Excerpt from The Poem of the Cid The composition which, in default of an authoritative title, we must be content to call 'The Poem of the Cid, ' is in some respects the most remarkable production of mediaeval literature that has come down to us. If not absolutely the oldest document in the Spanish language, it is unquestionably the oldest that can be claimed as belonging to the literature of Spain. There are, it is true, ballads the antiquity of which, so far as their substance is concerned, is far greater, but none, in the form in which we now have them, of a date within two centuries of that of the Poem; and the earliest specimens of cultivated, as distinguished from popular, poetry are at least half a century later. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."