Chronicle of the Cid
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English
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CHRONICLE OF THE CID
Translated from the Spanish
BY ROBERT SOUTHEY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
INTRODUCTION.
Robert Southey's "Chronicle of the Cid" is all translation from the
Spanish, but is not translation from a single book. Its groundwork is
that part of the _Cronica General de Espana_, the most ancient of the
Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully
told. This old Chronicle was compiled in the reign of Alfonso the Wise,
who was learned in the exact science of his time, and also a
troubadour. Alfonso reigned between the years 1252 and 1284, and the
Chronicle was written by the King himself, or under his immediate
direction. It is in four parts. The first part extends from the
Creation of the World to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths, and
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
of his countrymen against the Moors. Thus he was styled The Lord
Champion--_El Cid Campeador_. The Cid died at the end of the eleventh
century, and "The Poem of the Cid" was composed before the end of the
twelfth. It was written after the year 1135, but before the year 1200.
The Cid is also the foremost hero of the ancient Spanish Ballads. The
ballads invent or record more incidents of his life than are to be
found in the Poem and the Chronicle; and of these Southey, in the
translation here reprinted, has made frequent and skilful use. Thus it
is from the Chronicle, the Poem, and the whole group of Ballads, as
collated by an English poet with a fine relish for Spanish literature
and a keen sense of the charm of old historical romance, that we get
the translation from the Spanish which Southey published at the age of
thirty-four, in the year 1808, as "The Chronicle of the Cid."
Robert Southey was born at Bristol on the 12th of August, 1774. He was
the son of an unprosperous linen-draper, and was cared for in his
childhood and youth by two of his mother's relations, a maiden aunt,
with whom he lived as a child, and an uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, who
assisted in providing for his education. Mr. Hill was Chaplain to the
British Factory at Lisbon, and had a well-grounded faith in Southey's
genius and character. He secured for his nephew some years of education
at Westminster School, and when Southey was expelled by an unwise
headmaster for a boyish jest, his uncle's faith in him held firm, and
he was sent on to Balliol College, Oxford. Those were days of wild hope
among the young. They felt all that was generous in the aspiration of
idealists who saw the golden cities of the future in storm-clouds of
revolution. Robert Southey at Oxford dreamed good dreams as a poetical
Republican. He joined himself with other young students--Coleridge
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