It is very necessary, when judging this great body of verse, to stand on our guard against certain besetting fallacies. There is always a marked tendency in collectors to excuse what is grotesque on the ground that it is ancient, and to pardon what is bad on the ground that it is popular. The Spanish ballads have suffered from the too great zeal with which modern editors have reprinted what was accepted by the indiscriminate taste of first collectors. Many of the ballads belong to the class of _romances de ciegos_--_i.e._, “blindmen’s ballads”--which were doggerel at all times. Others are not above the level of the poets’ corner of not over-exacting newspapers. Even in the best, the intention and the first inspiration are commonly far better than the expression. The Spaniard’s slovenliness of form is found here as elsewhere. Lockhart, in the preface to his adaptations, has rebuked the Spaniards for “neglecting old and simpler poets,” who wrote the romances, in favour of authors “who were at the best ingenious imitators of classical or Italian models.” He has himself, however, subjected those he selected for translation into English to a treatment which conveys a severe and a just critical judgment. A comparison between his ballads and the originals will show that he occasionally, though very rarely, weakened a forcible phrase. Now and again there are signs that his knowledge of Spanish was not deep. He writes, “So spake the brave Montanez,” as if that had been the name of the Lord of Butrago, whereas _montanes_ (mountaineer) was a common old Spanish equivalent for noble, a custom due to the belief that the old Castilian aristocracy drew its “blue blood,” shown by its grey or blue eyes, from the Visigoths, who held the mountains of Asturias against the Moors. The Lord of Butrago was a historical personage, and the head of the house of Mendoza. But if a few faults of this kind can be found, there are to be set off against them a hundred passages in which he has suppressed a redundancy or replaced the purely prosaic original by poetry. A very good test case is to be found in the last verse of the Wandering Knight’s song--which stands thus in Lockhart:-- “I ride from land to land, I sail from sea to sea; Some day more kind I fate may find, Some night kiss thee.” What can be more pretty or more fit? but it is not in the _Cancionero de Romances_, where the words stand:-- “Andando de Sierra en Sierra Por orillas de la mar, Por provar si en mi ventura Ay lugar donde avadar; Pero por vos, mi señora, Todo se ha de comportar.”