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diff --git a/old/orig5921-h/p1.htm b/old/orig5921-h/p1.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6151550 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/orig5921-h/p1.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2924 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE, By Cervantes, Vol. I, Part 1.</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body {background:#faebd7; margin:10%; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; text-align: center; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; } + .figleft {float: left;} + .figright {float: right;} + .toc { margin-left: 15%; margin-bottom: 0em;} + CENTER { padding: 10px;} + PRE { font-family: Times; font-size: 97%; margin-left: 15%;} + // --> +</style> + + +</head> +<body> + +<center> +<table summary="" cellPadding=4 border=3> +<tr><td> + <a href="p2.htm">Next Part</a> +</td><td> + <a href="5921-h.htm">Main Index</a> + </td></tr> +</table> +</center> +<br><br> + + +<center> +<h1>DON QUIXOTE</h1> +<br> +<h2>by Miguel de Cervantes</h2> +<br> +<h3>Translated by John Ormsby</h3> +</center> + +<br><br> + +<center><h3> +Volume I., Part 1. +<br><br> +Chapters 1-3 +</h3></center> + +<br><br> +<center> +<img alt="bookcover.jpg (230K)" src="images/bookcover.jpg" height="842" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/bookcover.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"> +</a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center> +<img alt="spine.jpg (152K)" src="images/spine.jpg" height="842" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/spine.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"> +</a> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<center> +<h4>Ebook Editor's Note</h4> +</center> +<blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> +<p>The book cover and spine above and the images which follow were not part of the original Ormsby +translation—they are taken from the 1880 edition of J. W. Clark, illustrated by +Gustave Dore. Clark in his edition states that, "The English text of 'Don Quixote' +adopted in this edition is that of Jarvis, with occasional corrections from Motteaux." +See in the introduction below John Ormsby's critique of +both the Jarvis and Motteaux translations. It has been elected in the present Project Gutenberg edition +to attach the famous engravings of Gustave Dore to the Ormsby translation instead +of the Jarvis/Motteaux. The detail of many of the Dore engravings can be fully appreciated only +by utilizing the "Full Size" button to expand them to their original dimensions. Ormsby +in his Preface has criticized the fanciful nature of Dore's illustrations; others feel +these woodcuts and steel engravings well match Quixote's dreams. + + D.W.</p> +</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center> +<img alt="p003.jpg (307K)" src="images/p003.jpg" height="813" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p003.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"> +</a> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<center><h2>CONTENTS</h2></center> + + +<pre> + +<a href="#ch1">CHAPTER I</a> +WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN +DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA + +<a href="#ch2">CHAPTER II</a> +WHICH TREATS OF THE FIRST SALLY THE INGENIOUS DON QUIXOTE MADE +FROM HOME + +<a href="#ch3">CHAPTER III</a> +WHEREIN IS RELATED THE DROLL WAY IN WHICH DON QUIXOTE HAD HIMSELF +DUBBED A KNIGHT + +</pre> + +<br><br><br><br> + +<center> +<h2>TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE</h2> +</center> +<br><br> + + +<h3>I: ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION</h3> + +<p> +It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favour of +the present undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that +of a new edition of Shelton's "Don Quixote," which has now become a +somewhat scarce book. There are some—and I confess myself to be +one—for whom Shelton's racy old version, with all its defects, has +a charm that no modern translation, however skilful or correct, +could possess. Shelton had the inestimable advantage of belonging to +the same generation as Cervantes; "Don Quixote" had to him a +vitality that only a contemporary could feel; it cost him no +dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes saw them; there is no +anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish of Cervantes into +the English of Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself most likely knew the +book; he may have carried it home with him in his saddle-bags to +Stratford on one of his last journeys, and under the mulberry tree +at New Place joined hands with a kindred genius in its pages.</p> + +<p>But it was soon made plain to me that to hope for even a moderate +popularity for Shelton was vain. His fine old crusted English would, +no doubt, be relished by a minority, but it would be only by a +minority. His warmest admirers must admit that he is not a +satisfactory representative of Cervantes. His translation of the First +Part was very hastily made and was never revised by him. It has all +the freshness and vigour, but also a full measure of the faults, of +a hasty production. It is often very literal—barbarously literal +frequently—but just as often very loose. He had evidently a good +colloquial knowledge of Spanish, but apparently not much more. It +never seems to occur to him that the same translation of a word will +not suit in every case.</p> + +<p>It is often said that we have no satisfactory translation of "Don +Quixote." To those who are familiar with the original, it savours of +truism or platitude to say so, for in truth there can be no thoroughly +satisfactory translation of "Don Quixote" into English or any other +language. It is not that the Spanish idioms are so utterly +unmanageable, or that the untranslatable words, numerous enough no +doubt, are so superabundant, but rather that the sententious terseness +to which the humour of the book owes its flavour is peculiar to +Spanish, and can at best be only distantly imitated in any other +tongue.</p> + +<p>The history of our English translations of "Don Quixote" is +instructive. Shelton's, the first in any language, was made, +apparently, about 1608, but not published till 1612. This of course +was only the First Part. It has been asserted that the Second, +published in 1620, is not the work of Shelton, but there is nothing to +support the assertion save the fact that it has less spirit, less of +what we generally understand by "go," about it than the first, which +would be only natural if the first were the work of a young man +writing currente calamo, and the second that of a middle-aged man +writing for a bookseller. On the other hand, it is closer and more +literal, the style is the same, the very same translations, or +mistranslations, occur in it, and it is extremely unlikely that a +new translator would, by suppressing his name, have allowed Shelton to +carry off the credit.</p> + +<p>In 1687 John Phillips, Milton's nephew, produced a "Don Quixote" +"made English," he says, "according to the humour of our modern +language." His "Quixote" is not so much a translation as a travesty, +and a travesty that for coarseness, vulgarity, and buffoonery is +almost unexampled even in the literature of that day.</p> + +<p>Ned Ward's "Life and Notable Adventures of Don Quixote, merrily +translated into Hudibrastic Verse" (1700), can scarcely be reckoned +a translation, but it serves to show the light in which "Don +Quixote" was regarded at the time.</p> + +<p>A further illustration may be found in the version published in 1712 +by Peter Motteux, who had then recently combined tea-dealing with +literature. It is described as "translated from the original by +several hands," but if so all Spanish flavour has entirely +evaporated under the manipulation of the several hands. The flavour +that it has, on the other hand, is distinctly Franco-cockney. Anyone +who compares it carefully with the original will have little doubt +that it is a concoction from Shelton and the French of Filleau de +Saint Martin, eked out by borrowings from Phillips, whose mode of +treatment it adopts. It is, to be sure, more decent and decorous, +but it treats "Don Quixote" in the same fashion as a comic book that +cannot be made too comic.</p> + +<p>To attempt to improve the humour of "Don Quixote" by an infusion +of cockney flippancy and facetiousness, as Motteux's operators did, is +not merely an impertinence like larding a sirloin of prize beef, but +an absolute falsification of the spirit of the book, and it is a proof +of the uncritical way in which "Don Quixote" is generally read that +this worse than worthless translation—worthless as failing to +represent, worse than worthless as misrepresenting—should have been +favoured as it has been.