The Ingeniotis Gentleman 
 
 DON QUIXOTE 
 
 LA MANCHA.
 
 The Ingenious Gentleman 
 
 DON QUIXOTE 
 
 OF 
 
 LA MANCHA 
 
 BY 
 
 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. 
 
 A NEW EDITION: 
 
 Done into English 
 
 WITH NOTES, ORIGINAL AND SELECTED, 
 
 AND 
 
 A NEW LIFE OP THE AUTHOR. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDWARD WATTS. 
 
 IN FIVE VOLUMES. 
 VOLUME I.— BIOGRAPHY; CRITICISM; BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, 15 PICCADILLY. 
 
 1888. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 
 The number of Copies of this Edition has been 
 strictly limited to Two Hundred and Fifty. All are 
 printed in Fcap. a,to. and on Dutch Hand-made Paper. 
 
 No.
 
 pq 
 
 PR E FA C E. 
 
 HE object and character of this new edition 
 of Don Quixote, and the general principles 
 on which I have made my translation, 
 being set forth at length in my Introduc- 
 tion, I have only to add a few words ex- 
 planatorj'- of the scheme of publication. The whole work 
 is comprised in five volumes. The first volume is de- 
 voted entirely to a life of Cervantes, drawn from the 
 best and latest sources of information, some of which 
 have never before been accessible to English readers ; 
 together with the bibliography of Don Quixote, and of 
 the romances of chivalry. The remaining volumes will 
 include a new and original translation of Don Quixote^ 
 based on that which must be regarded as the best 
 Spanish text, namely, the last edition of the Royal 
 Spanish Academy, published in 1819, accompanied by 
 a commentary partly selected from the Spanish editions 
 VOL. I. b 
 
 6' 
 
 i^ troop. 
 
 n
 
 vi Don Quixote. 
 
 of Bowie, Pellicer, Clemencin, and others, and partly 
 new, the result of my own reading, research, or travel. 
 The notes, which I trust will not be found superfluous 
 by any lover of Cervantes, are intended to explain diffi- 
 culties in the text, the numerous references to the 
 chivalric romances and poems, and the allusions to 
 historical personages and events, as well as to contem- 
 porary Spanish life and manners. I have restrained 
 myself, as far as it was possible, from intruding mere 
 verbal criticisms and thrusting what have been called 
 " finger post " comments on my readers. 
 
 This work being intended for those not absolutely 
 ignorant of Spanish or insensible to humour, I have not 
 thought it necessary to instruct my readers as to what 
 they should admire or where they should laugh. 
 
 With all my care and solicitude in this respect, it is 
 possible that I may have erred sometimes in putting a 
 note to a passage where it was not wanted, but I hope 
 for forgiveness for this and for graver offences, inevitable 
 in a work of so much labour and difficulty. 
 
 My translation I claim to be original, so far as it is 
 possible for any version of a prose work, so frequently 
 translated as Don Quixote has been, to be original, in 
 this present age. I have read every previous English 
 translation, as it was my duty to do, and I have not 
 hesitated to take the best English word wherever I
 
 Preface. vil 
 
 found it ; holding fast to my one purpose, which is to 
 give Don Quixote his best English dress, and regarding 
 rather the interests of the author than of the translator. 
 This work, as I have said, being intended rather for 
 Spanish scholars and students of Cervantes who have 
 some previous knowledge of Don Quixote, than for the 
 wholly uninstructed general public, I need not occupy 
 much time in teaching my readers how to pronounce 
 certain leading Spanish words. I presume every one 
 knows that Quixote, which is now universally spelt 
 Quij'ote in Spanish, is properly a word of three syllables, 
 — with the accent on the penultimate, and the x or j 
 sounded as a guttural aspirate. The change from the 
 X to the J in Spanish words came into fashion about 
 the middle of the last century. Before that period, 
 and even for some time after, x and j were used indis- 
 criminately, — having precisely the same sound, which 
 there is some reason to believe has been changed since 
 the time of Charles V. from the sound of the French 
 ch, or the English s/i, to that of the Arabic aspirate. 
 Some Spanish scholars even maintain that it was the 
 German courtiers of Charles who first brought the 
 aspirated J into fashion.' Cervantes himself probably 
 
 ' According to the Orlografia Casteliana, which may be taken 
 to be a sufficient authority in the matter, x should be retained in
 
 viii Don Quixote. 
 
 called his hero Keeshote. My readers may call him 
 what they please, I myself incline, in an English 
 book, to the old English form Quixote — Quicksot. It 
 has become naturalised as an English word, and has 
 become the father of the undoubted English words 
 Quixotism, Quixotic, &c. 
 
 As to Sancho and La Mancha, one may combine 
 correctness with English use and convenience without 
 any effort. It is just as easy to say Santcho and La 
 Mantcha as to say Sanko and La Manka ; and more 
 correct. Rozinante or Rocinante, — the z and the soft c 
 being unisonous and interchangeable, — has these letters 
 sounded, in pure Castilian, like the dental English th ; 
 but those who prefer, as I do, the plain old pronuncia- 
 tion, have the satisfaction of knowing that even in 
 most Spanish countries it is so pronounced. 
 
 In regard to the spelling of the proper names through- 
 
 all words of pure Latin origin, whiley should be used in words 
 from the Arabic. But this rule is disregarded by modern Spanish 
 writers, who use x and 7 indiscriminately. Thus we have ejemplo 
 and ejercito, instead of exemplo and exercito, — which are clearly 
 solecisms, and in violation of the rule. So late as in 1623, 
 Minsheu, in the appendix to his Spanish and English Dictionary, 
 directs his readers that the Spanish ; "is pronounced as in French 
 jamais,^' and x like the French ch,—ojo like osho, a.nd_^oxo like
 
 Preface. ix 
 
 out Don Quixote I have adhered generally to the English 
 mode, as being most in character in an English transla- 
 tion, not binding myself to any hard and fast rule. It 
 is not always easy to say when the Spanish name has 
 become sufficiently familiar to be used, in such a book 
 as this, in its English form. We are all agreed to say 
 Seville for Sevilla, and Biscay for Biscaya ; but there is 
 no sufficient reason for preferring Saragossa and Pampe- 
 luna to Zaragoza and Pamplona. In the case of the 
 names of the heroes of fable, it is difficult to lay down 
 any fixed rule ; but I have generally Englished the 
 foreign name, wherever an English form of it was 
 known. I have preferred, however, Orlando to Roland, 
 seeing that nearly always the allusions in Don Quixote 
 are to the Italian hero of Boiardo's or Ariosto's poem. 
 While they are by origin one, the Italian Orlando differs 
 materially from the English or French Roland, just as 
 either differs from the Spanish Roldan. It would make 
 confusion, however, were I to vary t^je name according 
 to the several countries of this general Latin hero (who 
 was not Latin at all, but a Frank, if he was anything) \ 
 so I have preferred to call him Orlando throughout. 
 And for such a form as Valdovinos I need plead no ex- 
 cuse in substituting Baldwin, any more than for turning 
 Arturo or Artus into Arthur. In regard to such an 
 absurd name (however consecrated by usage) as Dan
 
 X Don Quixote. 
 
 John — half Spanish, half English — I have preferred the 
 wholly Spanish Don Juan. We do not say Sir Pedro 
 or Sir Henrique. The Oriental and Arabic names of 
 persons and places I have given according to the Eng- 
 lish Romanised forms ; as Hadgi Murad for AgiMorato. 
 I do not pretend, in all this, to follow any scientific 
 scheme of transliteration, but, amidst the multitude of 
 systems of spelling, have looked only to that which is 
 most easy and familiar to the English reader. 
 
 There remains one other duty for me to discharge 
 in this place, which is to record my acknowledgments 
 to those who have helped me in this arduous under- 
 taking. In expressing my obligations to Don Pascual 
 de Gayangos for much kindly sympathy and assistance, 
 especially in the bibliographical part, I merely repeat 
 what has become almost a stereotyped phrase in the 
 prefaces of English books relating to Spain or to 
 Spanish literature. There is no living scholar of a 
 knowledge so accurate and profound on all matters 
 relating to the books of his country as my good friend 
 Don Pascual, and no one of a good-nature and libe- 
 rality so profuse and untiring. To the editor of the 
 St. James's Gazette I am indebted for the privilege 
 of using the substance of several articles contributed 
 to that journal on Don Quixote and Cervantic literature. 
 To Mr. Francis Storr I have to express my thanks for
 
 Preface. xi 
 
 having lent me the translation of Heine's essay on Don 
 Quixote, which appears in the Appendix to Vol. I. 
 Mr. Edmund Gosse I have to thank for his graceful 
 rendering of one of the occasional sonnets in the text. 
 Lastly, and in an extreme measure, my gratitude is 
 due to Mr. C. H. H. Macartney, who has relieved me 
 of infinite labour by reading my proofs and by aiding 
 in the compilation of my two Indices — one to the Life 
 of Cervantes and the other to the text of Don Quixote. 
 This last, to his special glory be it recorded, is a ser- 
 vice which no English editor has ever before done for 
 Cervantes. 
 
 In bringing to a conclusion a work in which I have 
 been engaged, more or less busily, for the last eighteen 
 years, — begun in the midst of the cares, distractions, 
 and turmoil of a harassing and jealous profession, — 
 which has been to me a perpetual and ever-abiding 
 source of delight and comfort, fulfilling in my regard, 
 in a very special sense, that object for which the book 
 was designed by its author, according to his own words, 
 I am sensible of an emotion which has in it more of 
 pain than of pleasure. It is the taking leave of an 
 old friend, who can never more be the same again, — 
 the companion of my leisure, the solace of many dull 
 and weary hours. I can scarcely indulge my readers 
 with the hope which is implied in the common form
 
 xii Don Quixote. 
 
 of an author's farewell to his book. I cannot flatter 
 myself that any one will take so much delight in 
 reading this translation of Don Quixote as I have had 
 in making it. The mischief is that it is done ; and the 
 labour can delight no more.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 Preface page v 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 LIFE OF CERVANTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Youth and Education — Early 
 Essays in Literature — Service with Cardinal Acqua- 
 viva — -Journey to Rome 31 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 Leaves the Service of Cardinal Acquaviva — Enlists as a 
 Soldier — The Holy League — The Battle of Lepanto 
 — Cervantes' Conduct in the Fight — His Wounds — 
 Recovery and Return to Service — Navarino — Tunis — 
 Italy — Obtains Leave to Visit Spain — Embarks at 
 Naples 49 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 xiv Don Quixote. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Cervantes^ Galley attacked by Alger ine Corsairs — Taken 
 Captive — Slave of Deli Mami — Attevipts at Escape 
 — Projected Rising of Christian Captives — Treat- 
 ment of Cervantes by Hassan Pasha — Testimony as 
 to his Conduct at Algiers — Father Hcedds Account 
 of Cervantes — Is rafisoined and returns to Spain . . .page 7 6 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Cervantes returns to Spain — State of the Country under 
 Philip II. — Gi'catiiess of Philip's Doniinion — Signs 
 of Decadence a?id its Causes — Extraordinary Growth 
 of the Ecclesiastical Poioer — Influence of Priestcraft 
 — The Inquisitioji — Cervantes re-eftters the Military 
 Profession — Service in Portugal — In the Azores — 
 Residence in Lisbon — Quits Military Life 98 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Begins his Career as a Man of Letters — Story oj his 
 Portraits — Ideal Portrait by Kent — Tlie Conde del 
 Aguila's Picture — Asensio's Discovery — Description of 
 Himself — Publication of Galatea — Marriage 114 
 
 CHAPTER Vr. 
 
 Cervantes adopts Literature as a Profession — Multitude 
 of Poets i?i Spain — JFrites for the Stage — His Come- 
 dies — Numancia — El Trato de Argel — Lope de Vega 
 — Retires from Madrid — Life in Seville — A Commis- 
 sary in Ajidalusia — Imprisonment — Trials and Expe- 
 riences in La Mancha — A?gamasilla — The Cradle of 
 Don Quixote 133
 
 Contents. xv 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Return to Valladolid — Disappointed in his Hopes of Pre- 
 ferment — Writes Don Quixote — The Duke of Bejar 
 — Publication of Don Quixote — Reception of the Book 
 — Its Object and Character discussed — The Romances 
 of Chivalry and their Influence — Their Annihilation 
 by Don Quixote .pa^e 
 
 159 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 Life at Valladolid^ Arrival of the English Ambassador 
 — The Festivities at Court — Gongora — Affair of 
 Ezpeleta — Visit to Seville — Return to Madrid — Cer- 
 vantes^ Purszdts — Friends and Rivals — Publication of 
 the Novels — The Voyage to Parnassus and Appendix 
 — Cervantes^ Patrons — Publication of Comedies and 
 Farces — Poverty of the Author — Foreign Opinion ... 185 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Second Part of Don Quixote commenced — Spurious Second 
 Part published — Its Character — Bitter Attack on 
 Cervafites — Parody of his Work — The Mystery of 
 Avellaneda — Attempts at its Solution — Lope de Vega 
 — His Relations with Cervantes — The Second Part 
 of Don Quixote published — Its Character 206 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Last Years — Persiles and Sigismunda — Cervantes' Fare- 
 well — Death and Burial — General Sionmary of his 
 Life and Character — Estitnate of Don Quixote — 
 Conclusion 232
 
 XVI 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. — Genealogy of Miguel de Cervantes .page 258 
 
 B. — Abstract of the Proceedings in Algiers 260 
 
 C. — The Bibliography of Don Quixote 268 
 
 D. — The Romances of Chivalry 291 
 
 E. — Heine on Cervantes and Don Quixote 309 
 
 Index 325
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Y purpose in this work is to tell the story 
 of Don Quixote to English readers as 
 Cervantes, his creator, has told it ; ob- 
 serving, so far as the difference between 
 the Spanish of the Sixteenth century and 
 the English of the Nineteenth will allow, 
 the same simplicity, clearness, and directness of lan- 
 guage which are the distinctive attributes of the 
 original ; and ever regarding it as my first duty to be 
 faithful to the text and to the author. To this end 
 three things chiefly are necessary : First, a true and 
 faithful translation of the text of DON QUIXOTE, with- 
 out mutilation or abridgment or addition : Second, a 
 full commentary in explanation of the innumerable 
 references to books, to events, and to persons, and in 
 elucidation of the manners, customs, idioms, characters, 
 and phrases, which either time has rendered obscure, 
 or the translators and commentators have made unin- 
 telligible : Third, a biography of the author, with a 
 VOL. I. B *
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 survey of the time and the conditions under which he 
 lived and wrote, which is the one thing, above all, 
 essential to the true understanding of his book. 
 
 Of the translation I need only say, in excuse for my 
 seeming audacity in undertaking what so many have 
 attempted, that DON QUIXOTE is the book of all others 
 in the world the most translateable, which is proved, I 
 maintain, by the fact of its being the book most often 
 translated. The prophecy of Cervantes, put into the 
 mouth of Samson Carrasco, has been more than ful- 
 filled : No ha de haber nacion ni lengua dotide no se 
 traduca. The book of Spain has become the common 
 property of mankind. In the words of the great 
 French critic — Ce livre d'apropos est devenu un livre 
 d humanite. Every literature has its DON Quixote, 
 as it has its Bible. There is no language but has been 
 enriched by the coinage of Cervantes. Quixote, Rozi- 
 nante, Sancho Panza, Dulcinea, Maritornes — they are 
 words in every tongue. In a sense, and to an extent 
 which the author himself could hardly have antici- 
 pated, proudly confident as he was of the fortunes of 
 this child of his genius, DoN Quixote has become 
 " the plaything of infancy, the study of mankind, the 
 idol of old age." To say that there is no book in the 
 world so popular, is to bear but scant testimony to the 
 triumph it has achieved over readers of all nations, all 
 tastes, and all ages. Bibliography can hardly keep 
 pace with the number of editions through which Don 
 Quixote has passed. Don Lopez de Fabra, the editor 
 of the beautiful fac-simile first editions of Part Land II.,
 
 Introduction. 3 
 
 published at Barcelona in 1874;^ enumerates 278 editions 
 of Don QuixOTE^up to that date, of which 136 are 
 in Spanish. This gives us some 150 in other lan- 
 guages, two of the latest of these to acquire Cervantes' 
 masterpiece being Rouman and Guzerati. A book 
 which has passed the ordeal of translation so bravely 
 proves itself to be, in spite of what its author himself 
 has said in discouragement of translators, one eminently 
 adapted for translation. The Spaniards continue to 
 maintain, in spite of all these proofs to the contrary, 
 that Don Quixote is untranslateable. Richard Ford, 
 who had so much in his own genius to make him a 
 competent translator of Cervantes, has declared it to be 
 " a mortal sin for any man to read Don Quixote 
 except in the original." I cannot flatter myself that I 
 shall be able to keep any one from his salvation in 
 this respect. Of course, it is true that DON QUIXOTE, 
 like every other book, loses by translation. But though 
 thrice blessed are they who have command enough 
 of the noble Castilian tongue to be able to read Don 
 Quixote in the original, it is something like a paradox 
 to say that a book which has borne so much translation 
 — which, in spite of the translators, is still popular — 
 cannot be translated. This is the one quality which 
 gives to Don Quixote its unique place among the 
 books of the world ; that, however badly it may be 
 rendered, however roughly treated, in the baldest and 
 driest version it never ceases to be readable: some- 
 thing of the delicate aroma escapes, as with the choice 
 wine of its native La Mancha, the Val-de-penas anejo, in
 
 4 Don Quixote. 
 
 the process of transfer. The grace and the spirit which 
 are in the form itself cannot be " done " into any other 
 language. The characteristic Cervantes' flavour, the ever- 
 flowing under-current of humour, the play upon words, 
 the subtle half-meanings and double-meanings, the 
 fascination which resides in the style, whose careless- 
 ness is itself a grace, — all this no translator can hope to 
 preserve. Something, however, may be achieved, — of 
 the much which has been attempted, — by the bold and 
 loyal spirit who shall be content to abide in a due 
 respect for the work, with which is indissolubly con- 
 nected a reverence for the author. He who shall follow 
 his text closely and ask for no other inspiration — who 
 shall put away the temptation to decorate the plain 
 words in his own manner — who shall not mock the 
 greatest of humorists, with any vain endeavour to bring 
 him into a line with " the humour of the times " — for 
 him the adventure may yet be reserved. 
 
 The ideal of a true translation seems to be best 
 indicated by August Schlegel, when he bids us " follow 
 step by step the letter of the sense {den Biichstaben des 
 Sinnes), and yet catch part of the innumerable inde- 
 scribable beauties which do not lie in the letter, but 
 hover about it, like ^ an intellectual spirit." The curse 
 which Voltaire has pronounced on the literal translator 
 notwithstanding, there is no book tempts to literal 
 translation like DoN OuiXOTE. The language is 
 always simple and clear ; the construction, though care- 
 less and irregular, easy and direct. The meaning, at 
 least one meaning, it is always possible to give in a
 
 Introduction. 5 
 
 foreign language. Yet there are pitfalls in the very- 
 ease with which the Spanish seems to fit into any 
 tongue with a Romance root ; as the fate of some who 
 have gone bravely Into condicioHy suceso,gracioso, discreto, 
 and come out with " condition," " success," " gracious," 
 and *' discreet," has painfully illustrated. The letter has 
 killed. The spirit only, is a delusion, a will-o'-the-wisp. 
 The true salvation is in something which is neither, but 
 the spirit of the letter ; which is the only thing the good 
 translator has to regard. In the case of DON QUIXOTE 
 the temptation to break away from the text is almost 
 irresistible. The story seems to tell itself The style 
 is so very simple that one ceases to study it with 
 the due respect. For a long time, even in Spain, 
 the original was regarded as scarcely deserving of the 
 serious attention of men of letters. Printed on the 
 vilest of paper and with the dirtiest of ink, it used to 
 be what they called "illustrated" with the most hideous 
 " sculptures," caricaturing the Knight and his squire, 
 and reducing all the romance, all the pathos, and all 
 the humour of the story to the meanest and rudest of 
 ideals. For nearly a century and a half DON Quixote 
 was only a larger sort of chap-book for the million. 
 England, it may fairly be said, was the first of all the 
 nations to recognise the writer of Don Quixote. The 
 first translation — that of Shelton — was the English. 
 The first edition of the text, in a shape worthy of the 
 author and befitting a classic, was an English one, — 
 that published under the auspices of the great English 
 Minister, Lord Carteret, in 1738. The first commentary
 
 6 Don Quixote. 
 
 in any language was that of the Rev. John Bowie, 
 printed at Salisbury in 1781, in an edition whose value 
 has scarcely yet been duly estimated. Lastly, and as 
 a final proof of her sympathy with Cervantes and 
 regard for his work, it is England who has produced 
 the greatest number of translations of Don Quixote, 
 from the author's lifetime to the present date. Spain 
 may have begotten the child, but England has been 
 his foster-mother. 
 
 Of the English translators whom I have now to speak 
 of, Thomas Shelton, the earliest, is deserving of much 
 gratitude for what he did to popularise DON QuiXOTE 
 in this country. Who Thomas Shelton was I have 
 utterly failed to learn. He remains nomi7tis jiinbra, 
 without a single word in any biographical dictionary, 
 or any mention from a contemporary. That he had 
 a competent knowledge of Spanish, perhaps more than 
 any of his successors had, is, I think, sufficiently 
 proved by his translation ; which, rude, careless, and 
 imperfect as it is, must still be reckoned as one of the 
 most spirited and the most genuine that has ever been 
 done in English. Shelton tells us in his preface that 
 he did it (meaning the First Part) " in the space of 
 forty days;" that he then threw it aside, and "never 
 once set hand to review or correct the same," his "many 
 affairs hindering him from undergoing that labour" — all 
 which is extremely probable, to which the state of his 
 text bears witness. Although a rough and slovenly 
 piece of work, of which the first edition is now a very 
 rare book, it is an honest attempt to convey the spirit of
 
 Introduction. 7 
 
 Don Quixote into the tongue which Englishmen spoke 
 in that period. Shelton was fortunate in being able to 
 use the language of Shakespeare to express the mind 
 of Cervantes, — not, indeed, that the language which he 
 uses is the best equivalent for Cervantes' Spanish. The 
 language in which the Spaniard wrote was more ad- 
 vanced and more highly developed than was English 
 in the reign of Elizabeth. Spain was then at the very- 
 zenith of her greatness, and in the flush of her golden 
 age of literature. England was still almost " in the 
 gristle," with a literature yet " mewing its mighty 
 youth." Shelton seems to have based his translation 
 of the First Part,vvhich was first published in 16 12 (in 
 Shakespeare's as well as in Cervantes' lifetime), on the 
 Brussels edition of 1607, — an edition of some interest 
 as being more carefully printed than the previous 
 Spanish ones of 1605, but entirely without authority, 
 and probably a piratical enterprise, without the author's 
 knowledge or sanction. Shelton's Second Part, which 
 is much inferior to his First, was printed in 1620, 
 Together, the two Parts constitute the very earliest 
 recognition of Cervantes' great work in any country 
 outside of Spain, and are a very remarkable evidence 
 of the influence of Spanish literature in England at 
 that early date. Shakespeare might have read Don 
 Quixote in Shelton^s English before he died; sup- 
 posing that he had not read it in Cervantes' Spanish. 
 
 The next after Shelton to turn DON Quixote into 
 English was John Phillips, the nephew of Milton, who 
 may bedismissed in a very few words. In an evil hour
 
 8 Don Quixote. 
 
 he conceived the notion of adapting DoN Quixote 
 to " the humour of the age." He fell into oblivion 
 speedily, helped thereto by a shaft out of the quiver of 
 Swift. The third to enter the lists was Motteux, in 
 17 1 2, whose version has been as much over-praised as 
 that of Shelton, from whom he stole largely, has been 
 neglected. That Motteux's version of DON Quixote 
 still continues to be printed, even attains to the dignity of 
 an " edition de luxe," with elegant and curious etchings, 
 must be accepted as a proof of the undying popular 
 interest in the book, rather than in this particular trans- 
 lation. Of all the English versions of DON Quixote, 
 Motteux's is the one most remote from the spirit and 
 genius of Cervantes. Motteux was, indeed, not wanting 
 in a spirit of a sort, but it is a spirit wholly alien from 
 that of his author. He was an indefatigable writer, 
 or rather head of a manufactory of books which were 
 turned out according to the demand, with much skill 
 and neatness, after the manner of his nation. He was 
 a naturalised Frenchman, a refugee from Rouen, who 
 must have acquired an extraordinary proficiency in 
 the English language to have moved the wonder of 
 
 Dryden, — 
 
 that a foreign guest 
 Should ever match the most and match the best. 
 
 Besides retailing tea and carrying on the business of 
 a general dealer in Leadenhall Street, Peter Anthony 
 Motteux wrote, or was at the head of a company which 
 wrote, poems and plays with great ease and in singular 
 profusion ; all of which, in spite of Dryden's praise, are
 
 Introduction. 9 
 
 now forgotten. He was a dead hand at a translation ; 
 and of all the wares he dealt in, his translations of 
 Rabelais and of Don Quixote seem to have brought 
 him the greatest profit while he lived, and lasting fame 
 since his death.^ To what extent he himself was re- 
 sponsible for the version of DON QuiXOTE which goes 
 by his name, it is now impossible to decide. The 
 original editions — and there have been many since the 
 first of 17 1 2— announced in the title-page that the 
 translation is by " various hands, published by Mr. 
 Motteux." Ozell, who helped in the translation of 
 Rabelais, is said to have been the chief hand under 
 Motteux ; but how many others there might have 
 been of the crew we have now no means of knowinsr. 
 The work bears manifest signs of a loose and unequal 
 collaboration. Of Motteux's qualifications for the task 
 of supervising a translation of DON QuixOTE there is 
 no evidence whatever. He had a great reputation for 
 his knowledge of languages ; but whether among the 
 languages he knew Spanish is to be included may 
 be strongly doubted. His innumerable blunders, his 
 'ignorance of common Spanish customs and manners, 
 
 ^ Motteux was a busy, bustling man, a sort of jack-of-all-trades, 
 who was an auctioneer, and kept a miscellaneous store at the sign 
 of the " Two Fans," near the old India House, where he retailed, 
 according to his letter in the Spectator (January 30th, 1712), Teas 
 Muslins, Arrack, Pictures, and Silks of the newest modes ; beside* 
 odes, prologues, and translations. He avers that "the foreign goods 
 I sell seem no less acceptable than the foreign books. I translated 
 Rabelais and Don Qtiixote." Motteux made a miserable end, being 
 found murdered in a brothel near Temple Bar in February, 17 18, 
 VOL. I. C
 
 10 Don Quixote. 
 
 his poverty in the way of illustration, his persistent 
 avoidance of difficulties in the text, his entire want 
 of sympathy with the author, and his general un- 
 Spanish (so to speak) tone throughout, proclaim him 
 to be only one of the numerous pretenders who, 
 on the strength of a superficial colloquial acquaint- 
 ance with the language, have flattered themselves and 
 their readers with the belief that they are competent 
 to interpret Cervantes. Motteux's style is a coarse, 
 tawdr>', ribald, graceless style ; not without a certain 
 rough humour of its own, but a humour alien to that 
 of Cervantes, and of all English styles the most unlike 
 the Spanish. The liberties which Motteux permits 
 himself to take with his original are quite without 
 excuse as they are without parallel in any translation 
 of a great classic. He seems to have imagined that 
 his sole duty was tell the story of DON QuixOTE 
 without any regard to the manner in which it had been 
 told before by Cervantes. He tramples ruthlessly on 
 all the delicate graces of the Spanish, blurring the 
 native tints, decking the author with fancies not his 
 own, loading false humour upon true, and producing 
 something which is an outrage upon art and upon 
 truth — a mock burlesque Knight Errant, a Sancho 
 conscious of his own drollery, nay, a comic DoN 
 Quixote — than which false taste and irreverence can 
 no further go.^ 
 
 ' Motteux's version has been many times reprinted, even to our 
 day, with a few trifling corrections and alterations. Lockhart made
 
 Introduction. ii 
 
 After Mottcux came Charles Jarvis, better known as 
 Jervas and a painter, the friend of Pope, who gave his 
 name to a translation of DON Quixote first brought 
 out by the booksellers in 1742, which has been more 
 often reprinted than any other. Jervas himself, a 
 gentleman from Ireland, and a very bad painter in 
 spite of his eulogist and pupil Pope, died in 1739, 
 so that he could not have revised the work to which 
 the name of " Jarvis " was carelessly attached by the 
 booksellers. Of his Don Quixote it cannot be said 
 what Pope wrote of some of the beauties whom Jervas 
 painted, that it will — 
 
 bloom in his colours for a thousand years. 
 
 According to Warburton, Jarvis's own friend Pope said 
 of him that "he translated Don Quixote without 
 knowing Spanish." ^ Certainly neither his knowledge of 
 
 it the medium of giving to the world his translation of the Spanish 
 Ballads, a translation quite as loose and as unlike the original as 
 that to which it was tacked. Lockhart, though a man of fine 
 taste and of fastidious judgment, had very little Spanish. 
 
