DON QUIXOTE
                             by Miguel de Cervantes
                           Translated by John Ormsby

II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE

  FOUR generations had laughed over "Don Quixote" before it occurred
to anyone to ask, who and what manner of man was this Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too
late for a satisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to
add a life of the author to the London edition published at Lord
Carteret's instance in 1738. All traces of the personality of
Cervantes had by that time disappeared. Any floating traditions that
may once have existed, transmitted from men who had known him, had
long since died out, and of other record there was none; for the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were incurious as to "the men of
the time," a reproach against which the nineteenth has, at any rate,
secured itself, if it has produced no Shakespeare or Cervantes. All
that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was entrusted, or any of
those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or Navarrete, could do was
to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes to himself in his various
prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidence bearing upon his
life as they could find.
  This, however, has been done by the last-named biographer to such
good purpose that he has superseded all predecessors. Thoroughness
is the chief characteristic of Navarrete's work. Besides sifting,
testing, and methodising with rare patience and judgment what had been
previously brought to light, he left, as the saying is, no stone
unturned under which anything to illustrate his subject might possibly
be found. Navarrete has done all that industry and acumen could do,
and it is no fault of his if he has not given us what we want. What
Hallam says of Shakespeare may be applied to the almost parallel
case of Cervantes: "It is not the register of his baptism, or the
draft of his will, or the orthography of his name that we seek; no
letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character
of him drawn ... by a contemporary has been produced."
  It is only natural, therefore, that the biographers of Cervantes,
forced to make brick without straw, should have recourse largely to
conjecture, and that conjecture should in some instances come by
degrees to take the place of established fact. All that I propose to
do here is to separate what is matter of fact from what is matter of
conjecture, and leave it to the reader's judgment to decide whether
the data justify the inference or not.
  The men whose names by common consent stand in the front rank of
Spanish literature, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Calderon,
Garcilaso de la Vega, the Mendozas, Gongora, were all men of ancient
families, and, curiously, all, except the last, of families that
traced their origin to the same mountain district in the North of
Spain. The family of Cervantes is commonly said to have been of
Galician origin, and unquestionably it was in possession of lands in
Galicia at a very early date; but I think the balance of the
evidence tends to show that the "solar," the original site of the
family, was at Cervatos in the north-west corner of Old Castile, close
to the junction of Castile, Leon, and the Asturias. As it happens,
there is a complete history of the Cervantes family from the tenth
century down to the seventeenth extant under the title of "Illustrious
Ancestry, Glorious Deeds, and Noble Posterity of the Famous Nuno
Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo," written in 1648 by the industrious
genealogist Rodrigo Mendez Silva, who availed himself of a
manuscript genealogy by Juan de Mena, the poet laureate and
historiographer of John II.
  The origin of the name Cervantes is curious. Nuno Alfonso was almost
as distinguished in the struggle against the Moors in the reign of
Alfonso VII as the Cid had been half a century before in that of
Alfonso VI, and was rewarded by divers grants of land in the
neighbourhood of Toledo. On one of his acquisitions, about two leagues
from the city, he built himself a castle which he called Cervatos,
because "he was lord of the solar of Cervatos in the Montana," as
the mountain region extending from the Basque Provinces to Leon was
always called. At his death in battle in 1143, the castle passed by
his will to his son Alfonso Munio, who, as territorial or local
surnames were then coming into vogue in place of the simple
patronymic, took the additional name of Cervatos. His eldest son Pedro
succeeded him in the possession of the castle, and followed his
example in adopting the name, an assumption at which the younger
son, Gonzalo, seems to have taken umbrage.
  Everyone who has paid even a flying visit to Toledo will remember
the ruined castle that crowns the hill above the spot where the bridge
of Alcantara spans the gorge of the Tagus, and with its broken outline
and crumbling walls makes such an admirable pendant to the square
solid Alcazar towering over the city roofs on the opposite side. It
was built, or as some say restored, by Alfonso VI shortly after his
occupation of Toledo in 1085, and called by him San Servando after a
Spanish martyr, a name subsequently modified into San Servan (in which
form it appears in the "Poem of the Cid"), San Servantes, and San
Cervantes: with regard to which last the "Handbook for Spain" warns
its readers against the supposition that it has anything to do with
the author of "Don Quixote." Ford, as all know who have taken him
for a companion and counsellor on the roads of Spain, is seldom
wrong in matters of literature or history. In this instance,
however, he is in error. It has everything to do with the author of
"Don Quixote," for it is in fact these old walls that have given to
Spain the name she is proudest of to-day. Gonzalo, above mentioned, it
may be readily conceived, did not relish the appropriation by his
brother of a name to which he himself had an equal right, for though
nominally taken from the castle, it was in reality derived from the
ancient territorial possession of the family, and as a set-off, and to
distinguish himself (diferenciarse) from his brother, he took as a
surname the name of the castle on the bank of the Tagus, in the
building of which, according to a family tradition, his
great-grandfather had a share.
  Both brothers founded families. The Cervantes branch had more
tenacity; it sent offshoots in various directions, Andalusia,
Estremadura, Galicia, and Portugal, and produced a goodly line of
men distinguished in the service of Church and State. Gonzalo himself,
and apparently a son of his, followed Ferdinand III in the great
campaign of 1236-48 that gave Cordova and Seville to Christian Spain
and penned up the Moors in the kingdom of Granada, and his descendants
intermarried with some of the noblest families of the Peninsula and
numbered among them soldiers, magistrates, and Church dignitaries,
including at least two cardinal-archbishops.
   Of the line that settled in Andalusia, Deigo de Cervantes,
Commander of the Order of Santiago, married Juana Avellaneda, daughter
of Juan Arias de Saavedra, and had several sons, of whom one was
Gonzalo Gomez, Corregidor of Jerez and ancestor of the Mexican and
Columbian branches of the family; and another, Juan, whose son Rodrigo
married Dona Leonor de Cortinas, and by her had four children,
Rodrigo, Andrea, Luisa, and Miguel, our author.
  The pedigree of Cervantes is not without its bearing on "Don
Quixote." A man who could look back upon an ancestry of genuine
knights-errant extending from well-nigh the time of Pelayo to the
siege of Granada was likely to have a strong feeling on the subject of
the sham chivalry of the romances. It gives a point, too, to what he
says in more than one place about families that have once been great
and have tapered away until they have come to nothing, like a pyramid.
It was the case of his own.
  He was born at Alcala de Henares and baptised in the church of Santa
Maria Mayor on the 9th of October, 1547. Of his boyhood and youth we
know nothing, unless it be from the glimpse he gives us in the preface
to his "Comedies" of himself as a boy looking on with delight while
Lope de Rueda and his company set up their rude plank stage in the
plaza and acted the rustic farces which he himself afterwards took
as the model of his interludes. This first glimpse, however, is a
significant one, for it shows the early development of that love of
the drama which exercised such an influence on his life and seems to
have grown stronger as he grew older, and of which this very
preface, written only a few months before his death, is such a
striking proof. He gives us to understand, too, that he was a great
reader in his youth; but of this no assurance was needed, for the
First Part of "Don Quixote" alone proves a vast amount of
miscellaneous reading, romances of chivalry, ballads, popular
poetry, chronicles, for which he had no time or opportunity except
in the first twenty years of his life; and his misquotations and
mistakes in matters of detail are always, it may be noticed, those
of a man recalling the reading of his boyhood.
  Other things besides the drama were in their infancy when
Cervantes was a boy. The period of his boyhood was in every way a
transition period for Spain. The old chivalrous Spain had passed away.
The new Spain was the mightiest power the world had seen since the
Roman Empire and it had not yet been called upon to pay the price of
its greatness. By the policy of Ferdinand and Ximenez the sovereign
had been made absolute, and the Church and Inquisition adroitly
adjusted to keep him so. The nobles, who had always resisted
absolutism as strenuously as they had fought the Moors, had been
divested of all political power, a like fate had befallen the
cities, the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon had been swept
away, and the only function that remained to the Cortes was that of
granting money at the King's dictation.
  The transition extended to literature. Men who, like Garcilaso de la
Vega and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, followed the Italian wars, had
brought back from Italy the products of the post-Renaissance
literature, which took root and flourished and even threatened to
extinguish the native growths. Damon and Thyrsis, Phyllis and Chloe
had been fairly naturalised in Spain, together with all the devices of
pastoral poetry for investing with an air of novelty the idea of a
dispairing shepherd and inflexible shepherdess. As a set-off against
this, the old historical and traditional ballads, and the true
pastorals, the songs and ballads of peasant life, were being collected
assiduously and printed in the cancioneros that succeeded one
another with increasing rapidity. But the most notable consequence,
perhaps, of the spread of printing was the flood of romances of
chivalry that had continued to pour from the press ever since Garci
Ordonez de Montalvo had resuscitated "Amadis of Gaul" at the beginning
of the century.
  For a youth fond of reading, solid or light, there could have been
no better spot in Spain than Alcala de Henares in the middle of the
sixteenth century. It was then a busy, populous university town,
something more than the enterprising rival of Salamanca, and
