Note 20 — Chapter II

This division, and some others less distinctly marked, have led Tapia (Historia de la Civilización de España, Madrid, 1840, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 268) to think, that the whole poem is but a congeries of ballads, as the Iliad has sometimes been thought to be, and, as there is little doubt, the Nibelungenlied really is. But such breaks occur so frequently in different parts of it, and seem so generally to be made for other reasons, that this conjecture is not probable. (Huber, Chrónica del Cid, p. xl.) Besides, the whole poem more resembles the Chansons de Geste of old French poetry, and is more artificial in its structure, than the nature of the ballad permits.