Note 565 — Chapter XVII

The Valencian has always remained a sweet dialect. Cervantes praises it for its “honeyed grace” more than once. See the second act of the “Gran Sultana,” and the opening of the twelfth chapter in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda.” Mayans y Siscar loses no occasion of honoring it; but he was a native of Valencia, and full of Valencian prejudices.

The literary history of the kingdom of Valencia—both that of the period when its native dialect prevailed, and that of the more recent period during which the Castilian has enjoyed the supremacy—has been illustrated with remarkable diligence and success. The first person who devoted himself to it was Josef Rodriguez, a learned ecclesiastic, who was born in its capital in 1630, and died there in 1703, just at the moment when his “Biblioteca Valentina” was about to be issued from the press, and when, in fact, all but a few pages of it had been printed. But though it was so near to publication, a long time elapsed before it finally appeared; for his friend, Ignacio Savalls, to whom the duty of completing it was intrusted, and who at once busied himself with his task, died, at last, in 1746, without having quite accomplished it.

Meanwhile, however, copies of the imperfect work had got abroad, and one of them came into the hands of Vicente Ximeno, a Valencian, as well as Rodriguez, and, like him, interested in the literary history of his native kingdom. At first, Ximeno conceived the project of completing the work of his predecessor; but soon determined rather to use its materials in preparing on the same subject another and a larger one of his own, whose notices should come down to his own time. This he soon completed, and published it at Valencia, in 1747-49, in two volumes, folio, with the title of “Escritores de Valencia,”—not, however, so quickly that the Biblioteca of Rodriguez had not been fairly launched into the world, in the same city, in 1747, a few months before the first volume of Ximeno’s appeared.

The dictionary of Ximeno, who died in 1764, brings down the literary history of Valencia to 1748, from which date to 1829 it is continued by the “Biblioteca Valenciana” of Justo Pastor Fuster, (Valencia, 1827-30, 2 tom., folio,) a valuable work, containing a great number of new articles for the earlier period embraced by the labors of Rodriguez and Ximeno, and making additions to many which they had left imperfect.

In the five volumes, folio, of which the whole series consists, there are 2841 articles. How many of those in Ximeno relate to authors noticed by Rodriguez, and how many of those in Fuster relate to authors noticed by either or both of his predecessors, I have not examined; but the number is, I think, smaller than might be anticipated; while, on the other hand, the new articles and the additions to the old ones are more considerable and important. Perhaps, taking the whole together, no portion of Europe equally large has had its intellectual history more carefully investigated than the kingdom of Valencia;—a circumstance the more remarkable, if we bear in mind that Rodriguez, the first person who undertook the work, was, as he says, the first who attempted such a labor in any modern language, and that Fuster, the last of them, though evidently a man of curious learning, was by occupation a bookbinder, and was led to his investigations, in a considerable degree, by his interest in the rare books that were, from time to time, intrusted to his mechanical skill.