altogether a very different place from the melancholy, silent,
deserted Alcala the traveller sees now as he goes from Madrid to
Saragossa. Theology and medicine may have been the strong points of
the university, but the town itself seems to have inclined rather to
the humanities and light literature, and as a producer of books Alcala
was already beginning to compete with the older presses of Toledo,
Burgos, Salamanca and Seville.
  A pendant to the picture Cervantes has given us of his first
playgoings might, no doubt, have been often seen in the streets of
Alcala at that time; a bright, eager, tawny-haired boy peering into
a book-shop where the latest volumes lay open to tempt the public,
wondering, it may be, what that little book with the woodcut of the
blind beggar and his boy, that called itself "Vida de Lazarillo de
Tormes, segunda impresion," could be about; or with eyes brimming over
with merriment gazing at one of those preposterous portraits of a
knight-errant in outrageous panoply and plumes with which the
publishers of chivalry romances loved to embellish the title-pages
of their folios. If the boy was the father of the man, the sense of
the incongruous that was strong at fifty was lively at ten, and some
such reflections as these may have been the true genesis of "Don
Quixote."
  For his more solid education, we are told, he went to Salamanca. But
why Rodrigo de Cervantes, who was very poor, should have sent his
son to a university a hundred and fifty miles away when he had one
at his own door, would be a puzzle, if we had any reason for supposing
that he did so. The only evidence is a vague statement by Professor
Tomas Gonzalez, that he once saw an old entry of the matriculation
of a Miguel de Cervantes. This does not appear to have been ever
seen again; but even if it had, and if the date corresponded, it would
prove nothing, as there were at least two other Miguels born about the
middle of the century; one of them, moreover, a Cervantes Saavedra,
a cousin, no doubt, who was a source of great embarrassment to the
biographers.
  That he was a student neither at Salamanca nor at Alcala is best
proved by his own works. No man drew more largely upon experience than
he did, and he has nowhere left a single reminiscence of student life-
for the "Tia Fingida," if it be his, is not one- nothing, not even
"a college joke," to show that he remembered days that most men
remember best. All that we know positively about his education is that
Juan Lopez de Hoyos, a professor of humanities and belles-lettres of
some eminence, calls him his "dear and beloved pupil." This was in a
little collection of verses by different hands on the death of
Isabel de Valois, second queen of Philip II, published by the
professor in 1569, to which Cervantes contributed four pieces,
including an elegy, and an epitaph in the form of a sonnet. It is only
by a rare chance that a "Lycidas" finds its way into a volume of
this sort, and Cervantes was no Milton. His verses are no worse than
such things usually are; so much, at least, may be said for them.
  By the time the book appeared he had left Spain, and, as fate
ordered it, for twelve years, the most eventful ones of his life.
Giulio, afterwards Cardinal, Acquaviva had been sent at the end of
1568 to Philip II by the Pope on a mission, partly of condolence,
partly political, and on his return to Rome, which was somewhat
brusquely expedited by the King, he took Cervantes with him as his
camarero (chamberlain), the office he himself held in the Pope's
household. The post would no doubt have led to advancement at the
Papal Court had Cervantes retained it, but in the summer of 1570 he
resigned it and enlisted as a private soldier in Captain Diego
Urbina's company, belonging to Don Miguel de Moncada's regiment, but
at that time forming a part of the command of Marc Antony Colonna.
What impelled him to this step we know not, whether it was distaste
for the career before him, or purely military enthusiasm. It may
well have been the latter, for it was a stirring time; the events,
however, which led to the alliance between Spain, Venice, and the
Pope, against the common enemy, the Porte, and to the victory of the
combined fleets at Lepanto, belong rather to the history of Europe
than to the life of Cervantes. He was one of those that sailed from
Messina, in September 1571, under the command of Don John of
Austria; but on the morning of the 7th of October, when the Turkish
fleet was sighted, he was lying below ill with fever. At the news that
the enemy was in sight he rose, and, in spite of the remonstrances
of his comrades and superiors, insisted on taking his post, saying
he preferred death in the service of God and the King to health. His
galley, the Marquesa, was in the thick of the fight, and before it was
over he had received three gunshot wounds, two in the breast and one
in the left hand or arm. On the morning after the battle, according to
Navarrete, he had an interview with the commander-in-chief, Don
John, who was making a personal inspection of the wounded, one
result of which was an addition of three crowns to his pay, and
another, apparently, the friendship of his general.
  How severely Cervantes was wounded may be inferred from the fact,
that with youth, a vigorous frame, and as cheerful and buoyant a
temperament as ever invalid had, he was seven months in hospital at
Messina before he was discharged. He came out with his left hand
permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him
in the "Viaje del Parnaso" for the greater glory of the right. This,
however, did not absolutely unfit him for service, and in April 1572
he joined Manuel Ponce de Leon's company of Lope de Figueroa's
regiment, in which, it seems probable, his brother Rodrigo was
serving, and shared in the operations of the next three years,
including the capture of the Goletta and Tunis. Taking advantage of
the lull which followed the recapture of these places by the Turks, he
obtained leave to return to Spain, and sailed from Naples in September
1575 on board the Sun galley, in company with his brother Rodrigo,
Pedro Carrillo de Quesada, late Governor of the Goletta, and some
others, and furnished with letters from Don John of Austria and the
Duke of Sesa, the Viceroy of Sicily, recommending him to the King
for the command of a company, on account of his services; a dono
infelice as events proved. On the 26th they fell in with a squadron of
Algerine galleys, and after a stout resistance were overpowered and
carried into Algiers.
  By means of a ransomed fellow-captive the brothers contrived to
inform their family of their condition, and the poor people at
Alcala at once strove to raise the ransom money, the father
disposing of all he possessed, and the two sisters giving up their
marriage portions. But Dali Mami had found on Cervantes the letters
addressed to the King by Don John and the Duke of Sesa, and,
concluding that his prize must be a person of great consequence,
when the money came he refused it scornfully as being altogether
insufficient. The owner of Rodrigo, however, was more easily
satisfied; ransom was accepted in his case, and it was arranged
between the brothers that he should return to Spain and procure a
vessel in which he was to come back to Algiers and take off Miguel and
as many of their comrades as possible. This was not the first
attempt to escape that Cervantes had made. Soon after the commencement
of his captivity he induced several of his companions to join him in
trying to reach Oran, then a Spanish post, on foot; but after the
first day's journey, the Moor who had agreed to act as their guide
deserted them, and they had no choice but to return. The second
attempt was more disastrous. In a garden outside the city on the
sea-shore, he constructed, with the help of the gardener, a
Spaniard, a hiding-place, to which he brought, one by one, fourteen of
his fellow-captives, keeping them there in secrecy for several months,
and supplying them with food through a renegade known as El Dorador,
"the Gilder." How he, a captive himself, contrived to do all this,
is one of the mysteries of the story. Wild as the project may
appear, it was very nearly successful. The vessel procured by
Rodrigo made its appearance off the coast, and under cover of night
was proceeding to take off the refugees, when the crew were alarmed by
a passing fishing boat, and beat a hasty retreat. On renewing the
attempt shortly afterwards, they, or a portion of them at least,
were taken prisoners, and just as the poor fellows in the garden
were exulting in the thought that in a few moments more freedom
would be within their grasp, they found themselves surrounded by
Turkish troops, horse and foot. The Dorador had revealed the whole
scheme to the Dey Hassan.
  When Cervantes saw what had befallen them, he charged his companions
to lay all the blame upon him, and as they were being bound he
declared aloud that the whole plot was of his contriving, and that
nobody else had any share in it. Brought before the Dey, he said the
same. He was threatened with impalement and with torture; and as
cutting off ears and noses were playful freaks with the Algerines,
it may be conceived what their tortures were like; but nothing could
make him swerve from his original statement that he and he alone was
responsible. The upshot was that the unhappy gardener was hanged by
his master, and the prisoners taken possession of by the Dey, who,
however, afterwards restored most of them to their masters, but kept
Cervantes, paying Dali Mami 500 crowns for him. He felt, no doubt,
that a man of such resource, energy, and daring, was too dangerous a
piece of property to be left in private hands; and he had him
heavily ironed and lodged in his own prison. If he thought that by
these means he could break the spirit or shake the resolution of his
prisoner, he was soon undeceived, for Cervantes contrived before
long to despatch a letter to the Governor of Oran, entreating him to
send him some one that could be trusted, to enable him and three other
gentlemen, fellow-captives of his, to make their escape; intending
evidently to renew his first attempt with a more trustworthy guide.
Unfortunately the Moor who carried the letter was stopped just outside
Oran, and the letter being found upon him, he was sent back to
Algiers, where by the order of the Dey he was promptly impaled as a
warning to others, while Cervantes was condemned to receive two
thousand blows of the stick, a number which most likely would have
deprived the world of "Don Quixote," had not some persons, who they
were we know not, interceded on his behalf.
  After this he seems to have been kept in still closer confinement
than before, for nearly two years passed before he made another
attempt. This time his plan was to purchase, by the aid of a Spanish
renegade and two Valencian merchants resident in Algiers, an armed
vessel in which he and about sixty of the leading captives were to
make their escape; but just as they were about to put it into
execution one Doctor Juan Blanco de Paz, an ecclesiastic and a
compatriot, informed the Dey of the plot. Cervantes by force of
character, by his self-devotion, by his untiring energy and his
exertions to lighten the lot of his companions in misery, had endeared
himself to all, and become the leading spirit in the captive colony,
and, incredible as it may seem, jealousy of his influence and the