 1 Sir John Hawkins, in his Life of Dr. Johnson^ tells a curious 
 story about Jarvis and his translation. "The fact is Jei-vas 
 laboured at it for many years, but could make but little progress, 
 for being a painter by profession, he had not been accustomed to 
 write, and had no style. Mr. Tonson, the bookseller, seeing this, 
 suggested the thought of employing Mr. Broughton, the reader at 
 the Temple Church, the author and editor of sundiy publications, 
 who, as I have been informed by a friend of Tonson, sat himself 
 down to study the Spanish language, and in a few months acquired, 
 as was pretended, sufficient knowledge thereof to give to the world
 
 12 Don Quixote. 
 
 Spanish nor his mastery of English appears in the 
 book which goes by his name. Although free from the 
 glaring errors of his predecessors, and from some of 
 their worst offences against the spirit of Cervantes, 
 Jarvis is dull, commonplace, and unhumorous. He 
 has not the " curious felicity " of Shelton in difficult pas- 
 sages, though he frequently borrows from the old trans- 
 lator. His version is generally correct and judicious, 
 but certainly not faithful, and it is not easy to discover 
 why it has become so generally accepted, unless it is 
 that Jarvis's dulness has served him for a warrant of 
 morality. Chiefly on the strength of his own profuse 
 professions of piety, Jarvis has been regarded as the 
 one interpreter of Cervantes who says nothing calculated, 
 in the words of the proprietor of Mrs. Jarley's Wax- 
 Work, to " bring a blush on the cheek of innocence."* 
 As for the version of Smollett, which was a commission 
 from the booksellers in opposition to those who pub- 
 lished Jarvis', what must be said of it is that he executed 
 his task in the full spirit of his commission. The author 
 of HinnpJirey Clinker was gifted with a genius not 
 without affinity to that of Cervantes, but unfortunately 
 he knew no Spanish. He seems to have done his book 
 
 a translation of Don Quixote in the spirit of the original, and to 
 which is prefixed the name of Jarvis." 
 
 ■■ Attached to the eariy editions of Jarvis is "A Supplement to 
 the Translator's Preface," dealing with the principles and practice 
 of " the ancient chivalry," said to be " communicated by a 
 learned writer, well-known in the literary world." This was Bishop 
 Warburton, of whose dogmatism, arrogance, and hollow, pompous 
 pedantry this essay is a very choice specimen.
 
 Introduction. 13 
 
 out of the French, clumsily, and with as small a regard 
 for the text as even Motteux. 
 
 I need go no further into the characters of the old 
 translators, my predecessors. As to the two recent 
 translations, which are more directly the competitors 
 with this for the favour of all faithful Cervantists, it 
 would be unbecoming of me to speak. That I am not 
 content with them sufficiently appears in this present 
 undertaking. 
 
 The adventure may be perilous, but the lists, at 
 least, are not closed to the aventiireros. The field 
 is still open to all; though the prize grows more and 
 more remote as the host of the mantenedores increases. 
 The principles on which I have based this new 
 translation of DON QuixOTE may be briefly stated. 
 The first duty of the translator is to make sense of 
 what is written. If a plain, intelligible meaning can be 
 given in words corresponding with those of the original, 
 then such words should be chosen. For an English 
 book they must be English words. All archaisms 
 and conceited forms of locution — all verbal surprises, 
 new coinages, and modern picture-words — all "taffeta 
 phrases, silken words precise " — all pieces of " precious- 
 ness," for which there is no parallel in the original, 
 must be piously avoided. There is no book in which 
 extravagance and affectation are more out of place than 
 in Don Quixote, the most simple and sensible of 
 books ; which has for its very aim the suppression of the 
 false romantic, the exposure of mock enthusiasm, of 
 charlatan chivalry. Of course, Cervantes himself some-
 
 ^ 
 
 14 Don Quixote. 
 
 times uses archaic and afifcctcd words ; but these are put 
 where they are proper, in the mouth of one whose brain 
 has been turned by the reading of the extravagant 
 books called " of chivalries." DON QuixOTE, when he 
 is on his stilts, uses the language which the knights, his 
 ever-present models, used in the Romances. To find 
 fault with the author for making his personages speak 
 " according to the trick," as some of Cervantes' critics, 
 Spanish and English, have done, is absurd. We might 
 as well censure Shakespeare for the rant he has put in 
 the mouth of Ancient Pistol, or Walter Scott for making 
 Edie Ochiltree talk Scotch. When Cervantes himself 
 is speaking, the language is ever plain, clear, and 
 graceful, in words, except when he intends to be jocose, 
 or deliberately to wrap up his meaning, so simple 
 that any peasant in Castile may understand him. 
 The English translator must in this follow his author, 
 so far as the resources of English will allow. Again, 
 there is the language of Sancho Panza and of the 
 peasants and clowns who figure in the story. They, of 
 course, talk in the vulgar tongue, which however is not, 
 or at least was not, so distinct in Spain as it is in this 
 country. The Spanish peasant, in the districts where 
 Spanish is spoken, talks good Castilian. Where there is 
 no patois, or relic of another language, as in Galicia and 
 in Catalonia, and except where the speakers delibe- 
 rately use slang or the dialect of Germania} the speech 
 
 ^ Germania is the classic slang of Spain, more prevalent in 
 Cer\'antes' time in Andalusia than in any other province. It is
 
 Introduction. 
 
 15 
 
 of the lower classes in Spain is not very dififercnt from 
 the speech of the higher. Moreover, there is a nearer 
 approach to social equality, an inheritance probably 
 from the Arabs, between master and man than was ever 
 the case in England. Therefore the attempts which 
 some of our translators have made to degrade Sancho 
 by putting his speeches into vulgar, provincial English, 
 are as absurd as they are untrue to the original. 
 Sancho talks, as well as behaves, in his governorship, 
 as no man would talk or behave who had been brought 
 up an English labourer ; nor is there any inconsistency 
 in this, such as the translator need trouble himself to 
 modify or correct. The best results, I believe, are to be 
 obtained, as I have endeavoured to obtain them, by 
 following the text as closely as possible, departing only 
 from it when a literal adhesion would lead to obscurity 
 or absurdity. There are some idioms and peculiar 
 terms of phrase, of course, which cannot be rendered 
 plainly into any corresponding English. The only 
 proper way with these is to render them by parallel 
 English idioms, when such can be found ; if not, then 
 by the nearest English equivalents or analogues. 
 
 To sum up the duties of a translator: he should above 
 
 defined by Don Sebastian Covarrubias, in his valuable Tesoro de 
 la Lengua Castellana (published shortly after the date of Don 
 Quixote), as el lefigtiaje de la rujianesca — "the language of the 
 ruffianry"— the idiom of the Lazarillos and the Cortadillos, in 
 which Cervantes, as his books show, was a proficient. Germania 
 has its dictionaiy and its grammar, and must not be confounded 
 with Romany, which is a jargon based on Hindustani.
 
 1 6 Don Quixote. 
 
 all seek to bring the work translated into a shape as 
 nearly resembling the original as possible, not in the 
 general outline only, but in the form and colour of 
 every detail and accessory. Always remembering that 
 he has to make an English book out of a foreign one, 
 to be read by English men and women, the translator 
 should endeavour to make the author speak instead 
 of speaking for him. To do the showman to such a 
 man as Cervantes is a presumption intolerable — all the 
 more unpardonable seeing the exquisite art with which 
 Cervantes avoids being the showman to Don Quixote. 
 The translator should efface himself, for it is not he 
 whom the public have come to see, but the author. To 
 intrude one's own Nineteenth-Century personality into 
 such a book as Don Quixote, is an offence as gross 
 against good manners as against art. A worse crime 
 than this, however, is to deck the author as well as his 
 book in your own colours — to put on him your livery — 
 to make him speak after a set manner — to torture and 
 twist his character, as well as his work, into conformity 
 with some fantastic ideal in the translator's brain. A 
 Frenchman who translated P/a?it7is in 17 19, one Gueude- 
 ville, tells us in his preface, by way of recommending 
 his work, that he had spared no pains, "/>02(r mettre ce 
 vieux comiqiie a la i?tode" To make out a certain vieiix 
 comique, known as MiGUEL DE CERVANTES, to be the 
 image of a certain viciix coviiqiie, only grander, who 
 lives in our own time — to discover a similitude in the 
 work of the Spaniard to the work of an English poli- 
 tician — to make DON Quixote a sort of political mani-
 
 Introduction. 17 
 
 festo and missionary prospectus, that is a fantasy- 
 wilder than any which Cervantes took up his pen to 
 dispel, a romance more extravagant than any which 
 helped to turn Don Quixote crazy. 
 
 I have endeavoured to keep free from this sin at 
 least, letting Cervantes declare himself in his own way 
 and in his own words.. The text I have followed in my 
 translation is that which must be regarded as the best 
 available up to the present time — certainly the most 
 authoritative — namely, the fourth and last edition of 
 the Don Quixote published in Madrid in 18 19, under 
 the direction of the Royal Spanish Academy. The 
 basis of this edition is that of 1608, the third printed by 
 Juan de la Cuesta, and the only one which the author 
 ever took the trouble to revise, though he revised it 
 but partially. Of this edition of 1608 the Academy 
 says in the preface to its own that it has selected it as 
 the basis of its text, " regarding it as the last choice of 
 the author and preferable to the first (of 1605), which 
 was neither made under his eyes nor received the last 
 touch of his hand." There is, indeed, no positive 
 evidence that Cervantes ever corrected his book after 
 the manuscript left his hands ; but what sort of 
 evidence could we have .'' The universal tradition 
 and belief among Spanish scholars, confirmed by all 
 internal evidence and probability, have been that 
 Cervantes, though he did not correct any of the editions 
 printed in 1605, did correct and alter that of 1608. In 
 1605 he was living at Valladolid, and there was some 
 excuse for his neglecting to revise his book printed at 
 VOL. I. D
 
 i8 Don Quixote. 
 
 Madrid, In 1608 he had changed his residence to 
 Madrid ; and it is a most extravagant theory that 
 even then, with the book printed under his eyes which 
 had been so successful and brought him so much fame, 
 if not profit, the author should have deliberately allowed 
 his Don Quixote to be published anew without cor- 
 rection. This theory, however, monstrous as it is, has 
 been adopted by Seiior Hartzenbusch in his editions of 
 Don Quixote published at Argamasilla, and is de- 
 fended and acted upon by the latest of English trans- 
 lators, Mr. John Ormsby. I have discussed the question 
 elsewhere in the various passages where it arises, and 
 so I need not open the controversy here. Suffice it to 
 say, that if we reject that which has been the belief of 
 all Spanish scholars up to the time of Sehor Hartzen- 
 busch, we must believe, not only that Cervantes valued 
 his work so little as not to care to revise it when he 
 had the chance of doing so, but that he allow^ed some 
 material alterations and additions to be made in the 
 text by some one who, — seeing that on this theory he is 
 the author of one of the most delightful and character- 
 istic passages in the book, namely, the lamentation of 
 Sancho Panza over the loss of his Dapple, — must have 
 been of a genius akin to the author's own. The notion 
 that " the printer, apparently propria motu, supplied this 
 passage," seems to me to be as extravagant as that other 
 theory of the matter, that Cervantes purposely mutilated 
 and defaced his story in order to make it resemble the 
 romances of chivalry. How, then, if these additions were 
 not made by Cervantes himself, does it happen that he
 
 Introduction. 19 
 
 makes no mention of the independent and unauthorised 
 correctorwhen this verymatter of the robbery of Sancho's 
 ass is discussed ? The sensitiveness which Cervantes 
 shows in the Second Part in regard to Avellaneda's base 
 attempt to intrude upon his field and spoil his work, 
 is entirely incompatible with the temper of one who 
 was so absolutely indifferent to the fate of his book, 
 even after it had achieved an enormous and unpre- 
 cedented popularity, as not to care who altered it or 
 added to it in a material passage. 
 
 To leave this question for the present, it is enough to 
 say that the text, as given by the Spanish Academy, 
 must be regarded as the most authoritative in Cervantes' 
 native country, and therefore the one which an English 
 translator is bound to follow. The edition of 18 19 does 
 certainly not pretend to give a perfect text, and it must 
 be admitted that it leans over-much to the conservative 
 side in the matter of emendation. Still, this is a good 
 fault, and I hope I shall be accused of none worse. 
 In a few places I have preferred to take the reading 
 of Clemencin's edition, and in some have accepted 
 even the emendations of Hartzenbusch, reckless and 
 licentious as for the most part they are. With every 
 effort to follow what appears to be the best text of 
 Don Quixote, I must acknowledge that sometimes I 
 have failed to make sense of the words as they stand, 
 and I need have the less hesitation in making this 
 admission, seeing how often the good Clemencin himself, 
 the acutest of the critics of Don Quixote, confesses 
 himself puzzled to make out the author's meaning.
 
 20 Don Quixote. 
 
 I come now to the second of the features which I 
 claim to be distinctive of this edition of DON QuixOTE, 
 namely, the commentary. To read a book without 
 notes to distract one's attention is a great delight and 
 a greater privilege. A commentary is unflattering both 
 to the book and to the reader, as it presumes the one 
 to be obscure and the other to be dull of comprehension. 
 But time, though it has dealt more gently with DON 
 Quixote than with any other work of the same age, 
 has made some annotation necessary. The astonishing 
 thing, considering the purpose for which DON Quixote 
 was written, and its intense spirit of nationalism, being, 
 as it is, the quintessence of Espanolismo, is that it has 
 survived to be so well understood, or, at least, so well 
 liked, in all languages. " It is so clear," said the author 
 himself, "that there is nothing to raise a difficulty in 
 it."^ However true this might have been in Cervantes' 
 time, it is not so now, even in Spain. From being a 
 satire on the popular taste, a parody on the pre- 
 vailing fashion in reading, a flying shot at a folly long 
 since dead, DON QuixOTE has come to be a classic, 
 more than fulfilling all the conditions which St. Beuve 
 has laid down as necessary to classics. Although what 
 makes it popular is the story, — which we can go on 
 reading with delight in any version however bald; and 
 in any text however bare, — it is not for the story alone 
 that Don Quixote should be read. Even if we could 
 pass by without inquiry the innumerable passages 
 
 * Es tan clara que no hay cosa que dijicultar en ella.
 
 Introduction. 21 
 
 where it is evident that the author purposes to imitate 
 some action, or burlesque some speech of a character 
 in one of the romances which it is his declared object 
 to destroy, it would be necessary to explain the refer- 
 ences to historical events and persons ; the allusions to 
 contemporary books and their authors ; the customs, 
 manners, and mode of life of the people amidst whom 
 the action of the story takes place ; the geography, 
 natural history, and character of the country which is 
 the scene of the adventures ; lastly, the idioms, the 
 proverbs, the local sayings, and the ballads which are 
 so abundant throughout the book. And if the Spaniards 
 themselves, as the elaborate commentaries of Pellicer, 
 Clemencin, and Hartzenbusch bear witness, cannot 
 read DoN QuixOTE without the help of notes, how 
 much less can the English reader afford to do without 
 them .'' Granted that some notes are necessary, there 
 is no stopping short of a full commentary. Such I have 
 endeavoured to supply, to the best of my ability, partly 
 from original research and personal travel, partly and 
 perhaps more largely, as must be the case with an 
 Englishman annotating a foreign classic, out of the 
 works of the Spanish critics and commentators. 
 
 The chief of those from whom I have taken such 
 notes as are not original are the Reverend John Bowie, 
 the first of all the commentators on Don OUIXOTE, 
 native or foreign ; Don Juan Antonio Pellicer, the editor 
 of the very creditable edition which followed Bowie's in 
 1798; Don Diego Clemencin, whose commentary is 
 the amplest and the most complete of all ; and Don
 
 22 Don Quixote. 
 
 Eugenic Hartzenbusch, who has published two editions 
 of Don Quixote in 1863 and 1865, besides contri- 
 buting a supplementary volume of notes, chiefly new 
 readings of his own, to Lopez de Fabra's fac-simile 
 reproduction of the first edition of the Two Parts. 
 There have been of late various other detached volumes 
 and papers of criticism and commentary on Cervantes 
 and his works, by Guerra y Orbe, Barrera, Valera, 
 Asensio, Aribau, Mainez, and numerous other of the 
 smaller fry of Cervantistas, to whom I have been more 
 or less indebted. Unhappily, there is not much of 
 material value to glean from these gentlemen. Their 
 enthusiasm, in this age of strong reaction in favour of 
 Cervantes and DON Quixote, takes the form chiefly 
 of turgid verse, in ecstatic eulogy of El Principe 
 DE LOS INGENIOS ESPANOLES, of patriotic exaltation 
 of the virtues of El Manco DE Lepanto, with a 
 complacent enumeration of all that foreigners have 
 done in honour of the great Spaniard, or elaborate cal- 
 culation of the number of times DON QUIXOTE responds 
 or Sancho speaks in the course of the narrative. 
 
 Chief among the commentators, and worthy of all 
 honour for what he has done for DoN Quixote, is the 
 Englishman Bowie, whose edition, with an elaborate 
 commentary in six volumes, though it fell almost dead 
 from the press, has now, after a hundred years of neg- 
 lect, met with its just recognition even in Spain. Bowie 
 was an English clergyman, a canon of Salisbury, who, 
 as he tells us, spent fourteen years in learning and in 
 reading Spanish in order to bring out a Spanish edition
 
 Introduction. 23 
 
 of Don Quixote, with annotations. Bowie was never 
 in Spain, and his Spanish is sometimes an occasion of 
 stumbling and of sarcasm to his rivals. But his 
 honesty, industry, and patience are worthy of all com- 
 mendation. He is specially strong in his classical refer- 
 ences and his quotations from the Italian poets and the 
 Spanish romances of chivalry, some of which, perhaps, 
 no one but himself has ever read since Don Quixote 
 appeared. For a reason which needs too long a story 
 to explain, the Italian Baretti, the well-known friend of 
 Dr. Johnson, pursued Bowie and his literary adventure 
 with great malignity, writing an ill-natured book styled 
 Tolondron} of which the object was to ridicule the 
 idea of any one who had never been in Spain com- 
 menting in Spanish upon Don QuiXOTE. Next to 
 Bowie as a commentator stands Pellicer, who did a 
 good deal to explain old customs in his notes and to 
 clear up obscure allusions in the text. After him came 
 Clemencin, whose commentary, though not deserving 
 of all the praise given to it by Ticknor, must be re- 
 garded as the most notable literary monument which 
 
 ^ Tolondron means " a giddy-pate," " a hare-brained fellow." 
 The book was published in London in 1786, and is an angry, 
 spluttering, performance, full of venom and bad language. The 
 respectable Bowie is called many foul names, such as " Ourang- 
 Outang," " Monsieur Cerberus," " Dr. Coglione " ; and is generally 
 addressed as " Jack." There is a tradition that Baretti, who was 
 a most malignant creature, believed that Bowie had written a 
 paragraph to his discredit, in the matter of his trial for murder, in 
 the Monthly Review. Poor Bowie's end is said to have been 
 hastened by the ill-success of his book.
 
 24 Don Quixote. 
 
 has ever been raised to the memory of Cervantes. I 
 know of no modern book which has been the subject 
 of so minute, searching, and profuse a scheme of criti- 
 cism and illustration as that which appears in Don 
 Diego Clemencin's six volumes of Don Quixote, pub- 
 lished in 1833-9. There is scarcely a point or turn 
 in the story where we do not find Clemencin lying in 
 wait for us with a little note (often a very long one), 
 a reference, a correction, a judgment, or a remark on 
 the style, the matter, or the man. Of his learning, 
 his industry, and, on the whole, his love and respect 
 for the author there cannot be any doubt.^ Of judg- 
 ment, or good taste, or modesty, or sense of proportion 
 he had very little. He has but an imperfect sym- 
 pathy with the genius of Cervantes. He has very 
 little humour of his own, and will not allow any- 
 thing to be good which he does not understand. He 
 frequently mistakes his author's meaning, confounding 
 irony with earnest, and his inability to comprehend 
 the difference between Cervantes and Don Quixote 
 amounts to a kind of intellectual colour-blindness. His 
 remarks are very often purely trivial and impertinent. 
 He is hypercritical, exacting, and cantankerous. He 
 stands over Cervantes like a schoolmaster over a dull 
 
 ^ There is a tradition, how well founded I do not know, though 
 Hartzenbusch seems to hint that it is true, that Clemencin had 
 got hold of certain manuscripts of one Don Ramon Cabrera 
 (not to be confounded with the Carlist leader), the author of an 
 EtjTiiological Dictionary, and used them as his own in the com- 
 position of his commentary.
 
 Introduction. 25 
 
 pupil, with ferrule in hand, and sublimely unconscious 
 of the profane liberties he is taking with a great genius : 
 pruning, cutting up, and laying on as if he had to do 
 with a school-boy's exercise instead of the finest book 
 in the world. For his numerous offences against good 
 taste, his dulness, and his insensibility to the subtler 
 beauties of the book, Clemencin has been the favourite 
 butt of succeeding critics.^ With all his faults, how- 
 ever, and I shall have frequent occasion to differ from 
 him, we cannot do without Clemencin, He has cer- 
 tainly done more for the elucidation of DON Quixote 
 than any one else. On all points connected with 
 the national manners and customs — on questions of 
 grammar and orthography — on the traditions, the his- 
 tory, and the literature of Spain he is generally a 
 safe guide — to the foreign translator, at least, indis- 
 pensable.2 To him, as well as to Bowie, I must here 
 
 ^ His chief enemy, and the most redoubtable champion on the 
 Cervantist side, is Juan Calderon, the author of an admirable little 
 book, entitled Cervantes Vindicado (Madrid, 1854). Calderon, of 
 whom I can learn nothing but that he was a refugee in England 
 and hc.d turned Protestant, is one of the best of all the later critics 
 of Don Quixote^ who " gives it back " to Clemencin in a rare good 
 style. 
 
 ^ Towards the end of his sixth volume Clemencin seems to be 
 visited with some glimmering sense of remorse for having been 
 too hard on Cervantes, and tries to make up for his past freedoms 
 with Don Quixote by some uncouth gambollings of delight over 
 that good though ungrammatical work. In this he shares the 
 common lot of those who have had to do with Cervantes, whose 
 critics, commentators, and translators cannot help loving the man 
 even when they ill-treat his book. 
 VOL. I. E
 
 26 Don Quixote. 
 
 express, once for all, my deep sense of obligation for 
 assistance which it would be tedious in each particular 
 instance to acknowledge — to the former for the greater 
 numberof my references to Spanish books and customs, 
 and to the latter for his labours in the quotation o 
 parallel passages from the Italian poets and the romances 
 of chivalry. 
 
 Of Don Eugenio Hartzenbusch, himself a conspicuous 
 man of letters, a poet and a dramatist, who has enriched 
 the language of Spain with many compositions of real 
 merit and permanent value, I confess I cannot speak 
 with much respect as a commentator on Cervantes. His 
 services in the cause of Cervantic literature in the co- 
 editing of the magnificent edition of Cervantes' works 
 printed at Argamasilla in 1865, have been to a great 
 extent neutralised by the rashness with which he 
 engages in the perilous work of conjectural em.en- 
 dation. What Cervantes left as the text of his DON 
 Quixote was not held by Senor Hartzenbusch good 
 enough. He takes it in hand, therefore, to re-fashion 
 it ; not only altering words and phrases which he cannot 
 understand, or which he imagines the author did not 
 write, but dislocating the narrative, cutting episodes 
 out of one chapter and putting them into another, 
 introducing ideas and expressions into the text without 
 any warrant w^hatever except his own belief that he 
 (Hartzenbusch) knew better what Cervantes should, or 
 might, or would have written, than Cervantes has chosen 
 to write. For this reason, and in spite of the ingenuity 
 and acumen which are manifest in some of his emen-
 
 Introduction. 27 
 
 dations, I have had very little to do with Seiior 
 Hartzenbusch. 
 
 Of the numerous other critics and commentators, in 
 Spain and elsewhere, who have made Don Quixote 
 the subject of study, it is unnecessary to speak in detail. 
 It is enough to say that I have made use of all the 
 material, wherever I could find it, that I have thought 
 useful for my purpose, which is to give as full and 
 complete a commentary on DON Quixote as an 
 English translation ought to have to be properly 
 understood by English readers, — having regard to no 
 considerations of personal fame, but looking only to 
 the honour and glory of my author. 
 
 The third feature of my enterprise, which is no less 
 important than the others in any new edition of Don 
 Quixote, is a Life of Cervantes, brought down to the 
 latest state of knowledge, and illustrated with all the 
 lights which modern research has furnished. Of no 
 other book and its author can it be said that they 
 are related, as Cervantes and his DON QUIXOTE are 
 related. As the book is the true witness to the man, 
 so the life of the man is the best light to guide us to 
 a true knowledge of the book. Of many other master- 
 pieces of human wit, it can be said that they would 
 be equally interesting and equally good whether we 
 knew their authors or not. The impersonality of 
 Shakespeare, so far as the present age is concerned, 
 does not make us relish Falstaff, or Touchstone, 
 or Autolycus any the less. His types of humour are 
 perfect in themselves, and it is only curiosity which
 
 28 Don Quixote. 
 
 tempts us into lifting the veil which shrouds their 
 creator. Cervantes, however, cannot be separated from 
 Don Quixote. It is not that he has not fashioned his 
 creatures so that they are able to stand alone ; but 
 that, underlying the wit, the wisdom, and the humour, 
 ever present in the story and vivifying Sancho as much 
 as his master, is the spirit of Miguel de Cervantes. 
 The fable cannot be understood without the fabulist. 
 The clue to the mystery of Don Quixote is to be found 
 in the life of the author, and there only. That " very 
 perfect gentle Knight," that reviver of the ancient 
 chivalry, that would-be redressor of wrongs, that sweet 
 and noble nature which, in spite of all buffetings and 
 reverses, we never cease to love and admire, — who is he 
 but the hero of Lepanto himself, whose life is a 
 romance of chivalry, at least as various, eventful, and 
 arduous, — as full of glory, hardship, and sadness ; — 
 as prolific of surprising adventures, as the immortal 
 story he has written ? Many volumes have been 
 written, and a vast amount of ingenuity wasted, in 
 the attempt to discover the secret of Don Quixote 
 — its object and purpose ; to find the moi de Fenigme — 
 the key to the mystery. Why need we go further than 
 the life of Cervantes in the search for a motive to Don 
 Quixote } 
 
 That life I will now proceed to tell as it is to be 
 learnt from all the existing authorities. The materials 
 for a full and perfect biography are, fortunately, more 
 abundant than in the case of Cervantes' great English 
 contemporary. There have been many biographies of
 
 Introduction. 29 
 
 Cervantes, from the first by Mayans y Siscar, prefixed to 
 Lord Carteret's edition of 1738, to that of Don Ramon 
 Mainez, published at Cadiz in 1876. None of them can 
 be said to be wholly satisfactory. The best of them is 
 the standard one by Don Martin Navarrete, which was 
 published in 18 19 as a supplement to the Academy's 
 fourth edition of DON Quixote. This, though a 
 judicious and well-proportioned piece of work, is now 
 out of date. Many things have since been discovered 
 about Cervantes, some of great importance, such as his 
 rhymed letter from Algiers to Mateo Vasquez, Philip 
 the Second's secretary, and the remarkable correspond- 
 ence of Lope de Vega, unearthed by Schack from the 
 library of the Duke de Sesa, which throws so much 
 new light on the relations between Lope and his rival. 
 The curious mystery of Avellaneda and his false 
 Second Part of DON Quixote, which was the last 
 of the several strange tricks played off by fortune 
 against this hapless child of genius — a mystery which 
 Cervantes' early biographers seem almost afraid to 
 touch — has recently been more closely investigated, 
 with results such as I purpose to give in their right 
 place. Hitherto there has been no English biography 
 of Cervantes which has dealt fully with the romantic 
 passages of his career as bearing upon the chief product 
 of his genius. It is in this sense, and as an essential 
 part of the commentary on Don Quixote, that I 
 propose to write the life of Miguel de Cervantes.
 
 LIFE OF CERVANTES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Birth and Parentage — Youth and Education — Early 
 Essays in Literature — Service with Cardinal 
 Acquaviva — Journey to Rome. 
 
 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES^ was born at Alcald 
 de Henares, a small town of New Castile, in 
 1 547. The exact day of his birth is not recorded, but 
 he was baptised, according to the register still extant, 
 
 ' The name is generally supposed to be drawn from the ruined 
 tower which stands near the end of the bridge opposite Toledo, 
 famihar to all visitors to the old Gothic capital, called Castillo de 
 San Cervantes. Ford denies this origin, and I think he is right. 
 The name of the tower is known to be a corruption of San Servan, 
 or Servando, a martyr of the early Spanish church. That San 
 Servan became corrupted into San Cervantes is certain ; but that 
 Servan or Servando gave the name of Cervantes to the family 
 is not probable. According to the pedigree given by Mendez de 
 Silva (hereafter to be spoken of), the first who took the name of 
 Cervantes was Gonzalo, in the early years of the Thirteenth 
 century, to distinguish himself from his elder brother, Pedro 
 Alfonso, who was called Cervatos. That both these names sprung 
 from the same root is probable, seeing that the arms of the two 
 brothers were nearly alike ; their chief blazon being, of the one.
 