</p> + +<p>It had the effect, however, of bringing out a translation undertaken +and executed in a very different spirit, that of Charles Jervas, the +portrait painter, and friend of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. +Jervas has been allowed little credit for his work, indeed it may be +said none, for it is known to the world in general as Jarvis's. It was +not published until after his death, and the printers gave the name +according to the current pronunciation of the day. It has been the +most freely used and the most freely abused of all the translations. +It has seen far more editions than any other, it is admitted on all +hands to be by far the most faithful, and yet nobody seems to have a +good word to say for it or for its author. Jervas no doubt +prejudiced readers against himself in his preface, where among many +true words about Shelton, Stevens, and Motteux, he rashly and unjustly +charges Shelton with having translated not from the Spanish, but +from the Italian version of Franciosini, which did not appear until +ten years after Shelton's first volume. A suspicion of incompetence, +too, seems to have attached to him because he was by profession a +painter and a mediocre one (though he has given us the best portrait +we have of Swift), and this may have been strengthened by Pope's +remark that he "translated 'Don Quixote' without understanding +Spanish." He has been also charged with borrowing from Shelton, whom +he disparaged. It is true that in a few difficult or obscure +passages he has followed Shelton, and gone astray with him; but for +one case of this sort, there are fifty where he is right and Shelton +wrong. As for Pope's dictum, anyone who examines Jervas's version +carefully, side by side with the original, will see that he was a +sound Spanish scholar, incomparably a better one than Shelton, +except perhaps in mere colloquial Spanish. He was, in fact, an honest, +faithful, and painstaking translator, and he has left a version which, +whatever its shortcomings may be, is singularly free from errors and +mistranslations.</p> + +<p>The charge against it is that it is stiff, dry—"wooden" in a +word,—and no one can deny that there is a foundation for it. But it may be +pleaded for Jervas that a good deal of this rigidity is due to his +abhorrence of the light, flippant, jocose style of his predecessors. +He was one of the few, very few, translators that have shown any +apprehension of the unsmiling gravity which is the essence of Quixotic +humour; it seemed to him a crime to bring Cervantes forward smirking +and grinning at his own good things, and to this may be attributed +in a great measure the ascetic abstinence from everything savouring of +liveliness which is the characteristic of his translation. In most +modern editions, it should be observed, his style has been smoothed +and smartened, but without any reference to the original Spanish, so +that if he has been made to read more agreeably he has also been +robbed of his chief merit of fidelity.</p> + +<p>Smollett's version, published in 1755, may be almost counted as +one of these. At any rate it is plain that in its construction +Jervas's translation was very freely drawn upon, and very little or +probably no heed given to the original Spanish.</p> + +<p>The later translations may be dismissed in a few words. George +Kelly's, which appeared in 1769, "printed for the Translator," was +an impudent imposture, being nothing more than Motteux's version +with a few of the words, here and there, artfully transposed; +Charles Wilmot's (1774) was only an abridgment like Florian's, but not +so skilfully executed; and the version published by Miss Smirke in +1818, to accompany her brother's plates, was merely a patchwork +production made out of former translations. On the latest, Mr. A. J. +Duffield's, it would be in every sense of the word impertinent in me +to offer an opinion here. I had not even seen it when the present +undertaking was proposed to me, and since then I may say vidi +tantum, having for obvious reasons resisted the temptation which Mr. +Duffield's reputation and comely volumes hold out to every lover of +Cervantes.</p> + +<p>From the foregoing history of our translations of "Don Quixote," +it will be seen that there are a good many people who, provided they +get the mere narrative with its full complement of facts, incidents, +and adventures served up to them in a form that amuses them, care very +little whether that form is the one in which Cervantes originally +shaped his ideas. On the other hand, it is clear that there are many +who desire to have not merely the story he tells, but the story as +he tells it, so far at least as differences of idiom and circumstances +permit, and who will give a preference to the conscientious +translator, even though he may have acquitted himself somewhat +awkwardly.</p> + +<p>But after all there is no real antagonism between the two classes; +there is no reason why what pleases the one should not please the +other, or why a translator who makes it his aim to treat "Don Quixote" +with the respect due to a great classic, should not be as acceptable +even to the careless reader as the one who treats it as a famous old +jest-book. It is not a question of caviare to the general, or, if it +is, the fault rests with him who makes so. The method by which +Cervantes won the ear of the Spanish people ought, mutatis mutandis, +to be equally effective with the great majority of English readers. At +any rate, even if there are readers to whom it is a matter of +indifference, fidelity to the method is as much a part of the +translator's duty as fidelity to the matter. If he can please all +parties, so much the better; but his first duty is to those who look +to him for as faithful a representation of his author as it is in +his power to give them, faithful to the letter so long as fidelity +is practicable, faithful to the spirit so far as he can make it.</p> + +<p>My purpose here is not to dogmatise on the rules of translation, but +to indicate those I have followed, or at least tried to the best of my +ability to follow, in the present instance. One which, it seems to me, +cannot be too rigidly followed in translating "Don Quixote," is to +avoid everything that savours of affectation. The book itself is, +indeed, in one sense a protest against it, and no man abhorred it more +than Cervantes. For this reason, I think, any temptation to use +antiquated or obsolete language should be resisted. It is after all an +affectation, and one for which there is no warrant or excuse. +Spanish has probably undergone less change since the seventeenth +century than any language in Europe, and by far the greater and +certainly the best part of "Don Quixote" differs but little in +language from the colloquial Spanish of the present day. Except in the +tales and Don Quixote's speeches, the translator who uses the simplest +and plainest everyday language will almost always be the one who +approaches nearest to the original.</p> + +<p>Seeing that the story of "Don Quixote" and all its characters and +incidents have now been for more than two centuries and a half +familiar as household words in English mouths, it seems to me that the +old familiar names and phrases should not be changed without good +reason. Of course a translator who holds that "Don Quixote" should +receive the treatment a great classic deserves, will feel himself +bound by the injunction laid upon the Morisco in Chap. IX not to +omit or add anything.</p> + +<p> +II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE</p> + +<p> +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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 be 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> + +<center> +<h2>SOME COMMENDATORY VERSES</h2> +</center> + + + +<pre> + +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." + +</pre> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><a name="p005"></a><img alt="p005.jpg (171K)" src="images/p005.jpg" height="431" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p005.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<center> +<h2>THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE</h2> +</center> +<br> +<p>Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I would +this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, +and cleverest that could be imagined. But I could not counteract +Nature's law that everything shall beget its like; and what, then, +could this sterile, illtilled wit of mine beget but the story of a +dry, shrivelled, whimsical offspring, full of thoughts of all sorts +and such as never came into any other imagination—just what might +be begotten in a prison, where every misery is lodged and every +doleful sound makes its dwelling? Tranquillity, a cheerful retreat, +pleasant fields, bright skies, murmuring brooks, peace of mind, +these are the things that go far to make even the most barren muses +fertile, and bring into the world births that fill it with wonder +and delight. Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the +love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his +defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, +and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however—for +though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don +Quixote"—have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to +implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as +others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in +this child of mine. Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy +soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, +thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of +his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill +the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration +and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without +fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou +mayest say of it.</p> + +<p>My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, +without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of +customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at +the beginning of books. For I can tell thee, though composing it +cost me some labour, I found none greater than the making of this +Preface thou art now reading. Many times did I take up my pen to write +it, and many did I lay it down again, not knowing what to write. One +of these times, as I was pondering with the paper before me, a pen +in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my cheek in my hand, thinking +of what I should say, there came in unexpectedly a certain lively, +clever friend of mine, who, seeing me so deep in thought, asked the +reason; to which I, making no mystery of it, answered that I was +thinking of the Preface I had to make for the story of "Don +Quixote," which so troubled me that I had a mind not to make any at +all, nor even publish the achievements of so noble a knight.</p> + +<p>"For, how could you expect me not to feel uneasy about what that +ancient lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, +after slumbering so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming +out now with all my years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a +rush, devoid of invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly +wanting in learning and wisdom, without quotations in the margin or +annotations at the end, after the fashion of other books I see, which, +though all fables and profanity, are so full of maxims from Aristotle, +and Plato, and the whole herd of philosophers, that they fill the +readers with amazement and convince them that the authors are men of +learning, erudition, and eloquence. And then, when they quote the Holy +Scriptures!—anyone would say they are St. Thomases or other doctors +of the Church, observing as they do a decorum so ingenious that in one +sentence they describe a distracted lover and in the next deliver a +devout little sermon that it is a pleasure and a treat to hear and +read. Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have nothing +to quote in the margin or to note at the end, and still less do I know +what authors I follow in it, to place them at the beginning, as all +do, under the letters A, B, C, beginning with Aristotle and ending +with Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis, though one was a slanderer and +the other a painter. Also my book must do without sonnets at the +beginning, at least sonnets whose authors are dukes, marquises, +counts, bishops, ladies, or famous poets. Though if I were to ask +two or three obliging friends, I know they would give me them, and +such as the productions of those that have the highest reputation in +our Spain could not equal.</p> + +<p>"In short, my friend," I continued, "I am determined that Senor +Don Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La Mancha +until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things +he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness +and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by +nature shy and careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself +can say without them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found +me in, and reason enough, what you have heard from me."</p> + +<p>Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead and +breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, "Before God, Brother, now +am I disabused of an error in which I have been living all this long +time I have known you, all through which I have taken you to be shrewd +and sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far from that +as the heaven is from the earth. It is possible that things of so +little moment and so easy to set right can occupy and perplex a ripe +wit like yours, fit to break through and crush far greater +obstacles? By my faith, this comes, not of any want of ability, but of +too much indolence and too little knowledge of life. Do you want to +know if I am telling the truth? Well, then, attend to me, and you will +see how, in the opening and shutting of an eye, I sweep away all +your difficulties, and supply all those deficiencies which you say +check and discourage you from bringing before the world the story of +your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry."</p> + +<p>"Say on," said I, listening to his talk; "how do you propose to make +up for my diffidence, and reduce to order this chaos of perplexity I +am in?"</p> + +<p>To which he made answer, "Your first difficulty about the sonnets, +epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the beginning, +and which ought to be by persons of importance and rank, can be +removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can +afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them, +fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of +Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous +poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors +should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis +for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut off +the hand you wrote it with.</p> + +<p>"As to references in the margin to the books and authors from whom +you take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it is only +contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or scraps of Latin you may +happen to have by heart, or at any rate that will not give you much +trouble to look up; so as, when you speak of freedom and captivity, to +insert</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<i> Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;</i> +</blockquote></blockquote> + +<p>and then refer in the margin to Horace, or whoever said it; or, if you +allude to the power of death, to come in with—</p> + +<blockquote><blockquote> +<i> Pallida mors Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, + <br> Regumque turres.</i> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<p>"If it be friendship and the love God bids us bear to our enemy, go +at once to the Holy Scriptures, which you can do with a very small +amount of research, and quote no less than the words of God himself: +Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you speak of +evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. +If of the fickleness of friends, there is Cato, who will give you +his distich:</p> +<blockquote><blockquote> +<i>Donec eris felix multos numerabis amicos, + <br> Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.</i> +</blockquote></blockquote> +<p>"With these and such like bits of Latin they will take you for a +grammarian at all events, and that now-a-days is no small honour and +profit.</p> + +<p>"With regard to adding annotations at the end of the book, you may +safely do it in this way. If you mention any giant in your book +contrive that it shall be the giant Goliath, and with this alone, +which will cost you almost nothing, you have a grand note, for you can +put—The giant Golias or Goliath was a Philistine whom the shepherd +David slew by a mighty stone-cast in the Terebinth valley, as is +related in the Book of Kings—in the chapter where you find it +written.</p> + +<p>"Next, to prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature and +cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your story, +and there you are at once with another famous annotation, setting +forth—The river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain: it has its +source in such and such a place and falls into the ocean, kissing +the walls of the famous city of Lisbon, and it is a common belief that +it has golden sands, etc. If you should have anything to do with +robbers, I will give you the story of Cacus, for I have it by heart; +if with loose women, there is the Bishop of Mondonedo, who will give +you the loan of Lamia, Laida, and Flora, any reference to whom will +bring you great credit; if with hard-hearted ones, Ovid will furnish +you with Medea; if with witches or enchantresses, Homer has Calypso, +and Virgil Circe; if with valiant captains, Julius Caesar himself will +lend you himself in his own 'Commentaries,' and Plutarch will give you +a thousand Alexanders. If you should deal with love, with two ounces +you may know of Tuscan you can go to Leon the Hebrew, who will +supply you to your heart's content; or if you should not care to go to +foreign countries you have at home Fonseca's 'Of the Love of God,' +in which is condensed all that you or the most imaginative mind can +want on the subject. In short, all you have to do is to manage to +quote these names, or refer to these stories I have mentioned, and +leave it to me to insert the annotations and quotations, and I swear +by all that's good to fill your margins and use up four sheets at +the end of the book.