esteem in which he was held, moved this man to compass his destruction
by a cruel death. The merchants finding that the Dey knew all, and
fearing that Cervantes under torture might make disclosures that would
imperil their own lives, tried to persuade him to slip away on board a
vessel that was on the point of sailing for Spain; but he told them
they had nothing to fear, for no tortures would make him compromise
anybody, and he went at once and gave himself up to the Dey.
  As before, the Dey tried to force him to name his accomplices.
Everything was made ready for his immediate execution; the halter
was put round his neck and his hands tied behind him, but all that
could be got from him was that he himself, with the help of four
gentlemen who had since left Algiers, had arranged the whole, and that
the sixty who were to accompany him were not to know anything of it
until the last moment. Finding he could make nothing of him, the Dey
sent him back to prison more heavily ironed than before.
  The poverty-stricken Cervantes family had been all this time
trying once more to raise the ransom money, and at last a sum of three
hundred ducats was got together and entrusted to the Redemptorist
Father Juan Gil, who was about to sail for Algiers. The Dey,
however, demanded more than double the sum offered, and as his term of
office had expired and he was about to sail for Constantinople, taking
all his slaves with him, the case of Cervantes was critical. He was
already on board heavily ironed, when the Dey at length agreed to
reduce his demand by one-half, and Father Gil by borrowing was able to
make up the amount, and on September 19, 1580, after a captivity of
five years all but a week, Cervantes was at last set free. Before long
he discovered that Blanco de Paz, who claimed to be an officer of
the Inquisition, was now concocting on false evidence a charge of
misconduct to be brought against him on his return to Spain. To
checkmate him Cervantes drew up a series of twenty-five questions,
covering the whole period of his captivity, upon which he requested
Father Gil to take the depositions of credible witnesses before a
notary. Eleven witnesses taken from among the principal captives in
Algiers deposed to all the facts above stated and to a great deal more
besides. There is something touching in the admiration, love, and
gratitude we see struggling to find expression in the formal
language of the notary, as they testify one after another to the
good deeds of Cervantes, how he comforted and helped the weak-hearted,
how he kept up their drooping courage, how he shared his poor purse
with this deponent, and how "in him this deponent found father and
mother."
  On his return to Spain he found his old regiment about to march
for Portugal to support Philip's claim to the crown, and utterly
penniless now, had no choice but to rejoin it. He was in the
expeditions to the Azores in 1582 and the following year, and on the
conclusion of the war returned to Spain in the autumn of 1583,
bringing with him the manuscript of his pastoral romance, the
"Galatea," and probably also, to judge by internal evidence, that of
the first portion of "Persiles and Sigismunda." He also brought back
with him, his biographers assert, an infant daughter, the offspring of
an amour, as some of them with great circumstantiality inform us, with
a Lisbon lady of noble birth, whose name, however, as well as that
of the street she lived in, they omit to mention. The sole
foundation for all this is that in 1605 there certainly was living
in the family of Cervantes a Dona Isabel de Saavedra, who is described
in an official document as his natural daughter, and then twenty years
of age.
  With his crippled left hand promotion in the army was hopeless,
now that Don John was dead and he had no one to press his claims and
services, and for a man drawing on to forty life in the ranks was a
dismal prospect; he had already a certain reputation as a poet; he
made up his mind, therefore, to cast his lot with literature, and
for a first venture committed his "Galatea" to the press. It was
published, as Salva y Mallen shows conclusively, at Alcala, his own
birth-place, in 1585 and no doubt helped to make his name more
widely known, but certainly did not do him much good in any other way.
  While it was going through the press, he married Dona Catalina de
Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, a lady of Esquivias near Madrid, and
apparently a friend of the family, who brought him a fortune which may
possibly have served to keep the wolf from the door, but if so, that
was all. The drama had by this time outgrown market-place stages and
strolling companies, and with his old love for it he naturally
turned to it for a congenial employment. In about three years he wrote
twenty or thirty plays, which he tells us were performed without any
throwing of cucumbers or other missiles, and ran their course
without any hisses, outcries, or disturbance. In other words, his
plays were not bad enough to be hissed off the stage, but not good
enough to hold their own upon it. Only two of them have been
preserved, but as they happen to be two of the seven or eight he
mentions with complacency, we may assume they are favourable
specimens, and no one who reads the "Numancia" and the "Trato de
Argel" will feel any surprise that they failed as acting dramas.
Whatever merits they may have, whatever occasional they may show, they
are, as regards construction, incurably clumsy. How completely they
failed is manifest from the fact that with all his sanguine
temperament and indomitable perseverance he was unable to maintain the
struggle to gain a livelihood as a dramatist for more than three
years; nor was the rising popularity of Lope the cause, as is often
said, notwithstanding his own words to the contrary. When Lope began
to write for the stage is uncertain, but it was certainly after
Cervantes went to Seville.
  Among the "Nuevos Documentos" printed by Senor Asensio y Toledo is
one dated 1592, and curiously characteristic of Cervantes. It is an
agreement with one Rodrigo Osorio, a manager, who was to accept six
comedies at fifty ducats (about 6l.) apiece, not to be paid in any
case unless it appeared on representation that the said comedy was one
of the best that had ever been represented in Spain. The test does not
seem to have been ever applied; perhaps it was sufficiently apparent
to Rodrigo Osorio that the comedies were not among the best that had
ever been represented. Among the correspondence of Cervantes there
might have been found, no doubt, more than one letter like that we see
in the "Rake's Progress," "Sir, I have read your play, and it will not
doo."
  He was more successful in a literary contest at Saragossa in 1595 in
honour of the canonisation of St. Jacinto, when his composition won
the first prize, three silver spoons. The year before this he had been
appointed a collector of revenues for the kingdom of Granada. In order
to remit the money he had collected more conveniently to the treasury,
he entrusted it to a merchant, who failed and absconded; and as the
bankrupt's assets were insufficient to cover the whole, he was sent to
prison at Seville in September 1597. The balance against him, however,
was a small one, about 26l., and on giving security for it he was
released at the end of the year.
  It was as he journeyed from town to town collecting the king's
taxes, that he noted down those bits of inn and wayside life and
character that abound in the pages of "Don Quixote:" the Benedictine
monks with spectacles and sunshades, mounted on their tall mules;
the strollers in costume bound for the next village; the barber with
his basin on his head, on his way to bleed a patient; the recruit with
his breeches in his bundle, tramping along the road singing; the
reapers gathered in the venta gateway listening to "Felixmarte of
Hircania" read out to them; and those little Hogarthian touches that
he so well knew how to bring in, the ox-tail hanging up with the
landlord's comb stuck in it, the wine-skins at the bed-head, and those
notable examples of hostelry art, Helen going off in high spirits on
Paris's arm, and Dido on the tower dropping tears as big as walnuts.
Nay, it may well be that on those journeys into remote regions he came
across now and then a specimen of the pauper gentleman, with his
lean hack and his greyhound and his books of chivalry, dreaming away
his life in happy ignorance that the world had changed since his
great-grandfather's old helmet was new. But it was in Seville that
he found out his true vocation, though he himself would not by any
means have admitted it to be so. It was there, in Triana, that he
was first tempted to try his hand at drawing from life, and first
brought his humour into play in the exquisite little sketch of
"Rinconete y Cortadillo," the germ, in more ways than one, of "Don
Quixote."
  Where and when that was written, we cannot tell. After his
imprisonment all trace of Cervantes in his official capacity
disappears, from which it may be inferred that he was not
reinstated. That he was still in Seville in November 1598 appears from
a satirical sonnet of his on the elaborate catafalque erected to
testify the grief of the city at the death of Philip II, but from this
up to 1603 we have no clue to his movements. The words in the
preface to the First Part of "Don Quixote" are generally held to be
conclusive that he conceived the idea of the book, and wrote the
beginning of it at least, in a prison, and that he may have done so is
extremely likely.
  There is a tradition that Cervantes read some portions of his work
to a select audience at the Duke of Bejar's, which may have helped
to make the book known; but the obvious conclusion is that the First
Part of "Don Quixote" lay on his hands some time before he could
find a publisher bold enough to undertake a venture of so novel a
character; and so little faith in it had Francisco Robles of Madrid,
to whom at last he sold it, that he did not care to incur the
expense of securing the copyright for Aragon or Portugal, contenting
himself with that for Castile. The printing was finished in
December, and the book came out with the new year, 1605. It is often
said that "Don Quixote" was at first received coldly. The facts show
just the contrary. No sooner was it in the hands of the public than
preparations were made to issue pirated editions at Lisbon and
Valencia, and to bring out a second edition with the additional
copyrights for Aragon and Portugal, which he secured in February.
  No doubt it was received with something more than coldness by
certain sections of the community. Men of wit, taste, and
discrimination among the aristocracy gave it a hearty welcome, but the
aristocracy in general were not likely to relish a book that turned
their favourite reading into ridicule and laughed at so many of
their favourite ideas. The dramatists who gathered round Lope as their
leader regarded Cervantes as their common enemy, and it is plain
that he was equally obnoxious to the other clique, the culto poets who
had Gongora for their chief. Navarrete, who knew nothing of the letter
above mentioned, tries hard to show that the relations between
Cervantes and Lope were of a very friendly sort, as indeed they were
until "Don Quixote" was written. Cervantes, indeed, to the last
generously and manfully declared his admiration of Lope's powers,