 32 Don Quixote. 
 
 in the parish church of Santa Maria the Greater, on the 
 9th of October. From this fact, which was brought to 
 light for the first time by Don Vicente de Los Rios, in 
 the Life of Cervantes appended to the first edition of 
 the Spanish Royal Academy, it has been assumed that 
 the author of Don Quixote was born on the 29th of 
 September preceding. It was the custom of Castile for 
 the infant to be christened by the name of the saint on 
 whose day he was born, and hence, without any direct 
 evidence, it has been settled that Michaelmas, 1547, 
 
 two stags (ciervos) or; and of the other, two hinds or^ in a field 
 azure. The arms doubtless had a punning allusion to the name. But 
 Cervatos, which seems to be the older surname, is even less likely 
 than Cervantes to have come from Servando. Cervatos is said, 
 however, to have been the name of the place whence the pro- 
 genitor of the family first took his appellation, probably so called 
 as being a place of stags. There is, at the present day, an estate 
 in La Mancha called La Cervanta, in which is a deer-park. The 
 family, in 1089, is said to have founded a Benedictine monastery 
 on the site of what was supposed to be a castle of the Goths, on 
 the ruins of which stands the present tower of " San Cervantes," 
 of unknown antiquity. The question is wrapt in much confusion, 
 nor is it worth while to attempt to solve it. Miguel de Cervantes 
 himself generally wrote his name Cerbantes; and in one case at 
 least, in the direction of the rhymed letter to Mateo Vasquez, 
 Ceruante. It is, perhaps, needless to remark that the Spanish 
 b and v are interchangeable, both being pronounced more softly 
 than the same letters in English ; and that the gentlemen of that 
 period were not particular as to their spelling. The second name, 
 Saavedra, seems to have been assumed by Cervantes after his 
 return from captivity, being taken, according to a common custom, 
 from the name of a distinguished ancestor, Juan Arias de Saavedra, 
 the father of Maria Avellaneda, who was the mother of Juan 
 Cervantes, the grandfather of our hero.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 33 
 
 was the date of the birth of Miguel de Cervantes. His 
 parents were Rodrigo de Cervantes, a native of Alcala, 
 and Leonor de Cortinas, a native of the neighbouring 
 village of Barajas. Both the father and mother, who 
 were married in 1540, though of straitened circum- 
 stance, were of good family, entitled to be classed among 
 hidalgos. The father of Rodrigo was Juan de Cervantes, 
 who seems to have been of higher station than his pro- 
 geny, since he filled the office of Corregidor (corre- 
 sponding to that of Mayor or Stipendiary Magistrate) 
 of the city of Osuna, and is mentioned as a friend and 
 associate of the Conde de Urena, the father of the illus- 
 trious Don Pedro Giron, first Duke of Osuna, who was 
 the first Viceroy of Sicily, and afterwards of Naples, 
 under Philip II. The family is supposed to have sprung 
 originally from Galicia. Rodrigo Mendez de Silva, the 
 genealogist who wrote in 1648 of the ancestry and 
 deeds of the famous Nuno Alfonso, Alcaide of Toledo 
 (a.d. 1090), traces the line of Cervantes up to the early 
 Gothic Kings of Leon •} thus making the author of 
 Don Quixote to be of the same blood with his king, 
 and with his chief, the victor of Lepanto.^ One of the 
 five sons of Nuno Alfonso was Alfonso Nuno, who took 
 
 ^ See the Cervantes genealogical tree, taken from Mendez de 
 Silva, in the Appendix A., Vol. I. 
 
 2 Don Juan of Austria, the natural son of Charles V., can, in 
 fact, be made out to be a cousin of Miguel de Cervantes who 
 fought under him at Lepanto. Charles V, was the grandson of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, Ferdinand being seventeenth in descent 
 from Ximena Munez, who was sister to the first bearer of the name 
 of Cervantes. 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 34 Don Quixote. 
 
 the surname of Cervatos, from the castle and lordship 
 of that name, which he inherited from his father. His 
 son was Gonzalo de Cervantes, who was the first who 
 took that name, to distinguish him from his elder 
 brother. Both brothers figured largely in the wars 
 against the Moors — the elder being present at the battle 
 of Las Navas de Tolosa in 12 12 — the great victory which 
 was the first decisive blow struck at Mahomedan ascen- 
 dancy in the Peninsula. Gonzalo de Cervantes accom- 
 panied the king, St. Ferdinand, in the campaign which 
 ended in the conquest of Seville, and was rewarded for 
 his services by a share of the lands re-conquered from 
 the Moors. From him, if we are to believe the genea- 
 logists and chroniclers, there came in a direct line Juan 
 de Cervantes, who, in the reign (a.d. 1407-54) of King 
 Juan II., was a veinticjiatro, or alderman, of Seville. 
 Thence the descent to Miguel de Cervantes, our hero, 
 seems clear and uninterrupted.^ 
 
 The enthusiasm of his countrymen, in rude atone- 
 ment for the past, may perhaps have glorified over- 
 
 * Full details of the genealogy of Cervantes are to be found in 
 the pages of Navarrete (232-246), derived from Juan de Mena, 
 who wrote the Chronicle of Juan II., and Rodrigo Mendez de 
 Silva, the author of many genealogical treatises, who flourished 
 some two generations after Cervantes. The work of Juan de 
 Mena is in manuscript in the Royal Library at Madrid. The 
 family had numerous branches, spreading all over Spain and the 
 New World, which have produced Cardinals, Generals, Presidents of 
 Republics, and other high personages in Castile, Andalucia, and 
 Catalonia, as well as in Mexico and Central and South America, 
 down to our own times.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 35 
 
 much the family of Cervantes. These genealogical 
 exercises, so much to the taste of the Spanish writers, 
 may be taken as expiatory offerings at the shrine of 
 the genius who, in his lifetime, not the kinship with 
 royalty nor even the writing of Don Quixote could 
 save from poverty and ill-treatment. Cervantes him- 
 self cared little for these things ; and when taunted by 
 his enemy, Avellaneda, with being " as old as the castle 
 of San Cervantes," which was probably intended as a 
 sarcasm on his high birth as well as his infirmities, cared 
 only to reply that " poverty might cloud but could not 
 wholly obscure nobility." What is certain, and the only 
 thing material, is that the family of Cervantes, at his 
 birth, were of the condition of poor untitled gentlefolk. 
 Of the father, Rodrigo de Cervantes, nothing whatever 
 is recorded in history. The mother, Leonor de Cortinas "1 
 (who, according to Pellicer, was a cousin of Lope de 
 Vega's first wife's mother), survived her husband many 
 years. They had four children, two sons and two 
 daughters, of whom Miguel was the youngest. Rodrigo, 
 the elder brother;, was a soldier, who will figure in several 
 passages of this history. He distinguished himself 
 greatly in the expedition of the Marques de Santa 
 Cruz against the Azores, and in the campaigns in 
 Flanders, and appears to have died, at a date uncertain, 
 before Miguel. 
 
 Alcala de Henares (in Arabic "the castle of the 
 river, according to Ford), so called to distinguish it 
 from several other Alcalas, is a dull, decayed town, 
 about twenty miles east of Madrid. The Henares, a
 
 86 Don Quixote. 
 
 stream of which Cervantes seems to have entertained 
 pleasant recollections, is a feeder of a more consider- 
 able river — the Jarama — which flows into the Tagus. 
 The walls and towers, colleges and chapels, which give 
 Alcald so imposing an appearance from a distance, 
 bear witness to its former importance, as the seat of a 
 University only second to that of Salamanca in great- 
 ness and in celebrity. The old city was called Co7n- 
 plutum (quasi conjiuviiimy Ford suggests), whence 
 Cervantes' la gran Complnto, in the only mention he 
 makes of his birthplace in DON QuixOTE. The Uni- 
 versity, founded by Cardinal Ximenes, the famous 
 Minister of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1510, once con- 
 tained nineteen colleges and twice as many chapels, 
 and was so amply endowed that Erasmus dubbed it 
 Pajiploiiton} Cardinal Ximenes, who retired hither 
 when he had lost the favour of " the Catholic Kings," 
 devoted all his great wealth, the plunder of Moordom, 
 to its adornment and enrichment. Hither came in the 
 early half of the Sixteenth century most of the golden 
 youth of Spain to be educated ; here was printed, at 
 the Cardinal's instigation and expense, the famous 
 Complutensian Polyglott ; here Francis the First, when 
 
 ^ Also the " cumplimiento " of all learning. There is said to 
 have been 11,000 students here in the reign of Charles V.; the 
 French King Francis remarking, when a visitor here in 1525, that 
 " one Spanish monk had done what it would have taken a line of 
 kings in France to accomplish." See Ford, and the authorities 
 he quotes in the first edition of his Handbook^ of 1845, — which is by 
 far the best edition, being unmutilated, and the only one I shall 
 quote in the course of this work.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 37 
 
 Charles V.'s prisoner, was royally entertained ; here 
 Ximenes himself is buried in the Collegio Mayor, under 
 a gorgeous monument with an arrogant epitaph. The 
 once famous University has been removed to Madrid, 
 and Alcala is now, as Ford describes it, a shadow of the 
 past, the echoes of whose deserted streets are scarce ever 
 awakened but by the tread of pilgrims, chiefly English 
 and American, to the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes. 
 The house where he was born is now distinguished by 
 a wall-plate, with a flaming inscription. It is, what 
 remains of it, of decent size and appearance, denoting 
 that its once owners were of the rank of respectable 
 hidalgos. 
 
 A signal proof of the carelessness and indifference 
 with which Spaniards regarded their greatest country- 
 man, is afforded by the fact that it was more than a 
 century and a half after his death before they began 
 to investigate a detail so considerable as the place of his 
 birth. Although Fr. Diego de Haedo, in his Topografia 
 de A rgel (written before DON Quixote appeared, though 
 not published till 161 2), had given a long account of 
 Cervantes as "un hidalgo principal" of Alcala de Henares ; 
 and although Pv'Iendez de Silva, a leading genealogist 
 of the Seventeenth century, in one of his works^ has 
 repeated this statement, confirming it by particulars of 
 
 ' Of Hsedo and his book I will speak more in a chapter to 
 follow. The title of Mendez de Silva's book, one of the scarcest 
 of the series (not mentioned by Salvi), is Ascendencia illustre, 
 gloriosos hechos, y posteridad noble del famoso Nuno Alfonso,, 
 Alcaide de la imperial Ciudad de Toledo. Madrid, 1648.
 
 38 Don Quixote. 
 
 Cervantes' lineage, no one in Spain seems to have taken 
 any notice of these informations for a hundred and fifty 
 years after Cervantes' death. The mystery in which 
 Cervantes had deliberately wrapped the birthplace of his 
 hero — ciiyo fioinbre 710 quiso acordarse — to the end that 
 " all the towns and villages of La Mancha might con- 
 tend among themselves for the honour of giving him 
 birth and adopting him for their own, as the Seven Cities 
 of Greece contended for Homer," by a singular freak of 
 destiny involved his own place of birth. The prediction 
 was fulfilled to the letter, for DON QuiXOTE as well as 
 for his author. The contention among the towns of 
 La Mancha for the honour of being DON Quixote's 
 birthplace was no fiercer than the dispute which has 
 raged among the towns of Spain for the glory of pro- 
 ducing the most illustrious of her children. Seven 
 cities have actually contended for the honour of being 
 the cradle of Miguel de Cervantes, — Madrid, Seville, 
 Toledo, Lucena, Esquivias, Alcazar de San Juan, and 
 Consuegra. Don Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Cervantes' 
 first biographer, in the Life prefixed to the London 
 edition of 1738, maintains that Cervantes was born at 
 Madrid, which was also, apparently. Lope de Vega's 
 opinion. Don Nicolas Antonio, in his scanty article 
 on Cervantes in his BibliotJieca Hispanica, makes him a 
 native of Seville. The claims of Alcazar de San Juan are 
 hotly advanced to this day,^ on the strength of a certain 
 
 1 I have had myself to argue with more than one citizen of 
 this ancient town, against the local claim, — among others with a
 
 Life of Cervantes. 39 
 
 entry in the parish register recording the baptism of a 
 certain " Miguel," son of Bias Cervantes Saavedra and 
 Catalina Lopez, on the 9th of November, 1558. Oppo- 
 site to the entry, in a comparatively modern hand, is 
 writen, Este fue el autor de la historia de Don Quixote 
 (this was the author of the history of DoN Quixote), 
 That such the said Miguel could not be is clearly 
 proved by the date of his birth, a date which would 
 make him taking a conspicuous part in the battle of 
 Lepanto before the age of thirteen. That there was 
 another Miguel de Cervantes, who, strangely enough, 
 had for a second surname Saavedra, is certain, and I 
 cannot help thinking that some of the incidents of his 
 life (he seems to have been somewhat of a scapegrace) 
 have got mixed up with the history of the true Miguel 
 de Cervantes. He might have been some cousin, for 
 the name is by no means uncommon in Spain, then as 
 now ; and the author of DON QUIXOTE is known to 
 have had an uncle and other relatives in La Mancha. 
 The credit of having settled this controversy is shared 
 between the learned Benedictine Fr. Martin Sarmiento 
 and Don Juan de Iriarte, the King's Librarian at 
 Madrid, temp. Charles IIL Iriarte discovered among 
 the manuscripts of the Royal Library a document, 
 dated 1581, giving a list of certain captives who had 
 been redeemed from Algiers the year before, among 
 whom is included " Miguel de Cervantes, of the age of 
 
 patriotic Manchegan, station-master at Argamasilla, whom I can 
 hardly flatter myself I was able to convince, that being my first 
 argument in the Spanish tongue.
 
 40 Don Quixote. 
 
 thirty years, a native of Alcald de Henares." Follow- 
 ing up this clue, Father Sarmiento consulted Haedo's 
 Topography of Algiers, and found there the notice of 
 Cervantes to which I have referred above. Sarmiento 
 seems to have hesitated for some time, strangely enough, 
 between these evidences in favour of Alcala and the 
 entry in the parish register of Alcdzar de San Juan. 
 Finally he made up his mind, and wrote the tract, 
 Noticia sabre la Verdadera P atria de Cervantes, in 1761, 
 which has settled the question. That there should have 
 been so long a doubt on the subject, with the abundant 
 material at hand, printed and in manuscript, extant, for 
 resolving it, is a striking proof of the indifference with 
 which the Spanish men of letters and learning regarded 
 Cervantes and DON Quixote, until foreign opinion 
 had stirred them to an effusion of patriotism.' Even 
 to this day, the authors of the once flaming dispute 
 between Alcala and Alcazar have not lost their heat,^ 
 in spite of the testimony afforded under Cervantes' own 
 hand, among the papers discovered in 1804 by Cean 
 Bernudez in the archives of the Indies at Seville. Among 
 these, which are printed in full length by Navarrete, 
 
 ' See for further details of the story of how Cervantes' birth- 
 place came to be discovered, Navarrete, p. 206, and following. 
 
 2 One of the stoutest champions on the side of Alcdzar is a 
 respectable gentleman of that city, Don Juan Alvarez Guerra, 
 who tried to impress me with his views by word of mouth in 1884, 
 and who gave me his book, entitled Sol de Cervantes Saavedra^ 
 su Verdadera P atria Alcdzar de San Juan — a quarto of 240 pages, 
 of a credulity and unreason stupendous.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 41 
 
 is a memorial in Cervantes' own writing, demanding of 
 Father Juan Gil, the official redeemer of captives in 
 Algiers, an investigation into his life and conduct in 
 captivity, in which he styles himself ^^ Miguel de Cer- 
 vantes, natural de la villa de Alcald de Hectares "^ 
 
 Of Cervantes' youth and early life at Alcala we have 
 no details, and only such slight traces as are to be found 
 in his works. In one of those delightful bits of auto- 
 biography which he now and then (alas ! too rarely) in- 
 dulges us with in his prologues and dedications, he tells 
 us of one of the favourite amusements of his early years. 
 This was to attend the representations given by the 
 strolling company of players organised by Lope de 
 Rueda, the first who gave form and order to the Spanish 
 Drama. The passage occurs at the beginning of the 
 Prologue to the collection of Cervantes' Comedies and 
 Farces, published in September, 161 5, a few months 
 before his death : " In past days I once found myself 
 in a conversation among friends in which we discussed 
 Comedies and matters relating thereto .... And the 
 question was raised ; Who was the first who brought 
 them out of their swaddling clothes and gave them 
 habitation, and attired them decently and handsomely } 
 Said I, who was the oldest of them there, I remembered 
 well seeing the great Lope de Rueda act, a man distin- 
 guished for his acting and for his intelligence. He was 
 a native of Seville, and by trade a gold-beater, that is, 
 one of those who make gold-leaf He was admirable 
 
 ' See Navarre te, Ilustraciones y Documentos^ p. 311-49. 
 VOL. I. G
 
 42 Don Quixote. 
 
 in Pastoral Poetry, and in that department, neither then 
 nor since till now, has any one excelled him ; and though 
 from being then a boy I could not form any right judg- 
 ment as to the goodness of his verses, from some which 
 cling to my memory, examined now in mature age, I 
 
 find that what I have said is true In the time 
 
 of this celebrated Spaniard the whole apparatus of a 
 manager of plays was contained in a sack, and consisted 
 of four white sheep-skin dresses trimmed with gilt 
 leather, and four beards, wigs, and crooks, more or 
 less." As to the stage and the properties, they consisted, 
 Cervantes says, the first, of " four benches arranged in 
 a square, with five or six planks on top of them, raised 
 but four hands' -breadth from the ground." The only 
 decoration of the theatre was " an old blanket drawn 
 aside by two ropes, which made what they call the 
 green-room, behind which were the musicians singing 
 some old ballad without a guitar." ^ The performances 
 used to take place then in some public square, as now 
 with strollers at a country fair, and were given twice 
 a day, in the forenoon and the afternoon. Lope de 
 Rueda is known to have been present at Segovia with 
 his company of players on the occasion of the festivities 
 held in that city when the new Cathedral was conse- 
 crated in August, 1558,^ and it is most likely that he 
 
 ^ See Prologue in Ocho Comedias y Ocho Entremeses nuevos 
 nunca representados. Madrid, 161 5: reprinted, with an absurd 
 preface by Don Bias Nasarre, in 1749. 
 
 ^ Navarrete, p. 257, who quotes from Diego de Colmenares, the 
 historian of Segovia.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 43 
 
 proceeded thence to Madrid and perhaps to Alcala. 
 Cervantes was then in his eleventh year. Of any other 
 pursuit or employment than theatre-going in these early 
 days we have no record. Grammar and the Humanities 
 Cervantes learned under Lopez de Hoyos, a teacher of 
 some celebrity in that age, a poet and a man of letters, 
 who seems to have kept a school at Madrid.^ From 
 Lopez de Hoyos, who is praised by Nicolas Antonio 
 as a man of " vast erudition," Cervantes probably 
 acquired all the learning he ever possessed, which, 
 though sneered at in after life by some of his contem- 
 poraries, was such as befitted a youth of his station at 
 that period. Though never a ripe or an exact scholar, 
 he himself was well read and informed, more than some 
 of those who have ventured to correct him. Like many 
 other great writers, he is to be claimed as one of the 
 condemned band of " desultory readers." According to 
 his own account he read everything, even to the pieces 
 of torn paper to be picked up in the streets.^ Of ro- 
 mances and the romantic poetry, both of Spain and of 
 Italy, he must have acquired a knowledge as profound as 
 did Alonzo Quijano himself; nor did any one ever study 
 those pernicious books of chivalries with greater enthu- 
 siasm and relish than he who lived to give them the 
 
 * The site of this school is said, in a book entitled El Antiguo 
 Madrid^ to be No. 2, in the Calle de la Villa, now occupied by 
 a house inhabited by the Countess De la Vega del Pozo, which 
 bears on its gate a marble slab with a commemorative inscription. 
 (Mesonero Romanos, in the Ilus/racioji, 15th April, 1872.) 
 
 ^ See Don Quixote, Part I. C. ix.
 
 44 Don Quixote. 
 
 death-stroke. With the literature of his own country 
 he shows in all his works that he was well acquainted ; 
 and all that was romantic in the poetry of Italy must 
 have been as familiar to him as Amadis or Palmerin. 
 
 Of any other education than that which Cervantes 
 received from Lopez de Hoyos and gave himself, there 
 exists no evidence. The tradition that he spent two 
 years at the University of Salamanca, which is accepted 
 by Navarrete and by Ticknor, rests upon no basis of 
 fact. Considering the circumstances of his family, and 
 that they had a University at their doors as celebrated 
 as any in Spain, it is most unlikely that they sent him 
 to Salamanca. Navarrete, indeed, quotes the statement 
 of a certain ex-professor of rhetoric at Salamanca, to 
 the effect that he had seen the name of Miguel de 
 Cervantes in the University Registers as having matri- 
 culated and gone through a two years' course of philo- 
 sophy ; but this seems to have been an idle rumour, 
 which no one has since been able to confirm.^ Of the 
 
 ' The tradition that Cervantes studied at Salamanca is thought 
 to be strengthened by the local belief that he lodged in the Calle 
 de Moros, in which a house is shown as that of Cervantes. It is 
 said also that in the novel La Tia Fingida^ the author shows much 
 familiarity with Salamanca, in which city the scene is laid, the 
 story being taken from a real occurrence in 1575. But La Tia 
 Fingida was never acknowledged by Cervantes, nor did he include 
 it in the edition of the Novelas published in his life-time. From 
 internal evidence I do not believe it to be his work, nor could 
 he have had any personal knowledge of what happened at 
 Salamanca in 1575, being in that year either at sea in the 
 Mediterranean or a captive at Algiers.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 45 
 
 class to which Cervantes belonged, very few went to the 
 University, unless intended for the priestly profession. 
 Cervantes, indeed, seems in various passages of his 
 writings to ridicule the student life and system of train- 
 ing at Salamanca ; and such familiarity as he shows 
 with it might easily have been acquired by his residence 
 at Alcala There was not much in that age which the 
 Universities of Spain could teach beyond grammar and 
 what was called philosophy — a philosophy which knew 
 no science but that of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and re- 
 jected as false and immoral all that was contrary to the 
 Catholic Faith and the teaching of the Church. 
 
 The relations between the young Cervantes and his 
 tutor, Lopez de Hoyos, seem to have been most intimate 
 and cordial. Hoyos may, indeed, claim the honour not 
 only of having given a bent to the genius of the youth, 
 but of being the first to detect in his literary pro- 
 ductions the promise of greatness. When Isabel of 
 Valois, the beautiful third wife of Philip IL, died sud- 
 denly, as did so many of Philip's family and kin, 
 her obsequies were celebrated at Madrid with great 
 pomp and splendour, on the 24th of October, 1568. 
 Among other offerings laid on her tomb were a number 
 of encomiastic sonnets and elegies, composed by the 
 pupils of Lopez de Hoyos. Cervantes could hardly 
 be now reckoned a pupil, being twenty-one years of 
 age, yet some half-a-dozen of the poems were con- 
 tributed by him " in the name of the whole establish- 
 ment " {de todo el estudid). Of these, Hoyos, in his 
 introduction and notes, makes special mention, as of
 
 46 Don Quixote. 
 
 " elegant style," " rhetorical colours," and " delicate con- 
 ceits," speaking of their author, with fond partiality, 
 as his " dear and beloved pupil." These early pieces 
 are still extant ;^ but, though interesting as the first- 
 fruits of that intense love of poetry of which, in a 
 well-known passage in his Voyage to Parnassus, he 
 speaks," they are of small merit. 
 
 Besides these early poems, written under the auspices 
 of his tutor, and under the influence of ceremonial woe, 
 Cervantes seems at this early period to have written 
 a pastoral poem called Filena, for so we must read the 
 passage in the Viaje del Parnaso — 
 
 Tambien al par de Filis mi Filena 
 Resond por las selvas, que escucharon 
 Mas de una y otra alegre cantilena ; 
 
 which '^.x. J. Y, Gibson, in his elegant version of the 
 Voyage to Parnassus has Englished thus : — 
 
 To rival Phyllis my Phylena gay 
 Hath carolled through the woods, whose leafy land 
 •• Gave back the sound of many a merry lay. 
 
 Filena has been overtaken in the wave which has 
 swept away to oblivion so many of Cervantes' early 
 
 ' They are to be found in Aribau's edition of the works of 
 Cervantes in Rivadeneyra's series of the Biblioteca de los Autores 
 Espafioles ; also in the sumptuous Argamasilla edition of Rosell 
 and Hartzenbusch. 
 
 - Desde mis tiernos afios ame el arte 
 Dulce de la agradable poesia 
 Y en ella procure siempre agradarte. 
 
 — Viaje del Parnaso, ch. iv
 
 Life of Cervantes. 47 
 
 productions ; ballads innumerable, sonnets, elegies, and 
 plays, of whose fate he speaks, with a gay good humour, 
 as not undeserved. What survived was a certain repu- 
 tation as a maker of poetry, which he had acquired even 
 at this early period of his manhood,^ and before he had 
 entered upon the next stage of his busy and troubled 
 life. 
 
 Towards the end of 1568 there came to Madrid the 
 Cardinal Acquaviva, on the part of his Holiness the 
 Pope, to condole with Philip II. on the death of his son 
 Don Carlos, and for the settlement of certain outstanding 
 differences with Rome about the Milanese. The Cardinal 
 (he did not actually don the capelo till the 17th of May, 
 1570) is described by Philip's ambassador at Rome as 
 fnuy virtuoso y de miichas letras ; and there is elsewhere 
 mention of him as a prelate fond of the society of men 
 of genius, whom he would much favour, even to carrying 
 them with him when he went out in public, taking 
 pleasure in discussing with them "divers curious questions 
 of politics, the sciences, learning, and literature." ^ To 
 this noble and holy person Cervantes probably received 
 an introduction through the Cardinal Espinosa, then 
 Inquisitor-General and President of the Council, to 
 whom some of the poems written on the death of Queen 
 Isabel had been dedicated ; and was taken into his 
 
 ^ Navarrete, with what seems to be a confidence scarcely war- 
 rantable, speaks of Cervantes as being already at this early period 
 reckoned among " the most celebrated poets of the nation." 
 
 2 So says Mateo Aleman, who saw his Excellency at Madrid as 
 quoted in Navarrete, p. 285-6.
 
 48 Don Quixote. 
 
 service as cajnarcro} which may be translated page or 
 chamberlain. Under such conditions, it was held in that 
 age to be no menial office, but such as might be filled 
 by young men of good birth without reproach. The 
 great Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, a scion of the 
 proudest noble house in Spain, who rose to fill the 
 highest offices in the State, commenced his career in the 
 same humble employment, as camarero to a cardinal. 
 Cer\^antes' motive in taking service with Cardinal 
 Acquaviva 2 has been represented by some of his bio- 
 graphers as evidence of his great affection and fidelity 
 to the Church at this early period of his life ; but it is 
 more probable that he was actuated simply by a desire 
 to see the world. In December, 1569, Acquaviva, — his 
 mission, either of the condolence or in the matter of 
 the Papal jurisdiction in the Milanese, not having been 
 successful, — returned to Rome, taking Cervantes in his 
 train. They journeyed, as it is conjectured, overland by 
 Valencia, Barcelona, and the South of France, as de- 
 scriptions of the cities along this route are to be found 
 in Cervantes' next important work, composed before he 
 could have visited this part of Europe, 
 
 ^ Cervantes mentions this himself in the Dedication of his 
 Galatea to Ascanio Colonna. 
 
 ^ The Cardinal Julio Acquaviva was but a year or two older than 
 Cervantes. He died in July, 1574, and is buried in the church of 
 Saint John Lateran, at Rome.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 49 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Leaves the Service of Cardinal Acquaviva — Enlists as a 
 Soldier — The Holy League — The Battle of Lepanto 
 — Cervantes' Conduct in the Fight — His Wounds — 
 Recovery and Return to Service — Navarino — Tunis 
 — Italy — Obtains Leave to Visit Spain — Embarks 
 at Naples. 
 
 OF Cervantes' residence at Rome in the service 
 of Acquaviva, we have no record beyond the 
 passing allusions he himself makes to this period of 
 his life. The employment could hardly have been 
 one congenial to a youth of his tastes and temper, 
 with a soul inflamed by visions of romance and knight- 
 errantry. The circumstances of the age and of the 
 country seemed exactly suited to one inspired by the 
 genius of adventure ; nor can one wonder that the 
 Cardinal's ante-chamber detained Miguel de Cervantes 
 but a very few months from his natural bent. Early 
 in the spring of 1570, being then in his twenty-fourth 
 year, Cervantes exchanged his place of page for that 
 of soldier in the Spanish service, enlisting in the 
 regiment of infantry commanded by Don Miguel 
 de Moncada, in the company of the famous captain, 
 Diego de Urbina. There has been a good deal of 
 controversy and some confusion among his biographers 
 VOL. I. H
 
 50 Don Quixote. 
 
 on the question whether the military service which 
 Cervantes first entered was that of the Pope or of 
 his natural sovereign, the King of Spain, — some doubts 
 being raised by certain words of Cervantes in the 
 dedication of his Galatea^ to Ascanio Colonna, to the 
 effect that he had " followed for some years the con- 
 quering banners " of that celebrated Papal general 
 (his father), Marco Antonio Colonna. Those solicitous 
 to claim Cerv^antes in every act of his life as a true son 
 of the Church, triumphantly quote this passage as indi- 
 cating his preference of the Pope's to the King's service. 
 The question is one of small importance, and is very 
 easily settled. The truth appears to be that a Spanish 
 contingent was placed at the service of his Holiness by 
 Philip II. at this time, which for a short period was 
 under the command of Marco Antonio Colonna.^ At 
 this period the fame of that redoubtable Spanish 
 infantry, who " made the earth tremble with their fire- 
 
 ^ The words in the dedication of the Galatea are por haber 
 seguido algiinos aiios las vencedoras banderas de aquel sol de la 
 milicia que ayer nos qiiito el cielo delante de los ojos. In the 
 prologue to his novels Cer\-antes says, speaking of himself, that 
 he "fought under the victorious banners of the son of that 
 thunderbolt of war, Charles V. of happy memory" {niilitando 
 debajo de las niuy veticedoras banderas del hijo del rayo de la 
 gicerra Carlos Qiiinto de felice 7nemoria). 
 