</p> + +<p>"Now let us come to those references to authors which other books +have, and you want for yours. The remedy for this is very simple: +You have only to look out for some book that quotes them all, from A +to Z as you say yourself, and then insert the very same alphabet in +your book, and though the imposition may be plain to see, because +you have so little need to borrow from them, that is no matter; +there will probably be some simple enough to believe that you have +made use of them all in this plain, artless story of yours. At any +rate, if it answers no other purpose, this long catalogue of authors +will serve to give a surprising look of authority to your book. +Besides, no one will trouble himself to verify whether you have +followed them or whether you have not, being no way concerned in it; +especially as, if I mistake not, this book of yours has no need of any +one of those things you say it wants, for it is, from beginning to +end, an attack upon the books of chivalry, of which Aristotle never +dreamt, nor St. Basil said a word, nor Cicero had any knowledge; nor +do the niceties of truth nor the observations of astrology come within +the range of its fanciful vagaries; nor have geometrical +measurements or refutations of the arguments used in rhetoric anything +to do with it; nor does it mean to preach to anybody, mixing up things +human and divine, a sort of motley in which no Christian understanding +should dress itself. It has only to avail itself of truth to nature in +its composition, and the more perfect the imitation the better the +work will be. And as this piece of yours aims at nothing more than +to destroy the authority and influence which books of chivalry have in +the world and with the public, there is no need for you to go +a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy +Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles +from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run +musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and +well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your +power, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or +obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy +may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that the +simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire the +invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise fail to +praise it. Finally, keep your aim fixed on the destruction of that +ill-founded edifice of the books of chivalry, hated by some and +praised by many more; for if you succeed in this you will have +achieved no small success."</p> + +<p>In profound silence I listened to what my friend said, and his +observations made such an impression on me that, without attempting to +question them, I admitted their soundness, and out of them I +determined to make this Preface; wherein, gentle reader, thou wilt +perceive my friend's good sense, my good fortune in finding such an +adviser in such a time of need, and what thou hast gained in +receiving, without addition or alteration, the story of the famous Don +Quixote of La Mancha, who is held by all the inhabitants of the +district of the Campo de Montiel to have been the chastest lover and +the bravest knight that has for many years been seen in that +neighbourhood. I have no desire to magnify the service I render thee +in making thee acquainted with so renowned and honoured a knight, +but I do desire thy thanks for the acquaintance thou wilt make with +the famous Sancho Panza, his squire, in whom, to my thinking, I have +given thee condensed all the squirely drolleries that are scattered +through the swarm of the vain books of chivalry. And so—may God +give thee health, and not forget me. Vale.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> + + +<center><h2>DEDICATION OF PART I</h2> +</center> +<br> +<p>TO THE DUKE OF BEJAR, MARQUIS OF GIBRALEON, COUNT OF BENALCAZAR +AND BANARES, VICECOUNT OF THE PUEBLA DE ALCOCER, MASTER OF THE TOWNS +OF CAPILLA, CURIEL AND BURGUILLOS</p> +<br> +<p> +In belief of the good reception and honours that Your Excellency +bestows on all sort of books, as prince so inclined to favor good +arts, chiefly those who by their nobleness do not submit to the +service and bribery of the vulgar, I have determined bringing to light +The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha, in shelter of Your +Excellency's glamorous name, to whom, with the obeisance I owe to such +grandeur, I pray to receive it agreeably under his protection, so that +in this shadow, though deprived of that precious ornament of +elegance and erudition that clothe the works composed in the houses of +those who know, it dares appear with assurance in the judgment of some +who, trespassing the bounds of their own ignorance, use to condemn +with more rigour and less justice the writings of others. It is my +earnest hope that Your Excellency's good counsel in regard to my +honourable purpose, will not disdain the littleness of so humble a +service.</p> + +<p>Miguel de Cervantes</p> +<br><br> + +<br><br> +<center><img alt="e00.jpg (24K)" src="images/e00.jpg" height="445" width="308"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br><br><br> +<center><h2><a name="ch1"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2></center> +<br> +<center><h3>WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN +DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA</h3></center> + +<br><br> +<center><a name="p007"></a><img alt="p007.jpg (150K)" src="images/p007.jpg" height="437" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p007.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> + + + + +<p>In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to +call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that +keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a +greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a +salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a +pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his +income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet +breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a +brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper +past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and +market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the +bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; +he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and +a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or +Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the +authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable +conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, +however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough +not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it.</p> + +<p>You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he +was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up +to reading books of chivalry with such ardour and avidity that he +almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even +the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his +eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of +tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many +of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well +as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for their +lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his +sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and +cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the +unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that +with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens, +that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render +you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of +this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake +striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what +Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come +to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about +the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to +him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have +had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He +commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the +promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted +to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, +which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work +of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.