Chapter VIII: Book I (3)

Thus did Castilian poetry and eloquence develope itself in the ancient national forms, during the first centuries that succeeded its birth, without any superior genius having either raised it to higher perfection, or enlarged its boundaries. Like the _Gaya Ciencia_ of the Troubadours, it was a common property, protected by a literary democracy, which allowed no despotic genius to encroach upon its rights. It is difficult to imagine what might have been the fate of Castilian poetry, had not a new political connection formed between Spain and Italy, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, suddenly brought the Spanish nation, as it were in mass, in contact with the Italians. At all events, the Spaniards must, in the progress of cultivation, have ceased to be satisfied with the poetry of their old songs and romances, on their literary taste becoming in any way more refined.