 2 As Colonna was afterward second in command of the allied 
 fleets at Lepanto and elsewhere, Cervantes might well speak of 
 having followed his conquering banners, without being guilty of 
 inconsistency in saying, some thirty years afterwards, that he had 
 fought under Don Juan. -
 
 Life of Cervantes. 51 
 
 locks,"^ was at the very highest. A succession of skilful 
 masters of war, from Gonsalvo de Cordova to the Duke 
 of Alva, had brought the Spanish foot-soldier to a perfect 
 state as a man-at-arms. As a fighting instrument, the 
 tercio'^ was without an equal in the armies of Europe ; 
 and perhaps for solidity, for discipline, for the confidence 
 bred by a long course of victory, was unsurpassed by 
 the Macedonian Phalanx, the Roman Legion, or the 
 unreformed British Regiment. None but picked men, 
 of good character and decent birth, were eligible to 
 the ranks ; and to be a common soldier under so dis- 
 tinguished a captain as he who led the tercio de Moncada 
 was in itself no mean distinction for a youth of good 
 family. Under the Papal general, Colonna, the Spanish 
 contingent in Rome was ordered, in the summer of 
 1570, to Naples, there to be amalgamated with the 
 other forces of the King of Spain, and re-organised for 
 the great enterprise, which was then in contemplation 
 by the heads of the Church, for the advancement of 
 Christendom. 
 
 The Holy League against the Turks, inspired and 
 
 ^ So Don Lorenzo Vanderhammen ; the first biographer of Don 
 Juan of Austria, and also historian of Philip II. 
 
 2 The normal strength of the tercio was 3,000 men, divided into 
 companies of from one hundred to a hundred and fifty. In the 
 case of such regiments as those of Moncada and Figueroa, the 
 number of men serving in the ranks (or as bisofios^ supernumera. 
 ries waiting for vacancies) would be considerably higher from the 
 greater attraction which those names had for recruits of good 
 family, and the greater demand for their services in the extensive 
 dominions of Spain.
 
 52 Don Quixote. 
 
 devised by Pope Pius V., a man whose zeal, energy, 
 and sincerity of character did so much to re-kindle the 
 fine old rage of Christendom against Islam, is an 
 adventure which need not occupy us any more than it 
 is connected with the life and fortunes of Miguel de 
 Cervantes. While Philip, with characteristic caution, 
 was still hesitating whether or not to involve his forces 
 in a struggle which he suspected to be less for the 
 benefit of himself than of his maritime rivals, the 
 Venetians, the winter of 1570 saw the power of the 
 Turk advanced to its very zenith. All Christendom 
 had been alarmed and scandalised by the easy conquest 
 of Cyprus ; though every Power thought the particular 
 scandal and the first peril to belong to its neighbour. 
 The Turkish fleet had no rival in the Mediterranean. 
 The Turks, though of a race which belonged rather to 
 the desert and the mountain than the sea, trained and 
 led by those renegade Christians of whose abilities they 
 have always been known to make good use, had come 
 to be reckoned as the best of sailors in the narrow 
 seas. In number, in strength, and in the perfectness of 
 their equipment, the Turkish ships constituted a force 
 such as no single Christian Power could then encounter 
 with any hope of success. The siege and conquest of 
 Cyprus by Selim II., proved that Venice, single-handed, 
 was unequal to the task of resisting the Ottoman. The 
 Pope might well begin to fear for his own temporal 
 dominions. But Pius V. was a Pontiff of the antique 
 mould, who looked beyond the aggrandisement of the 
 Papal See, the strengthening of his own power, or the
 
 Life of Cervantes. 53 
 
 enrichment of his own family — the usual concerns of the 
 successors of the Apostle. He invoked all Christendom 
 to the aid of Venice, in language such as for centuries 
 had not been heard from the chair of St. Peter. And 
 though the Christian States could hardly have doubted 
 the sincerity of a spiritual head who had declared his 
 readiness to give his last shirt in aid of the good work 
 of the assassination of Protestant Elizabeth, yet Christen- 
 dom did not respond so cordially as might have been 
 expected. The Powers, as in every age before and since, 
 were jealous of each other. Some of them were not 
 sorry at heart that the maritime pride of Venice had 
 been lowered. The Most Christian King could not be 
 got to hate the Sultan so much as he did the House 
 of Austria. Charles IX. of France had hereditary 
 friendly relations with the Turk, and was even suspected 
 of giving secret aid to the Porte. The Emperor 
 Maximilian had but lately made a treaty of peace 
 with Turkey, and was not likely to be turned from it 
 by any tender feeling for his kinsman of Spain, any 
 more than for his old rival the Pope. Only Spain 
 could be got to give a reluctant and hesitating response 
 to the prayer for aid to Christendom in its great duel 
 with Islam. It was not, however, until after the year 
 had passed which had witnessed the fall of Cyprus, 
 and until late in the summer of 1 571, that any active 
 steps were taken to give effect to the Holy League, of 
 which the three members were the Pope, Spain, and 
 Venice. The treaty between these three Powers was 
 signed on the 20th of May, 1571. The combined fleet,
 
 54 Don Quixote. 
 
 of which the primary object was the recovery of Cyprus, 
 assembled in the harbour of Otranto on the 21st of 
 August. The Spanish contingent was under the com- 
 mand of the Genoese admiral, Giovanni Andrea Doria, 
 a seaman almost equal in reputation already, though 
 only in his thirty-first year, to his uncle, the famous 
 Andrea Doria. The Venetians were led by the veteran 
 Sebastian Veniero, and the Papal squadron by Marco 
 Antonio Colonna, who was appointed Commander-in- 
 Chief until the arrival of Don Juan of Austria. The very 
 names of the leaders of the allied fleet seem to indicate 
 the insincerity of the alliance, and were no good augury 
 of its stability. The three admirals, though all Italians 
 and all good Catholics, were known to be in mortal en- 
 mity one with another, — the Genoese and the Venetian, 
 hereditary foes of many generations, being only pre- 
 vented from flying at each other's throats by the presence 
 and predominant influence of the Roman-Spaniard, who 
 in his turn hated and distrusted his two associates. 
 
 During the winter of 1570 and until the arrival of 
 the Spanish reinforcements, with the regiment of Lope 
 de Figueroa and the main body of Moncada's, Miguel 
 de Cervantes was at Naples, where he tells us that he 
 " trod the streets for more than a year." ^ Don Juan 
 of Austria,^ who had been appointed Generalissimo of 
 
 1 — Ndpoles la ilustre, 
 
 Que yo pise sus ruas mas de un ano. 
 
 — Viaje del Parnaso, canto viii. 
 
 "^ He was the natural son of the Emperor Charles V. by Barbara 
 Blomberg, a singer of Ratisbon. That is the accepted story of his
 
 Life of Cervantes. 55 
 
 the allied forces, arrived at Naples on the 9th of August ; 
 and on the 20th of that month, — the valuable interval 
 being spent in high festivities, — put to sea again with 
 thirty-five galleys. Of these the Marqiiesa was one, a 
 private ship of Doria's, commanded by Francisco Sancto 
 Pietro, on board of which was Miguel de Cervantes, with 
 a detachment of the Moncada regiment. On the 23rd 
 of August, Don Juan arrived at Messina, the appointed 
 final rendezvous of the allied fleets, and took over the 
 supreme command from Marco Antonio Colonna, A 
 council was summoned of the chief naval and military 
 commanders, in order to settle the plan of operations. 
 Much time was spent in discussing various schemes 
 and in arranging the disputes between the several com- 
 manders. The Venetians were all for immediate attack, 
 though they are described by Don Juan himself, in a 
 private letter, as being the worst provided and the least 
 orderly of all their ships. The strength of the Spaniards 
 consisted in their trained soldiers ; that of their allies 
 chiefly in seamen. Don Juan himself, who seems to 
 have exercised very little authority over the Venetians, 
 was at first for delaying the sailing of the fleet, but at 
 last became enthusiastic for an immediate attack. The 
 allied squadrons put to sea on the i6th of September, 
 numbering, according to a letter of Don Juan himself, 
 
 birth, but there is much reason to doubt whether Barbara Blomberg 
 was his mother. The historian Strada believes, on the authority 
 of the Archduchess Isabella, the favourite daughter of Philip II., 
 that Don Juan's mother was a high lady of the Court.
 
 56 Don Quixote. 
 
 208 galleys, 7 galleasses, and 24 sailing ships.* The 
 total number of troops on board the fleets was 26,000. 
 The line of battle, as arranged on the advice of the 
 most expert captains, was in three divisions. The first 
 division or right wing, consisting of the Spanish vessels 
 
 ' The war galley of this period, in build and appearance was not 
 unlike those of the Romans except that it had only one tier of 
 oars, and was from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty 
 feet in length, with a beam of from fourteen to twenty feet. It was 
 propelled by from twenty to twenty-six pairs of oars, each worked 
 by from three to six men, sitting close together on benches set 
 athwart or at a right angle to the side — the strongest rower taking 
 the inside place. The oars were thirty to forty feet long, worked 
 through thwart-holes, one-third within and two-thirds without, the 
 rowers being protected while at work by a row of iron shields 
 running down outside, as well as by the high bulwarks. There 
 was a high poop and a forecastle where the guns were placed, on 
 traversing platforms, which could only be fired fore and aft. From 
 stem to stern there ran a gangway, on a level with the shoulders 
 of the rowers, on which the officers walked to give their orders and 
 to direct the oarsmen. The galley carried sometimes two, some- 
 times three masts, according to its size, with fore and aft sails, — 
 the masts low and the yards high-peaked, in the Mediterranean 
 fashion. The galleass was a larger and more powerful galley, with 
 longer oars, set wider apart, requiring seven men to each. Besides 
 the forecastle and poop guns, the galleass carried smaller broadside 
 pieces, placed on platforms between the benches of oarsmen, with 
 loop-holed bulwarks for the musketeers. Sailing ships were rarely 
 used in the Mediterranean in the Sixteenth century except for 
 trade, and of their employment in battle in the narrow seas this, 
 I think, is the first instance; The oarsmen in the galleys, it 
 is, perhaps, needless to say, were all criminals under sentence. 
 In the Turkish galleys they were Christian slaves — prisoners 
 of war.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 57 
 
 and those in the immediate service of Spain, 54 in 
 number, was under the command of Doria. The centre 
 was composed of 64 galleys, Spanish and Roman, under 
 Don Juan himself. The left wing, of 53 galleys, com- 
 prising the Venetian ships, was under the command of 
 Agostino Barbarigo. There was a rear or reserve 
 squadron of 30 galleys, under the Marquess of Santa 
 Cruz ; while the six galleasses were distributed in pairs 
 among the three divisions of the line. Besides the 
 galleys and galleasses were the 24 sailing ships, chiefly 
 used as transports and as depots of the soldiery, under 
 the command of Arguello, whose orders were to employ 
 them wherever he could inflict most damage on the 
 enemy. 
 
 The allied fleet, which was the largest up to this 
 time ever seen under the Christian flag, sailed at once 
 in search of the enemy, who was not found till the /th of 
 October, — the interval being chiefly passed in quarrels 
 between the Spaniards and the Venetians, which at one 
 time rose to such a pitch that Don Juan threatened to 
 put the Venetian admiral under arrest, who had hanged 
 some Spanish soldiers for disobedience of orders almost 
 under his eyes. The sight of the enemy at length brought 
 the Christian commanders to reason if not to harmony. 
 The Turkish fleet was discovered in order of battle 
 within the Gulf of Lepanto, at the entrance of the Gulf 
 of Corinth, in waters which have been reddened with 
 the blood of more than one great sea-fight.^ The Turks 
 
 ^ The site of the battle was not far from the promontory of 
 Actium where Augustus, just sixteen hundred years before, won 
 VOL. I. I
 
 58 Don Quixote. 
 
 were commanded by AH Pasha, who had under him the 
 most skilful corsair of the time— Much Ali— a Calabrian 
 renegade.^ Their galleys, though more numerous, were 
 smaller than those of the Christians ; inferior in the 
 number and calibre of their guns, and rowed by Christian 
 slaves, who could have had no great stomach for the 
 fight under such masters. The two fleets advanced 
 towards each other both animated by the desire of 
 battle, the Turks at first having the weather-gauge, 
 though the wind shifted suddenly to the west, by a 
 special interposition of Providence, at the very crisis of 
 the shock, with a smooth sea,— and so the allies had 
 the advantage. 
 
 The Battle of Lepanto, the greatest of sea-actions 
 in modern history up to that date, and perhaps, for the 
 number of men engaged and the issues at stake, the 
 greatest ever fought in any age, has been so often 
 described, and recently with such elaborate minuteness 
 
 the empire of the world from Antony — within a short distance of 
 Navarino, the "untoward event," which for ever closed the record 
 of the Turks as a great naval power. 
 
 1 Aluch Ali, variously called Uluch Ali, Ouloudg Ali, L'Ochiali, 
 Luchali, and in the English State papers of the time Ochali, was 
 a very conspicuous figure in the chronicles of that period — the 
 most famous commander at sea perhaps whom the Turks ever pos- 
 sessed. He was given the name of Khilidg, or the Sword, by the 
 grateful Sultan, for his good conduct at Lepanto. He died of 
 poison in 1 580, at a good old age. In the Stor}' of the Captive, in 
 the xxxix. and xl. Chapters of Don Quixote, Pt. I., this eminent 
 naval hero is spoken of with respect for his bravery and comparative 
 clemency.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 59 
 
 in the animated pages of the biographer ^ of Don Juan 
 of Austria, that it will scarcely be expected of me to 
 tell the story afresh. Suffice it to say, that the allied 
 jfleets won a victory which, if not so decisive as it 
 should have been, was very creditable to their Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, and especially to the soldiers who 
 fought on board his ships. But of all who distinguished 
 themselves in that memorable fight, — though the names 
 of the leaders of the Christian host included half the 
 Golden Books of Venice and of Genoa, with the most 
 famous of the proud nobility of Spain, including Don 
 Juan himself, who fought on that day like a hero of 
 romance, — the one who is best remembered by posterity 
 for his share in the battle is Miguel de Cervantes, the 
 common soldier of the regiment of Moncada. And as 
 a common soldier, his conduct would have made him 
 famous had he not survived that glorious day to be 
 the author of Don Quixote. Cervantes' ship, the 
 Marquesa, though belonging to Doria, was placed in 
 the left wing, which was under the immediate command 
 of the Venetian provedditore general, Barbarigo. Upon 
 the testimony of his fellow-soldiers and of eye-witnesses 
 
 ^ The late Sir William Stirling Maxwell, whose Life of Bon 
 John of Austria, in two beautiful volumes, is, whether in the 
 larger or in the smaller edition, so splendid a monument to that 
 perhaps a little over-praised hero. I have followed Sir William 
 Stirling Maxwell generally as my guide in the account of the 
 battle of Lepanto. The best Spanish history of the battle is Don 
 Cayetano Rosell's Historia de la Combate Naval de Lepanto : 
 Madrid, 1853.
 
 6o Don Quixote. 
 
 we have an exact account of his behaviour on this 
 occasion. Being ill and weak through a fever he had 
 contracted at Naples, Cervantes was entreated by his 
 captain and his comrades to remain quiet in the cabin 
 of the galley. But he replied that he preferred to die 
 fighting for his God and for his king to betaking himself 
 to cover and preserving his health ; and he besought 
 the captain to station him in the post of greatest danger.^ 
 In accordance with his desire, he was placed in com- 
 mand of twelve soldiers on the quarter-deck, by the 
 side of the long-boat (esquife) — a station where he was 
 necessarily exposed to the hottest fire from the enemy's 
 arquebusiers and bowmen.^ The Marquesa, judging 
 by the loss she suffered and the trophies she secured, 
 
 ^ See the sworn testimony given by Mateo de Santisteban 
 before the Alcalde, in support of Rodrigo de Cervantes' (the 
 father's) petition for aid in raising the money for Cervantes' 
 ransom, on the 17th of March, 1578 {Navarrefe, p. 317). Santis- 
 teban was one of Cervantes' fellow-soldiers in Diego de Urbina's 
 compare, who fought by his side on the deck of the Marquesa. 
 After quoting the words of Cervantes as I have given them above, 
 Santisteban declares that he saw him fight as a valiant soldier at 
 the post to which he was appointed by the captain. Gabriel de 
 Castaiieda, an alferez or ensign in the same company, gives the 
 same testimony, repeating Cervantes' words, adding that he knew 
 that Don Juan had raised his pay by five or six escudos. Others 
 of his comrades speak in equal high terms of Cervantes' conduct 
 in the battle. 
 
 ^ Bows and arrows were used by the Turks at Lepanto, and 
 apparently with great effect when at close quarters — perhaps for 
 the last time in a sea-battle. The inferior quality of the Turks' 
 artillery was doubtless one of the chief causes of their defeat.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 6i 
 
 must have been in the very thick of the fight, and 
 contributed at least her full share to the signal victory 
 achieved by the left division. Cervantes was among 
 the foremost who boarded the galley of the Pasha of 
 Alexandria, which was captured with the royal standard 
 of Egypt, more than five hundred Turks being slain^ 
 with the Pasha himself Cervantes suffered severely in 
 his own person for the active part he took in the fight. 
 He received three gun-shot wounds, two in the breast 
 and one in the left hand, which maimed it for ever. 
 Yet were these hurts cherished by him in after-life as 
 the most glorious of his honours, having been got, as 
 he says himself, on "the greatest occasion that past or 
 present ages have witnessed, or that the future can 
 hope to witness," — preferring to have endured his losses 
 and his sufferings to being whole and taking no share in 
 the glory of that day. That the conduct of Cervantes 
 in the battle of Lepanto earned the applause of all his 
 comrades and won for him, as a private soldier, the 
 especial notice of his leaders we have ample evidence 
 to prove, — evidence which is beyond the suspicion of 
 having been manufactured after he had become cele- 
 brated as a writer. 
 
 The honour of the victory must be said to be due, 
 in an unusual measure, to the skill, intrepidity, and 
 moral influence of the Generalissimo himself, — a youth 
 of the same age as Miguel de Cervantes, — who gave 
 promise in this brilliant achievement of a future which 
 fate and the envious Philip did not permit him to 
 reach. Beginning the day by dancing a galliard on
 
 62 Don Quixote. 
 
 the poop of the flagship, with some of his noble 
 companions, to the music of the kettle-drums and 
 recorders,' Don Juan performed his part throughout 
 with admirable coolness and judgment, distinguishing 
 himself no less by his modesty in speaking of his 
 brilliant exploit, his clemency to the vanquished, and 
 his magnanimity to the sulky and stubborn Venetians ; 
 on whom, however, to judge by the tale of the killed 
 and wounded, the hardest part of the fighting had 
 fallen. But though the centre and the left wing had 
 been signally victorious, the right wing, under Doria, 
 which was opposed to the Turkish left, under the astute 
 and daring Aluch Ali, came out of the battle with less 
 honour. Doria made the mistake, so common in naval 
 warfare, of extending his line with a view to envelop 
 his adversary. After much manoeuvring between the 
 rival leaders, both renowned in that age for seamanship, 
 Aluch Ali found an opening in Doria's line through 
 which he bore down with 30 of his swiftest galleys ; 
 and, getting in the rear of the main body of the 
 allies, was able to inflict much damage and rescue 
 several of his own captured vessels, finally making his 
 escape to sea in good order with the remnant of the 
 Ottoman fleet. The victory of the Holy League, though 
 dearly purchased, was, in a material sense, more de- 
 cisive than naval engagements are wont to be. Over 
 20,000 of the Turks were calculated to have perished, 
 
 ^ See the curious account of Don Juan's behaviour, quoted in 
 Stirling Maxwell's book (vol. i. p. 411) from Caracciolo's Com- 
 mentaries.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 63 
 
 including all the principal commanders ; 5,000 were 
 taken prisoners, including Ali Pasha's two youthful sons ; 
 170 galleys were captured, most of them useless from 
 the wear of battle, and more than 100 were supposed 
 to be sunk or wrecked. The Holy Standard of Mecca, 
 the Sultan's Imperial flag, and the sword of the Turkish 
 Admiral-in-Chief, were among the trophies of the victors. 
 From 12,000 to 15,000 Christian captives obtained their 
 freedom from slavery. The loss of the allies is reckoned 
 at between 5,000 and 7,000 killed, and 8 or 10 galleys 
 sunk or burnt,^ All Christendom rang with the fame 
 of the victory. Pope Pius, to whom the news had 
 been already revealed by special miracle,^ burst out when 
 the actual message came from the young conqueror, 
 in the Evangelist's words : — Fuit homo missus a Deo cui 
 nomen erat Joajines? To Marco Antonio Colonna, when 
 
 ^ These figures make out the total number engaged on both 
 sides to be no less than 70,000 men, — soldiers, seamen, and oars- 
 men, — a host more numerous perhaps than any ever fought in a 
 naval battle in modern history. 
 
 ^ The legend, as preserved in Rome to this day, is that the Pope 
 was on his knees in prayer before the image of the Madonna, 
 painted by Fra Angelico da Fiesole, in the afternoon of October 7th, 
 which was a Sunday, when the Virgin revealed to him, in the 
 usual manner, that the Christians had beaten the Turks. This 
 image which now belongs to the Church of the Magdalen near 
 the Pantheon, is still held in special honour by the Romans ; and 
 on the tercentenary of Lepanto, was carried in procession through 
 the streets, clad in a new frock and enriched with a new garniture 
 of gold and gems. 
 
 ^ The same words are said to have been uttered by the Emperor
 
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 66 Don Quixote. 
 
 contributed to make the struggle of his after life more 
 bitter, as among the most fortunate accidents of his 
 career. When taxed by his enemy, Avellaneda, by a 
 thrust not more malicious than maladroit, with this 
 among other personal defects that he had " more 
 tongue than hands " {mas kngua que manos), Cervantes' 
 retort was, that to charge him with the loss of his hand 
 was to impute to him the greatest honour to which a 
 soldier could aspire. In several of his works he speaks 
 with a simple yet proud complacency of his wounds, 
 holding them as his chief titles to honour, the left 
 hand being maimed " for the greater glory of the right." 
 That his services and suffering in the battle attracted 
 an unusual degree of notice, we know from contem- 
 porary records and from official documents.^ In the 
 archives of Simancas are preserved the accounts, secret 
 and extraordinary, of Don Juan's expenditure in the 
 campaign of the Levarijt. Among these is an entry by 
 the Treasurer of the Fleet to the effect that, on the 
 23rd of January, 1572, at Messina, various sums were 
 distributed among those who had been wounded at 
 Lepanto, the name of Miguel de Cervantes being down 
 in the list for 20 ducats. There is another entry on 
 March 17th of the same year, of payments made to 
 those who had deserved well in the battle of the 7th of 
 October, and among these is Miguel de Cervantes, who 
 receives 22 ducats. On the 29th of April of the same 
 
 ' See the Ilustraciones and Documentos collected by the faithful 
 and judicious Navarrete, and appended to his Life of Cervantes.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 6^ 
 
 year an addition was made to the pay of Miguel de 
 Cervantes, by a special order, of three esciidos a month 
 — these being, we may suppose, silver escudos or crowns, 
 worth eight or ten reals apiece.^ On the 29th of April, 
 1572, being convalescent, though, as we learn from him- 
 self, not yet cured of his wounds, Cervantes left the 
 hospital of Messina to join the regiment of Lope de 
 Figueroa, — then the most famous in the Spanish in- 
 fantry, and, doubtless, a corps d'elite, — being enrolled 
 in the company soon afterwards commanded by Don 
 Manuel Ponce de Leon. The allied fleets had by 
 this time completed their re-fitting ; and though the 
 enthusiasm of the Leaguers had considerably abated, 
 through internal dissensions fomented by the outside 
 Christian states and by Turkey, it was resolved that 
 Don Juan should lead another armament against the 
 Turks in the Levant. The death of the energetic old 
 Pope, in April, was a great blow to the cause ; for, 
 although his successor, Gregory XIIL, began his ponti- 
 ficate by urging the Confederates to action, there was 
 much difficulty in getting them to move. The truth 
 is that from this time the allies began to perceive 
 that their objects were by no means identical. Each, 
 as in every Christian alliance since, had his own policy 
 to serve in the East. The Venetians were intent solely 
 upon recovering their lost colonies in the Levant. The 
 King of Spain was jealous of his victorious and popular 
 half-brother ; and though bent upon schemes of African 
 
 1 Navarrele, p. 294.
 
 68 Don Quixote. 
 
 conquest, was not over eager to entrust them to the 
 execution of Don Juan, who was himself suspected of 
 visions of an independent empire in Africa. Meanwhile, 
 the Turks were busily employed in recruiting their 
 shattered forces and in building a new fleet. By June 
 Aluch Ali was at sea again with 170 galleys, laying 
 waste the shores of Greece and re-conquering many 
 of the fortresses which had been lost in the year before. 
 In July the Turkish fleet, relatively as strong as it had 
 been before Lepanto, was once more threatening the 
 Adriatic. Don Juan being still delayed at Messina 
 through the difficulties placed in his way by the King, 
 the allied fleet, reduced by many individual secessions, 
 was under the command of Colonna, who had joined 
 with the Venetians at Corfu. Some skirmishing ensued 
 between the two fleets on the western coast of the 
 Morea, but to no purpose, — Colonna's endeavours to 
 force on a battle, of which he might have all the glory 
 before the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief, being 
 frustrated by Aluch Ali. At length Don Juan was 
 enabled to take command of the fleet, which was now, 
 by the accession of the Spanish ships, increased to a 
 total of nearly 200 galleys, besides 40 large sailing 
 ships and 8 galleasses, — a force actually larger than 
 that which had won at Lepanto, and perhaps more 
 highly organised and in better discipline. Nothing, 
 however, came of this grand expedition, which, partly 
 through the unaccountable hesitations of the leaders, 
 but more perhaps through their divisions and mutual 
 jealousies, utterly failed of its object ; though at one
 
 Life of Cervantes. 69 
 
 time the entire Turkish fleet was blockaded within the 
 narrow port of Modon, and might have been easily- 
 destroyed. Every attempt to bring on a general 
 engagement was foiled by the superior skill and sea- 
 manship of the Turks, and at last the allied fleet had 
 to retire, through stress of weather, to Corfu, aban- 
 doning all the fruits of the victorious campaign of 
 Lepanto, and leaving Aluch AH master of the sea. 
 On the 25th of October, Don Juan re-entered the 
 harbour of Messina, this time not as a conqueror ; while 
 the Turks hailed their own admiral with acclaim, who, 
 without hazarding a battle, had restored to them all 
 their old power and prestige at sea. 
 
 That Cervantes was on board the fleet during this 
 inglorious second campaign in the Levant is clear, if 
 only from the minute and accurate account of the 
 futile operations in the Bay of Navarino which he 
 gives in the Story of the Captive in DON Quixote. 
 The winter and spring following, the regiment of 
 Figueroa was quartered mainly in Sicily, though from 
 an entry in the Treasurer's account-books Cervantes 
 seems to have been left with his company at Naples. 
 On the nth of February, 1573, there is an order on 
 the officials of the fleet, dated from Naples, to pay 
 Miguel de Cervantes, " a soldier in the company of 
 Don Manuel Ponce de Leon " ten escudos of what is 
 due to him ; another sum of twenty esaidos being paid 
 him in the month following. The beginning of March 
 saw the Holy League dissolved, through the secession 
 of the Venetians, who had been enabled, by the good
 
 70 Don Quixote, 
 
 offices of France, to make a separate peace with the 
 Sultan. The Pope urging King Phih'p to a war of 
 conquest on his own account against the Turks, an 
 expedition was resolved upon, under the conduct of 
 Don Juan, against Tunis. Nothing, however, was done 
 until the autumn. On the 8th of October the expedition 
 appeared off the Golctta, the harbour of Tunis, in the 
 fort at the entrance of which, since the time of its 
 conquest by Charles V. in 1535, there had been a 
 Spanish garrison. Driving the Turks out of Tunis 
 Don Juan took possession of the city, and an attempt 
 was made, by setting up a Moorish prince of the old 
 reigning family as ruler, to create a division among 
 the natives and the Turks. Leaving a small reinforce- 
 ment with the Spanish garrison at the Goletta, Don 
 Juan returned to Naples. That Cervantes served in 
 the Tunisian campaign we know from his own words.' 
 
 ' In the rhymed epistle to Mateo de Vasquez, Philip II.'s 
 secretary, he says : — 
 
 Y al reino antique y celebrado, 
 
 A do la hermosa Dido fue vendida 
 
 Al querer del Troyano desterrado, 
 Tambien, vertiendo sangre aun la herida. 
 
 Mayor con otras dos, quise ir y hallarme, 
 
 Por ver ir la Morisma de vencida. 
 
 Then to the kingdom, ancient and renowned. 
 Where beauteous Dido, by love betrayed. 
 Her doom in Troy's illustrious exile found. 
 
 Though yet my stricken hand distilled its gore 
 With other hurts still green, I fain would go 
 To see the unbelievers trounced once more.
 