</p> + +<p>Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a +learned man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the +better knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, +the village barber, however, used to say that neither of them came +up to the Knight of Phoebus, and that if there was any that could +compare with him it was Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, +because he had a spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no +finikin knight, nor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter +of valour he was not a whit behind him. In short, he became so +absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, +and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little +sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. +His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books, +enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, +agonies, and all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his +mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, +that to him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to +say the Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be +compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke +cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of +Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of +enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he +strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly +of the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is +always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and +well-bred. But above all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially +when he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he +met, and when beyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which, as +his history says, was entirely of gold. To have a bout of kicking at +that traitor of a Ganelon he would have given his housekeeper, and his +niece into the bargain.</p> + +<p>In short, his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest +notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he +fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own +honour as for the service of his country, that he should make a +knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on +horseback in quest of adventures, and putting in practice himself +all that he had read of as being the usual practices of +knights-errant; righting every kind of wrong, and exposing himself +to peril and danger from which, in the issue, he was to reap eternal +renown and fame. Already the poor man saw himself crowned by the might +of his arm Emperor of Trebizond at least; and so, led away by the +intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies, he set himself +forthwith to put his scheme into execution.</p> + +<p>The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged +to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a +corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and +polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, +that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This +deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind +of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked +like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong +and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of +slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a +week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces +disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set +to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was +satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more +experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the +most perfect construction.</p> + +<p>He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than +a real and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum +pellis et ossa fuit," surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of +Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid. Four days were spent in +thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was +not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with +such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and +he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before +belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was; for it was only +reasonable that, his master taking a new character, he should take a +new name, and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one, +befitting the new order and calling he was about to follow. And so, +after having composed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and +remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided +upon calling him Rocinante, a name, to his thinking, lofty, +sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he +became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the +world.</p> + +<p>Having got a name for his horse so much to his taste, he was anxious +to get one for himself, and he was eight days more pondering over this +point, till at last he made up his mind to call himself "Don Quixote," +whence, as has been already said, the authors of this veracious +history have inferred that his name must have been beyond a doubt +Quixada, and not Quesada as others would have it. Recollecting, +however, that the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself +curtly Amadis and nothing more, but added the name of his kingdom +and country to make it famous, and called himself Amadis of Gaul, +he, like a good knight, resolved to add on the name of his, and to +style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha, whereby, he considered, he +described accurately his origin and country, and did honour to it in +taking his surname from it.</p> + +<p>So then, his armour being furbished, his morion turned into a +helmet, his hack christened, and he himself confirmed, he came to +the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for +a lady to be in love with; for a knight-errant without love was like a +tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul. As he said +to himself, "If, for my sins, or by my good fortune, I come across +some giant hereabouts, a common occurrence with knights-errant, and +overthrow him in one onslaught, or cleave him asunder to the waist, +or, in short, vanquish and subdue him, will it not be well to have +some one I may send him to as a present, that he may come in and +fall on his knees before my sweet lady, and in a humble, submissive +voice say, 'I am the giant Caraculiambro, lord of the island of +Malindrania, vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently +extolled knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, who has commanded me to +present myself before your Grace, that your Highness dispose of me +at your pleasure'?" Oh, how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of +this speech, especially when he had thought of some one to call his +Lady! There was, so the story goes, in a village near his own a very +good-looking farm-girl with whom he had been at one time in love, +though, so far as is known, she never knew it nor gave a thought to +the matter. Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought +fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search +for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own, and should +suggest and indicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided +upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso—she being of El Toboso—a name, +to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had +already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him.</p> + + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><a name="p007b"></a><img alt="p007b.jpg (61K)" src="images/p007b.jpg" height="485" width="623"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br><br><br> +<center><h2><a name="ch2"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2></center> +<br> +<center><h3>WHICH TREATS OF THE FIRST SALLY THE INGENIOUS DON QUIXOTE MADE FROM HOME +</h3></center> + +<br><br> +<center><a name="p007c"></a><img alt="p007c.jpg (97K)" src="images/p007c.jpg" height="265" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p007c.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + + +<p>These preliminaries settled, he did not care to put off any longer +the execution of his design, urged on to it by the thought of all +the world was losing by his delay, seeing what wrongs he intended to +right, grievances to redress, injustices to repair, abuses to +remove, and duties to discharge. So, without giving notice of his +intention to anyone, and without anybody seeing him, one morning +before the dawning of the day (which was one of the hottest of the +month of July) he donned his suit of armour, mounted Rocinante with +his patched-up helmet on, braced his buckler, took his lance, and by +the back door of the yard sallied forth upon the plain in the +highest contentment and satisfaction at seeing with what ease he had +made a beginning with his grand purpose. But scarcely did he find +himself upon the open plain, when a terrible thought struck him, one +all but enough to make him abandon the enterprise at the very +outset. It occurred to him that he had not been dubbed a knight, and +that according to the law of chivalry he neither could nor ought to +bear arms against any knight; and that even if he had been, still he +ought, as a novice knight, to wear white armour, without a device upon +the shield until by his prowess he had earned one. These reflections +made him waver in his purpose, but his craze being stronger than any +reasoning, he made up his mind to have himself dubbed a knight by +the first one he came across, following the example of others in the +same case, as he had read in the books that brought him to this +pass. As for white armour, he resolved, on the first opportunity, to +scour his until it was whiter than an ermine; and so comforting +himself he pursued his way, taking that which his horse chose, for +in this he believed lay the essence of adventures.