Note 427 — Chapter II · THE ITALIAN DECADENCE AND THE SPANIARDS.

Spain can boast, however, perhaps the very best History of its criticism as a whole that any European language has—if not as yet the only good one—in the Historia de las Ideas Estéticas en España of Don Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (Ed. 2, 9 vols., Madrid, 1890-1896)1890-1896). This is fortunate for me, inasmuch as I do not pretend to any extensive familiarity with Spanish literature beyond the early poets, and indeed do not read the language with very great facility. Besides Señor Menéndez I have relied chiefly on the texts and comments recently furnished (v. inf.) by M. Morel-Fatio (who will, I hope, continue in so good a road), on Ticknor, on the short but valuable notices of this period in Mr Spingarn, op. cit., on those in my friend Mr Hannay’s The Later Renaissance (Edinburgh and London, 1898), and on Mr James Fitzmaurice Kelly’s History of Spanish Literature (London, 1898). I am particularly obliged to Mr Kelly for a copy of the recent (undated) Spanish translation of his book, with a few corrections, and a preface by Señor Menéndez himself. The Spanish critic combines, with a just praise of the book, a mild remonstrance as to the small space which Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly has given to this very critical subject—a fact in which I own I myself had felt some comfort. The silence of the specialist is the shield of the expatiator. I have not failed, wherever I could, to verify all the critical deliverances in the text, and examine almost all, if not all, the books mentioned; but I do not know the circumference of them as I do elsewhere. And as I began this History on the principle of going to the sources, I think myself bound to warn the reader of any case in which I have been obliged to modify that principle.