 Life of Cervantes. ' 71 
 
 From the end of 1573 to the beginning of May of 
 1574, Cervantes was in garrison with his regiment in 
 the island of Sardinia. In that month he was sent to 
 Genoa in the galleys of Marcelo Doria in order to be 
 stationed in Lombardy, under the orders of Don Juan. 
 On the 27th of July there was held at Piacenza, with 
 all antique pomp and ceremony, a grand tournament, 
 under the auspices of the Farnese, in honour of their 
 illustrious kinsman, " the most valiant of Knight 
 Errants," " the only hope of an oppressed and afflicted 
 religion," the puissant conqueror of the Turk. Cer- 
 vantes might have been present as a spectator. At 
 least he would have heard news of these chivalric 
 doings, and many things of " tilting furniture and em- 
 blazoned shields," such as could not but be stored up 
 in the memory of one, by nature already well inclined 
 to dream of 
 
 Le donne, i cavallier, I'arme, gli amori, 
 Le cortesie, I'audaci impresi — 
 
 the singing of which by the great romantic poet of 
 Italy was then fresh in the minds of men. There were 
 gallant doings at Piacenza on this occasion, — pageants, 
 processions, defiances, — such as recalled the proud days 
 of the old chivalry. The circumstantial matter-of-fact 
 way in which the business is recorded, as though it 
 were a fitting and necessary end to the sterner work 
 to which it was to do homage, proves how deeply the 
 minds of the noble youths of the period were still 
 impressed with the spirit of the extinct chivalry, — how 
 green were its memories and recent its glories. A
 
 72 Don Quixote. 
 
 challenge was sent by the Count Alberto Scotti, in 
 due knightly form, to all the world, inviting the entire 
 universe to testify to the superior loveliness and virtue 
 of the lady whom the said Knight, defender of the 
 lists, had made mistress of his affections, and declaring 
 that he is prepared, with sword and lance and other 
 necessary furniture, to do battle against any Knight 
 so daring as to decline to comply with that simple pro- 
 posal, and to "make him feel how greatly he has 
 deceived himself."^ The hero in whose honour the 
 tournament was held was one to whom on every 
 account such an offering was most fitting and con- 
 genial. There was much of the Errant about Don Juan, 
 in his character and in his genius, as in his career; 
 much that was calculated to arouse the golden youth of 
 Spain and of Italy to the emulation of the deeds of 
 " fabled knights in battles feigned."- 
 
 On the 7th of August, Don Juan, sated as he must 
 
 ^ See the account of this quaint proceeding, with all the cere- 
 monial of the tournament, in Sir W. Stirling Maxwell's Life of 
 Don John of Austria. The gravity and the business-like air with 
 which the proceedings were conducted are curious, as affording 
 evidence that up to this date at least (1574) the practices, the 
 language, and the apparatus of knight-errantry had by no means 
 become extinct. 
 
 ■•^ At the tournament which took place in connexion with Count 
 Alberto Scotti's challenge, Don Juan himself " being the honour- 
 able and unconquered Knight for which the world knows him, 
 could not restrain himself from appearing," says the chronicler. 
 And to Don Juan was awarded the prize' of the lance, as having 
 been the most expert in the use of that weapon.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 73 
 
 have been with the incense offered him by the best 
 blood of Italy, embarked at Spezzia, taking with him 
 the regiment of Figueroa, in which, doubtless, Cervantes 
 was still serving. He was called to the affairs of Tunis, 
 now, through the weakness of the Spanish garrison and 
 the increasing audacity of the Moors and their Turkish 
 allies, growing daily more desperate. A shifty and 
 equivocal letter from Philip had thrown upon Don Juan 
 the whole responsibility of deciding upon the fate of 
 Tunis, while refusing the material aid he required in 
 order to restore the Spanish dominion in Africa. There 
 were reasons, independent of his jealousy of his brilliant 
 half-brother, which at that time might well make the 
 Spanish monarch hesitate to support Don Juan in any 
 vigorous attempt to stave off the coming disaster at 
 Tunis. The Low Countries were in open rebellion, 
 encouraged both by France and by England. The war 
 with Turkey was still raging, and a powerful Ottoman 
 fleet had sailed for the African coast. Italy itself was 
 in a troubled state, with the Pope irritated at the con- 
 tinued occupation of his territory by Spanish troops. 
 In the midst of the conflicting instructions which he 
 received from Madrid, whose real purpose seems to 
 have been to spare the King any further expense in 
 Africa, while involving Don Juan personally in the 
 dishonour of retreating before the Turks, there came 
 a series of furious storms which detained the Spanish 
 fleet, with the troops intended for the succour of Tunis, 
 in the Sicilian ports. Before the fleet could sail, news 
 came of the fall of Tunis and of the Goletta, after a 
 VOL. I. L
 
 74 Don Quixote. 
 
 desperate^ resistance to an overwhelming military and 
 naval Turkish armament. This ignoble end to the 
 chapter of warlike enterprise and glorious adventure 
 which had seemed to open for Spanish manhood by the 
 great day of Lepanto, must have filled the bosom of the 
 ardent young soldier of Figueroa's regiment with a sense 
 of deep disappointment and disgust, which, in his DON 
 Quixote, in the chapters referring to this shameful 
 Tunis episode, he does not care to conceal. The vision 
 of chivalry was dissolved. The age of knightly deeds, 
 which seemed to have come again to this eager student 
 of romance, he must have felt to be a mockery of the 
 past. The glimmer of Lepanto was but the departing 
 light of a day which was gone for ever. And now the 
 sick and maimed soldier, fretting out his heart for want 
 of action, must have felt that 
 
 — the true old times were dead, 
 When every morning brought a noble chance, 
 And every chance brought out a noble knight. 
 
 In August, 1575, when there appeared to be no further 
 prospect of active work with the army, Cervantes, being 
 then at Naples, besought and obtained leave to visit 
 Spain, having been absent from home nearly six years. 
 Don Juan himself gave him letters to the King, strongly 
 recommending him, as "a man of valour, of merit, and of 
 many signal services " done to his Majesty, for the com- 
 mand of a company of the troops being raised for Italy.^ 
 
 ' See the memorial presented by Cervantes to the King in 1590. 
 Also the testimony of his fellow-soldier, Gabriel de Castaneda, a 
 captive at Algiers. Navarrete^ pp. 312 and 317.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 75 
 
 Don Carlos de Aragon, the Duke of Sesa and Viceroy 
 of Sicily, also wrote to the King and to his Council, 
 in very flattering terms, in favour of "a soldier as 
 deserving as he was unfortunate, who, by his noble 
 virtue and gentle disposition, had won the esteem of his 
 comrades and chiefs." ^ Furnished with these, — which 
 proved, alas ! to be " letters of Bellerophon " to him, 
 tending, as we shall see, rather to the aggravation of 
 his state than the bettering of his fortunes, — Cervantes 
 embarked at Naples for Spain on board the galley El 
 Sol, in company with his brother Rodrigo, who had 
 also served in the campaigns of the previous years — of 
 Don Pero Diaz Carillo de Quesada, ex-Governor of 
 the Goletta, and several other distinguished gentlemen, 
 chiefly soldiers on leave returning to their native 
 country. 
 
 ^ The Duke of Sesa's own evidence as a member of the Royal 
 Council, before which Cervantes' petition for a bounty in aid of 
 his ransom was considered in 1578, confirms of his own part all 
 that is said in Cervantes' favour by other witnesses.
 
 ;6 Don Quixote. 
 
 CHAPTER III.^ 
 
 Cervantes Galley attacked by Algerine Corsairs — Taken 
 Captive — Slave of DM Mami — A ttempts at Escape 
 — Projected Rising of Christian Captives — Treat- 
 vient of Cervantes by Hassan Pasha — Testimony as 
 to his Co7iduct at Algiers — Father Hcedds Account 
 of Cervantes — Is ransomed and returns to Spain. 
 
 ON the voyage to Spain there befell Cervantes that 
 great and cruel calamity which, while it altered 
 the whole current of his fortunes and spoilt his career, 
 brought out into stronger relief the nobility of his 
 
 * The chief authority for the facts of Cervantes' captivity in 
 Algiers is Hasdo's Topografia y Historia General de Argel, pub- 
 lished at Valladolid in 1612. Fray Diego Hcedo^ a Benedictine 
 monk, was Abbot of Fromesta, and nephew of a prelate of the 
 same name, Archbishop of Palermo, who died in 1608. The book 
 seems to have been the joint composition of uncle and nephew, 
 and bears internal evidence of truthfulness in its minuteness, elabo- 
 ration, and candour. The latter part, giving an account of the 
 sufferings of the captives in Algiers, is based on the information 
 of certain well-known persons who had been released from slavery, 
 especially of Dr. Antonio de Sosa, the Captain Geronimo Ramirez, 
 and Don Antonio Gonzalez de Torres, Knight of the Order of 
 San Juan, who are introduced as interlocutors in the story, and 
 evidently speak of their personal knowledge of Cer\'antes. Although 
 the book was not published till 161 2, the licence for printing it is 
 dated 1604. Father Haedo, therefore, must have written before 
 the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote; nor is there any
 
 Life of Cervantes. 77 
 
 character, and perhaps determined the course of his 
 genius. The vessel in which he had taken his passage 
 home — the galley El Sol — when almost in sight of the 
 Spanish coast, was met, on the 26th of September, 
 I575> by a squadron of Algerine corsairs under the 
 command of the redoubtable Arnaut Mami, one of 
 those renegade sea-captains who were then the terror of 
 the Mediterranean .1 After a fruitless attempt at escape, 
 there ensued a desperate fight between the El Sol and 
 three of the foremost of the pirate galleys, in which 
 Cervantes is reported to have borne a conspicuous part. 
 The unequal combat ended in the surrender of the 
 Spaniards, who were divided among the corsairs, 
 according to their custom, — the captives being prized 
 according to their supposed rank and ransom-yielding 
 capacity. Cervantes himself fell to the lot of one Deli 
 Mami, a renegade Greek, a man noted even amongst 
 that ungodly brood for his wild ferocity, — a raez, or 
 corsair captain.^ The letters of Don Juan of Austria 
 
 evidence in his book to show that he had any other knowledge of 
 Cervantes through his informants except as un hidalgo principal 
 de A leal d de Henares. 
 
 ^ Arnaut Mami, as his name indicates, was an Albanian renegade, 
 chief of the Algerine corsairs, and a very celebrated sea rover of 
 that age. He is mentioned in several of Cervantes' works, and 
 figures in two of the ballads in Duran's Romancero General 
 (vol. i. p. 147). 
 
 ^ Deli Mami, Cervantes' first master, should not be confounded, 
 as sometimes he has been, with Arnaut Mami. The one was but 
 a raez, or owner and captain of a corsair galley ; the other held 
 the supreme command of the corsair fleet.
 
 78 Don Quixote. 
 
 and of the Duke of Sesa, found upon Cervantes, led 
 his captor to believe that he was a prize of exceptional 
 value, upon whom a large ransom might be set. He 
 was, therefore, brought to Algiers, loaded with chains, 
 and treated with especial severity, in accordance with 
 the corsair policy, in order that he might be the more 
 solicitous of freedom. 
 
 The kingdom and city of Algiers were then a 
 dependency of the Turkish Empire, having been con- 
 quered from the Moors by Aruch Barbarossa, the elder 
 brother of the more celebrated Khayreddin Barbarossa, 
 in 1516. The government was administered by a 
 Viceroy from Constantinople, frequently changed, who 
 was usually a successful soldier or seaman, Turk or 
 renegade. In 1575 the Viceroy, or Dey, who was the 
 twenty-first in succession from Barbarossa, according 
 to Father Haedo, was Rabadan Pasha, a Sardinian 
 renegade, — a pupil, like his successor, of the famous 
 Aluch AH, who had then exchanged Algiers for Tunis.' 
 The whole business and raison d'etre of Algiers were 
 piracy. The corsair captains were the rulers of the 
 State, and their prizes at sea the whole public revenue. 
 The Dey was but the chief of the corsairs, who ad- 
 ministered the affairs of his truculent little kingdom 
 upon a system the most methodically ruthless and 
 regularly savage, perhaps ever known within so short 
 a distance of civilisation. The barbarities practised 
 
 ^ HcBdo, p. 84. Rabadan was succeeded in June, 1577, by 
 Hassan.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 79 
 
 upon the unfortunate Christians who fell within their 
 power have been the theme of innumerable pens ; nor 
 can we refrain from a feeling of wonder how so insig- 
 nificant a band of adventurers was able for so long a 
 period to defy all the naval powers of Christendom. 
 The total population of the city of Algiers, which really 
 contained the whole Algerine State and strength, 
 according to the careful estimate of Father Haedo, did 
 not amount to 100,000, about the year 1575.^ Of these 
 the Turks proper, — the ruling caste, — were in an insig- 
 nificant minority. The renegades,^ who were of every 
 Christian nation in the world, including English, 
 Scotch, Irish, Russian, must have numbered nearly 
 one-third of the entire people, and seem to have taken 
 more than a proportionate share of the pirating and 
 plundering. The captives who still retained their name 
 of Christian are reckoned at nearly 25,000, among 
 whom were noblemen and officers of the highest quality, 
 especially Spaniards and Italians. Except when they 
 gave offence to their masters by attempting to escape, 
 
 ^ There were 12,200 houses within the city walls in Haedo's 
 time, which, giving a larger allowance than usual to each house, 
 in consideration of the polygamous establishments of the great, 
 would still bring the total number within 100,000. 
 
 2 Of the 35 corsair captains whose names are given in Hcedo 
 (p. 18), 24 were renegades, or sons of renegades, 10 Turks, and 
 one Jew. Though dubbed corsairs and pirates by their Christian 
 neighbours, these gentlemen rovers probably no more deserved 
 the epithet than did the privateers in the last great war, and not 
 so much as the buccaneers of the New World in that and subsequent 
 ages.
 
 8o Don Quixote. 
 
 and thus trying to rob them of what was supposed to 
 be their lawful perquisites, namely, their ransoms, — the 
 captives who were in the ransomable class seem to 
 have been treated with tolerable liberality. They were 
 not debarred from commerce among themselves. They 
 led their own life, were allowed (as Mahomedans in 
 Spain or in Italy certainly were not) the free exercise 
 of their religion, and were even permitted their own 
 recreations.^ The number of renegades of every race 
 and tongue among them was, perhaps, regarded by 
 their masters as sufficient security for their slaves' good 
 behaviour. 
 
 Cervantes had not been long at Algiers before he 
 began to plot schemes of escape. In company with 
 several other of his fellow-captives, he made an attempt 
 to reach Oran by land, — Oran being then in Spanish 
 hands ; but the party was deserted by the Moor whom 
 they had engaged as their guide after the first day's 
 march, and were compelled to return to Algiers, there 
 to be loaded with heavier chains and kept in stricter 
 confinement. Two or three other ineffectual attempts 
 were made by him to recover his freedom, as he men- 
 tions himself in his comedy of El Trato de Argel ; but 
 
 ^ Plays were allowed to be acted and poems to be recited, — •the 
 authorities, with that scornful tolerance ever characteristic of the 
 Turk, refraining from interfering with these amusements. See 
 Cervantes' comedy of Los Banos de Argel. Cervantes himself is 
 said to have composed poems and dramas, profane and religious, 
 to keep up the spirits and to cheer the faith of his brethren in 
 captivity.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 8i 
 
 in every case, though he displayed extraordinary 
 courage and craft in planning what could not have 
 been other than a very desperate enterprise, and was 
 invariably the first to take the blame when the attempt 
 miscarried, he met with his usual bad luck, being foiled 
 by the timidity or the treachery of some one amongst 
 his companions. 
 
 In the second year of his captivity, some of his per- 
 sonal friends having been rescued, Cervantes wrote 
 home by one of them, — Gabriel Castaneda,^ — to his 
 parents, describing his own and his brother's deplorable 
 state. The father, Rodrigo Cervantes, responded to 
 this appeal by remitting to Algiers a certain sum, being 
 all that he was able to raise by the pledging of his 
 estate and the dowries of his two daughters. The 
 money was rejected by Ddli Mami as not enough for 
 the redemption of so illustrious a captive as he deemed 
 Miguel de Cervantes to be.^ The ransom, however, 
 was sufficient to obtain the release of his elder brother, 
 Rodrigo, with whom Cervantes concerted a scheme for 
 the deliverance of himself and certain of his friends 
 through the agency of an armed Spanish ship, which 
 was to appear off the shore on a stipulated day. 
 
 ^ Gabriel de Castaneda was with Cervantes in the attempt to 
 escape to Oran. He was an alferez, or ensign, and had fought 
 at Lepanto. He was one of those who bore witness to Cervantes' 
 behaviour in that battle, and testified, in his deposition in support 
 of Rodrigo Cervantes' petition (to be mentioned hereafter), that 
 he had read the commendatory letters which Cervantes was bearing 
 when taken captive. 
 
 " Navarrete, p. 35. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 82 Don Quixote. 
 
 Rodrigo Cervantes returned to Spain in August, 1577, 
 furnished with letters from two captives of high rank — 
 Don Antonio de Toledo, of the family of Alva, and 
 Don Francisco de Valencia — directed to the Viceroys of 
 Valencia and the Balearic Islands, praying them to help 
 this design by the despatch of a war-vessel, as agreed 
 upon between Cerv^antes and his brother. 
 
 In preparation for this, the most daring of his 
 attempts at escape, Cervantes had already taken the 
 preliminary steps. About six miles from the town of 
 Algiers, to the eastward, a certain Greek renegade 
 Hassan, one of the Alcaldes of the city, had a country- 
 house, with a garden, by the sea-shore, under charge of 
 a slave called Juan, a native of Navarre. In this 
 garden was a cavern in which Cervantes, with the 
 connivance of Juan, had concealed several Christian 
 captives. Others were from time to time introduced, 
 until, at the date of Rodrigo's departure, there were 
 hidden away in this place of refuge, in anticipation 
 of the relief to come from seaward, forty or fifty 
 escaped slaves, most of them Spaniards and gentlemen 
 of quality. It is a proof at once of Cervantes' re- 
 sources of invention and dexterity, as well as of the 
 ascendency acquired by him over all with whom he 
 came into contact, — a proof also, perhaps, of the com- 
 parative liberty enjoyed by the Christian captives, in 
 certain cases, — that he was able to support the members 
 of this subterraneous republic with food for more than 
 six months without incurring the suspicions of his 
 jealous master, Deli Mami. His plans being completed
 
 Life of Cervantes. 83 
 
 at last, and the day drawing near which had been 
 arranged for the coming of the Spanish vessel in aid, 
 Cervantes himself took refuge in the cavern, about the 
 20th of September. Everything seemed to promise 
 well for the success of his hardy enterprise. A frigate 
 was despatched from Majorca, under the command of 
 a tried and expert seaman acquainted with the coast, 
 which came off Hassan's garden on the night of the 
 28th of September, and was able to communicate with 
 the inmates of the cavern. Some Moorish fishermen, 
 however, having given the alarm, the vessel was obliged 
 to put out to sea again. Meanwhile, treachery was at 
 work among those who knew of the secret of the cave. 
 A certain renegade called El Dorador (" the gilder "), 
 who had been entrusted by Cervantes with the duty of 
 conveying provisions to the people in the cavern, 
 repented of his resolution to return to the land and 
 the faith of his fathers, and went before the Viceroy, 
 Hassan Pasha,^ to reveal the scheme of Cervantes. 
 The Viceroy, who appears to have had an extraordinary 
 and inexplicable dread mingled with no less strange a 
 respect, for Cervantes, was all the more eager to profit 
 by El Dorador's disclosure, as it would give him the 
 property in all these would-be fugitive slaves, according 
 to the law and custom of Algiers. A strong force of 
 
 * So I have Englished, according to my rule in such cases, the 
 name which appears in all the Spanish histories as Azan, or 
 Asan Baxd, or Baji. There is no sound of sh in Spanish — the 
 harsh, guttural aspirate x ox j being used to express it in all words 
 of Eastern origin.
 
 84 Don Quixote. 
 
 armed Turks was sent to the Alcalde's garden to 
 search for the captives in the cavern. Cervantes, per- 
 ceiving the failure of his scheme, was the first to come 
 forward ; and, presenting himself at the entrance of the 
 cavern, to declare before the Viceroy's soldiers that 
 none of his companions had any part or blame in that 
 business ; that he alone had persuaded them to fly and 
 to conceal themselves there, and that he had arranged 
 and managed the whole affair. The Turks, surprised 
 at a confession so extraordinary and magnanimous, sent 
 off one of their number to the Viceroy to inform him 
 of what Cervantes had said, with the result that Hassan 
 Pasha ordered all the other captives to be incarcerated 
 in his bagnio, but Cervantes to be conducted to his 
 presence. 
 
 In this crisis of his fate, Miguel de Cervantes owed his 
 escape from a cruel death to his undaunted bearing, — 
 with some aid, perhaps, from the Viceroy's cupidity and 
 jealousy.^ Of all those who had held rule in Algiers 
 under the Turk, Hassan Pasha, the renegade Venetian, 
 was the most noted for his extravagant and inhuman 
 cruelty. Father Haedo's testimony, which is based on 
 that of eye-witnesses, describes his reign as one of the 
 bloodiest in the annals of Algiers. Cervantes himself, 
 who is rarely betrayed into speaking ill of an enemy, 
 has drawn a graphic picture of this monster whom, by 
 a pardonable pleonasm, he styles " the homicide of all 
 human kind." ^ Speaking through the mouth of the 
 
 ^ See Don Quixote, Part I. C. xl.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 85 
 
 captive Captain, Viedma, in the fortieth chapter of the 
 First Part of DON QuixOTE, — " nothing distressed me 
 so much," he says, " as to hear and see at every turn 
 the till then unheard-of and unseen cruelties which 
 my master practised on tha Christians. Every day he 
 hanged a slave ; impaled one ; cut off the ears of 
 another ; and this upon so little occasion, or so entirely 
 without cause, that the Turks would own he did it 
 merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his 
 nature." Over this tyrant Cervantes seems to have 
 exercised some extraordinary influence, which can be 
 attributed only to his undaunted spirit and the singular 
 respect in which he was held by his companions, many 
 of whom were superior to him in rank and in condition. 
 According to the remarkable testimony of Father 
 Haedo, Hassan Pasha was wont to say that, "could 
 he have this maimed Spaniard in safe keeping, he 
 would reckon as secure his Christians, his ships, and his 
 city."^ Threatened with torture and instant death, 
 with the spectacle. of many of his companions hanged 
 or mutilated before his eyes, Cervantes refused to impli- 
 cate any one in his scheme of flight. The Viceroy, who 
 was as greedy as he was cruel, was eager to find some 
 pretext for laying hold of the Redemptorist Father 
 Jorge Olivar, who, in the character of official ransomer 
 for the kingdom of Aragon, was protected by Algerine 
 custom. Could Olivar be proved to have been cogni- 
 
 ^ Dezia Azan Baxd, Rey de Argel, que como el tuviesse guardado 
 al estropeado Espanol tenia seguros sus Christianas, baxeles, y 
 aun todo la ciudad. Hcedo, p. 185.
 
 86 Don Quixote. 
 
 sant of the cavern scheme, there would be a tangible 
 pretext for squeezing out of him a large ransom. But 
 nothing could be got out of Cervantes, whom the 
 Viceroy, — whether for greater safety, or in the belief that 
 so resolute a slave must be»a man of great mark in his 
 own country', and therefore likely to be redeemed at a 
 high price, — purchased from his master, Deli Mami, for 
 500 gold crowns. 
 
 About this period it must have been, in the autumn 
 of 1577, that Cervantes wrote his rhymed epistle to 
 Mateo Vasquez, the Secretary to Philip II. It consists 
 of 81 tercets of 243 lines, beginning with a biogra- 
 phical sketch of the author, in which his acts and ser- 
 vices by sea and land are recited, and concluding with 
 a proposal for a general rising of the Christian slaves 
 in Algiers, to be seconded by an armament from Spain. 
 King Philip was entreated to conclude the work begun 
 with so much daring and valour by his beloved father ; 
 to quell the pride of that pirates' nest ; to take pity on 
 the Christians who, with straining eyes, watch for the 
 coming of the Spanish fleet to unlock their prison 
 doors. Nor does the poet doubt that the "benign Royal 
 bosom " feels the misery of the poor wretches who pine 
 in chains", almost within sight of the sacred, invincible 
 shores of their native land. The adventure, though 
 bold and romantic, was by no means impracticable, 
 and, had there been any chivalry extant in Spain, 
 would have been attempted. The captives in Algiers 
 were strong in numbers. The land was weak ; the 
 city ill-fortified ; and its defenders, divided by blood
 
 Life of Cervantes. 87 
 
 and race, united only by a common faith and lust of 
 gain. The enterprise was far easier than that which, 
 at this time, tempted the madcap Don Sebastian, last 
 of the Portugal Knights Errant, into the neighbouring 
 realm of Morocco. But Philip the Prudent had other 
 designs in view. That benign bosom was occupied 
 just then with his Christian neighbour's heritage. The 
 epistle of Cervantes to Mateo Vasquez probably never 
 got beyond the desk of the Secretary. 
 
 Never weary of seeking for a means of breaking out 
 of his abhorred prison, Cervantes, about the end of 
 1577, made another attempt at evasion. He sent a 
 secret message by a Moor to Don Martin de Cordova, 
 the Governor of Oran, praying him to send some safe 
 Christian men to the frontier to meet himself and some 
 other captives. The unfortunate messenger was inter- 
 cepted and taken before the Viceroy, with his letters, 
 which bore Cervantes' seal and signature. The Moor 
 was ordered to be impaled, and Cervantes to receive 
 two thousand blows with the stick. The captives and 
 others interceded for him, and once more he gave an 
 opportunity to Hassan Pasha to exercise the unfamiliar 
 virtue of clemency. But neither the terrible risks he 
 had run, nor the persistent misfortune which seemed 
 to dog his steps, could keep Cervantes from medi- 
 tating fresh schemes of escape. In September, 1579, 
 there was a Spanish renegade, known when in grace as 
 the Licentiate Giron, of Granada, but, since his back- 
 sliding, as Abderrahman, This renegade, pining to 
 return to his faith and his country, sought out Cervantes,
 
 88 Don Quixote. 
 
 and plotted with him a plan of escape. Two Valen- 
 cian merchants resident in Algiers — Onofre Exarque 
 and Baltasar de Torres — were to provide an armed 
 vessel at their cost, in which sixty of the principal 
 captives were to embark at some favourable moment, 
 under the secret direction of Cervantes. Once again 
 the scheme was frustrated by treachery. One Blanco 
 de Paz, an Arragonese and Dominican monk, who had 
 conceived a bitter enmity against Cervantes, revealed 
 the plot to the Viceroy. Cervantes, we are told, 
 might have escaped himself had he accepted the 
 offer of one of the Valencian merchants to fly with 
 him at once and abandon his companions. But he 
 refused his liberty on these conditions. Meanwhile, 
 the Viceroy, having learnt of the scheme through the 
 information of Blanco de Paz, made public proclama- 
 tion through the city that any one harbouring Cervantes 
 (who had fled from his house and sought refuge with 
 one of his friends) should be punished with death. In 
 order that no Christian might suffer on his behalf, 
 Cervantes came forward voluntarily and presented him- 
 self before the Viceroy. He was seized and bound 
 hands and feet, with a rope round his neck, and 
 threatened with instant death. But Cervantes, pre- 
 serving the utmost serenity, not only refused to incul- 
 pate any one in this design, but, by his ingenious and 
 witty answers, so tempered the wrath of Hassan that 
 for his only punishment he was ordered to be confined 
 in the Moors' prison, which was in the Viceroy's palace, 
 where he was kept for five months, laden with chains
 
 liFE OF Cervantes. 89 
 
 and fetters and guarded with the utmost rigour, acquir- 
 ing, as one of the witnesses of his conduct — Luis de 
 Pedrosa — says, "great fame, praise, honour, and glory 
 among the Christians." ^ Not less wonderful than the 
 constancy and the fortitude displayed by Cervantes 
 through all these trials, was the singular forbearance 
 displayed towards him by those to whom generosity to 
 a Christian slave must have been a virtue very little 
 practised. In recalling the memory of this cruel time 
 afterwards in DoN QuixOTE, Cervantes speaks with a 
 certain complacency of the immunities which his cha- 
 racter among the Algerines had won for him. Captain 
 de Viedma, the captive whose story forms an episode 
 in the First Part of Don Quixote, after reciting some 
 of Hassan Pasha's cruelties, says : — " The only one 
 who held his own with him was a Spanish soldier, called 
 De Saavedra,^ to whom, though he did things which will 
 dwell in the memory of those people for many years, and 
 all for the recovery of his freedom, his master never gave 
 a blow, nor bade any one to do so, nor even spoke to 
 him an ill word, though for the least of the many things 
 
 ^ Navarrete, p. 41 and 358. It seems, by the deposition of some 
 of the witnesses at the enquiry afterwards held on Cervantes' 
 conduct, that he was befriended in this, perhaps his worst strait, 
 by one Morato (Murad), called Maltrapillo (the Sloven), a Murcian 
 renegade and corsair captain, who was one of Hassan's principal 
 favourites. This man is mentioned by Haedo as one of the thirty- 
 five owners and masters of galleys. He may be the Agi Morato 
 (Hadji Murad) who figures conspicuously in Captain Perez de 
 Viedma's story in Don Quixote, Part I. C. xl. 
 