</p> + +<p>Thus setting out, our new-fledged adventurer paced along, talking to +himself and saying, "Who knows but that in time to come, when the +veracious history of my famous deeds is made known, the sage who +writes it, when he has to set forth my first sally in the early +morning, will do it after this fashion? 'Scarce had the rubicund +Apollo spread o'er the face of the broad spacious earth the golden +threads of his bright hair, scarce had the little birds of painted +plumage attuned their notes to hail with dulcet and mellifluous +harmony the coming of the rosy Dawn, that, deserting the soft couch of +her jealous spouse, was appearing to mortals at the gates and +balconies of the Manchegan horizon, when the renowned knight Don +Quixote of La Mancha, quitting the lazy down, mounted his celebrated +steed Rocinante and began to traverse the ancient and famous Campo +de Montiel;'" which in fact he was actually traversing. "Happy the +age, happy the time," he continued, "in which shall be made known my +deeds of fame, worthy to be moulded in brass, carved in marble, limned +in pictures, for a memorial for ever. And thou, O sage magician, +whoever thou art, to whom it shall fall to be the chronicler of this +wondrous history, forget not, I entreat thee, my good Rocinante, the +constant companion of my ways and wanderings." Presently he broke +out again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, "O Princess +Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart, a grievous wrong hast thou +done me to drive me forth with scorn, and with inexorable obduracy +banish me from the presence of thy beauty. O lady, deign to hold in +remembrance this heart, thy vassal, that thus in anguish pines for +love of thee."</p> + +<p>So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in +the style of those his books had taught him, imitating their +language as well as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly +and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervour that it was +enough to melt his brains if he had any. Nearly all day he travelled +without anything remarkable happening to him, at which he was in +despair, for he was anxious to encounter some one at once upon whom to +try the might of his strong arm.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><a name="p008"></a><img alt="p008.jpg (289K)" src="images/p008.jpg" height="512" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p008.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Writers there are who say the first adventure he met with was that +of Puerto Lapice; others say it was that of the windmills; but what +I have ascertained on this point, and what I have found written in the +annals of La Mancha, is that he was on the road all day, and towards +nightfall his hack and he found themselves dead tired and hungry, +when, looking all around to see if he could discover any castle or +shepherd's shanty where he might refresh himself and relieve his +sore wants, he perceived not far out of his road an inn, which was +as welcome as a star guiding him to the portals, if not the palaces, +of his redemption; and quickening his pace he reached it just as night +was setting in. At the door were standing two young women, girls of +the district as they call them, on their way to Seville with some +carriers who had chanced to halt that night at the inn; and as, happen +what might to our adventurer, everything he saw or imaged seemed to +him to be and to happen after the fashion of what he read of, the +moment he saw the inn he pictured it to himself as a castle with its +four turrets and pinnacles of shining silver, not forgetting the +drawbridge and moat and all the belongings usually ascribed to castles +of the sort. To this inn, which to him seemed a castle, he advanced, +and at a short distance from it he checked Rocinante, hoping that some +dwarf would show himself upon the battlements, and by sound of trumpet +give notice that a knight was approaching the castle. But seeing +that they were slow about it, and that Rocinante was in a hurry to +reach the stable, he made for the inn door, and perceived the two +gay damsels who were standing there, and who seemed to him to be two +fair maidens or lovely ladies taking their ease at the castle gate.</p> + +<p>At this moment it so happened that a swineherd who was going through +the stubbles collecting a drove of pigs (for, without any apology, +that is what they are called) gave a blast of his horn to bring them +together, and forthwith it seemed to Don Quixote to be what he was +expecting, the signal of some dwarf announcing his arrival; and so +with prodigious satisfaction he rode up to the inn and to the +ladies, who, seeing a man of this sort approaching in full armour +and with lance and buckler, were turning in dismay into the inn, +when Don Quixote, guessing their fear by their flight, raising his +pasteboard visor, disclosed his dry dusty visage, and with courteous +bearing and gentle voice addressed them, "Your ladyships need not +fly or fear any rudeness, for that it belongs not to the order of +knighthood which I profess to offer to anyone, much less to highborn +maidens as your appearance proclaims you to be." The girls were +looking at him and straining their eyes to make out the features which +the clumsy visor obscured, but when they heard themselves called +maidens, a thing so much out of their line, they could not restrain +their laughter, which made Don Quixote wax indignant, and say, +"Modesty becomes the fair, and moreover laughter that has little cause +is great silliness; this, however, I say not to pain or anger you, for +my desire is none other than to serve you."</p> + +<p>The incomprehensible language and the unpromising looks of our +cavalier only increased the ladies' laughter, and that increased his +irritation, and matters might have gone farther if at that moment +the landlord had not come out, who, being a very fat man, was a very +peaceful one. He, seeing this grotesque figure clad in armour that did +not match any more than his saddle, bridle, lance, buckler, or +corselet, was not at all indisposed to join the damsels in their +manifestations of amusement; but, in truth, standing in awe of such +a complicated armament, he thought it best to speak him fairly, so +he said, "Senor Caballero, if your worship wants lodging, bating the +bed (for there is not one in the inn) there is plenty of everything +else here." Don Quixote, observing the respectful bearing of the +Alcaide of the fortress (for so innkeeper and inn seemed in his eyes), +made answer, "Sir Castellan, for me anything will suffice, for</p> + + +<pre>'My armour is my only wear, +My only rest the fray.'"</pre> + +<p>The host fancied he called him Castellan because he took him for a +"worthy of Castile," though he was in fact an Andalusian, and one from +the strand of San Lucar, as crafty a thief as Cacus and as full of +tricks as a student or a page. "In that case," said he,</p> + +<pre>"'Your bed is on the flinty rock, +Your sleep to watch alway;'</pre> + +<p>and if so, you may dismount and safely reckon upon any quantity of +sleeplessness under this roof for a twelvemonth, not to say for a +single night." So saying, he advanced to hold the stirrup for Don +Quixote, who got down with great difficulty and exertion (for he had +not broken his fast all day), and then charged the host to take +great care of his horse, as he was the best bit of flesh that ever ate +bread in this world. The landlord eyed him over but did not find him +as good as Don Quixote said, nor even half as good; and putting him up +in the stable, he returned to see what might be wanted by his guest, +whom the damsels, who had by this time made their peace with him, were +now relieving of his armour. They had taken off his breastplate and +backpiece, but they neither knew nor saw how to open his gorget or +remove his make-shift helmet, for he had fastened it with green +ribbons, which, as there was no untying the knots, required to be cut. +This, however, he would not by any means consent to, so he remained +all the evening with his helmet on, the drollest and oddest figure +that can be imagined; and while they were removing his armour, +taking the baggages who were about it for ladies of high degree +belonging to the castle, he said to them with great sprightliness:</p> + +<pre>"Oh, never, surely, was there knight + So served by hand of dame, +As served was he, Don Quixote hight, + When from his town he came; +With maidens waiting on himself, + Princesses on his hack— +</pre> +<p>—or Rocinante, for that, ladies mine, is my horse's name, and Don +Quixote of La Mancha is my own; for though I had no intention of +declaring myself until my achievements in your service and honour +had made me known, the necessity of adapting that old ballad of +Lancelot to the present occasion has given you the knowledge of my +name altogether prematurely. A time, however, will come for your +ladyships to command and me to obey, and then the might of my arm will +show my desire to serve you."