Note 56 — Chapter XXXII

There is no need of authorities to prove the universal prevalence of ballads in the seventeenth century; for the literature of that century often reads like a mere monument of it. But if I wished to name any thing, it would be the Don Quixote, where Sancho is made to cite them so often; and the Novelas of Cervantes, especially “The Little Gypsy,” who sings her ballads in the houses of the nobles and the church of Santa María; and “Rinconete and Cortadillo,” where they make the coarse merriment of the thieves of Seville. Indeed, as the puppet-showman says, in Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 26,) “They were in the mouths of every body,—of the very boys in the streets.”