 * i.e., Cervantes. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 90 Don Quixote. 
 
 he did we all feared he would be impaled, as he him- 
 self feared more than once." ^ There is a mystery 
 about this treatment of Cervantes in Algiers which is 
 not explained by the fact that his captors took him to 
 be a person of more importance than he really was. 
 Christian noblemen and gentlemen of high rank and 
 condition were almost daily the victims of Hassan 
 Pasha's inordinate lust for blood ; it being one of the 
 favourite amusements of the tyrant to cut off the noses 
 and ears of those who offended him, especially those 
 who were caught trying to escape. What was the 
 nature of the spell which Cervantes only, of all who 
 fell into his power, was able to exercise over this 
 monster ? That Cervantes was known to be the ring- 
 leader of the malcontent slaves, and suspected of plot- 
 ting a general rising of the Christian captives, were but 
 reasons the more why the Algerines, having him in 
 their power, should do to him as they had done to 
 thousands of his companions. But though they loaded 
 him with irons, and kept him in a duress so strict that 
 Father Haedo says of his captivity it was " one of the 
 worst ever known in Algiers," ^ he was never beaten or 
 hurt or abused in his person. Fear alone could hardly 
 account for this immunity ; still less can we believe, 
 after the emphatic testimony borne by his comrades to 
 
 ^ Don Quixote, Part I. C. xl. 
 
 2 Con ser de los peores que en Argel avia. Hsedo says, more- 
 over, that " had his fortune corresponded to his intrepidity, his 
 industry, and his projects, this day Algiers would belong to the 
 Christians ; for to no other end did his intents aspire." Hcedo, p. 185.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 91 
 
 his unswerving loyalty to creed and country, that his 
 captors treated him with indulgence through any hope 
 of his turning renegade. May we not suppose that 
 there was really more of human nature among those 
 wild corsairs, — that collection of adventurers from all 
 parts of the earth, who held their own so boldly in their 
 pirates' nest against all maritime Christendom, — than 
 the Spanish annalists and monkish chroniclers have 
 been willing to allow ; that the mingled genius and 
 moral greatness of Miguel de Cervantes were enough 
 to account for even that miracle, the clemency of 
 Hassan Pasha ,'' 
 
 Towards the end of 1579 this cruel episode in the life 
 of Cervantes was drawing to its term. In that year 
 the great preparations made by Philip II. for the con- 
 quest of Portugal, the throne of which country was left 
 vacant by the tragic end made by the King Sebastian 
 at Alcazarquivir, in the year preceding,^ spread terror 
 along all the coasts of Barbary ; it being supposed that 
 Philip's object was to make a descent on Algiers. The 
 strenuous efforts made by the Algerines to add to the 
 defences of their port were the occasion of fi'esh suf- 
 fering and hardship to their captives, who were worked 
 day and night on the fortifications. It may be also 
 that the prospect of danger from without made the 
 masters more eager to realise their property in slaves. 
 
 ^ The battle of Alcdzarquivir, where Sebastian, King of Portugal, 
 and all his army were overthrown and destroyed by the Moors 
 under their dying Sultan Muley Muloch, was fought on the 4th of 
 August, 1578.
 
 gi Don Quixote. 
 
 A ransom had been placed upon Cervantes, as we have 
 said, far larger than his friends could afford to pay. 
 Meanwhile, his father and mother, with other relatives, 
 had never ceased in their efforts to raise sufficient funds 
 for the redemption of their younger son. Among the 
 documents found by Cean Bermudez in 1808, in the 
 archives of the Indies at Seville, is the petition pre- 
 sented to the Royal Council, the 17th of March, 1578, 
 by Rodrigo Cervantes, the father, reciting his son's 
 services and praying for assistance to free him from his 
 captivity.^ The Duke of Sesa backed up this petition, 
 writing strongly in Cervantes' favour, — speaking of him 
 as a good soldier who had fought for his Majesty ; 
 whom he had himself recommended for promotion ; and 
 who was deserving of all favour and aid to free him 
 from captivity.^ It does not appear that this appeal 
 met with any direct response. The father, Rodrigo 
 Cervantes, died in 1579, leaving the burden of Miguel's 
 liberation to fall upon the mother, Leonor de Cortinas, 
 and the widowed sister, Andrea de Cervantes. These 
 two women managed to raise between them a sum of 
 300 ducats, equivalent to 3,300 reals.^ A sum about 
 
 ' JVavarrefe, p. 315. 
 
 2 Navarrete, p. 314. Don Carlos de Aragon, Duke of Sesa and 
 Terranova, and lately Viceroy of Sicily, had already borne flattering 
 testimony to Cervantes' services at the battle of Lepanto. He 
 Avas afterwards the great friend and patron of Lope de Vega, and 
 in that character lost sight of the old soldier of Lepanto. 
 
 ^ There is so much confusion in the Spanish coinage of this 
 period, through the same denominations serving for gold and for
 
 Life of Cervantes. 93 
 
 equal to this was got from various other sources, chiefly 
 by way of loan ; and the money was entrusted to 
 Father Juan Gil — -stet nomen in cBternum ! — of the holy 
 order of the Redemptorists, and official Redeemer 
 of Castile.^ Father Gil arrived at Algiers on his mis- 
 sion of mercy on the 29th of May, 1580. The offer 
 of 600 ducats was refused by Hassan, who demanded 
 
 silver pieces, that it is difficult to arrive at an exact estimate of the 
 value of the sums raised for Cervantes' ransom in our money. 
 The dticado, or ducat, used throughout Italy, Spain, and the 
 Mediterranean, was fixed by a decree of Philip II., in 1566, to be 
 of the value of 400 maravedis. As 34 ina?'avedis went to a real, 
 the ducat (of gold) was worth a little^less than 12 reals, which 
 would be about equal to our halfa-crown. The escudo, so called 
 from bearing the royal escutcheon, was always half a doblon, 
 though what a doblon was, — the familiar doubloon of our buc- 
 caneers, so called from bearing the two effigies of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella, — is not so certain. The escudo of gold was worth 10 reals, 
 — a little less than the ducat. The coinage of Spain, especially the 
 gold, was in that age at a premium throughout the Mahomedan 
 countries ; and in all bargains about ransom in Algiers, says Hsedo, it 
 was stipulated that the price should be paid in Spanish gold. The 
 sum contributed by the widow Cervantes for the release of her son 
 would be equal to about ^35 in English money, without allowing 
 for the difference of value in money between that time and this. 
 
 1 To the character and services of this eminent servant of God, 
 Cervantes bears grateful and emphatic testimony in his Trato de 
 Argel, calling him " a most Christian man," known to be friendly 
 to the doing of good, who set an example of great Christianity and 
 great wisdom " (act v.). In the novel of La Espafiola Inglesa^ there 
 is also a graceful tribute to the zeal, courage, and humanity of this 
 most useful and blessed order of Redemptorists, who devoted 
 their lives to the rescuing" of poor Christian captives from slavery, 
 and often were known to give their own persons in pledge to 
 redeem poor captives unable to raise a ransom.
 
 94 Don Quixote. 
 
 i,ooo — that being double the sum he had paid for his 
 slave to Deli Mami. Hassan Pasha had now been re- 
 called from his government, and was on the point of 
 giving up the Viceroyalty to his successor, Jaffier. He 
 had completed his arrangements for the voyage to 
 Constantinople, and Cervantes, with the rest of his 
 slaves, was put on board one of his galleys, chained and 
 fettered. At the last moment, moved by compassion 
 and fearing to let slip the opportunity, Father Gil, by 
 his earnest supplications and efforts among the local 
 merchants and others, was enabled to raise a further 
 sum of 500 esciidos in Spanish gold, with which Hassan 
 was satisfied.^ Cerv^antes disembarked on the 19th of 
 September, once more a free man, having completed 
 just five years of captivity. 
 
 There took place a delay of a few weeks longer 
 before he was enabled once more to set foot on his 
 native soil, through an incident highly characteristic 
 of our hero. His malignant enemy, the Dominican 
 Blanco de Paz, the same who had denounced him to 
 Hassan for his last attempt at escape, had circulated 
 certain calumnies in Spain respecting Cervantes' be- 
 haviour at Algiers during his captivity. In order to 
 obtain greater credit for these inventions, Blanco de 
 
 ^ Thus the total sum paid for Cervantes to his captors, after five 
 years of incessant striving among his relatives and friends, sup- 
 plemented largely by the charity of the Redemptorists and of 
 those who knew him in Algiers, was a little more than ;i{^ioo of 
 English moneys— equal in these days, at the usual reckoning, to 
 about ^500.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 95 
 
 Paz had given himself out to be a familiar of the Holy 
 Office, with a mandate and commission from the King 
 to exercise his functions in Algiers. Whether Blanco 
 de Paz really possessed this character, or whether he 
 was an impostor, is not very clear from the scanty 
 lights we have on this, not the least mysterious passage 
 in Cervantes' history. Considering the malevolence 
 with which he pursued Cervantes, and the strange, in- 
 explicable rancour with which he followed up the feud, 
 apparently for some time after the Algerine episode, — a 
 rancour totally irreconcilable with his being a charlatan 
 or having only a personal quarrel with Cervantes, — I 
 cannot help thinking that there was something more 
 than a private grudge at the bottom of Blanco de Paz 
 and his enmity. That he was a Dominican is certain ; 
 and the Dominicans were but slaves of the Holy Office. 
 In after years it was a Dominican who tried to do 
 Cervantes a mortal injury by disfiguring Don Quixote, 
 and robbing him of the credit and the fruit of his 
 genius.^ Why should Cervantes have taken such pains 
 formally to combat Blanco de Paz, and to contradict 
 his calumnies ? That he did so we may be thankful ; 
 for it is through the investigation held before Father 
 Juan Gil, for want of any judge or commissary qualified 
 to administer justice in Algiers, that we obtain a most 
 minute, vivid, and pathetic picture of Cervantes' life 
 
 ^ The so-called Fernandez Avellaneda, author of the spurious 
 Second Part of Don Quixote^ is demonstrated to have been a priest 
 and a Dominican. Some have supposed that he was Blanco de 
 Paz himself ; but more of this hereafter.
 
 96 Don Quixote. 
 
 during his Algerine captivity. Had there survived 
 no other record than this of the Hfe of Cervantes, — had 
 he not written a Hne of the books which have made him 
 famous, — the proofs we have here of his greatness of 
 soul, constancy, and cheerfulness under the severest of 
 trials which a man could endure, would be sufficient to 
 ensure him lasting fame. The enthusiasm, the alacrity, 
 and the unanimity with which all the witnesses, — includ- 
 ing the captives of the highest rank and character in 
 Algiers, — give their testimony in favour of their beloved 
 comrade, are quite remarkable and without precedent. 
 They speak of him in terms such as no Knight of 
 romance ever deserved ; of his courage in danger ; his 
 resolution under suffering ; his patience in trouble ; his 
 daring and his fertility of resource in action. He seems 
 to have won the hearts of all the captives, both laymen 
 and clerics, by his good humour, unselfish devotion, and 
 kindliness of heart. Finally, the elaborate process, 
 with its twenty-five articles and the individual depo- 
 sitions to each, which lasted over twelve days, was 
 concluded on the 22nd of October, by an affirmation 
 under the hand of Father Juan Gil himself that he 
 knew the parties to the process and all the deponents 
 of personal knowledge ; that Blanco de Paz was a 
 notorious liar and calumniator, hated of all ; and Miguel 
 de Cervantes deserving, for his conduct in captivity, of 
 all the praises which he had received.^ 
 
 ^ See Appendix B, at the end of the Life of Cervantes, for 
 an abstract of all the proceedings at this curious and interesting
 
 Life of Cervantes. 97 
 
 This affair ended, Cervantes left Algiers, landing in 
 Spain with some of his ransomed companions on one 
 of the last days of 1580.^ 
 
 inquiry, with the depositions of the principal witnesses, taken from 
 Navarrete, who quotes the documents in full, from the copy made 
 by Senor Cean Bermudez of the papers found in the Archives of 
 the Indies at Seville. 
 
 1 Cervantes made frequent mention and great use of his Algerian 
 experiences in all his works. The story of the Captive in Doti 
 Quixote is evidently a real passage in the life of one of his fellow- 
 prisoners, in which allusion is made to himself and to some of his 
 own adventures. In several of the novels, as El Aniante Liberal 
 and La Espailola Iiiglesa, are introduced Algerine corsairs and 
 their captives. In the comedy of El Trato de Argel (Life in 
 Algiers), which was thirty years afterwards incorporated in another 
 called Los Bafios de Argel, the scene is laid in Algiers, and 
 Hassan Pasha and other real personages are brought upon the 
 scene. In El Gallardo Espailol, the hero, Saavedra, turns renegade 
 for love, but returns to the true faith and retrieves his honour. 
 In La Gran Sultana, the heroine is a Spanish lady captured by 
 the Algerines, who is taken to Constantinople and captivates the 
 Grand Seiior, — founded on the real story of one Doha Catalina de 
 Oviedo. In Persiles and Sigismunda, there are also captives and 
 corsairs. In all his works Cervantes shows what, for that age, was 
 an unusual familiarity with the Moors, the Mahomedan faith and 
 customs, and the language and idioms of the East, having probably 
 acquired a competent knowledge of colloquial Arabic, as well as 
 of the Lingua Franca, a mixed language then commonly spoken 
 throughout the Levant and the courts of Barbary, — making use 
 of his knowledge occasionally in Don Quixote, in which words of 
 Eastern origin and Eastern ideas are of frequent occurrence. 
 
 VOL. L
 
 98 Don Quixote. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Cervantes returns to Spain — State of the Coimtry tinder 
 Philip II. — Greatness of Philip's Dominion — Signs 
 of Decadence and its Causes — Extraordinary Growth 
 of the Ecclesiastical Power — Influence of Priest- 
 craft — The Inquisition — Cervantes re-e7tters the 
 Military Profession — Service in Portugal — In the 
 Azores — Residence in Lisbon — Quits Military Life. 
 
 CERVANTES returned to Spain to experience that 
 which he has declared to be the greatest pleasure 
 which can be enjoyed in this life, which is " to arrive, after 
 a long captivity, safe and sound to one's native country." 
 Little other cause had he for joy on the termination 
 of his long and cruel slavery. He was now in his 
 thirty-third year, with a courage unbroken and a heart 
 and temper over which fortune seemed to have no 
 power. Yet his condition was desperate enough, in a 
 worldly sense, to need all the resources of his gay and 
 sanguine nature to preserve him from despair. He had 
 come back to Spain, after ten years' absence, disap- 
 pointed in the promise of his life, without a profession, 
 without a career, neither a soldier nor a civilian, not 
 knowing whether he was in the King's service or out of 
 it. To begin the world afresh he was even less favour- 
 ably equipped than he had been as a young man before
 
 Life of Cervantes. 99 
 
 Lepanto. His wounds must have been a serious impe- 
 diment to him in the profession of arms which he had 
 adopted. His chief patron, Don Juan, was now dead ; 
 and such interest as his past services and good cha- 
 racter had won him could scarcely avail him much 
 among the multitude of competitors for preferment. 
 His family were reduced to poverty through their efforts 
 for his release. He himself was encumbered with a 
 portion of the debt which had been incurred for the 
 raising of his ransom, which, small as it was, took 
 him four years to discharge.^ What was there to do 
 in the Spain of Philip H. for the poor maimed soldier, 
 who had not yet discovered the treasure of his own 
 genius ? 
 
 Spain in 1580, to all outward seeming, was at the 
 very height of her power and greatness. During the 
 hundred years preceding she had risen, amidst the 
 wonder and envy of her neighbours, from a cluster of 
 petty states to the foremost place among the nations 
 of the earth. The extinction of the Moorish dominion 
 
 * By a document found among the Archives of the Indies in 
 Valencia, being a cedula or deed in the name of the King Philip 1 1., 
 dated the nth of August, 1584, extending the time during which a 
 certain privilege was granted to Doha Leonor de Cortinas (the 
 mother of Cervantes) for sending merchandise for sale from 
 Valencia to Algiers, it appears that up to this date some of 
 Cervantes' ransom-money was still unpaid to those who had 
 helped his family to raise it ; nor was it until the December fol- 
 lowing that the debt was finally paid off, out of the profits of the 
 cargo for which the King's licence was given.
 
 loo Don Quixote. 
 
 in the Peninsula ; the conquests of her vah'ant soldiers, 
 under a succession of able native generals, in Italy and 
 in Flanders ; the distracted condition of France through 
 internal religious wars ; and a lucky marriage with the 
 House of Austria, had contributed to advance a State 
 hitherto almost a stranger — a quantite negligeable in the 
 policy of Europe — to be the greatest, the strongest, and 
 the wealthiest empire on earth. The heir of the Em- 
 peror Charles V., although he succeeded to but a portion 
 of his father's dominion, was the master of two conti- 
 nents. No monarch since Charlemagne had exercised 
 so wide a rule. In 1580 he had acquired, by the easy 
 conquest of Portugal, the sovereignty of the entire 
 Peninsula. He w^as lord of more than half of Italy, 
 including Lombardy and Naples, wath the islands of 
 Sicily and Sardinia. The states of Tuscany and of 
 Genoa were his vassals. The Duke of Savoy w^as his 
 son-in-law and dependent The Low Countries he 
 still held military possession of, in spite of all the 
 genius and craft of Orange and all the valour and 
 obstinacy of the Dutch. Of the new world Spain held 
 the fairest portion. From Chili to Florida, three- 
 fourths of the known continent was hers. All the 
 w^ealth of the Indies, then not merely a figure of speech, 
 but a substantial yearly tribute, of \vhich the Spanish 
 King was the sole dispenser, was poured into the 
 Spanish ports. Seville had been raised to be the rival 
 of Venice as the emporium of commerce, the mart 
 of the world. By sea and by land Spain was pre- 
 dominant. Her navy was by far the greatest ever seen
 
 Life of Cervantes. ioi 
 
 in Europe, and, in spite of the English adventurers, still 
 held the command of the seas. Her soldiers were 
 acknowledged to be the best, for trained valour and 
 skill, in the world. She was the mingled envy, admira- 
 tion, and terror of her neighbours. She was at the 
 head of European civilisation, and aspired to give law 
 and fashion to all Christendom. Her native art was 
 still in its infancy ; but in literature her golden age 
 had dawned with ex"traordinary splendour. No nation 
 seemed to exhibit the promise of a more exuberant 
 harvest in poetry and in the drama. The age was 
 pregnant with greatness — the soil bursting with the 
 long pent-up life of centuries. Never before had there 
 been such a prospect opened to the national genius. 
 Never had Spain filled so large a space in the eyes of 
 the world. 
 
 At this epoch, when all her greatness was at the 
 highest, the decay of Spain had already begun. The 
 fruit was rotting before it was ripe. Under the rule of 
 Philip n. it was impossible but that the true health and 
 strength of the nation should decline. This puny Atlas 
 had, in 1580, borne the burden of the two worlds now 
 for five-and-twenty years. The patriotic historians trace 
 the decadence of Spain from the degenerate successors 
 of " Philip the Prudent," who himself is always spared 
 from criticism by reason of his orthodoxy, his very 
 Spanish character, and his active repression of heresy, 
 abroad and at home. But there can be no doubt that 
 the mortification in this overgrown carcase of empire 
 had commenced with Philip H. At heart a monk rather
 
 102 Don Quixote. 
 
 than a king, a meaner creature never held dominion 
 over the sons of men. With none of the impulses 
 which contribute to a nation's greatness had Philip the 
 smallest sympathy. He had no taste either for war or 
 for letters. He was splendid only in aiitos de fd. He 
 preferred burning his subjects to any other pastime or 
 exercise. In him the national tendency to intolerance, 
 begotten of the long duel with the Moslem, during 
 which to be a Christian was to be a patriot and a 
 good Spaniard, found its purest expression. He hated 
 poetry, and tried to put down the drama. He was 
 jealous of all intellectual eminence. He had no idea 
 but to strengthen the Church, and conceived of no duty 
 higher than of extirpating freedom of thought through- 
 out his dominions. Under this sour and gloomy despot, 
 who boasted of governing two worlds from his solitary 
 desk, what could ensure the health and prosperity of a 
 great empire ? Nothing is more certain than that the 
 decay of Spain had begun even from the very moment 
 when she was crowned arbitress of the destinies of 
 Europe. There was no real life in the members of this 
 giant body, which lay like a huge polype across two 
 hemispheres. The heart fulfilled none of its functions. 
 The energy which had sustained the people against the 
 Moors seemed to die out suddenly, as a national force, 
 after the conquest of Granada. The discovery of 
 America rather precipitated than retarded the ruin of 
 Spain. All the enterprise, all the chivalry, all the 
 enthusiasm inherited from their Gothic blood seemed to 
 flow in one ceaseless stream across the Atlantic. Cortez
 
 Life of Cervantes. 103 
 
 and Pizarro — the last of the true Knights Errant — 
 sought their adventures in the New World ; and their 
 companions practised in Mexico and in Peru tlie les- 
 sons they had learnt in their romances. There is ample 
 testimony, even in the pages of the native writers, to 
 prove that the discovery of America, instead of being 
 a source of riches, was really a cause of impoverishment 
 to the mother-country. The best blood of Castile was 
 poured out into Mexico and Peru. The lust for gold — • 
 the rage for dominion — absorbed every other whole- 
 some passion, drained every other feeling. There is 
 much reason to doubt whether Spain derived even any 
 material benefit from her American colonies. The ten 
 or twelve millions of gold which were computed, in 
 the most prosperous period, barring accidents and the 
 English buccaneers, to come in every year, were more 
 than counterbalanced by what went out in the shape of 
 men, their industry, and their enterprise. It is certain 
 that Philip's revenue, never estimated at more than six- 
 teen or seventeen millions of dollars, was never equal to 
 his wants. In his correspondence with Don Juan in 
 Flanders, and with his Viceroys in Italy, the one con- 
 stant burden is the inadequacy of the Royal income 
 to supply their demands ; and yet Philip had the one 
 virtue of frugality. The foreign wars had exhausted 
 his treasury. Flanders was an ever open sore — the 
 support of the Catholic League a running issue — the 
 garrisons in Italy a perpetual drain. Of the total 
 revenue of Spain, nearly two-thirds were unavailable 
 for the current expenses of the State, being already
 
 104 Don Quixote. 
 
 pledged to the bankers of Venice or of Genoa. In- 
 deed, the whole realm of Spain was " leased out like to 
 a tenement or a pelting-farm." Every great office was 
 sold for the benefit of the King. The few rich were 
 becoming richer, while the mass of the people were 
 steeped in poverty — a poverty year by year becoming 
 straiter through the increase of the cost of living, caused 
 by the influx of American gold. There was much 
 splendour at Court, and much show of wealth among the 
 grandees and the great ecclesiastics, but we have ample 
 evidence to prove that the nation at large was poor. 
 There was a certain activity of commerce, and a move- 
 ment in industry, greater, perhaps, than there has been 
 since; but the country, as then administered, was a losing 
 business. All public life under Philip II. had been 
 extinguished. Aragon still claimed, indeed, to exercise 
 hex fueros, and sometimes, as in the affair of Antonio 
 Perez, used them to thwart the King's humour.^ But 
 there was very little left of the old provincial constitutions 
 and privileges. All power was centred in the Sovereign, 
 more completely, perhaps, than in any state in Christen- 
 dom. Philip was absolute master of the lives and 
 liberties of his people. The Cortes still met occasion- 
 
 ^ Aragon had, from a remote date, her own especial laws and 
 privileges, fueros, to which she clung with great tenacity, and 
 always possessed a greater share of individual liberty than any of 
 the kingdoms which, under Ferdinand and Isabella, became pro- 
 vinces. Fuero is from Gothic = Latin fonts, from fo7Uin, because, 
 says Covarrubias, the old laws were administered in the market- 
 place.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 105 
 
 ally, indeed, and it was a part of the tyrant's policy to 
 pretend to consult them when he desired to divide his 
 responsibilities ; but, except to vote supplies or to pass 
 resolutions in restraint of vice or luxury, the Cortes 
 had ceased to be a living power in the State. 
 
 One only power was alive, which absorbed all the 
 heart's blood of the nation, whose vigour and vitality 
 were such as, without any other evidence, to demonstrate 
 the decrepitude of Spain. Under Philip II., if nothing 
 else flourished, the Church was in' rude and rampant 
 health. To quote the words of the English Ambassador, 
 Sir Charles Cornwallis (written in the next reign, but 
 as true of the state of things under Philip II.), "the 
 riches of the Temporall hath in a manner all fallen into 
 the mouthes and devouring throates of the Spirituall." 
 Under Philip commenced that rage for religion, — at 
 least, that enthusiasm for the idle and luxurious life 
 led by the monks and nuns, which attained to such 
 prodigious and almost incredible lengths within the 
 next generation. While everything else withered, 
 the Church alone remained green and luxuriant. So 
 vast an establishment for the service of God was, 
 perhaps, never maintained in any other country on 
 earth, with so beggarly a return in the shape of good 
 morals. All virtue, all enthusiasm, all intellect, — what- 
 ever was spared from America, — went in the direction 
 of the Church. There is something positively appalling 
 in the rush which was made towards the religious life 
 and the religious endowments in that age and in the 
 succeeding one. The Spanish writers, in their pious 
 VOL. I. P
 
 io6 Don Quixote. 
 
 exultation, are even too profuse of their details. In 
 a petition to the King, only a few years after Philip II.'s 
 death, the Cortes, — even the Cortes, — express their 
 alarm at the multiplication of churches and convents. 
 They say that there were in Spain 9,088 monasteries, 
 not reckoning the nunneries, who " little by little, with 
 dotations, confraternities, chapelries, or purchases, are 
 getting the whole kingdom into their power." ^ In the 
 beginning of the reign of Philip's son, the two orders 
 of Dominicans and Franciscans alone numbered 32,000. 
 In two bishoprics, Calahorra and Pamplona, Davila 
 reckons that there were 24,000 of clergy. In the diocese 
 of Seville there were 14,000 ministers of religion, the 
 cathedral alone engaging the services of a hundred 
 priests.- Within the whole dominions of Philip, with 
 a population, excluding the wild Indians of South 
 America, which could not have exceeded 50,000,000,^ 
 
 1 See the authorities quoted by Buckle in his famous chapter on 
 the history of the Spanish intellect, in his History of Civilization, 
 vol. ii. p. 476. I have never found Buckle wrong in his citations, 
 though often hasty in his conclusions. 
 
 ^ See Davila and Yanez, in their histories of Philip III., 
 Geronimo de Cevallos, Disciirso de los Razones, and a cloud of 
 other witnesses, lay and ecclesiastic. 
 
 ^ Ticknor and others make it 100,000,000 ; but this is surely an 
 exaggeration, unless we include all the unreclaimed Indians of 
 Mexico and South America. In Spain, the population, which 
 under the Romans used to be reckoned at 14,000,000 (probably 
 an exaggeration), and in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella at 
 15,000,000, had declined at the end of Philip's reign, to 12,000,000. 
 The Milanese, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and the other Itahan
 
 Life of Cervantes. 107 
 
 there were 58 archbishops, 684 bishops, 11,400 abbeys, 
 936 chapters, 127,000 parishes, 7,000 religious hos- 
 pitals, 23,000 religious orders and confraternities, 
 46,000 monasteries, 13,500 nunneries, 312,000 secular 
 priests, 400,000 monks, 200,000 friars and other eccle- 
 siastics.^ About 1,000,000 human beings cut off from 
 natural and wholesome life, and dedicated to a life of 
 idleness, whether in mortification or in luxury ! To 
 crown all, there hung over the land the black shadow of 
 the Inquisition. The age of most abundance and fruitful- 
 ness in Spain, — the seed-time, if not the harvest, of 
 the national genius, — was also unhappily the age of 
 the greatest oppression. The crop, debarred from free 
 growth, shut out from wholesome light and air, chilled 
 and stunted by the cold breath of the Holy Office, 
 produced little but sickly and distorted weeds. The 
 period of activity in art and in letters coincided with 
 the renewed vigour of the Church against heresy and 
 free thought. What Bossuet called " the holy severity 
 
 dominions of Spain might have contained a third more. The 
 Low Countries could not have numbered more than 4,000,000. 
 This leaves 18,000,000 for America and the colonies. 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. Dunham, in his History of Spam, on the whole 
 an honest piece of work, though with a strong bent towards abso- 
 lutism and ecclesiasticism, quotes these figures not only without 
 wonder but actually with a certain complacency, defending them 
 as " not so outrageous," and as evidencing a state of things over 
 which good Churchmen should rejoice, following up this glorious 
 list of good things belonging to the Church with the remark that 
 " at this time the state of the Peninsular population was one of 
 comparative comfort ! "
 
 ro8 Don Quixote. 
 
 of the Church of Rome, which will not tolerate error," 
 was never more conspicuous than in the reign of 
 Philip 11. The Inquisition, which had been compara- 
 tively idle during the tolerant age of Charles, had 
 broken out into new heat under his son. From 1556 
 to 1597, the tale of heretics roasted gives a total of 
 3,990, or about 140 a year; besides 18,450 imprisoned 
 and sent to the galleys. With this dread tribunal, with 
 its secret processes, its mysterious agents, and its in- 
 visible spies, darkening every act of life, what nation, 
 with all its material wealth and its vigour of spirit, 
 could hope to retain greatness ? Is there any wonder 
 that the state of Spain, in spite of shows of vigour, of a 
 certain pomp and bustle which imposed on the world, 
 should be radically unsound after twenty-five years of 
 such a reign as Philip's ? 
 
 Such a world as this it was into which Cervantes, 
 with his gifts, his experiences, and his yearnings, was 
 launched in the year 1580. The records of his life 
 at this period are extremely scanty ; but it seems that, 
 despairing of any other employment, Cervantes was 
 driven to take service again as a common soldier, 
 resuming his place in his old regiment of Figueroa, 
 which now formed part of the army destined for the 
 subjugation of Portugal. In the beginning of 1580, 
 King Philip was lying at Badajoz, sick of fever and 
 of grief, it is said, for the loss of his fourth wife, Anne, 
 of Austria. By the spring of the next year, the Duke 
 of Alva had completed the conquest of Portugal ; but 
 Dom Antonio, the Prior of Ocrato, a rival claimant to
 
 Life of Cervantes. 109 
 
 the throne, had gathered a force of his adherents at 
 the Azores, which he was occupying with a fleet, 
 strengthened by some English and French ships.^ An 
 expedition was organised at Lisbon against him, under 
 the veteran commander, Don Alvaro de Bazan, the 
 Marquess of Santa Cruz, in which Rodrigo Cervantes 
 took a part, and probably his brother also. The head- 
 quarters of the regiment of Figueroa were at Lisbon. 
 Some disputes between the naval and military com- 
 manders seem to have frustrated the first expedition 
 against Dom Antonio, and it was not until the summer 
 of 1582 that the fleet under the command of the Mar- 
 quess de Santa Cruz was able to attack the allied 
 Portuguese, French, and English ships off the island 
 of Terceira. Miguel de Cervantes and his brother 
 Rodrigo were in the action fought on the 25 th of 
 July, 1582, being on board the galleon Suit Mateo ^ . 
 
 ' Dom Antonio, who figures in history as the Prior of Ocrato, 
 was the illegitimate son of Dom Luis, the brother of Dom Joam III., 
 who died in 1557. Philip claimed the throne of Portugal through 
 his mother, the Infanta Isabella, sister of King Joam III. Both 
 England and France supported the claims of Dom Antonio, and 
 lent him some assistance, — Elizabeth, as was her wont, in a very 
 niggardly spirit, and, of course, not so much for love of him as 
 out of hatred to Philip, and in accordance with her policy of war 
 with Spain at all points. Very little is known from English or 
 French sources of this allied expedition in aid of Dom Antonio, 
 and it seems probable that the assistance given, at least on the 
 part of England, was limited to a few ships under private adven- 
 turers. The French were more conspicuous in this affair. 
 
 2 See Navarrete, p . 60. The San Mateo seems to have been 
 the centre round which the battle raged.
 
 no Don Quixote. 
 
 which was attacked by several of the French ships. 
 The result of the day's fighting was to give the 
 Spaniards a complete and decisive victory — about the 
 last ever achieved by them at sea. The Marquess 
 de Santa Cruz returned to Lisbon on the 25th of 
 September. His work, however, was not yet done, for 
 a third expedition was despatched in the following year 
 against the refractoiy Dom Antonio, whose adherents 
 had made head again, leaving Lisbon on the 23rd of 
 June. Terceira was again the scene of an obstinate 
 struggle, in which Rodrigo Cervantes so greatly dis- 
 tinguished himself by his personal valour as to obtain 
 the notice of his commander and promotion in the ser- 
 vice.i Whether Miguel also was in this expedition is not 
 certain. We know from his own memorial to the King, 
 some years afterwards, petitioning for employment, that 
 he served under the Marquess de Santa Cruz in the 
 Azores,^ but it was probably in no very active or pro- 
 minent capacity. In a contemporary record of the 
 campaign in the Azores, appears an eulogistic sonnet 
 by Miguel de Cervantes, in which "the great Marquess" 
 (the same whose beard was singed by Drake at the 
 entrance of the Tagus in 1585), the first Admiral-in- 
 
 * See Navarrete, p. 62. 
 
 "^ The petition will be given in full in its due place. It was 
 found by Cean Bermudez, among other documents relating to Cer- 
 vantes, in the archives of the Indies at Seville, in the year 1808. 
 It is dated 1590, and is backed up by one from the Duke of Sesa, 
 confirming what Cervantes says of his public sen^ices.
 
 Life of Cervantes. ill 
 
 Chief of the Invincible Armada, is exalted for his great 
 deeds in the usual hyperbolical style of the period.^ 
 After the completion of the work in the Azores, and 
 the suppression of Dom Antonio, the Spanish fleet re- 
 turned to port, on this occasion to Cadiz, there to 
 receive, says the historian, the applause of all good 
 Spaniards. 
 
 With this ended the military career of Miguel de 
 Cervantes, The precise date of his leaving the regiment 
 of Figueroa is not recorded. During his stay in Lisbon, 
 he conceived a favourable opinion of the Portuguese 
 and of their city, lavishing on them much praise for 
 their agreeable, courteous, and liberal manners ; com- 
 mending their language as sweet and pleasant, and 
 especially admiring the beauty and lovable qualities 
 of their women,^ — praise rarely earned by the Portuguese 
 from their neighbours, and in that age especially most 
 uncommon. Cervantes had room in his large heart for 
 every one, — Moors, Portuguese, even Englishmen, — in 
 
 1 Comentarios de la Jornada de las islas Azores, by Cristobal 
 Mosquera de Figueroa, published after the death of this famous 
 warrior in 1585, whose deeds as thus celebrated, Cervantes declares, 
 " neither oblivion, nor time, nor death can consume." 
 
 "How deeply imprinted on the heart of Cervantes was the memory 
 of this pleasant time in Portugal, is proved by the singular en- 
 thusiasm with which he speaks of the country and of the people 
 thirty years afterwards in his Persilesy Sigismunda (bk. iii. ch. vii.). 
 This was in an age when, as Byron says in Childe Harold — 
 
 " Well did the Spanish hind the difference know 
 'Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low."
 
 112 Don Quixote. 
 
 days when the Engh'sh Queen was looked upon by 
 Spanish patriots as a monster outside of humanity, and 
 when Lope de Vega could write his Dragontea, full of 
 foaming wrath and spite, over the dead Sir Francis 
 Drake. Of the Portuguese ladies, Cervantes' good 
 opinion was not without return. He had an amour with 
 one unknown, by tradition a lady of high quality, the 
 fruit of which was a daughter, Isabel, his only child, her 
 father's constant companion till his death.^ 
 
 At some period, which his biographers have not been 
 able to fix with any certainty, but probably subsequent 
 to his return from the last expedition under the Mar- 
 quess of Santa Cruz, Cervantes was at Mostagan, on 
 the coast of Barbary, then a Spanish possession, whence 
 he was sent to Spain by the Governor with despatches 
 for the King, by whom he was ordered on some service, 
 most likely in connexion with the provisioning of the 
 troops, to Oran, where also was a Spanish garrison.^ 
 This employment, which may have flattered Cervantes' 
 hopes of civil preferment, seems to have led to no 
 immediate results. 
 
 Meanwhile Cervantes was engaged in preparing for 
 the press his first acknowledged work, a mixed prose 
 and poetical romance, upon the model of the pastorals 
 
 ' Called Dona Isabel de Saavedra, who, after her father's death 
 took the veil, and entered a convent of bare-footed Trinitarian 
 nuns at Madrid. 
 
 ^ The sole authority for these facts is Cervantes' memorial to 
 the King in 1590, in which they are recited.
 
 Life of Cervantes! .113 
 
 then in fashion, entitled Galatea. He had also in con- 
 templation about this time another important step in 
 his life, which was his marriage.^ 
 
 ' Sir Richard Burtqn, in one of his notes to the translation of 
 the Lusiads (vol, iii. p. 67), remarks that " seeing they must often • 
 have heard of one another, curious to say, Camoens never men- 
 tions Cervantes." It would have been curious if he had. Camoens 
 was born in 1524, — twenty-three year^ before . Cervantes. The 
 Licsiads were published in 1572. He died in 1579, — six years 
 before Cervantes published his first book. Cervantes mentions 
 Camoens once in D071 Quixote (Part I. C. Iviii.). 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 114 Don QOixote. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Begins his career- as a Man of Letters— Story 'of ■ his 
 
 Portraits^— Ideal Portrait- by Kent — The Conde del 
 
 A^uilds Picture — Asensids Discovery — Description' 
 
 . qf Himself — Publication of . Galatea— Marriage . _ ■ 
 
 NEW epoch in the life of Cervantes opens in 
 1584: In that year he printed his first book, 
 and marne.d. a wife — these two momentous steps being, 
 in more than one way, connected. He was now in 'his 
 thirty-seventh year ; .and perhaps there. couM be no 
 more fitting time to describe his personal appearance. 
 There is no curiosity so natural or reasonable as that 
 which seeks «to . know how. the great men of the. past, 
 whose names are eternal, looked to the world when 
 alive. Few men .there are whose' images .we .should 
 mo.re gladly, call up than that of the author of DpN 
 Quixote. Unhappily, his. own creations have a 
 more real bodily presence .thari is retained by their, 
 creator. The images of Don .QuixbXE and of Sancho 
 Panza we can call up \yith a sufficient distinctness, 
 in spite, of all that several generations of painters 
 and engravers have done to distort and disfigure Cer- 
 vantes' ideals. But of Cervantes himself we have not, 
 alas ! any pictured memorial. The Stratford bust 
 and the Droeshout portrait have done something, if not
 
 Life OF Cervantes. 115 
 
 very much, to enable us to realise the. features of 
 Shakespeare. But the country of Cervantes has pre- 
 served no true effigy or picture which can be safely 
 accepted as the portrait of the author of Don Quixote. 
 Careless in every point and circumstance of their 
 greatest genius, neglectful of him when he lived, they . 
 who forgot where he was born, and still do not know 
 where he. was buried, have, by. a supreme and almost 
 incredible .piece of apathy, even allowed all trace of at 
 least two portraits of Cervantes, which were painted in 
 his lifetime by. well-khown artists, to be lost, or, if 
 extant, to be past identification. More fortunate than 
 his contemporary, Shakespeare, Cervantes lived in an 
 age. when art was in the full vigour of its spring. He 
 is known to haye been intimate with two of the best of 
 the early Spanish painters — Francisco Pacheco, the 
 master and father. -in -law of Velasquez, and Juan 
 Jauregiiy, poet as well as artist, whom our author ex- 
 tols in several of his writings. There is no reason for 
 doubting the statement, — in itself most credible, and 
 confirmed by what Cervantes himself says, at least in 
 regard to one of them,^ — that by both Cervantes' portrait 
 
 * See the opening sentences of the address to the reader in the 
 Prologue to Novelas Exemplares. Cervantes is apologising for 
 some friend who, like many others in the course of his life, has 
 dealt with him rather according to his worldly state than his 
 genius, "' which friend might well have engraved and sculp'd me 
 on the first leaf, since the famous D. Juan de Jaureguy gave him 
 my portrait." I cannot understand any one reading the Avords 
 and concluding, as a recent English translator has done (who 
 seems to think that Cervantes got no more than his deserts in hig
 
 ii6 Don Quixote. . 
 
 w^s painted. Pachcco is known to have made a col- 
 lection of a hundred and seventy portraits, in black and 
 red chalk, of all the most eminent men of his tirne ; and 
 that Cervantes' portrait was among them cannot be 
 doubted.' That a portrait by Jaureguy existed, from 
 
 treatment by his countrymen) that " they imply nothing more than 
 that Jaureguy could or would paint a portrait of him if asked to do 
 so." Surely they imply that there was such a picture, but that the 
 friend who might have engraved it for the book, failed to do so, as 
 Cervantes hints, because he v,-as not s'ure of being paid for his 
 work. It is not the picture, but the print from it, the absence 
 of which Ccr^-antes so good-'humouredly bewails, in the reader's 
 interest. 
 
 ' See Navarrefe, pp. 92, 196, and 537. Navarrete, who in 
 matters of fact may be entirely trusted, quotes from the Grandezas 
 de Espafia of Pedro de Medina, published in 1590, in which, 
 speaking of Seville, the author says it was the centre of men of 
 learning and letters. In that year Cervantes was residing at 
 Seville; now well known by his poems and plays; and Pacheco, a 
 great lover of literary company and a poet himself, was one of his 
 friends. It is Pacheco himself who tells us, in his Arte de la 
 Pinttira (bk. iii. ch. viii.), that he had drawn more than a hundred 
 and seventy portraits in black and red chalk. Rodrigo Caro, in 
 his Claros Varones de Sevilla^ confirms • Pacheco's statement, 
 adding that to every portrait was appended an eulogy, and that of 
 the whole collection a volume was made which Pacheco sent to 
 the Conde-Duque de Olivares, the celebrated favourite of Philip IV. 
 Pacheco, born in 1568, lived to 1654. After his death his collection 
 of portraits was broken up, some of them- being engraved in various 
 books of that and the following century. In 1830 the book, with 
 a reduced number of drawings, was in the possession of one Don 
 Vicente Aviles. From him or his successors it passed, in 1864, 
 after various fortunes, into the hands of Senor Asensio, one of 
 the most devoted, persevering, and enlightened of all modern 
 Cervantists, who has done so much by his own laboiu's to atone
 
 Life of Cervantes. 117 
 
 which an engraving was to have been made, to be 
 affixed to the first edition of the Novelas Exemplares, 
 we know by the opening words of the author's preface, 
 apologising to his readers for its non - appearance. 
 What has become of these two portraits .-' For more 
 than a hundred years, — since Spain awoke to discover 
 the merit of the author of Don Quixote, — they have 
 been lost. If they exist at all, they are hidden away 
 in some old museum or private gallery, doing duty, 
 perhaps, for ancestors of the family, or portraits of 
 gentlemen. But what, then, it will be said, of that 
 stately and ultra-Spanish face, which looks out upon 
 us in all the modern editions of Don Quixote, — that 
 " portrait of a gentleman," in a dress of surprising 
 splendour and newness such, as Cervantes never wore 
 in his life, — he who had not even a cloak in his old .age 
 to clothe him before Apollo,^ — all starched and frilled 
 in a collar of the period, in a close-buttoned doublet of 
 
 for the past ill-treatment of Cervantes by his countrymen. The 
 precious volume, which has been carefully reproduced by photo- 
 lithography (Seville, 1869), pow contains only fifty-six . portraits, 
 among which, unhappily, Cervantes is not to be found. See for 
 a very full account ' of Pacheco's work and its history Asensio's 
 Franciscd Pacheco, stis Obras Artisticas y Literarias, Seville, 
 1886. 
 
 ^ See his reply when advised by Apollo to show no resentment 
 at unkind Fortune, but to " fold up his cloak and sit thereon " : — 
 
 — Bien parece, senor, que no se advierte, 
 Le respondi, que yo no tengb capa. 
 
 (" It seems, my Lord, then that you have not noted," 
 I answered him, " that I possess no cloak.")
 
 iiS Don Quixote. 
 
 the fashionable cut, who so long has decorated our 
 frontispieces, to the confusion of all physiognomy ? 
 Unhappily for those who insist upon a portrait of the 
 real man,— perhaps happily for Cervantes and his cha- 
 racter,— this is an impostor, who is easily exposed. 
 The story of how this head came to delude the 
 world as the vera effigies of the great Spaniard is a 
 singular one. When, in 173S, Lord Carteret, to please 
 Queen Caroline, brought out his fine edition of DON 
 Quixote in four large quarto volumes,— the first in 
 which the. text received due honour as a classic, and 
 still one of the handsomest which has ever appeared, 
 printed in all the luxury of Tonson's type, and adorned 
 with gorgeous and ghastly sculptures by Vandcrbank 
 and Vandergutch,— :all possible ■ efforts -were made, 
 through the British Ambassador in Spain, to discover 
 a portrait of Cervantes, to be engraved in the frontis- 
 piece. According to the opening, sentence in Dr. Old- 
 field's preface, no portrait of Miguel de Cervantes could 
 be found, in. spite of all the inquiries made.' In this 
 extremity William Kent, the well-known English artist, 
 was set to make a -figure of the author of DON 
 Quixote which should be appropriate to his great 
 
 ' No aviendo hallado {J)or mas. solicitud que se ay a puesto) 
 retrato alguno de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, ha -parecido con- 
 vejiiente poner en el frantispicio de.su Historia de Don Quixote de 
 la Manchd una represejitacion que figure el grd7t desiguio que tuvo ■ 
 tan ingenioso Autor — says Dr. Oldfield. {Adveriencias sabre las 
 estampas'desta Hisioria,m the -'first- page of Vol. I. oi \h.Q.pon 
 Qteixote oS 17^8.) " ' •
 
 Life qf Cervantes.' 119 
 
 design in writing that book. This task William Kent 
 executed Lri all good faith and with perfect honesty, 
 taking for his guidance . the minute and particular 
 account of his person and features which Cervantes 
 himself drew in the^ prologue' to the Novelas Exemplares\ 
 in lieu of the print after J aure'guy, of which he was 
 disappointed— which, perhaps, he could not afford to 
 have (engraved.;. That there was. no attempt at decep- 
 tion, by palming off an .imaginary for a true portrait, is- 
 proved by the \Q.\X.tx\n^—:Retratode Miguel de Cervantes 
 per el Mismo. (Portrait of .Miguel de Cervantes by 
 Himself). The figure is a three-quarter length, repre-. 
 senting a man in the prime of life, elegantly attired, 
 with the well-known riiff and frills, seated on a chair, 
 \yith a pen in his hand. The left arm ends at the 
 wrist in. a stump. In the background is a picture .of. 
 DON' Quixote on horseback, fully armed, with Sancho' 
 . on- his' ass. behind. ' In the margin is the painter's 
 name and legend^ — " G. Kent invent et delin." The 
 design is wholly conventional, precisely such as any 
 •foreigri artist. might have drawn out of his owin imagi- 
 . nation after reading Cervantes' description of himself 
 and hearihg a little about DoN Quixote. That this 
 coxild be no true portrait, and that the print could not 
 have, been copied out of any contemporary picture or 
 ' engraving, is proved by the left hand being represented 
 as mutilated, and by the introduction of DON QuixOTE 
 ' and Sancho Panza. Cervantes' left hand, aS we have 
 shown in a previous chapter, had not been lopped off, 
 but only disabkd ; nor. is he known to have been painted
 
 120 Don Quixote. 
 
 by any one after the publication of DON QUIXOTE, when 
 he was nearly sixty years of age. 
 
 This fanciful picture drawn by the English artist, 
 William Kent, to decorate the first great English edition 
 of Don Quixote, has served as the basis of all the 
 existing portraits of Cervantes. The invention proved 
 an entire success, — that highly-typical Spaniard, with 
 the hooked nose, the large moustache, the round eyes 
 and the baby mouth, in the portentous collar, having 
 achieved, a triumph such as few works of English art 
 ever won outside of England. The after-history of this 
 child of William Kent's fancy is very curious. When, 
 some forty years afterwards, the Spanish Acadeniy, 
 shamed by the homage paid to Cervantes by foreigners, 
 brought out their own first classical edition of DON 
 Quixote, more fortunate than the English editors, 
 they were able to give what claimed to be a true por- 
 trait of the author. The narrative of its discovery, aS 
 told by the Spanish editors in their preface, is as 
 romantic as the story told by the author himself of 
 the finding of the missing portion of DON QUIXOTE^ — 
 fitting into its place, at the head of the first Spanish 
 edition, .with a neatness, and felicity none the less 
 admirable for being wholly undesigned. The editors 
 begin by ingenuously confessing that all trace of the 
 two portraits of Cervantes known to have been painted 
 in his lifetime were at that date (1780) lost beyond 
 recovery. But by great good luck, precisely when they 
 
 * See Don Quixote, Part I.. C. viii.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 121 
 
 most wanted a portrait with which to deck their edition, 
 the Conde del Aguila, a patriotic nobleman of Seville, 
 was found to possess one. The Conde del Aguila had 
 purchased it some years before of a picture-dealer in 
 Madrid, who sold it as the work of Alonso del Arco. 
 But here was a little difficulty, as the Academy naively 
 suggest. Alonso del Arco, the deaf and dumb painter, 
 was born in 1625, nine years after the death of Cer- 
 vantes, so that he could not have painted his picture 
 from the life. The Academy, however, wanted a portrait 
 of Cervantes badly, in order to be on a level with their 
 English rivals. They seem to have pursued their in- 
 vestigations in the spirit of cautious research with which 
 Don Quixote tested his helmet, which, on the first 
 trial, we learn that he demolished with ease ; " and so, 
 without caring to make a fresh trial of it, he constituted 
 and accepted it for a very perfect good helmet." The 
 Academy, fearing to prove too much and to lose their 
 prize if they persevered with their inquiries, pronounced 
 the Conde del Aguila's picture a very good and proper 
 portrait — if not an original, probably the copy of some 
 original by Jaureguy, or Pacheco, or some one else, 
 executed in Cervantes' lifetime. It was accordingly 
 engraved and prefixed to the great edition of DON 
 Quixote printed by Ibarra in 1780, with copper-plates 
 by native artists, which were at least as grotesque and 
 even worse drawn than the rival Dutch embellishments. 
 But now a strange thing appeared. The portrait in the 
 Academy's edition, which was a bust only, was found 
 to be identical in feature, in look, and in pose with 
 VOL. I. R
 
 122 Don Quixote. 
 
 Kent's ideal portrait of 1738. It was in an oval frame, 
 bordered with appropriate emblematical devices, show- 
 ing only the face and the upper part of the body, but 
 with the same dress, the same starched and enormous 
 ruff, the same pronounced aquiline nose, and smug, 
 well-contented expression, with the eyes even a size 
 larger and rounder, the mouth even smaller, and the 
 moustache more trim and pointed. The Academy's 
 own explanation of this mystery (of which the true 
 solution is, of course, that the Conde del Aguila, or the 
 dealer who sold him the picture, had copied the English 
 print) can scarcely be said to be satisfactory, as, indeed, 
 it has not satisfied even Spaniards themselves. They 
 submitted, they say, Conde del Aguila's picture to two 
 professional painters, who, comparing it with Kent's 
 print, came to the conclusion that it was the older of 
 the two ; that the style was of the schools of Vincenzo 
 Carducho and Eugenio Cajes, who flourished in the 
 reign of Philip IV. ; and that, though not a contem- 
 porary portrait, it must have been copied from an older 
 picture, probably of the time of Cervantes. These con- 
 clusions, which to an unprejudiced judgment appear to 
 be self-contradictory and mutually destructive, were 
 accepted by the Academy as decisive. While admitting 
 that the one portrait must have been a copy of the 
 other, they tried to make the world believe, as several 
 generations of good Spaniards believed, that it was 
 the earlier one which was the copy, the later the 
 true original. This absurd theory cannot deceive 
 any but those who desire to be deceived. Putting
 
 Life of Cervantes. 123 
 
 aside the palpable internal evidences of falsity in 
 the picture itself, — the features, which could never 
 have belonged to Cervantes ; the costume, which 
 he never could have worn ; the accessories, which 
 openly proclaim the forgery, — the idea that the 
 English editors, having a true portrait before them 
 wherewith for the first time to adorn an edition 
 of Don Quixote and give it value, should delibe- 
 rately lie and palm off an imaginary for a real 
 picture, is too preposterous to need a word in its 
 refutation.^ 
 
 To the long story of the quest of Cervantes' portrait 
 there yet belongs another chapter. Not content with 
 the effigy which had done duty for so many years 
 among Spaniards as the true image of Miguel de Cer- 
 vantes, a gentleman of Seville, Don Jose Maria Asensio 
 y Toledo, one of the most ardent and enlightened of 
 the modern race of Cervantophiles, who has done 
 
 ' Navarrete, like a good Spaniard, accepts the decision of the 
 Academy, which Ticknor also seems to support, on the ground 
 that " the old picture," meaning Conde del Aguila's, is " coiifornte 
 en todo^^ with the author's own description of himself. But it 
 must be evident that this can be no proof of its genuineness ; for, of 
 course, the painter, whoever he was, would take care to keep as 
 close to the v/ritten description as he could. By the majority of 
 Spanish Cervantists in the present day, the puerile fable of the 
 Conde del Aguila's picture is rejected ; the fancy portrait by Kent 
 being admitted to be the original. Yet to this day the national 
 artists go on repeating the same well-worn face on canvas, in 
 stone, and in brass ; and the national poets continue to write 
 sonnets on that forged nose and those artificial eyes.
 
 124 Don Quixote. 
 
 knight's service in the cause of the author of DON 
 OuiXOTE, following up a clue contained in a certain 
 anonymous manuscript relating to the history of his 
 native city, was led to search among certain pictures 
 known to have been painted by Pacheco for a convent 
 at Seville. In the manuscript was a note to the effect 
 that in one of six pictures was a portrait of Miguel 
 de Cervantes. The pictures were a series intended to 
 celebrate the good deeds of the brethren of the Re- 
 demptorist Order, in the release of captives from 
 Algiers, Pacheco was known to be a friend of Cer- 
 vantes ; and Cervantes was certainly among the most 
 famous of the captives redeemed from Algiers. Fur- 
 nished with these lights, Senor Asensio, aided by some 
 artist friends, made a careful search among Pacheco's 
 six pictures now in the Provincial Museum of Seville. 
 Among them was one numbered and described : " No. 
 19. San Pedro de Nolasco en tino de los pasos de sit 
 vida " (St. Peter of Nola in one of the passages of his 
 life). It represents a boat putting off from the Algerian 
 shore, in and about which are seven figures, one of 
 which is the saint himself, apparently in the act of 
 embarking. Among the other six, which Senor Asensio 
 has satisfied himself are all portraits, is a man standing 
 on the stem of the boat, pushing her off from shore 
 with a pole — attired like a sailor, with bare legs and 
 feet, and a wide, low-crowned hat. He has his face 
 turned to the spectator, as though the artist intended 
 him to be fully seen. This is Miguel de Cervantes, 
 according to Senor Asensio. Unfortunately, the con-
 
 Life of Cervantes. 125 
 
 elusion is but the last step of a long process of conjec- 
 ture. There is no proof whatever that Sefior Asensio 
 is right ; nor can there be any proof until the missing 
 sketch of Cervantes in black and red, known to have 
 been included in Pacheco's contemporary book of 
 portraits, is discovered. All we can say in favour of 
 Sexior Asensio's hypothesis is that it is a very ingenious 
 and plausible one. That it may prove to be true should 
 be the prayer of every lover of Cervantes. For this 
 might be, if it is not, the portrait of the author of DON 
 Quixote ; and, at least, it is vastly better than the 
 cheat which has long imposed on the world — the terrible 
 creature of Kent's fancy. The figure in the boat repre- 
 sents a man in the prime of early manhood, such as 
 Cervantes was when he was released from captivity. 
 The face, though badly modelled and ill drawn, is a 
 singularly fine one, and such as might well belong to 
 Miguel de Cervantes. The broad forehead, the beau- 
 tiful eyes, the well-defined and prominent nose, the 
 shapely head set upon a manly neck and shoulders, — 
 are somewhat marred by a. weak chin and jaw ; but 
 the physiognomist will discover in all these features 
 nothing but what is characteristic of the genius and 
 temperament of Cervantes. Senor Asensio rather spoils 
 his own case by saying, as a climax to his reasoning 
 in favour of the truth of his discovery, that the face 
 of el barqiiero resembles that in the Conde del 
 Aguila's picture. But that which is a forgery can 
 lend no confirmation to that which claims to be 
 true. The two portraits are really quite distinct, and
 
 126 Don Quixote. 
 
 could never have been painted of one and the same 
 
 man 
 
 A far better testimony in favour of el barquero is that 
 his features tally exactly with the portrait of himself 
 which Cer\^antes has painted in words.^ In the pro- 
 logue to his Novels, written when he was in his sixty- 
 sixth year, after asking his readers to excuse him for 
 not giving them an engraving from Jaureguy's picture 
 in the frontispiece, he thus paints himself : — " He whom 
 you see here, of aquiline feature, with chestnut hair, a 
 smooth, unruffled forehead, with sparkling eyes, and a 
 nose arched, though v/ell proportioned, — a beard of 
 silver which, not twenty years since, was of gold, great 
 moustaches, a small mouth, the teeth of no account, 
 
 ' See Asensio's Nuevos Documentos para ilustrar la vida de 
 Miguel de Cervantes^ &:c. Seville, 1864. I write with a copy of 
 the head and bust of el barquero in colours before me, for which I 
 am indebted to the kindness of Senor Asensio. The head has 
 been engraved in Sir "William Stirling's Life of Don fohn oj 
 Austria, who takes it unreservedly as a genuine portrait of 
 Cervantes. It also appears in the frontispiece to Mr. Gibson's 
 translation of the Viaje del Parnaso. In neither of these etchings is 
 the expression of the original well conveyed. The eyes, especially, 
 are of a wonderful softness and brilliancy in the original, and the 
 chin and jaw not quite so feeble as in the reproductions. 
 