his unfailing invention, and his marvellous fertility; but in the
preface of the First Part of "Don Quixote" and in the verses of
"Urganda the Unknown," and one or two other places, there are, if we
read between the lines, sly hits at Lope's vanities and affectations
that argue no personal good-will; and Lope openly sneers at "Don
Quixote" and Cervantes, and fourteen years after his death gives him
only a few lines of cold commonplace in the "Laurel de Apolo," that
seem all the colder for the eulogies of a host of nonentities whose
names are found nowhere else.
  In 1601 Valladolid was made the seat of the Court, and at the
beginning of 1603 Cervantes had been summoned thither in connection
with the balance due by him to the Treasury, which was still
outstanding. He remained at Valladolid, apparently supporting
himself by agencies and scrivener's work of some sort; probably
drafting petitions and drawing up statements of claims to be presented
to the Council, and the like. So, at least, we gather from the
depositions taken on the occasion of the death of a gentleman, the
victim of a street brawl, who had been carried into the house in which
he lived. In these he himself is described as a man who wrote and
transacted business, and it appears that his household then
consisted of his wife, the natural daughter Isabel de Saavedra already
mentioned, his sister Andrea, now a widow, her daughter Constanza, a
mysterious Magdalena de Sotomayor calling herself his sister, for whom
his biographers cannot account, and a servant-maid.
  Meanwhile "Don Quixote" had been growing in favour, and its author's
name was now known beyond the Pyrenees. In 1607 an edition was printed
at Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary to
meet the demand by a third edition, the seventh in all, in 1608. The
popularity of the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller was
led to bring out an edition in 1610; and another was called for in
Brussels in 1611. It might naturally have been expected that, with
such proofs before him that he had hit the taste of the public,
Cervantes would have at once set about redeeming his rather vague
promise of a second volume.
  But, to all appearance, nothing was farther from his thoughts. He
had still by him one or two short tales of the same vintage as those
he had inserted in "Don Quixote" and instead of continuing the
adventures of Don Quixote, he set to work to write more of these
"Novelas Exemplares" as he afterwards called them, with a view to
making a book of them.
  The novels were published in the summer of 1613, with a dedication
to the Conde de Lemos, the Maecenas of the day, and with one of
those chatty confidential prefaces Cervantes was so fond of. In
this, eight years and a half after the First Part of "Don Quixote" had
appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "You
shall see shortly," he says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote
and humours of Sancho Panza." His idea of "shortly" was a somewhat
elastic one, for, as we know by the date to Sancho's letter, he had
barely one-half of the book completed that time twelvemonth.
  But more than poems, or pastorals, or novels, it was his dramatic
ambition that engrossed his thoughts. The same indomitable spirit that
kept him from despair in the bagnios of Algiers, and prompted him to
attempt the escape of himself and his comrades again and again, made
him persevere in spite of failure and discouragement in his efforts to
win the ear of the public as a dramatist. The temperament of Cervantes
was essentially sanguine. The portrait he draws in the preface to
the novels, with the aquiline features, chestnut hair, smooth
untroubled forehead, and bright cheerful eyes, is the very portrait of
a sanguine man. Nothing that the managers might say could persuade him
that the merits of his plays would not be recognised at last if they
were only given a fair chance. The old soldier of the Spanish
Salamis was bent on being the Aeschylus of Spain. He was to found a
great national drama, based on the true principles of art, that was to
be the envy of all nations; he was to drive from the stage the
silly, childish plays, the "mirrors of nonsense and models of folly"
that were in vogue through the cupidity of the managers and
shortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and educate the
public taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of the Greek
drama- like the "Numancia" for instance- and comedies that would not
only amuse but improve and instruct. All this he was to do, could he
once get a hearing: there was the initial difficulty.
  He shows plainly enough, too, that "Don Quixote" and the
demolition of the chivalry romances was not the work that lay next his
heart. He was, indeed, as he says himself in his preface, more a
stepfather than a father to "Don Quixote." Never was great work so
neglected by its author. That it was written carelessly, hastily,
and by fits and starts, was not always his fault, but it seems clear
he never read what he sent to the press. He knew how the printers
had blundered, but he never took the trouble to correct them when
the third edition was in progress, as a man who really cared for the
child of his brain would have done. He appears to have regarded the
book as little more than a mere libro de entretenimiento, an amusing
book, a thing, as he says in the "Viaje," "to divert the melancholy
moody heart at any time or season." No doubt he had an affection for
his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would have been
strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous
creation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and
success of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with
which he shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But
it was not the success he coveted. In all probability he would have
given all the success of "Don Quixote," nay, would have seen every
copy of "Don Quixote" burned in the Plaza Mayor, for one such
success as Lope de Vega was enjoying on an average once a week.
   And so he went on, dawdling over "Don Quixote," adding a chapter
now and again, and putting it aside to turn to "Persiles and
Sigismunda" -which, as we know, was to be the most entertaining book
in the language, and the rival of "Theagenes and Chariclea"- or
finishing off one of his darling comedies; and if Robles asked when
"Don Quixote" would be ready, the answer no doubt was: En breve-
shortly, there was time enough for that. At sixty-eight he was as full
of life and hope and plans for the future as a boy of eighteen.
  Nemesis was coming, however. He had got as far as Chapter LIX, which
at his leisurely pace he could hardly have reached before October or
November 1614, when there was put into his hand a small octave
lately printed at Tarragona, and calling itself "Second Volume of
the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licentiate
Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda of Tordesillas." The last half of
Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of the Second Part give
us some idea of the effect produced upon him, and his irritation was
not likely to be lessened by the reflection that he had no one to
blame but himself. Had Avellaneda, in fact, been content with merely
bringing out a continuation to "Don Quixote," Cervantes would have had
no reasonable grievance. His own intentions were expressed in the very
vaguest language at the end of the book; nay, in his last words,
"forse altro cantera con miglior plettro," he seems actually to invite
some one else to continue the work, and he made no sign until eight
years and a half had gone by; by which time Avellaneda's volume was no
doubt written.
  In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere
continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to
it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned
man could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having
lost his hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being
friendless, accuses him of envy of Lope's success, of petulance and
querulousness, and so on; and it was in this that the sting lay.
Avellaneda's reason for this personal attack is obvious enough.
Whoever he may have been, it is clear that he was one of the
dramatists of Lope's school, for he has the impudence to charge
Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his criticism on the
drama. His identification has exercised the best critics and baffled
all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear on it.
Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes knew
who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an
invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a
mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language
pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself,
supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an
ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably.
  Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is
too dull to reflect much. "Dull and dirty" will always be, I
imagine, the verdict of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers.
He is, at best, a poor plagiarist; all he can do is to follow
slavishly the lead given him by Cervantes; his only humour lies in
making Don Quixote take inns for castles and fancy himself some
legendary or historical personage, and Sancho mistake words, invert
proverbs, and display his gluttony; all through he shows a
proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has contrived to introduce
two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth century novellieri
and without their sprightliness.
  But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget
the debt we owe them. But for them, there can be no doubt, "Don
Quixote" would have come to us a mere torso instead of a complete
work. Even if Cervantes had finished the volume he had in hand, most
assuredly he would have left off with a promise of a Third Part,
giving the further adventures of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho
Panza as shepherds. It is plain that he had at one time an intention
of dealing with the pastoral romances as he had dealt with the books
of chivalry, and but for Avellaneda he would have tried to carry it
out. But it is more likely that, with his plans, and projects, and
hopefulness, the volume would have remained unfinished till his death,
and that we should have never made the acquaintance of the Duke and
Duchess, or gone with Sancho to Barataria.
  From the moment the book came into his hands he seems to have been
haunted by the fear that there might be more Avellanedas in the field,
and putting everything else aside, he set himself to finish off his
task and protect Don Quixote in the only way he could, by killing him.
The conclusion is no doubt a hasty and in some places clumsy piece
of work and the frequent repetition of the scolding administered to
Avellaneda becomes in the end rather wearisome; but it is, at any
rate, a conclusion and for that we must thank Avellaneda.
  The new volume was ready for the press in February, but was not
printed till the very end of 1615, and during the interval Cervantes
put together the comedies and interludes he had written within the
last few years, and, as he adds plaintively, found no demand for among
