In nearly this same way the literatures of the different countries during the Thirteenth Century are eminently national and mirror with quite wonderful appropriateness the characteristics of the various people. This is true even when similar subjects, as for instance the Graal stories, are treated from nearly the same standpoint by the two Teutonic nations, the Germans and the English. Parsifal and Galahad are national as well as poetic heroes with a distinction of character all their own. As we shall see, practically every nation finds in this century some fundamental expression of its national feeling that has been among its most cherished classics ever since. {opp168} [Illustration] SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA (ROME'S GOTHIC CATHEDRAL) The first of these in time is the Cid, which was written in Spain during the latter half of the Twelfth Century, but probably took its definite form just about the beginning of the Thirteenth. It might well be considered that this old-fashioned Spanish ballad would have very little of interest for modern readers, and yet there are very few scholars of the past century who have not been interested in this literary treasure. Critics of all nations have been unstinted in their praise of it. Since the Schlegels recalled world attention to Spanish {169} literature, it has been considered almost as unpardonable for anyone who pretended to literary culture not to have read the Cid, as it would be not to have read Don Quixote. As is true of all the national epics founded upon a series of ballads which had been collecting in the mouth of the people for several centuries before a great poetic genius came to give them their supreme expression, there has been some doubt expressed as to the single authorship of Cid. We shall find the same problem to be considered when we come to discuss the Nibelungen Lied. A half a century ago or more the fashion of the critics for insisting on the divided authorship of such poems was much more prevalent than it is at present. At that time a great many scholars, following the initiative of Wolf and the German separatist critics, declared even that the Homeric poems were due to more than one mind. There are still some who cling to this idea with regard to many of these primal national epics, but at the present time most literary men are quite content to accept the idea of a single authorship. With regard to the Cid in this matter Mr. Fitzmaurice Kelly, in his Short History of Spanish Literature in the Literatures of the World Series, says very simply: