A CERVANTES ITEM FROM EMMANUEL COLLEGE LIBRARY: BARROS'S 'FILOSOFÍA CORTESANA', 1587

of Cervantes's complimentary poems had to wait more than three centuries before they were reprinted. Among these is a sonnet to Alonso de Barros, whose Filosofia cortesana moralizada was printed in Madrid in 1587. In 1819 Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete printed it in his life of Cervantes. He apparently took it from the original edition, though he modernized its spelling and punctuation. He added that Alonso de Barros also wrote a series of versified proverbs which went through several editions in the early seventeenth century.1 After his time no other Cervantine scholar has seen the Filosofia cortesana of 1587. Some supposed that it was the title of an early edition of the versified proverbs. FitzmauriceKelly doubted the identity of the two books, but added that, as no copy of the early edition was known to survive, the case could not be decided.2 His doubts might have been solved had he looked up the early editions of Barros's Proverbios morales^ and the Bibliotheca hispana sine hispanorum of Nicolas Antonio.4 After telling us that Barros was born in Segovia in about 1552, that he was a metatus [billeting officer] to Philip II and to Philip III and that he died in 1604, Antonio listed three editions of the Proverbios; he added two other works :