is dull; the second part tells of the Goths in Spain and of the
conquest of Spain by the Moors, and is less dull; the third part brings
down the story of the nation to the reign of Ferdinand the Great, early
in the eleventh century; and the fourth part continues it to the date
of the accession of Alfonso himself in the year 1252. These latter
parts are full of interest. Though in prose, they are based by a poet
on heroic songs and national traditions of the struggle with the Moors,
and the fourth part opens with an elaborate setting forth of the
history of the great hero of mediaeval Spain, the Cid Campeador. The
Cid is the King Arthur, or the Roland, of the Spaniards, less mythical,
but not less interesting, with incidents of a real life seen through
the warm haze of Southern imagination. King Alfonso, in his Chronicle,
transformed ballads and fables of the Cid into a prose digest that was
looked upon as history. Robert Southey translated this very distinct
section of the Chronicle, not from the _Cronica General_ itself, but
from the _Chronica del Cid_, which, with small variation, was extracted
from it, being one in substance with the history of the Cid in the
fourth part of the General Chronicle, and he has enriched it. This he
has done by going himself also to the Poem of the Cid and to the
Ballads of the Cid, for incidents, descriptions, and turns of thought,
to weave into the texture of the old prose Chronicle, brightening its
tints, and adding new life to its scenes of Spanish chivalry.

"The Poem of the Cid," the earliest and best of the heroic songs of
Spain, is a romance of history in more than three thousand lines,
celebrating the achievements of the hero little more than fifty years
after his death. Ruy Diaz, or Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, was born at Burgos
about the year 1040, and died in the year 1099. He was called the
_Cid_, because five Moorish Kings acknowledged him in one battle as
their _Seid_, or Lord and Conqueror, and he was _Campeador_ or Champion