nt history"--he might surely have found politer
language for a variant of the Magdalene story, which is beautiful in
itself and has received especial ornament from art--thought it
composed of "meagre monkish verse," and "hardly of importance" except
as a monument of language. I should myself venture--with infinitely
less competence in the particular language, but some knowledge of
other things of the same kind and time--to call it a rather lively and
accomplished performance of its class. The third piece[201] of those
published, not by Sanchez himself, but as an appendix to the Paris
edition, is the _Adoracion de Los Santos Reyes_, a poem shorter than
the _Santa Maria Egipciaca_, but very similar in manner as well as in
subject. I observe that Ticknor, in a note, seems himself to be of the
opinion that these two pieces are not so old as the Apollonius; though
his remarks about "the French _fabliaux_" are not to the point. The
_fabliaux_, it is true, are in octosyllabic verse; but octosyllabic
verse is certainly older than the _fabliaux_, which have nothing to do
with the Lives of the Saints. But he could hardly have known this when
he wrote.

[Footnote 199: Sanchez-Ochoa, _op. cit._, pp. 525-561.]

[Footnote 200: Ibid., pp. 561-576.]

[Footnote 201: Sanchez-Ochoa, _op. cit._, pp. 577-579.]

[Sidenote: _Berceo._]

Berceo, who appears to have written more than thirteen thousand
lines, wrote nothing secular; and though the religious poetry of the
Middle Ages is occasionally of the highest order, yet when it is of
that rank it is almost invariably Latin, not vernacular, while its
vernacular expression, even where not despicable, is apt to be very
much of a piece, and to present very few features of literary as
distinguished from philological interest. Historians have, however,
very properly noted in him the occurrence of a short lyrical fragment
in irregular octosyllabics, each rhymed in couplets and interspersed
after every line with a refrain. The only certain fact of his life
seems to be his ordination as deacon in 1221.

[Sidenote: _Alfonso el Sabio._]

Of King Alfonso the Learned (for he does not seem to have been by any
means very wise) much more is of course known, though the saying about
the blessedness of having no history is not falsified in his case. But
his titular enjoyment of the empire, his difficulties with his sons,
his death, practically dethroned, and the rest, do not concern us: nor
does even hi