period Spanish story-tellers
have known how to do their work well. There are tales in the
fourteenth-century collection by Don Juan Manuel, known as _El Conde
Lucanor_, that are as skillfully contrived as could possibly be. In
spite of its prolixity, the once famous romance of _Amadis of Gaul_,
which was given its Spanish form in the end of the fifteenth century,
must still be regarded as a highly successful piece of narration. At the
close of the same century, the often indecent, but never dull
'tragi-comedy' of _Celestina_ (a novel in fact, though dramatic in form)
proved its excellence as a piece of literary workmanship by attaining
speedily a European reputation. The sixteenth century saw the evolution
of so-called _novela picaresca_, or rogue novel, one of the most
important and influential of modern literary forms. And, finally, in
1605 Cervantes published the first part of one of the greatest of modern
books, _Don Quixote_,--a novel in which the art of story-telling is
brought to almost unrivaled perfection.

In more recent times, the Spanish novel has, of course, suffered from
the general intellectual decline of Spain as a whole. Its originality
has been impaired by the inevitable and generally baneful influence
exercised by foreign models upon the taste of a people not confident in
its own strength and superiority. The eighteenth century, in particular,
produced little deserving even casual mention. Yet in no period have
evidences of the old power been entirely lacking; and as soon as the
intellectual, no less than political, agitations that attended the
opening of the present century began, these evidences at once became
more numerous and more significant. The task of acquiring modernity has,
to be sure, proved longer and more difficult in Spain than in any other
great European nation, and the earlier literary work of the century has
about it too much of the general spiritual and artistic uncertainty of
such a period of confusion and change to possess enduring excellence.
But the trained observer can detect even in the unequal and hesitating
essays of the first half of our century indications of a renewal of the
old skill and of the gradual evolution of a new type of novel, which,
while modern in its methods and materials, still allies itself with what
is best in the older tradition.

The fruition of this period of growth has been seen since the middle of
the century, and to-day Spanish novelists easily hold