of Latin or of French.