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 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="p2.htm">Next Part</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
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<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.,&nbsp; Part 1.
<br><br>
Chapters 1-3
</h3></center>

<br><br>
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<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&mdash;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.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;D.W.</p>
</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>
<br><br><br><br>


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<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&mdash;and I confess myself to be
one&mdash;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&mdash;barbarously literal
frequently&mdash;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&mdash;worthless as failing to
represent, worse than worthless as misrepresenting&mdash;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&mdash;"wooden" in a
word,&mdash;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&mdash;for the "Tia Fingida," if it be his, is not one&mdash;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&mdash;like the "Numancia" for instance&mdash;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"&mdash;which, as we know, was to be the most entertaining book
in the language, and the rival of "Theagenes and Chariclea"&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;
 Innamorato, rather&mdash;who
   Won Dulcinea del Toboso.

 Put no vain emblems on thy shield;
   All figures&mdash;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&mdash;though above yon horned moon enthroned
     My fortune seems to sit&mdash;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&mdash;
   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&mdash;thou mad'st him grow so&mdash;
 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&mdash;
Who served Don Quixote of La Man&mdash;;
But from his service I retreat&mdash;,
Resolved to pass my life discreet&mdash;;
For Villadiego, called the Si&mdash;,
Maintained that only in reti&mdash;
Was found the secret of well-be&mdash;,
According to the "Celesti&mdash;:"
A book divine, except for sin&mdash;
By speech too plain, in my opin&mdash;




ON ROCINANTE

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




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?"&mdash;R. "No great sense."
B.  "You're metaphysical."&mdash;R. "From want of food."
B.  "Rail at the squire, then."&mdash;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>
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<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&mdash;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&mdash;for
though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don
Quixote"&mdash;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!&mdash;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&mdash;</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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>

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<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>

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<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&mdash;she being of El Toboso&mdash;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>



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<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>

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<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>

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<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&mdash;
</pre>
<p>&mdash;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>

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<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
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<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>

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<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>


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