the managers, and published them with a preface, worth the book it
introduces tenfold, in which he gives an account of the early
Spanish stage, and of his own attempts as a dramatist. It is
needless to say they were put forward by Cervantes in all good faith
and full confidence in their merits. The reader, however, was not to
suppose they were his last word or final effort in the drama, for he
had in hand a comedy called "Engano a los ojos," about which, if he
mistook not, there would be no question.
  Of this dramatic masterpiece the world has no opportunity of
judging; his health had been failing for some time, and he died,
apparently of dropsy, on the 23rd of April, 1616, the day on which
England lost Shakespeare, nominally at least, for the English calendar
had not yet been reformed. He died as he had lived, accepting his
lot bravely and cheerfully.
  Was it an unhappy life, that of Cervantes? His biographers all
tell us that it was; but I must say I doubt it. It was a hard life,
a life of poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, of
disappointment, but Cervantes carried within himself the antidote to
all these evils. His was not one of those light natures that rise
above adversity merely by virtue of their own buoyancy; it was in
the fortitude of a high spirit that he was proof against it. It is
impossible to conceive Cervantes giving way to despondency or
prostrated by dejection. As for poverty, it was with him a thing to be
laughed over, and the only sigh he ever allows to escape him is when
he says, "Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of bread for which
he is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself." Add to all
this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless invention
and his sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough to doubt
whether his could have been a very unhappy life. He who could take
Cervantes' distresses together with his apparatus for enduring them
would not make so bad a bargain, perhaps, as far as happiness in
life is concerned.
  Of his burial-place nothing is known except that he was buried, in
accordance with his will, in the neighbouring convent of Trinitarian
nuns, of which it is supposed his daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, was an
inmate, and that a few years afterwards the nuns removed to another
convent, carrying their dead with them. But whether the remains of
Cervantes were included in the removal or not no one knows, and the
clue to their resting-place is now lost beyond all hope. This
furnishes perhaps the least defensible of the items in the charge of
neglect brought against his contemporaries. In some of the others
there is a good deal of exaggeration. To listen to most of his
biographers one would suppose that all Spain was in league not only
against the man but against his memory, or at least that it was
insensible to his merits, and left him to live in misery and die of
want. To talk of his hard life and unworthy employments in Andalusia
is absurd. What had he done to distinguish him from thousands of other
struggling men earning a precarious livelihood? True, he was a gallant
soldier, who had been wounded and had undergone captivity and
suffering in his country's cause, but there were hundreds of others in
the same case. He had written a mediocre specimen of an insipid
class of romance, and some plays which manifestly did not comply
with the primary condition of pleasing: were the playgoers to
patronise plays that did not amuse them, because the author was to
produce "Don Quixote" twenty years afterwards?
  The scramble for copies which, as we have seen, followed immediately
on the appearance of the book, does not look like general
insensibility to its merits. No doubt it was received coldly by
some, but if a man writes a book in ridicule of periwigs he must
make his account with being coldly received by the periwig wearers and
hated by the whole tribe of wigmakers. If Cervantes had the
chivalry-romance readers, the sentimentalists, the dramatists, and the
poets of the period all against him, it was because "Don Quixote"
was what it was; and if the general public did not come forward to
make him comfortable for the rest of his days, it is no more to be
charged with neglect and ingratitude than the English-speaking
public that did not pay off Scott's liabilities. It did the best it
could; it read his book and liked it and bought it, and encouraged the
bookseller to pay him well for others.
  It has been also made a reproach to Spain that she has erected no
monument to the man she is proudest of; no monument, that is to say,
of him; for the bronze statue in the little garden of the Plaza de las
Cortes, a fair work of art no doubt, and unexceptionable had it been
set up to the local poet in the market-place of some provincial
town, is not worthy of Cervantes or of Madrid. But what need has
Cervantes of "such weak witness of his name;" or what could a monument
do in his case except testify to the self-glorification of those who
had put it up? Si monumentum quoeris, circumspice. The nearest
bookseller's shop will show what bathos there would be in a monument
to the author of "Don Quixote."
  Nine editions of the First Part of "Don Quixote" had already
appeared before Cervantes died, thirty thousand copies in all,
according to his own estimate, and a tenth was printed at Barcelona
the year after his death. So large a number naturally supplied the
demand for some time, but by 1634 it appears to have been exhausted;
and from that time down to the present day the stream of editions
has continued to flow rapidly and regularly. The translations show
still more clearly in what request the book has been from the very
outset. In seven years from the completion of the work it had been
translated into the four leading languages of Europe. Except the
Bible, in fact, no book has been so widely diffused as "Don
Quixote." The "Imitatio Christi" may have been translated into as many
different languages, and perhaps "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Vicar of
Wakefield" into nearly as many, but in multiplicity of translations
and editions "Don Quixote" leaves them all far behind.
  Still more remarkable is the character of this wide diffusion.
"Don Quixote" has been thoroughly naturalised among people whose ideas
about knight-errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest,
who had never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could not
possibly feel the humour of the burlesque or sympathise with the
author's purpose. Another curious fact is that this, the most
cosmopolitan book in the world, is one of the most intensely national.
"Manon Lescaut" is not more thoroughly French, "Tom Jones" not more
English, "Rob Roy" not more Scotch, than "Don Quixote" is Spanish,
in character, in ideas, in sentiment, in local colour, in
everything. What, then, is the secret of this unparalleled popularity,
increasing year by year for well-nigh three centuries? One
explanation, no doubt, is that of all the books in the world, "Don
Quixote" is the most catholic. There is something in it for every sort
of reader, young or old, sage or simple, high or low. As Cervantes
himself says with a touch of pride, "It is thumbed and read and got by
heart by people of all sorts; the children turn its leaves, the
young people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise
it."
  But it would be idle to deny that the ingredient which, more than
its humour, or its wisdom, or the fertility of invention or
knowledge of human nature it displays, has insured its success with
the multitude, is the vein of farce that runs through it. It was the
attack upon the sheep, the battle with the wine-skins, Mambrino's
helmet, the balsam of Fierabras, Don Quixote knocked over by the sails
of the windmill, Sancho tossed in the blanket, the mishaps and
misadventures of master and man, that were originally the great
attraction, and perhaps are so still to some extent with the
majority of readers. It is plain that "Don Quixote" was generally
regarded at first, and indeed in Spain for a long time, as little more
than a queer droll book, full of laughable incidents and absurd
situations, very amusing, but not entitled to much consideration or
care. All the editions printed in Spain from 1637 to 1771, when the
famous printer Ibarra took it up, were mere trade editions, badly
and carelessly printed on vile paper and got up in the style of
chap-books intended only for popular use, with, in most instances,
uncouth illustrations and clap-trap additions by the publisher.
  To England belongs the credit of having been the first country to
recognise the right of "Don Quixote" to better treatment than this.
The London edition of 1738, commonly called Lord Carteret's from
having been suggested by him, was not a mere edition de luxe. It
produced "Don Quixote" in becoming form as regards paper and type, and
embellished with plates which, if not particularly happy as
illustrations, were at least well intentioned and well executed, but
it also aimed at correctness of text, a matter to which nobody
except the editors of the Valencia and Brussels editions had given
even a passing thought; and for a first attempt it was fairly
successful, for though some of its emendations are inadmissible, a
good many of them have been adopted by all subsequent editors.
  The zeal of publishers, editors, and annotators brought about a
remarkable change of sentiment with regard to "Don Quixote." A vast
number of its admirers began to grow ashamed of laughing over it. It
became almost a crime to treat it as a humorous book. The humour was
not entirely denied, but, according to the new view, it was rated as
an altogether secondary quality, a mere accessory, nothing more than
the stalking-horse under the presentation of which Cervantes shot
his philosophy or his satire, or whatever it was he meant to shoot;
for on this point opinions varied. All were agreed, however, that
the object he aimed at was not the books of chivalry. He said
emphatically in the preface to the First Part and in the last sentence
of the Second, that he had no other object in view than to discredit
these books, and this, to advanced criticism, made it clear that his
object must have been something else.
  One theory was that the book was a kind of allegory, setting forth
the eternal struggle between the ideal and the real, between the
spirit of poetry and the spirit of prose; and perhaps German
philosophy never evolved a more ungainly or unlikely camel out of
the depths of its inner consciousness. Something of the antagonism, no
doubt, is to be found in "Don Quixote," because it is to be found
everywhere in life, and Cervantes drew from life. It is difficult to
imagine a community in which the never-ceasing game of
cross-purposes between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote would not be
recognized as true to nature. In the stone age, among the lake
dwellers, among the cave men, there were Don Quixotes and Sancho
Panzas; there must have been the troglodyte who never could see the
facts before his eyes, and the troglodyte who could see nothing
else. But to suppose Cervantes deliberately setting himself to expound
any such idea in two stout quarto volumes is to suppose something
not only very unlike the age in which he lived, but altogether
