Note 659 — Chapter XX

Thus fi, Valencian or Provençal for hijo, in the “Trescientas,” Copla 37, and trinquete for foresail, in Copla 165, may serve as specimens. Lope de Vega (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 474) complains of Juan de Mena’s Latinisms, which are indeed very awkward and abundant, and cites the following line:—

I do not remember it; but it is as bad as some of the worst verses of the same sort for which Ronsard has been ridiculed. It should be observed, however, that, in the earliest periods of the Castilian language, there was a greater connection with the French than there was in the time of Juan de Mena. Thus, in the “Poem of the Cid,” we have cuer for heart, tiesta for head, etc.; in Berceo, we have asemblar, to meet; sopear, to sup, etc. (See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, 1835, Tom. IV. p. 56.) If, therefore, we find a few French words in Juan de Mena that are no longer used, like sage, which he makes a dissyllable guttural to rhyme with viage in Copla 167, we may presume he found them already in the language, from which they have since been dropped. But Juan de Mena was, in all respects, too bold; and, as the learned Sarmiento says of him in a manuscript which I possess, “Many of his words are not at all Castilian, and were never used either before his time or after it.”