Literature was born in Spain only when the Christians began to
reconquer their country from the Moors. The first literary efforts
therefore naturally reflected a warlike spirit, and thus assumed the
epic form. Very few of these poems still exist in their original shape
save the Poema del Cid, the great epic treasure of Spain, as well as
the oldest monument of Spanish literature. Besides this poem, there
exist fragments of epics on the Infantes of Lara and on Fernan
Gonzales, and hints of others of which no traces now remain. These
poems were popularized in Spain by the juglares, who invented Bernardo
del Carpio so as to have a hero worthy to offset to the Roland of the
jongleurs,--their French neighbors. But the poems about this hero have
all perished, and his fame is preserved only in the prose chronicles.
In the Cronica rimada of the thirteenth century, we discover an
account of the Cid's youth, together with the episode where he slays
Ximena's father, which supplied Corneille with the main theme of his
tragedy.

The Spaniards also boast of a thirteenth century poem of some
twenty-five hundred stanzas on the life of Alexander, a fourteenth
century romance about Tristan, and the chivalric romance of Amadis de
Gaule, which set the fashion for hosts of similar works, whose
popularity had already begun to wane when Cervantes scotched all
further attempts of this sort by turning the chivalric romance into
ridicule in his Don Quixote.

The Spaniards also cultivated the epic ballad, or romanceros, previous
to the Golden Age of their literature (1550-1700), drawing their
subjects from the history or legends of France and Spain, and treating
mainly of questions of chivalry and love. Arthur, the Round Table, and
the Quest for the Holy Grail, were their stock subjects, previous to