unlike Cervantes himself, who would have been the first to laugh at an
attempt of the sort made by anyone else.
  The extraordinary influence of the romances of chivalry in his day
is quite enough to account for the genesis of the book. Some idea of
the prodigious development of this branch of literature in the
sixteenth century may be obtained from the scrutiny of Chapter VII, if
the reader bears in mind that only a portion of the romances belonging
to by far the largest group are enumerated. As to its effect upon
the nation, there is abundant evidence. From the time when the
Amadises and Palmerins began to grow popular down to the very end of
the century, there is a steady stream of invective, from men whose
character and position lend weight to their words, against the
romances of chivalry and the infatuation of their readers. Ridicule
was the only besom to sweep away that dust.
  That this was the task Cervantes set himself, and that he had
ample provocation to urge him to it, will be sufficiently clear to
those who look into the evidence; as it will be also that it was not
chivalry itself that he attacked and swept away. Of all the
absurdities that, thanks to poetry, will be repeated to the end of
time, there is no greater one than saying that "Cervantes smiled
Spain's chivalry away." In the first place there was no chivalry for
him to smile away. Spain's chivalry had been dead for more than a
century. Its work was done when Granada fell, and as chivalry was
essentially republican in its nature, it could not live under the rule
that Ferdinand substituted for the free institutions of mediaeval
Spain. What he did smile away was not chivalry but a degrading mockery
of it.
  The true nature of the "right arm" and the "bright array," before
which, according to the poet, "the world gave ground," and which
Cervantes' single laugh demolished, may be gathered from the words
of one of his own countrymen, Don Felix Pacheco, as reported by
Captain George Carleton, in his "Military Memoirs from 1672 to
1713." "Before the appearance in the world of that labour of
Cervantes," he said, "it was next to an impossibility for a man to
walk the streets with any delight or without danger. There were seen
so many cavaliers prancing and curvetting before the windows of
their mistresses, that a stranger would have imagined the whole nation
to have been nothing less than a race of knight-errants. But after the
world became a little acquainted with that notable history, the man
that was seen in that once celebrated drapery was pointed at as a
Don Quixote, and found himself the jest of high and low. And I
verily believe that to this, and this only, we owe that dampness and
poverty of spirit which has run through all our councils for a century
past, so little agreeable to those nobler actions of our famous
ancestors."
  To call "Don Quixote" a sad book, preaching a pessimist view of
life, argues a total misconception of its drift. It would be so if its
moral were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to
ridicule and discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; its
moral, so far as it can be said to have one, is that the spurious
enthusiasm that is born of vanity and self-conceit, that is made an
end in itself, not a means to an end, that acts on mere impulse,
regardless of circumstances and consequences, is mischievous to its
owner, and a very considerable nuisance to the community at large.
To those who cannot distinguish between the one kind and the other, no
doubt "Don Quixote" is a sad book; no doubt to some minds it is very
sad that a man who had just uttered so beautiful a sentiment as that
"it is a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and Nature made
free," should be ungratefully pelted by the scoundrels his crazy
philanthropy had let loose on society; but to others of a more
judicial cast it will be a matter of regret that reckless
self-sufficient enthusiasm is not oftener requited in some such way
for all the mischief it does in the world.
  A very slight examination of the structure of "Don Quixote" will
suffice to show that Cervantes had no deep design or elaborate plan in
his mind when he began the book. When he wrote those lines in which
"with a few strokes of a great master he sets before us the pauper
gentleman," he had no idea of the goal to which his imagination was
leading him. There can be little doubt that all he contemplated was
a short tale to range with those he had already written, a tale
setting forth the ludicrous results that might be expected to follow
the attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the part of a knight-errant in
modern life.
  It is plain, for one thing, that Sancho Panza did not enter into the
original scheme, for had Cervantes thought of him he certainly would
not have omitted him in his hero's outfit, which he obviously meant to
be complete. Him we owe to the landlord's chance remark in Chapter III
that knights seldom travelled without squires. To try to think of a
Don Quixote without Sancho Panza is like trying to think of a
one-bladed pair of scissors.
  The story was written at first, like the others, without any
division and without the intervention of Cide Hamete Benengeli; and it
seems not unlikely that Cervantes had some intention of bringing
Dulcinea, or Aldonza Lorenzo, on the scene in person. It was
probably the ransacking of the Don's library and the discussion on the
books of chivalry that first suggested it to him that his idea was
capable of development. What, if instead of a mere string of
farcical misadventures, he were to make his tale a burlesque of one of
these books, caricaturing their style, incidents, and spirit?
  In pursuance of this change of plan, he hastily and somewhat
clumsily divided what he had written into chapters on the model of
"Amadis," invented the fable of a mysterious Arabic manuscript, and
set up Cide Hamete Benengeli in imitation of the almost invariable
practice of the chivalry-romance authors, who were fond of tracing
their books to some recondite source. In working out the new ideas, he
soon found the value of Sancho Panza. Indeed, the keynote, not only to
Sancho's part, but to the whole book, is struck in the first words
Sancho utters when he announces his intention of taking his ass with
him. "About the ass," we are told, "Don Quixote hesitated a little,
trying whether he could call to mind any knight-errant taking with him
an esquire mounted on ass-back; but no instance occurred to his
memory." We can see the whole scene at a glance, the stolid
unconsciousness of Sancho and the perplexity of his master, upon whose
perception the incongruity has just forced itself. This is Sancho's
mission throughout the book; he is an unconscious Mephistopheles,
always unwittingly making mockery of his master's aspirations,
always exposing the fallacy of his ideas by some unintentional ad
absurdum, always bringing him back to the world of fact and
commonplace by force of sheer stolidity.
  By the time Cervantes had got his volume of novels off his hands,
and summoned up resolution enough to set about the Second Part in
earnest, the case was very much altered. Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza had not merely found favour, but had already become, what they
have never since ceased to be, veritable entities to the popular
imagination. There was no occasion for him now to interpolate
extraneous matter; nay, his readers told him plainly that what they
wanted of him was more Don Quixote and more Sancho Panza, and not
novels, tales, or digressions. To himself, too, his creations had
become realities, and he had become proud of them, especially of
Sancho. He began the Second Part, therefore, under very different
conditions, and the difference makes itself manifest at once. Even
in translation the style will be seen to be far easier, more
flowing, more natural, and more like that of a man sure of himself and
of his audience. Don Quixote and Sancho undergo a change also. In
the First Part, Don Quixote has no character or individuality
whatever. He is nothing more than a crazy representative of the
sentiments of the chivalry romances. In all that he says and does he
is simply repeating the lesson he has learned from his books; and
therefore, it is absurd to speak of him in the gushing strain of the
sentimental critics when they dilate upon his nobleness,
disinterestedness, dauntless courage, and so forth. It was the
business of a knight-errant to right wrongs, redress injuries, and
succour the distressed, and this, as a matter of course, he makes
his business when he takes up the part; a knight-errant was bound to
be intrepid, and so he feels bound to cast fear aside. Of all
Byron's melodious nonsense about Don Quixote, the most nonsensical
statement is that "'t is his virtue makes him mad!" The exact opposite
is the truth; it is his madness makes him virtuous.
  In the Second Part, Cervantes repeatedly reminds the reader, as if
it was a point upon which he was anxious there should be no mistake,
that his hero's madness is strictly confined to delusions on the
subject of chivalry, and that on every other subject he is discreto,
one, in fact, whose faculty of discernment is in perfect order. The
advantage of this is that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote
as a mouthpiece for his own reflections, and so, without seeming to
digress, allow himself the relief of digression when he requires it,
as freely as in a commonplace book.
  It is true the amount of individuality bestowed upon Don Quixote
is not very great. There are some natural touches of character about
him, such as his mixture of irascibility and placability, and his
curious affection for Sancho together with his impatience of the
squire's loquacity and impertinence; but in the main, apart from his
craze, he is little more than a thoughtful, cultured gentleman, with
instinctive good taste and a great deal of shrewdness and
originality of mind.
  As to Sancho, it is plain, from the concluding words of the
preface to the First Part, that he was a favourite with his creator
even before he had been taken into favour by the public. An inferior
genius, taking him in hand a second time, would very likely have tried
to improve him by making him more comical, clever, amiable, or
virtuous. But Cervantes was too true an artist to spoil his work in
this way. Sancho, when he reappears, is the old Sancho with the old
familiar features; but with a difference; they have been brought out
more distinctly, but at the same time with a careful avoidance of
anything like caricature; the outline has been filled in where filling
in was necessary, and, vivified by a few touches of a master's hand,
Sancho stands before us as he might in a character portrait by
Velazquez. He is a much more important and prominent figure in the
Second Part than in the First; indeed, it is his matchless mendacity
about Dulcinea that to a great extent supplies the action of the
story.
  His development in this respect is as remarkable as in any other. In
the First Part he displays a great natural gift of lying. His lies are
not of the highly imaginative sort that liars in fiction commonly
indulge in; like Falstaff's, they resemble the father that begets
them; they are simple, homely, plump lies; plain working lies, in
short. But in the service of such a master as Don Quixote he