</p> + +<p>The girls, who were not used to hearing rhetoric of this sort, had +nothing to say in reply; they only asked him if he wanted anything +to eat. "I would gladly eat a bit of something," said Don Quixote, +"for I feel it would come very seasonably." The day happened to be a +Friday, and in the whole inn there was nothing but some pieces of +the fish they call in Castile "abadejo," in Andalusia "bacallao," +and in some places "curadillo," and in others "troutlet;" so they +asked him if he thought he could eat troutlet, for there was no +other fish to give him. "If there be troutlets enough," said Don +Quixote, "they will be the same thing as a trout; for it is all one to +me whether I am given eight reals in small change or a piece of eight; +moreover, it may be that these troutlets are like veal, which is +better than beef, or kid, which is better than goat. But whatever it +be let it come quickly, for the burden and pressure of arms cannot +be borne without support to the inside." They laid a table for him +at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought +him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of +bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughable sight +it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver +up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless +some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies +rendered him. But to give him anything to drink was impossible, or +would have been so had not the landlord bored a reed, and putting +one end in his mouth poured the wine into him through the other; all +which he bore with patience rather than sever the ribbons of his +helmet.</p> + +<p>While this was going on there came up to the inn a sowgelder, who, +as he approached, sounded his reed pipe four or five times, and +thereby completely convinced Don Quixote that he was in some famous +castle, and that they were regaling him with music, and that the +stockfish was trout, the bread the whitest, the wenches ladies, and +the landlord the castellan of the castle; and consequently he held +that his enterprise and sally had been to some purpose. But still it +distressed him to think he had not been dubbed a knight, for it was +plain to him he could not lawfully engage in any adventure without +receiving the order of knighthood.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<center><img alt="e02.jpg (39K)" src="images/e02.jpg" height="381" width="575"> +</center> + + +<br><br><br><br><br><br> +<center><h2><a name="ch3"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2></center> +<br> +<center><h3>WHEREIN IS RELATED THE DROLL WAY IN WHICH DON QUIXOTE HAD HIMSELF +DUBBED A KNIGHT +</h3></center> +<br> +<br> +<center><a name="p009"></a><img alt="p009.jpg (164K)" src="images/p009.jpg" height="423" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p009.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Harassed by this reflection, he made haste with his scanty +pothouse supper, and having finished it called the landlord, and +shutting himself into the stable with him, fell on his knees before +him, saying, "From this spot I rise not, valiant knight, until your +courtesy grants me the boon I seek, one that will redound to your +praise and the benefit of the human race." The landlord, seeing his +guest at his feet and hearing a speech of this kind, stood staring +at him in bewilderment, not knowing what to do or say, and +entreating him to rise, but all to no purpose until he had agreed to +grant the boon demanded of him. "I looked for no less, my lord, from +your High Magnificence," replied Don Quixote, "and I have to tell +you that the boon I have asked and your liberality has granted is that +you shall dub me knight to-morrow morning, and that to-night I shall +watch my arms in the chapel of this your castle; thus tomorrow, as I +have said, will be accomplished what I so much desire, enabling me +lawfully to roam through all the four quarters of the world seeking +adventures on behalf of those in distress, as is the duty of +chivalry and of knights-errant like myself, whose ambition is directed +to such deeds."</p> + +<p>The landlord, who, as has been mentioned, was something of a wag, +and had already some suspicion of his guest's want of wits, was +quite convinced of it on hearing talk of this kind from him, and to +make sport for the night he determined to fall in with his humour. +So he told him he was quite right in pursuing the object he had in +view, and that such a motive was natural and becoming in cavaliers +as distinguished as he seemed and his gallant bearing showed him to +be; and that he himself in his younger days had followed the same +honourable calling, roaming in quest of adventures in various parts of +the world, among others the Curing-grounds of Malaga, the Isles of +Riaran, the Precinct of Seville, the Little Market of Segovia, the +Olivera of Valencia, the Rondilla of Granada, the Strand of San Lucar, +the Colt of Cordova, the Taverns of Toledo, and divers other quarters, +where he had proved the nimbleness of his feet and the lightness of +his fingers, doing many wrongs, cheating many widows, ruining maids +and swindling minors, and, in short, bringing himself under the notice +of almost every tribunal and court of justice in Spain; until at +last he had retired to this castle of his, where he was living upon +his property and upon that of others; and where he received all +knights-errant of whatever rank or condition they might be, all for +the great love he bore them and that they might share their +substance with him in return for his benevolence. He told him, +moreover, that in this castle of his there was no chapel in which he +could watch his armour, as it had been pulled down in order to be +rebuilt, but that in a case of necessity it might, he knew, be watched +anywhere, and he might watch it that night in a courtyard of the +castle, and in the morning, God willing, the requisite ceremonies +might be performed so as to have him dubbed a knight, and so +thoroughly dubbed that nobody could be more so. He asked if he had any +money with him, to which Don Quixote replied that he had not a +farthing, as in the histories of knights-errant he had never read of +any of them carrying any. On this point the landlord told him he was +mistaken; for, though not recorded in the histories, because in the +author's opinion there was no need to mention anything so obvious +and necessary as money and clean shirts, it was not to be supposed +therefore that they did not carry them, and he might regard it as +certain and established that all knights-errant (about whom there were +so many full and unimpeachable books) carried well-furnished purses in +case of emergency, and likewise carried shirts and a little box of +ointment to cure the wounds they received. For in those plains and +deserts where they engaged in combat and came out wounded, it was +not always that there was some one to cure them, unless indeed they +had for a friend some sage magician to succour them at once by +fetching through the air upon a cloud some damsel or dwarf with a vial +of water of such virtue that by tasting one drop of it they were cured +of their hurts and wounds in an instant and left as sound as if they +had not received any damage whatever. But in case this should not +occur, the knights of old took care to see that their squires were +provided with money and other requisites, such as lint and ointments +for healing purposes; and when it happened that knights had no squires +(which was rarely and seldom the case) they themselves carried +everything in cunning saddle-bags that were hardly seen on the horse's +croup, as if it were something else of more importance, because, +unless for some such reason, carrying saddle-bags was not very +favourably regarded among knights-errant. He therefore advised him +(and, as his godson so soon to be, he might even command him) never +from that time forth to travel without money and the usual +requirements, and he would find the advantage of them when he least +expected it.</p> + +<p>Don Quixote promised to follow his advice scrupulously, and it was +arranged forthwith that he should watch his armour in a large yard +at one side of the inn; so, collecting it all together, Don Quixote +placed it on a trough that stood by the side of a well, and bracing +his buckler on his arm he grasped his lance and began with a stately +air to march up and down in front of the trough, and as he began his +march night began to fall.