soldier commits an act of perfidy by conniving at the assassination of Don Pedro, Froissart raises no note of indignation. version. The same episode is described in the chronicle of Froissart's Spanish contemporary, Pedro Lopez de A Spanish Ayala, and in much the same way Ayala also is completely impassive, and records the ghastly affair with business-like precision. While he states with reference to " Mossen Beltran that Don Pedro put himself deliberately in his power, he recognises no obligation as resting on Du Guesclin, and it is one of Du Guesclin's knights that says to King Enrique, "This is your enemy," thus inaugurating the bloody scene. It is evident that, with both Froissart and Ayala, treachery and cruelty are commonplaces so familiar that it would be ridiculous to exclaim about them. Don Pedro, no doubt, met with his deserts. Surnamed "the Cruel," he had, it is said, put many persons to death in his realm, "por lo qual le vinó todo el dano que aveys oido," and so his untimely end was a nemesis.1 But this, it is needless to observe, is no excuse for Du Guesclin's breach of honour, or for the way justice was done on the unworthy monarch. In using these terms of a king who had killed, among others, his five brothers and his wife, I might seem to be on perfectly safe ground, and only setting down the unanimous verdict of humanity. But just 1 The same remark applies also to Trastamara. Chaucer, in his Monkes Tale, naturally sides with King "Petro," as an ally of the Black Prince. "White as there has been a disposition of late to "whitewash" Henry VIII. of England, so in the washing." seventeenth century there is visible a reaction in favour of this monster, for whom Moreto and Calderon in their dramas put forth brilliant, but ineffectual, apologies. In our own age this process of "white-washing" has been revived, and littérateurs with pronounced democratic sympathies have done their best to elevate Don Pedro into a popular hero, a champion of the poor against the oppressions of the grandees. But facts are stubborn. things. The character of Don Pedro is of importance for Ayala in two ways. The historian was originally his follower, but when, in 1366, Pedro left Spain and sought an asylum at the English Court at Bordeaux, Ayala went over to the side of his rival Trastamara, who made him his chancellor, and whose successors he continued to serve during several reigns. In the second place, it is to be noted that Ayala's penetrating analysis of the character of Don Pedro is a new phenomenon in Spanish historical literature. Ayala, having thus described the life and morals of Pedro the Cruel, was himself described with equal impartiality by his nephew Fernan Perez de Guzman, and it is interesting to observe that his kinsman, in his generally laudatory account, censures him for a frailty which Ayala attributes, though without censure, to Pedro. "Fue mucho amador de mugeres," says the Crónica; "Amo mugeres, mas que à tan sabio caballero como el convenia," say the Generaciones y Semblanzas. Perhaps the sense of personal imper fection may help to explain the insouciance with which Ayala records the vilest crimes Latin influence. Ayala is a very remarkable figure in the literature of Spain, and, on account of his versatility, I shall again have occasion to mention him in the succeeding chapter. Here he will be dealt with as an early and prominent representative of the classical tendency, one of the characteristics of the period which extends from the time of Pedro I. to that of Ferdinand and Isabella. A symptom of this tendency is the host of translations of Latin authors, accomplished sometimes by the way of French and still oftener by that of Italian "middlemen"; and, in this context, it may be noted that Boccaccio, director of the humanist movement, is already raised to the rank of a classic. Ayala's chief contributions to this popularisation of learning consist in translations of the History of Troy, of Boccaccio's Casus Principum (Caida de Principes), and the first, second, and fourth Decades of Livy. It is the last circumstance that I desire to emphasise. The classical tendency showed itself nowhere more strikingly than in the field of history. Attempts are made to emulate the Latin period, and these attempts not infrequently realise the position of "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself.”1 There is other evidence of ambition. It appears that Ayala's translation of Livy was undertaken at the instance of Enrique III. Possibly, therefore, the insertion of fictitious speeches in the Chancellor's 1 This criticism, however, does not apply to Ayala's style, which is simplicity itself. chronicle was dictated by a wish to propitiate that monarch; but however that may be, it cannot be doubted that the innovation is due to the influence of the Latin historian. The older Crónicas are quite innocent of anything of the sort, and content themselves with a simple narration of facts. As an historical expedient, fancy orations are not free from exception. They constitute an artificial and more or less arbitrary element in what, by its nature and profession, ought to be rigorously truthful and scientifically precise. Nevertheless, at a certain stage of human development the artifice may be useful, as enabling the reader to enter more adequately into the complexities of a situation, just as is done in an historical play or novel. The fictitious speech, therefore, with its pros and cons, may be regarded as a stepping-stone from a primitive, puerile, unintelligent stringing together of events to the philosophical probing of a mature historical method. Catalan These chronicles relating to Castile are written in the Castilian variety of the Spanish language, the classical dialect for prose. The neighbourhistories. ing kingdom of Aragon exhibits a similar condition of things. In the sphere of history we come upon the " four pearls" of Catalan literature -the Libre dels feyts esdevenguts en la vida del molt alt senyor rey En Jacme lo Conqueridor, which, there is reason to believe, was penned by Jacme himself; and the chronicles of Bernat Desclot (which exists only in a Castilian translation), of Ramon Muntaner, and of Peter IV. of Aragon. This last was supposed, Ꮓ until quite lately, to have been the work of Peter IV.; but documents found in the archives of Aragon render it certain that Bernat Desclot, counsellor and treasurer of John I., drew up the record, which extends from 1335 to 1387, under the direction of Peter IV. Taken together, these writings throw abundant and continuous light on the state of affairs in Aragon during the fourteenth century; but the only work of which it is necessary to say anything in particular is the Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner. Unlike the rest, it bears a personal impress, and is, in various senses, an actual work of art. It abounds in vivid touches and local colour only attainable by a sympathetic observer of the events described. Hence it is that Ramon Muntaner has been styled, not inaptly, the Catalan Froissart. Ramon It is not clear whether this Chronicle was begun in the year 1325 or 1335, but it concludes with the coronation of Alfonso III. in 1327. Muntaner's account of the way he came to undertake it is characteristic alike of the man and the age. His career as a soldier was ended, and he was asleep in his castle of Xiluella, when the vision. of an old man clad in white appeared to him and bade him make a book of the great marvels he had witnessed, and that God had wrought in the wars he had been in. Muntaner did not at once comply, and the vision was repeated. Thereupon he hesitated no more, but began his task, "that he might draw down the blessings of God on himself, his wife, and his children," |