develops rapidly, as we see when he comes to palm off the three
country wenches as Dulcinea and her ladies in waiting. It is worth
noticing how, flushed by his success in this instance, he is tempted
afterwards to try a flight beyond his powers in his account of the
journey on Clavileno.
  In the Second Part it is the spirit rather than the incidents of the
chivalry romances that is the subject of the burlesque. Enchantments
of the sort travestied in those of Dulcinea and the Trifaldi and the
cave of Montesinos play a leading part in the later and inferior
romances, and another distinguishing feature is caricatured in Don
Quixote's blind adoration of Dulcinea. In the romances of chivalry
love is either a mere animalism or a fantastic idolatry. Only a
coarse-minded man would care to make merry with the former, but to one
of Cervantes' humour the latter was naturally an attractive subject
for ridicule. Like everything else in these romances, it is a gross
exaggeration of the real sentiment of chivalry, but its peculiar
extravagance is probably due to the influence of those masters of
hyperbole, the Provencal poets. When a troubadour professed his
readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it incumbent upon
the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of tameness and
commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which the
next was compelled to cap by some still stronger declaration; and so
expressions of devotion went on rising one above the other like
biddings at an auction, and a conventional language of gallantry and
theory of love came into being that in time permeated the literature
of Southern Europe, and bore fruit, in one direction in the
transcendental worship of Beatrice and Laura, and in another in the
grotesque idolatry which found exponents in writers like Feliciano
de Silva. This is what Cervantes deals with in Don Quixote's passion
for Dulcinea, and in no instance has he carried out the burlesque more
happily. By keeping Dulcinea in the background, and making her a vague
shadowy being of whose very existence we are left in doubt, he invests
Don Quixote's worship of her virtues and charms with an additional
extravagance, and gives still more point to the caricature of the
sentiment and language of the romances.
  One of the great merits of "Don Quixote," and one of the qualities
that have secured its acceptance by all classes of readers and made it
the most cosmopolitan of books, is its simplicity. There are, of
course, points obvious enough to a Spanish seventeenth century
audience which do not immediately strike a reader now-a-days, and
Cervantes often takes it for granted that an allusion will be
generally understood which is only intelligible to a few. For example,
on many of his readers in Spain, and most of his readers out of it,
the significance of his choice of a country for his hero is completely
lost. It would he going too far to say that no one can thoroughly
comprehend "Don Quixote" without having seen La Mancha, but
undoubtedly even a glimpse of La Mancha will give an insight into
the meaning of Cervantes such as no commentator can give. Of all the
regions of Spain it is the last that would suggest the idea of
romance. Of all the dull central plateau of the Peninsula it is the
dullest tract. There is something impressive about the grim
solitudes of Estremadura; and if the plains of Leon and Old Castile
are bald and dreary, they are studded with old cities renowned in
history and rich in relics of the past. But there is no redeeming
feature in the Manchegan landscape; it has all the sameness of the
desert without its dignity; the few towns and villages that break
its monotony are mean and commonplace, there is nothing venerable
about them, they have not even the picturesqueness of poverty; indeed,
Don Quixote's own village, Argamasilla, has a sort of oppressive
respectability in the prim regularity of its streets and houses;
everything is ignoble; the very windmills are the ugliest and
shabbiest of the windmill kind.
  To anyone who knew the country well, the mere style and title of
"Don Quixote of La Mancha" gave the key to the author's meaning at
once. La Mancha as the knight's country and scene of his chivalries is
of a piece with the pasteboard helmet, the farm-labourer on ass-back
for a squire, knighthood conferred by a rascally ventero, convicts
taken for victims of oppression, and the rest of the incongruities
between Don Quixote's world and the world he lived in, between
things as he saw them and things as they were.
  It is strange that this element of incongruity, underlying the whole
humour and purpose of the book, should have been so little heeded by
the majority of those who have undertaken to interpret "Don
Quixote." It has been completely overlooked, for example, by the
illustrators. To be sure, the great majority of the artists who
illustrated "Don Quixote" knew nothing whatever of Spain. To them a
venta conveyed no idea but the abstract one of a roadside inn, and
they could not therefore do full justice to the humour of Don
Quixote's misconception in taking it for a castle, or perceive the
remoteness of all its realities from his ideal. But even when better
informed they seem to have no apprehension of the full force of the
discrepancy. Take, for instance, Gustave Dore's drawing of Don Quixote
watching his armour in the inn-yard. Whether or not the Venta de
Quesada on the Seville road is, as tradition maintains, the inn
described in "Don Quixote," beyond all question it was just such an
inn-yard as the one behind it that Cervantes had in his mind's eye,
and it was on just such a rude stone trough as that beside the
primitive draw-well in the corner that he meant Don Quixote to deposit
his armour. Gustave Dore makes it an elaborate fountain such as no
arriero ever watered his mules at in the corral of any venta in Spain,
and thereby entirely misses the point aimed at by Cervantes. It is the
mean, prosaic, commonplace character of all the surroundings and
circumstances that gives a significance to Don Quixote's vigil and the
ceremony that follows.
  Cervantes' humour is for the most part of that broader and simpler
sort, the strength of which lies in the perception of the incongruous.
It is the incongruity of Sancho in all his ways, words, and works,
with the ideas and aims of his master, quite as much as the
wonderful vitality and truth to nature of the character, that makes
him the most humorous creation in the whole range of fiction. That
unsmiling gravity of which Cervantes was the first great master,
"Cervantes' serious air," which sits naturally on Swift alone,
perhaps, of later humourists, is essential to this kind of humour, and
here again Cervantes has suffered at the hands of his interpreters.
Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips, could be
more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a
flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux's version for
example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes
adopt. It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the
apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything
ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, that give its peculiar
flavour to the humour of Cervantes. His, in fact, is the exact
opposite of the humour of Sterne and the self-conscious humourists.
Even when Uncle Toby is at his best, you are always aware of "the
man Sterne" behind him, watching you over his shoulder to see what
effect he is producing. Cervantes always leaves you alone with Don
Quixote and Sancho. He and Swift and the great humourists always
keep themselves out of sight, or, more properly speaking, never
think about themselves at all, unlike our latter-day school of
humourists, who seem to have revived the old horse-collar method,
and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque assumption of ignorance,
imbecility, or bad taste.
  It is true that to do full justice to Spanish humour in any other
language is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and
a sonorous stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that
make an absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most
preposterous statement. This is what makes Sancho Panza's drollery the
despair of the conscientious translator. Sancho's curt comments can
never fall flat, but they lose half their flavour when transferred
from their native Castilian into any other medium. But if foreigners
have failed to do justice to the humour of Cervantes, they are no
worse than his own countrymen. Indeed, were it not for the Spanish
peasant's relish of "Don Quixote," one might be tempted to think
that the great humourist was not looked upon as a humourist at all
in his own country.
  The craze of Don Quixote seems, in some instances, to have
communicated itself to his critics, making them see things that are
not in the book and run full tilt at phantoms that have no existence
save in their own imaginations. Like a good many critics now-a-days,
they forget that screams are not criticism, and that it is only vulgar
tastes that are influenced by strings of superlatives, three-piled
hyperboles, and pompous epithets. But what strikes one as particularly
strange is that while they deal in extravagant eulogies, and ascribe
all manner of imaginary ideas and qualities to Cervantes, they show no
perception of the quality that ninety-nine out of a hundred of his
readers would rate highest in him, and hold to be the one that
raises him above all rivalry.
  To speak of "Don Quixote" as if it were merely a humorous book would
be a manifest misdescription. Cervantes at times makes it a kind of
commonplace book for occasional essays and criticisms, or for the
observations and reflections and gathered wisdom of a long and
stirring life. It is a mine of shrewd observation on mankind and human
nature. Among modern novels there may be, here and there, more
elaborate studies of character, but there is no book richer in
individualised character. What Coleridge said of Shakespeare in
minimis is true of Cervantes; he never, even for the most temporary
purpose, puts forward a lay figure. There is life and individuality in
all his characters, however little they may have to do, or however
short a time they may be before the reader. Samson Carrasco, the
curate, Teresa Panza, Altisidora, even the two students met on the
road to the cave of Montesinos, all live and move and have their
being; and it is characteristic of the broad humanity of Cervantes
that there is not a hateful one among them all. Even poor
Maritornes, with her deplorable morals, has a kind heart of her own
and "some faint and distant resemblance to a Christian about her;" and
as for Sancho, though on dissection we fail to find a lovable trait in
him, unless it be a sort of dog-like affection for his master, who
is there that in his heart does not love him?
  But it is, after all, the humour of "Don Quixote" that distinguishes
it from all other books of the romance kind. It is this that makes it,
as one of the most judicial-minded of modern critics calls it, "the
best novel in the world beyond all comparison." It is its varied
humour, ranging from broad farce to comedy as subtle as
Shakespeare's or Moliere's that has naturalised it in every country
where there are readers, and made it a classic in every language
that has a literature.
  SOME COMMENDATORY VERSES

