Note 380 — Chapter XI

The whole subject of these twelve books of Amadis in Spanish and the twenty-four in French belongs rather to bibliography than to literary history, and is among the most obscure points in both. The twelve Spanish books are said by Brunet never to have been all seen by any one bibliographer. I have seen, I believe, seven or eight of them, and own the only two for which any real value has ever been claimed,—the Amadis de Gaula, in the rare and well-printed edition of Venice, 1533, folio, and the Esplandian in the more rare, but very coarse, edition already referred to. When the earliest edition of either of them, or of most of the others, was printed cannot, I presume, be determined. One of Esplandian, of 1510, is mentioned by N. Antonio, but by nobody else in the century and a half that have since elapsed; and he is so inaccurate in such matters, that his authority is not sufficient. In the same way, he is the only authority for an edition in 1525 of the seventh book,—“Lisuarte of Greece.” But, as the twelfth book was certainly printed in 1549, the only fact of much importance is settled; viz., that the whole twelve were published in Spain in the course of about half a century. For all the curious learning on the subject, however, see an article by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, Lóndres, Agosto de 1827, pp. 29-39; F. A. Ebert, Lexicon, Leipzig, 1821, 4to, Nos. 479-489; Brunet, article Amadis; and, especially, the remarkable discussion, already referred to, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher, Band XXXIII. 1826.