</p> + +<p>The landlord told all the people who were in the inn about the craze +of his guest, the watching of the armour, and the dubbing ceremony +he contemplated. Full of wonder at so strange a form of madness, +they flocked to see it from a distance, and observed with what +composure he sometimes paced up and down, or sometimes, leaning on his +lance, gazed on his armour without taking his eyes off it for ever +so long; and as the night closed in with a light from the moon so +brilliant that it might vie with his that lent it, everything the +novice knight did was plainly seen by all.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile one of the carriers who were in the inn thought fit to +water his team, and it was necessary to remove Don Quixote's armour as +it lay on the trough; but he seeing the other approach hailed him in a +loud voice, "O thou, whoever thou art, rash knight that comest to +lay hands on the armour of the most valorous errant that ever girt +on sword, have a care what thou dost; touch it not unless thou wouldst +lay down thy life as the penalty of thy rashness." The carrier gave no +heed to these words (and he would have done better to heed them if +he had been heedful of his health), but seizing it by the straps flung +the armour some distance from him. Seeing this, Don Quixote raised his +eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts, apparently, upon his lady +Dulcinea, exclaimed, "Aid me, lady mine, in this the first encounter +that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest in subjection; +let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first jeopardy;" +and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping his +buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a +blow on the carrier's head that he stretched him on the ground, so +stunned that had he followed it up with a second there would have been +no need of a surgeon to cure him. This done, he picked up his armour +and returned to his beat with the same serenity as before.</p> + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><a name="p010"></a><img alt="p010.jpg (261K)" src="images/p010.jpg" height="835" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p010.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> +<br><br><br><br> + +<p>Shortly after this, another, not knowing what had happened (for +the carrier still lay senseless), came with the same object of +giving water to his mules, and was proceeding to remove the armour +in order to clear the trough, when Don Quixote, without uttering a +word or imploring aid from anyone, once more dropped his buckler and +once more lifted his lance, and without actually breaking the second +carrier's head into pieces, made more than three of it, for he laid it +open in four. At the noise all the people of the inn ran to the +spot, and among them the landlord. Seeing this, Don Quixote braced his +buckler on his arm, and with his hand on his sword exclaimed, "O +Lady of Beauty, strength and support of my faint heart, it is time for +thee to turn the eyes of thy greatness on this thy captive knight on +the brink of so mighty an adventure." By this he felt himself so +inspired that he would not have flinched if all the carriers in the +world had assailed him. The comrades of the wounded perceiving the +plight they were in began from a distance to shower stones on Don +Quixote, who screened himself as best he could with his buckler, not +daring to quit the trough and leave his armour unprotected. The +landlord shouted to them to leave him alone, for he had already told +them that he was mad, and as a madman he would not be accountable even +if he killed them all. Still louder shouted Don Quixote, calling +them knaves and traitors, and the lord of the castle, who allowed +knights-errant to be treated in this fashion, a villain and a low-born +knight whom, had he received the order of knighthood, he would call to +account for his treachery. "But of you," he cried, "base and vile +rabble, I make no account; fling, strike, come on, do all ye can +against me, ye shall see what the reward of your folly and insolence +will be." This he uttered with so much spirit and boldness that he +filled his assailants with a terrible fear, and as much for this +reason as at the persuasion of the landlord they left off stoning him, +and he allowed them to carry off the wounded, and with the same +calmness and composure as before resumed the watch over his armour.</p> + +<p>But these freaks of his guest were not much to the liking of the +landlord, so he determined to cut matters short and confer upon him at +once the unlucky order of knighthood before any further misadventure +could occur; so, going up to him, he apologised for the rudeness +which, without his knowledge, had been offered to him by these low +people, who, however, had been well punished for their audacity. As he +had already told him, he said, there was no chapel in the castle, +nor was it needed for what remained to be done, for, as he +understood the ceremonial of the order, the whole point of being +dubbed a knight lay in the accolade and in the slap on the shoulder, +and that could be administered in the middle of a field; and that he +had now done all that was needful as to watching the armour, for all +requirements were satisfied by a watch of two hours only, while he had +been more than four about it. Don Quixote believed it all, and told +him he stood there ready to obey him, and to make an end of it with as +much despatch as possible; for, if he were again attacked, and felt +himself to be dubbed knight, he would not, he thought, leave a soul +alive in the castle, except such as out of respect he might spare at +his bidding.</p> + +<p>Thus warned and menaced, the castellan forthwith brought out a +book in which he used to enter the straw and barley he served out to +the carriers, and, with a lad carrying a candle-end, and the two +damsels already mentioned, he returned to where Don Quixote stood, and +bade him kneel down. Then, reading from his account-book as if he were +repeating some devout prayer, in the middle of his delivery he +raised his hand and gave him a sturdy blow on the neck, and then, with +his own sword, a smart slap on the shoulder, all the while muttering +between his teeth as if he was saying his prayers. Having done this, +he directed one of the ladies to gird on his sword, which she did with +great self-possession and gravity, and not a little was required to +prevent a burst of laughter at each stage of the ceremony; but what +they had already seen of the novice knight's prowess kept their +laughter within bounds. On girding him with the sword the worthy +lady said to him, "May God make your worship a very fortunate +knight, and grant you success in battle." Don Quixote asked her name +in order that he might from that time forward know to whom he was +beholden for the favour he had received, as he meant to confer upon +her some portion of the honour he acquired by the might of his arm. +She answered with great humility that she was called La Tolosa, and +that she was the daughter of a cobbler of Toledo who lived in the +stalls of Sanchobienaya, and that wherever she might be she would +serve and esteem him as her lord. Don Quixote said in reply that she +would do him a favour if thenceforward she assumed the "Don" and +called herself Dona Tolosa. She promised she would, and then the other +buckled on his spur, and with her followed almost the same +conversation as with the lady of the sword. He asked her name, and she +said it was La Molinera, and that she was the daughter of a +respectable miller of Antequera; and of her likewise Don Quixote +requested that she would adopt the "Don" and call herself Dona +Molinera, making offers to her further services and favours.</p> + +<p>Having thus, with hot haste and speed, brought to a conclusion these +never-till-now-seen ceremonies, Don Quixote was on thorns until he saw +himself on horseback sallying forth in quest of adventures; and +saddling Rocinante at once he mounted, and embracing his host, as he +returned thanks for his kindness in knighting him, he addressed him in +language so extraordinary that it is impossible to convey an idea of +it or report it. The landlord, to get him out of the inn, replied with +no less rhetoric though with shorter words, and without calling upon +him to pay the reckoning let him go with a Godspeed.</p> + + +<br><br><br><br> +<center><a name="p017"></a><img alt="p017.jpg (54K)" src="images/p017.jpg" height="435" width="650"> +</center> +<a href="images/p017.jpg" target="_blank"><img alt="Full Size" src="images/enlarge.jpg"></a> + +<br> +<br> + + + +<center> +<table summary="" cellPadding=4 border=3> +<tr><td> + <a href="p2.htm">Next Part</a> +</td><td> + <a href="5921-h.htm">Main Index</a> + </td></tr> +</table> +</center> +<br><br> + +</body> +</html> + |