              URGANDA THE UNKNOWN

     To the book of Don Quixote of la Mancha

       If to be welcomed by the good,
         O Book! thou make thy steady aim,
       No empty chatterer will dare
         To question or dispute thy claim.
       But if perchance thou hast a mind
         To win of idiots approbation,
       Lost labour will be thy reward,
         Though they'll pretend appreciation.

       They say a goodly shade he finds
         Who shelters 'neath a goodly tree;
       And such a one thy kindly star
         In Bejar bath provided thee:
       A royal tree whose spreading boughs
         A show of princely fruit display;
       A tree that bears a noble Duke,
         The Alexander of his day.

       Of a Manchegan gentleman
         Thy purpose is to tell the story,
       Relating how he lost his wits
         O'er idle tales of love and glory,
       Of "ladies, arms, and cavaliers:"
         A new Orlando Furioso-
       Innamorato, rather- who
         Won Dulcinea del Toboso.

       Put no vain emblems on thy shield;
         All figures- that is bragging play.
       A modest dedication make,
         And give no scoffer room to say,
       "What! Alvaro de Luna here?
         Or is it Hannibal again?
       Or does King Francis at Madrid
         Once more of destiny complain?"

       Since Heaven it hath not pleased on thee
         Deep erudition to bestow,
       Or black Latino's gift of tongues,
         No Latin let thy pages show.
       Ape not philosophy or wit,
         Lest one who cannot comprehend,
       Make a wry face at thee and ask,
         "Why offer flowers to me, my friend?"

       Be not a meddler; no affair
         Of thine the life thy neighbours lead:
       Be prudent; oft the random jest
         Recoils upon the jester's head.
       Thy constant labour let it be
         To earn thyself an honest name,
       For fooleries preserved in print
         Are perpetuity of shame.

       A further counsel bear in mind:
         If that thy roof be made of glass,
       It shows small wit to pick up stones
         To pelt the people as they pass.
       Win the attention of the wise,
         And give the thinker food for thought;
       Whoso indites frivolities,
         Will but by simpletons be sought.
                   AMADIS OF GAUL
             To Don Quixote of la Mancha

                        SONNET

     Thou that didst imitate that life of mine
       When I in lonely sadness on the great
       Rock Pena Pobre sat disconsolate,
     In self-imposed penance there to pine;
     Thou, whose sole beverage was the bitter brine
       Of thine own tears, and who withouten plate
       Of silver, copper, tin, in lowly state
     Off the bare earth and on earth's fruits didst dine;
     Live thou, of thine eternal glory sure.
       So long as on the round of the fourth sphere
       The bright Apollo shall his coursers steer,
     In thy renown thou shalt remain secure,
     Thy country's name in story shall endure,
       And thy sage author stand without a peer.
                 DON BELIANIS OF GREECE
              To Don Quixote of la Mancha

                         SONNET

     In slashing, hewing, cleaving, word and deed,
       I was the foremost knight of chivalry,
       Stout, bold, expert, as e'er the world did see;
     Thousands from the oppressor's wrong I freed;
     Great were my feats, eternal fame their meed;
       In love I proved my truth and loyalty;
       The hugest giant was a dwarf for me;
     Ever to knighthood's laws gave I good heed.
     My mastery the Fickle Goddess owned,
       And even Chance, submitting to control,
         Grasped by the forelock, yielded to my will.
     Yet- though above yon horned moon enthroned
         My fortune seems to sit- great Quixote, still
       Envy of thy achievements fills my soul.
                  THE LADY OF ORIANA
                To Dulcinea del Toboso

                        SONNET

     Oh, fairest Dulcinea, could it be!
       It were a pleasant fancy to suppose so-
       Could Miraflores change to El Toboso,
     And London's town to that which shelters thee!
     Oh, could mine but acquire that livery
       Of countless charms thy mind and body show so!
       Or him, now famous grown- thou mad'st him grow so-
     Thy knight, in some dread combat could I see!
     Oh, could I be released from Amadis
       By exercise of such coy chastity
     As led thee gentle Quixote to dismiss!
         Then would my heavy sorrow turn to joy;
       None would I envy, all would envy me,
         And happiness be mine without alloy.
          GANDALIN, SQUIRE OF AMADIS OF GAUL,
         To Sancho Panza, squire of Don Quixote

                          SONNET

     All hail, illustrious man! Fortune, when she
       Bound thee apprentice to the esquire trade,
       Her care and tenderness of thee displayed,
     Shaping thy course from misadventure free.
     No longer now doth proud knight-errantry
       Regard with scorn the sickle and the spade;
       Of towering arrogance less count is made
     Than of plain esquire-like simplicity.
     I envy thee thy Dapple, and thy name,
       And those alforjas thou wast wont to stuff
     With comforts that thy providence proclaim.
         Excellent Sancho! hail to thee again!
         To thee alone the Ovid of our Spain
       Does homage with the rustic kiss and cuff.
       FROM EL DONOSO, THE MOTLEY POET,

        On Sancho Panza and Rocinante

                  ON SANCHO

       I am the esquire Sancho Pan-
       Who served Don Quixote of La Man-;
       But from his service I retreat-,
       Resolved to pass my life discreet-;
       For Villadiego, called the Si-,
       Maintained that only in reti-
       Was found the secret of well-be-,
       According to the "Celesti-:"
       A book divine, except for sin-
       By speech too plain, in my opin-
                ON ROCINANTE

       I am that Rocinante fa-,
       Great-grandson of great Babie-,
       Who, all for being lean and bon-,
       Had one Don Quixote for an own-;
       But if I matched him well in weak-,
       I never took short commons meek-,
       But kept myself in corn by steal-,
       A trick I learned from Lazaril-,
       When with a piece of straw so neat-
       The blind man of his wine he cheat-.
                   ORLANDO FURIOSO
              To Don Quixote of La Mancha

                        SONNET

     If thou art not a Peer, peer thou hast none;
       Among a thousand Peers thou art a peer;
       Nor is there room for one when thou art near,
     Unvanquished victor, great unconquered one!
     Orlando, by Angelica undone,
       Am I; o'er distant seas condemned to steer,
       And to Fame's altars as an offering bear
     Valour respected by Oblivion.
     I cannot be thy rival, for thy fame
       And prowess rise above all rivalry,
         Albeit both bereft of wits we go.
     But, though the Scythian or the Moor to tame
       Was not thy lot, still thou dost rival me:
         Love binds us in a fellowship of woe.
                 THE KNIGHT OF PHOEBUS

              To Don Quixote of La Mancha

     My sword was not to be compared with thine
       Phoebus of Spain, marvel of courtesy,
     Nor with thy famous arm this hand of mine
       That smote from east to west as lightnings fly.
       I scorned all empire, and that monarchy
     The rosy east held out did I resign
       For one glance of Claridiana's eye,
     The bright Aurora for whose love I pine.
     A miracle of constancy my love;
       And banished by her ruthless cruelty,
         This arm had might the rage of Hell to tame.
     But, Gothic Quixote, happier thou dost prove,
         For thou dost live in Dulcinea's name,
       And famous, honoured, wise, she lives in thee.
                    FROM SOLISDAN
              To Don Quixote of La Mancha

                        SONNET

     Your fantasies, Sir Quixote, it is true,
       That crazy brain of yours have quite upset,
       But aught of base or mean hath never yet
     Been charged by any in reproach to you.
     Your deeds are open proof in all men's view;
       For you went forth injustice to abate,
       And for your pains sore drubbings did you get
     From many a rascally and ruffian crew.
     If the fair Dulcinea, your heart's queen,
       Be unrelenting in her cruelty,
         If still your woe be powerless to move her,
       In such hard case your comfort let it be
     That Sancho was a sorry go-between:
         A booby he, hard-hearted she, and you no lover.
                     DIALOGUE
           Between Babieca and Rocinante

                      SONNET

  B.  "How comes it, Rocinante, you're so lean?"
  R.  "I'm underfed, with overwork I'm worn."
  B.  "But what becomes of all the hay and corn?"
  R.  "My master gives me none; he's much too mean."
  B.  "Come, come, you show ill-breeding, sir, I ween;
      'T is like an ass your master thus to scorn."
  R.  He is an ass, will die an ass, an ass was born;
      Why, he's in love; what's what's plainer to be seen?"
  B.  "To be in love is folly?"- R. "No great sense."
  B.  "You're metaphysical."- R. "From want of food."
  B.  "Rail at the squire, then."- R. "Why, what's the good?
        I might indeed complain of him,I grant ye,
      But, squire or master, where's the difference?
        They're both as sorry hacks as Rocinante."