interesting fact is that at a time when classic, or at least new influences, born of the Renaissance, were carrying all before them in France and England, and in Italy had long ago definitively conquered, the Spaniards did not wholly part with their inheritance from the Middle Ages. The few ballads, and fragments of ballads, printed by Hernan del Castillo in 1511, proved so popular that an editor was tempted to form a special collection. The place and date of this first ballad-book proper are both significant.[1] It appeared at Antwerp in or about 1546--that is to say, three years or so after the first edition of the poems of Boscan and Garcilaso. The editor was one Martin Nucio. Antwerp, be it observed, was always a great publishing place for Spanish books, a fact which may be accounted for, not only by the political connection between Spain and the Low Countries, the number of Spaniards employed there in various capacities, as soldiers, officials, or traders, and the then extensive use of their language, but also by the superiority of the Flemish printers. That same carelessness of form which is found in the Spaniard’s literature followed him in lesser arts, where neatness of handling was more necessary than spirit and creative faculty. He was, at any rate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rarely a good engraver, and hardly ever a good printer. The _Cancionero de Romances_, brought out, it may be, primarily for the pleasure of the Spaniards scattered over Flanders and Germany, was soon reprinted in Spain, by one Estéban de Najera, at Saragossa. These contemporary collections are not quite identical, but essentially the same. This _Cancionero_, or _Sylva, de Romances_ met with a reception which proved how strong a hold his indigenous verse had on the Spaniard. Three editions, with corrections and additions, appeared by 1555. The latest of these was not reprinted until well into the next century. In the meantime other editors had followed Nucio and Najera. A _Romancero_ in nine parts appeared at places so far distant from one another as Valencia, Burgos, Toledo, Alcalá, and Madrid, between 1593 and 1597. This again grew into the great _Romancero General_ of 1604-1614, wherein there are a thousand ballads. [SN: _The quality of this poetry._]