 ^ Here I must differ from Ticknor, who, in a note to Asensio's 
 book, printed in the catalogue of his library at Boston, says that 
 " the handsome boatman is very unlike the description Cervantes 
 gives of himself" Ticknor could not have seen the original picture 
 at Seville, and is evidently speaking of the print given in Asensio's 
 book, which is by no means a satisfactory reproduction of 
 Pacheco's figure.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 127 
 
 for he has but six of them, and they in bad condition 
 and worse arranged, for they do not hold correspon- 
 dence one with another ; the body, between two extremes, 
 neither great nor Httle ; the complexion bright, rather 
 white than brown, somewhat heavy in the shoulders — 
 this, I say, is the aspect of the author of DON QuiXOTE 
 of La Mancha." ^ With this, which presents to us a 
 sufficiently striking and attractive personality, the world 
 must be content. To enable us still further to call up 
 the image of the man before our mind's eye, let it 
 be added that he had a hesitation in his speech, of 
 which he himself makes a jest, and to which his veiled 
 adversary, Avellaneda, seems to allude; and that he 
 was near-sighted.^ 
 
 ^ Prologo al Lector, in the introduction to the Novelas Exem- 
 plares. The colour of the boatman's hair and beard is a ruddy 
 chestnut in the picture ; and one touch at least of the verbal 
 description, — the shoulders algo cargados,— is strikingly evident 
 in the picture. Cervantes belonged by blood to the old Gothic 
 red-haired type of Spaniards, — the type to which Camoens also 
 belonged, as Sir Richard Burton remarks in his translation of the 
 Lusiads, — the type of the conquering race, — of the Cid, of Don 
 Enrique, the sailor prince of Portugal, — and of the best manhood 
 of the Peninsula. 
 
 "- In the Prologue to the Novelas he alludes to his infirmity of 
 speech. Also in the Viaje del Parnaso, cap. ill. Also in the 
 letter to Mateo Vasquez, where he speaks of — 
 
 Mi lengua balbuziente y quasi muda. 
 
 Avellaneda, in his bitter, envenomed prologue to his parody of 
 Don Quixote, which is a long personal attack on CeiTantes, speaks 
 of the author's having Jiias lengua que manos.
 
 128 Don Quixote. 
 
 The Galatea, Cervantes' first book, appears to have 
 been completed before the end of the year 1583. It 
 was approved for publication on the ist of February, 
 1584, but, for some reason not explained, it was not 
 published till the beginning of the year following.^ The 
 dedication, in which Cervantes speaks of his early life 
 at Rome, is to Ascanio Colonna, abbot of St. Sophia, 
 the son of Marco Antonio, his old admiral at Lepanto. 
 Galatea is a pastoral romance, or, as Cervantes calls it, 
 an Eclogue, of the kind which the Portuguese poet, Jorge 
 Montemayor, in his Diana had brought into fashion 
 from Italy. A Valencian poet before Cervantes, — Gil 
 Polo, — had improved upon Montemayor's model in his 
 Diana Enajnorada, which Cervantes praises somewhat 
 extravagantly in the Sixth Chapter of the First Part of 
 Don Quixote. The Galatea is, perhaps, the best in 
 that kind, which, perhaps, is no great praise. That 
 Cervantes' contemporaries thought so is proved by the 
 fact that seven editions were called for in the author's 
 lifetime, and by the praises which were lavished on the 
 book, not only at home, but abroad. That, judged by 
 our modern standard of taste, the Galatea is tedious, 
 feeble, and diffuse, is to condemn, not so much the work 
 of Cervantes, as the temper of the age in which he lived. 
 Probably he wrote for the same reason that the Cid 
 
 ^ Navarrete and Ticknor, following all the older authorities, 
 make the place of publication Madrid and the date 1584. But 
 Salva has proved in his Bibliography that the Galatea was first 
 published at Alcali, the author's birthplace, at the beginning of 
 1585.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 129 
 
 fought— para que hubiese que comer} Not much can be 
 done with shepherds and shepherdesses in fable. They 
 sing, they love, they talk. One asks another (not with- 
 out cause) why he is dull ; the other answers, because 
 some girl whom he loves does not love him. Then, 
 perhaps, the lady enters and gives many long reasons 
 why she should love somebody else. No genius can 
 invest such themes, whether in prose or in poetry, with 
 any human interest. The life is unreal ; the passions 
 false ; the loves and Uie occupations equally artificial. 
 In the Galatea the absurdity is heightened by the un- 
 happy device of introducing real personages on the 
 scene under stage names. The poet's own friends figure 
 in the action, after a fashion which he himself so happily 
 ridiculed thirty years afterwards in DON OuixOTE. 
 His future wife, in whose honour and for whose delecta- 
 tion the tradition runs that Cervantes composed the 
 story, appears disguised as Galatea ; while Cervantes 
 himself masquerades as her lover, the shepherd Ehcio. 
 Introduced into the body of the romance, without much 
 pertinency to what is doing, is a long poem called the 
 Canto de Caliope, which is a catalogue of all the leading 
 poets of Spain, — an enormous tribe, whose very names 
 and obscurity are sufficient to deaden any attempt to 
 
 * The Cid, a warrior strictly impartial in his enterprises, who 
 pillaged Christian churches and Moorish mosques with equal 
 zest, when reproached with the somewhat indiscriminate character 
 of his raids, and asked why he so behaved, is reported in the 
 Cronica Gefteral, to have made the answer quoted in the te.xt — 
 " that he might have something to eat." 
 VOL. I. S
 
 ISO Don Quixote. 
 
 preserve them alive. Some of the occasional stories and 
 the episodes, though they have little to do with shepherd- 
 ing, are prettily told, with all Cervantes' grace and skill as 
 a raconteur. But, apart from the romantic circumstances 
 of its birth, Galatea, though it brought our author fame, 
 even beyond his own country, must be pronounced un- 
 worthy of his powers, as it was out of keeping with his 
 genius. He himself, in the famous Inquisition on Don 
 Quixote's library, has pronounced a very fair verdict 
 on the book (of which it must be remembered that he 
 had promised a second part, which never came), by 
 saying that " it contains a little of good invention : it 
 proposes something, but concludes nothing." ^ 
 
 A few days before the publication of Galatea, Cer- 
 vantes was married at Esquivias, a small town of New 
 Castille between Madrid and Toledo, to Doiia Catalina 
 de Palacios y Salazar, — a young lady of respectable 
 family, perhaps a little higher than his own in worldly 
 position. The 12th of December, 1584, was the date 
 of the ceremony. There is a tradition that a kinsman 
 of the bride's opposed the match, on the ground that 
 the aspirant to the hand of Dona Catalina was not 
 sufficiently endowed with the gifts of fortune, and that 
 Cervantes, in revenge, made him the hero of DoN 
 Quixote." This legend belongs to the foolish family 
 
 ' See Don Quixote, Part I. C. vi. 
 
 - The story as told by D. Jimenez Serrano, in his article Un 
 Paseo d la Patria de Don Quixote in the Seminario Pintoresco, 
 1848, is that it was a cousin of Cer\-antes' wife who opposed the 
 match ;— one Don Rodrigo Pacheco, who was a hidalgo of Arga-
 
 Life of Cervantes. 131 
 
 of the inventions based on the theory that Don 
 Quixote was a satire, intended to have a personal 
 application. Very little is known about Cervantes' wife 
 except that she was much younger than himself, — that 
 she bore him no children, — and survived him more than 
 ten years, requesting in her will to be buried by his 
 side.^ Cervantes settled upon her a dowry of a hundred 
 ducats, which was estimated at that time to be a tenth 
 of his fortune. By a subsequent deed, of which a copy 
 is preserved with all the items, all the goods of Dona 
 Catalina at the time of her marriage are secured to 
 her by her husband. There is a curious inventory of 
 the young lady's effects given by Pellicer, which proves 
 that in worldly substance she must have been superior 
 to her husband. The goods of Dona Catalina, the 
 enumeration of which is not without a certain pathos, 
 as showing what was held at that time to be more than 
 equivalent to the fortune with which Cervantes was 
 endowed, include several plantations of young vines in 
 the district of Esquivias, together with various articles of 
 household furniture ; two linen sheets, three of cotton, 
 a cushion stuffed with wool, two pillows of the same, 
 one good blanket and one worn ; tables, chairs, pots and 
 pans ; a brasier, a grater, several jars, sacred images in 
 
 masilla, of whom and his picture in the parish church of that 
 town we shall have more to say hereafter. Others say his name 
 was Quesada. 
 
 ^ Dona Catalina died at Madrid on the 31st of October, 1626, 
 and was buried in the convent of the Trinitarian nuns, in her 
 husband's grave, of which the site is now forgotten,,
 
 132 Don Quixote. 
 
 alabaster and silver gilt ; a crucifix, two little infant 
 Christs, four bce-hivcs, and forty-five hens and pullets, 
 with one cock.' These details of household wealth 
 seem to justify the opinion of those neighbours of Dona 
 Catalina at Esquivias who held that in marrying the 
 old maimed soldier she threw herself away. 
 
 Cervantes seems to have been resident in his wife's 
 town of Esquivias for some months after his marriage. 
 We find him at Madrid soon after, occupied in his first 
 efforts to make a living by his pen. 
 
 ^ See the inventor)' in full as given by Pellicer in the Appendix 
 to his Life of Cervantes, in his edition of Don Quixote^ vol. i. 
 p. ccv.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Cervantes adopts Liter attire as a Profession — Multitude 
 of Poets in Spain — Writes for the Stage — His 
 Comedies — Numancia — El Trato de Argel — Lope de 
 Vega — Retires from Madrid — Life in Seville — A 
 Commissary in Andalusia — Imprisonment — Trials 
 ajid Experiences in La Mancha — Argamasilla — The 
 Cradle of Don Quixote. 
 
 IN 1585 Cervantes moved from his wife's town of 
 Esquivias to take up his residence for a time in 
 Madrid. He had now finally adopted literature as a 
 profession, having no other means than by his pen to 
 support himself and those dependent upon him. These 
 included at this time, and for some years afterwards, 
 not only his wife and his little daughter, Isabel, but his 
 widowed sister, Andrea, with one daughter, Constanza, 
 now eight years of age. His other sister, Luisa, three 
 years older than himself, had become a nun in 1575.^ 
 
 * Of the other members of the family, the brother, Rodrigo, was 
 serving with his company of the Figueroa regiment in Flanders. 
 The mother, Dona Leonor de Cortinas, seems to have been living 
 on her own small means, but that Cervantes still preserved the 
 due filial relations with her is proved by her becoming one of his 
 securities, in 1 595, on account of his debt to the Crown. Pellicer, 
 upon no other foundation than that one Dofia Magdalena de 
 Sotomayor, a beafa^ is named as a sister of Miguel de Cervantes,
 
 134 I^ON Quixote. 
 
 The household must have been a poor one, for, beyond 
 some small income derived by the wife from her little 
 estate in vines, and the earning of the sister by needle- 
 work, there was no other provision than such as Cer- 
 vantes was able to make by his writings. This was 
 a resource sufficiently precarious in that age, before 
 letters had become recognised either as a calling or as 
 a trade ; when those who wrote were many, and those 
 who read were few ; when authors were poorly paid, if 
 paid at all, and publishers, in the modern sense, did 
 not exist. Cervantes was probably the first man of 
 genius since the revival of learning who made an 
 attempt to earn a livelihood by his pen, unaided by any 
 other resource. The attempt was all the more desperate 
 from the peculiar condition of Spain in the latter years 
 of Philip's reign, — a condition which made the struggle 
 for existence almost hopeless for a writer of original 
 genius, who was also of independent mind. It was a 
 period of extraordinary growth, combined with a season 
 of sternest repression. Never was the Spanish intellect 
 so fruitful or so busy ; never was the popular taste so 
 corrupt, or the restraints upon free thought so numerous 
 and so degrading. The blight fell precisely when the 
 ground was richest and the promise of a crop most 
 hopeful. At that date no country in civilisation could 
 
 in a deposition made at Valladolid some years afterwards, makes 
 Dona Leonor to have taken a second husband, one Nicolds de 
 Sotomayor. But Navarrete proves that this could not be {Vt'da 
 de Cervantes, p. 249).
 
 Life of Cervantes. 135 
 
 boast of an intellectual energy so great as Spain. Her 
 renown in arms, her supremacy in empire, seems to 
 have acted as a spur to the national genius. The season 
 of glory was the season of growth. In spite of all 
 external checks, there was a spring of life in the nation 
 such as Spain had never experienced. There was a 
 tumult in the veins of the people such as even Philip 
 could not repress, which the Church vainly attempted to 
 stem or to guide. It was the dawn of the Golden Age 
 in letters and in art. In one direction the outburst was 
 phenomenal. The Spanish nation went into poetry 
 with a vigour and unanimity such as could be nothing 
 less than appalling to a man intending to enter the 
 profession of letters. The easy Castilian tongue which, 
 with its double resource of consonant and assonant, 
 lends itself naturally to rhyme, grew poets at an alarming 
 rate. The multitude of versifiers in Cervantes' time 
 was so great as to be a standing joke with the wits. 
 All Spain was a grove of singing-birds. Men in every 
 station of life turned to verse-making. Those who 
 could not spell yet dared to rhyme. A theme was 
 never wanting so long as fortune was unkind, Ministers 
 forgetful, or hunger pressing. The struggle for existence 
 brought out poets in shoals. " In every street four thou- 
 sand poets," writes one, as the last news from Madrid.^ 
 There were tailor poets and cobbler poets, who rhymed 
 
 ' En cada calle quatro mil fioeias, says Tomd de Burguillos, — 
 that is, Lope de Vega himself, who took that name to cover some 
 of his more sportive effusions.
 
 136 Don Quixote. 
 
 when they should be sewing and heeh'ng. Cervantes 
 himself, in his Voyage to Parnassus, though the most 
 tolerant of critics, who praised more bad writers than 
 any good writer ever did, makes immense fun of the 
 poetavibre — the deluge of bards from the clouds — " the 
 vulgar squadron of seven-month poets, twenty thousand 
 strong, whose being is a mystery," — " the useless rabble 
 who attempt to storm the mount when they are not 
 worthy to stand under its shade." ^ 
 
 To strive against this hungry herd for a living, to win 
 his bread in such a struggle, was a task to which the 
 good-natured genius of Cervantes was unequal. Though 
 he had won much fame by his Galatea, it was such 
 fame as could avail him little in the severe competition 
 with his higher-placed rivals. He had not yet found 
 the secret of the treasure which lay within him, nor is 
 there anything more pathetic in literature than his 
 desperate efforts to earn his fortune by doing as others 
 did. Of poems and ballads, he says himself, that he 
 wrote an infinite number,^ all of which have perished 
 
 * See especially the second chapter of the Viaje del Parnaso. 
 The whole poem is a good-natured satire on the poetasters of 
 
 the day. 
 
 - Yo he compuesto romances infinites 
 Y el de los Zelos es aquel que estimo, 
 Entre otros que los tengo por malditos. 
 (Of ballads I've writ many, and the best 
 I hold to be on Jealousy, the rest 
 I fear are gone unto the place unblest.) 
 It may be necessary to inform some of my readers that the 
 Spanish romance, as a compositionj does not mean the English
 
 Life of Cervantes. < 137 
 
 — perhaps without any great loss to himself or the 
 world, A few commendatory sonnets which, with his 
 usual good nature, he lent to his poet friends, to help 
 their dull productions, are all that survive of his works 
 which belong to this period. They are distinguished 
 rather by their subtlety in discovering the merits of 
 others than by any merit of their own. At what period 
 Cervantes began to write plays for the stage, then fast 
 rising in popular favour, we are not told. In an in- 
 teresting passage of the Prologue to the collection of 
 Comedies and Farces, which he published in his latter 
 years (these are not to be included among those he 
 
 romantic tale in prose, but always ballad^ — a short poem in the 
 vulgar tongue, — as opposed to the higher and more artificial pro- 
 ducts of el arte mayor. The romance in old Spain was the lan- 
 guage of the common people, — the degraded Roman of their 
 conquerors, as opposed to the Latin, which was the language of 
 educated society. In the old translations the Spanish romance is 
 nearly always rendered into English as romance^ which causes 
 confusion. Some of Cervantes' ballads may be still extant, if 
 no longer to be identified as his. Clemencin starts the very 
 reasonable conjecture that the ballads about Uchali (Aluch Ali), 
 of which there are several in the collections, may have been among 
 those composed by Cervantes. (See Clemencin's Don Quixote, 
 vol. iii. p. 157.) In Duran's Romancero are five anonymous bal- 
 lads, in which a slave of Aluch Ali is introduced, the first of which 
 represents him as sighing for his mistress Talinca, which is an 
 anagram of Catalina, the name of Cervantes' wife. This can 
 hardly be accidental. (Duran, vol. i. p. 145.) The ballad of Los 
 Zelos is included among Cervantes' smaller poems in Aribau's 
 edition of his works in the Biblioteca de los Autores Espanoles. 
 The best of Cervantes' known ballads are those in his charming 
 novel of La Gitanilla, which are full of grace and tenderness. 
 VOL. I. T
 
 138 Don Quixote, 
 
 speaks of), he says that he composed at this time about 
 tAventy or thirty plays, which were all put upon the 
 stage and received with favour. " They ran their course 
 without hisses, cries, or disturbances." ^ Elsewhere, in 
 his delightful appendix to the Voyage to Par7iassus, he 
 mentions the names of some of these plays : — Los 
 Tratos, or El Trato de Argel ("Life in Algiers"), La 
 Niunancia^ La Gran Turquesca, La Batalla Naval (pro- 
 bably the battle of Lepanto), La Jemsalen, La Ama- 
 ranta, or La del Mayo ("The Flower of May"), El Bosque 
 Amoroso, La Unica y Bizarra Arsinda (" The Rare and 
 Matchless Arsinda "), with many others whose names 
 he cannot remember.^ But the one of which he speaks 
 with special pride is La Conftisa ("The Perplexed 
 Lady "), to which he refers more than once as ranking 
 " good among the best of the comedies of the Cloak 
 and Sword (de capa y espadd) which had been, up to 
 that time, acted." In regard to these plays of his, of 
 which he speaks with so much modesty and simplicity, 
 the author declares that he was the first who introduced 
 moral or allegorical figures on the stage, and the first 
 who reduced the number of acts from five to three. 
 In neither of these statements is he strictly correct. If 
 
 ^ They were all acted, he says, moreover, sin qjie se les ofre- 
 ciese ofrenda de pepinos ni de otra cosa arrojadiza — "without 
 their receiving tribute of cucumbers or of any other missile," — the 
 throwing of cucumbers at the actors being, we presume, the pre- 
 valent mode of displaying the displeasure of the audience. 
 
 ^ See the interview between the poet and Pancracio de 
 Rancesvalles, in the Adjunta al Parnaso.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 139 
 
 there is any merit in introducing creatures of the imagi- 
 nation, abstractions, the virtues and the vices, and on 
 the stage to mingle and talk with the flesh-and-blood 
 personages of the drama, the merit of the invention 
 belongs to the earliest forms of the drama, this being a 
 common device, as Ticknor has pointed out, in the old 
 miracle plays. As to the change in the number of acts, 
 it had been made long before Cervantes' time by Aven- 
 dano.' These are points, however, of small importance, 
 on which it is excusable Cervantes, writing in his 
 old age, thirty years afterwards, should err. What is 
 certain, and the only thing material to this history of 
 his career, is that he was for some time successful in his 
 calling of a playwright. According to Pellicer he 
 received payment for each play at the full rate, which 
 was 800 reals.2 There were then two 'licensed com- 
 panies of actors in Spain. Only two of Cervantes' 
 plays have survived to this day, — La Numancia and El 
 Trato de Argel, — two of a character and quality so dif- 
 ferent as, if one did not know the extraordinary versa- 
 tility of the writer, to make it difficult to believe that 
 they were the work of the same hand. Although 
 exalted, perhaps, beyond its due merits by Schlegel and 
 Bouterwek, who have placed it on a level with the 
 masterpieces of .^schylus, the Ntimancia of Cervantes 
 is a noble work, which, apart altogether from its artistic 
 
 ' See Ticknor's History of Spanish Lilcratzire, vol. ii. p. 192. 
 ^ See Pellicer, Vida de Cervantes^ p. Ixxi. in the first volume of 
 his Don Quixote.
 
 I40 Don Quixote. 
 
 worth, rises, by its grandeur of patriotic sentiment and 
 loftiness of moral tone, to a height such as no Spanish 
 dramatist ever reached. From its very subject, it is 
 something more than a poem. The verse is inspired 
 by the very genius of patriotism. The lines glow 
 with a fierceness and intensity of national passion 
 which absorb and lull all meaner sentiment. For this 
 quality of pure, concentrated heroic energy, there is 
 nothing equal to it in the ancient or modern drama. 
 Defective in almost everything necessary to make a 
 successful tragedy ; without plot or passion ; with very 
 little action, and devoid of all stage artifice and con- 
 ventional effect, Numancia is to the Spanish drama 
 what Don Quixote is to Spanish romances, — the one 
 only second to the other among the numerous and 
 varied products of the genius of Cervantes.^ To be 
 properly appreciated it must be regarded as a chapter 
 in a great national epic. As one who has translated it 
 
 ^ The Numancia has for its subject the famous siege of the 
 Iberian city of Numantia by the Romans, under Scipio Africanus. 
 After resisting the power of Rome for fifteen years, and suffering 
 fourteen months of every kind of privation and horror, the 
 Numantines perished to a man, conquered by famine, — the last 
 survivor of the garrison, Viriatus, hurling himself from the battle- 
 ments as the Romans entered the city. It is the most heroic 
 page in the history of Spain which Cervantes chose for his theme. 
 The ancient town of Soria, in Old Castile, on the borders of 
 Aragon, claims the name of Numantia ; but the true site of the old 
 city is about five miles distant, it being difficult to identify the 
 spot which was the scene of this unparalleled deed of Saifiuvi?} 
 apiTJ], as the Romans passed a ploughshare over the ruins of the 
 devoted city.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 141 
 
 with abundant grace and sympathy remarks, it is 
 " simply a glorious page in Spanish history converted 
 into sounding verse " — " an attempt to give form and 
 body on the stage to a great national event." ^ One 
 incident in its life speaks eloquently of the success 
 achieved by the author in his immediate purpose. 
 During the memorable siege of Zaragoza in 1808, when 
 the French cannon were thundering at the gates, and 
 Palafox and Tio Pepe were holding them heroically 
 against overpowering numbers, the happy idea occurred 
 to the national leaders of putting Niimancia upon the 
 stage, to give life and courage to the garrison. Thus 
 had Cervantes a triumph such as few dramatists have 
 been able to claim. A play that could fulfil such a 
 function is not to be judged like an ordinary drama. 
 In the power of moving the readers, in the reality 
 of the impressions conveyed, in the painting of the 
 sublime pathos, horror and despair of the scene, Nu- 
 mancia is, indeed, unique among plays. In the con- 
 struction of the several kinds of verse here used, 
 Cervantes displays a skill, grace, and happiness of 
 which no other of his poems giyes any evidence. One 
 scene alone, — the rising of the corpse on the invocation 
 of the wizard Marquino, — is for sublimity of horror, for 
 grandeur of tragic effect, and sustained power of inven- 
 tion superior to anything imagined by Shakespeare or 
 Marlowe.^ 
 
 ^ The late J. Y. Gibson, who has given us in English a very 
 faithful and spirited version of the poem. 
 ^ Even the judicious Hallam is moved out of his ordinary stolid
 
 142 Don Quixote. 
 
 This height Cervantes in his dramas touched but 
 once. What La Confusa may have been we cannot 
 guess from the author's perhaps too partial judgment 
 upon it as the best of the class to which it belonged ; 
 but El Trato de Argel, the only comedy of this period 
 which has survived, may be taken as a fair specimen 
 of Cervantes' acted plays. It is without any regular plot, 
 written in that irregular, octosyllabic metre, in both 
 consonant and assonant rhyme, with redondillas, terza 
 rima, and other popular measures interspersed, in that 
 style which to English ears is so monotonous, and, 
 according to English taste, so unsuitable to dramatic 
 effect. The scenes are little else than transcripts from 
 Cervantes' own experiences as a captive in Algiers. 
 Real incidents and even real personages are introduced, 
 mingled with demons, and abstractions like Necessity 
 and Opportimity. It is difficult to conceive how such 
 a play could ever have been acted, and even more 
 difficult to imagine how it could have been written 
 by one who, as Cervantes shows, through the mouth 
 of the Canon of Toledo in Don Quixote,^ had con- 
 ceived so true and excellent an idea of the drama. 
 Certainly his own genius, — various of resource and 
 fruitful in kind as it was, — was not suited to play- 
 
 reserve to give three pages of his history to an analysis of this 
 remarkable poem. Ticknor, who is not usually given to over- 
 laudation of Cervantes, is unstinted in his praise. August Schlegel 
 thinks it was here that Cervantes found a proper field for the 
 complete development of his inventive mind. 
 ^ See Don Quixote^ Part I. C. xlviii.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 143 
 
 writing. The qualities most admirable in his own 
 masterpiece are precisely those which are of least 
 account in the drama. Cervantes could paint indi- 
 vidual scenes of comedy, and no one so perfectly 
 understands the art of making the creatures of his 
 imagination live and move. But in that rude age, 
 having to battle with adverse fortune, he was unable 
 to compete in the new art with others less hampered 
 by scruples of duty, — more prolific and more pliable. 
 
 About the same time when Marlowe in England had 
 prepared the way for Shakespeare's entrance, Cervantes 
 made his exit from this stage.^ As he tells us himself, 
 with his wonted frankness, he found other things to 
 occupy him. " I gave up the pen and comedies, and 
 there entered presently the monster of nature, the great 
 Lope de Vega, and assumed the dramatic throne. He 
 subjugated all the actors, and placed them under his juris- 
 diction. He filled the world with comedies, — suitable, 
 felicitous, and well-worded, — and so many that those 
 
 * The growth of the drama in Spain was almost contempo- 
 raneous with that of England, though it is probable that the first 
 came to maturity, both in the writing and in the representation, a 
 little sooner than the second. Spain during the latter two decades 
 of the Sixteenth century was certainly more advanced in all the 
 liberal arts than in England, though how much was derived by 
 the latter from the former is not to be determined. Cervantes 
 left off writing plays about 1588. Lope de Vega must have begun 
 dramatising immediately after his return from the expedition in 
 that year against England in the Inviftdble Armada, in which he 
 served as a soldier. Shakespeare's first play. Love's Labour Lost, 
 was produced, according to the authorities, in 1590.
 
 144 Don Quixote. 
 
 in writing exceeded ten thousand sheets, all of which 
 have been seen represented." • Lope de Vega was about 
 this time, 1588, twenty-six years of age, being fifteen 
 years younger than Cervantes. Unable to cope with 
 a rival of a comedy-making power so prodigious, of 
 whom it is reported that he could produce an original 
 play of three acts in forty-eight hours, Cervantes was 
 driven to seek for a livelihood elsewhere and by other 
 means.^ Abandoning literature, he removed with his 
 
 1 See the interesting Prologue to the Comedies, published by 
 Cervantes a year before his death. The words used by Cervantes 
 of his great rival, considering the relations between the two men, 
 and all that had happened in that interval of nearly thirty years, 
 must be regarded as fair, impartial, and even generous. In some 
 of the expressions, however, we may detect a very natural tone of 
 bitterness, such as Cervantes was fully justified in using towards 
 one who had shown himself so unscrupulous as a competitor. El 
 ■>no7isb'uo de naturalesa, which I have translated " the monster of 
 nature," is commonly rendered by those who insist upon shutting 
 their eyes to the true history of the relations between Cervantes 
 and Lope de Vega, as " the prodigy of nature." But monstruo is 
 certainly more often used in tnalam partem. It is so used by 
 Cervantes himself in the only other place where the phrase occurs, 
 in Don Quixote, when the Knight is rating his squire (Part I. 
 C. xlvi.). Seeing that, more than once. Lope had taken the bread 
 out of Cervantes' mouth, the passage, as we have quoted it, cannot 
 be characterised as anything less than magnanimous. 
 
 2 A recent English writer on the subject denies Cervantes our 
 statement of the cause which led him to abandon play-writing, on 
 the ground that Cervantes had left for Seville before Lope de 
 Vega began to write for the stage. But in the Nuevos Dociimentos 
 of Sefior Asensio, published in 1864, there is printed an agreement 
 between Cervantes and one Rodrigo Osorio, by which the latter
 
 Life of Cervantes. 145 
 
 family in 1588 to Seville, then the richest, busiest, and 
 most populous city in Spain, — " the support of the poor 
 and the refuge of the outcast," — the emporium of the 
 commerce and wealth of the New World, with whose 
 life and manners he came to acquire so profound and 
 minute an acquaintance. Through the interest of some 
 of his friends he obtained a place as one of four com- 
 missaries employed under Antonio de Guevara, the 
 Royal Purveyor-General for the fleets and armaments 
 of the Indies, to purchase stores in Andalucia. His 
 commission is signed the 12th of June, 1588, his two 
 sureties in the office being Juan de Nava Cabeza de 
 Vaca and Luis Marmolejo. From that date for some 
 time after, we hear of Cervantes only as a buyer of 
 grain and oil in the districts round Seville, an occu- 
 pation of little profit to him, except in so far as it 
 enlarged his field of knowledge of men and manners, 
 and subject to risks which involved him in a new series 
 of misfortunes. This business seems to have included 
 the collecting of small dues on behalf of the King from 
 the country people, and making advances for the supply 
 of such articles as were required for the public service. 
 The irony of fate is here curiously illustrated. While 
 not a scrap of any of his other manuscripts survive, 
 
 agrees to give the author fifty ducats each for six comedies, pro- 
 vided they are successful. The date is 1592, which proves that 
 Cervantes clung to the hope of succeeding as a playwright after 
 he left for Seville. Lope de Vega had certainly begun to write 
 plays before this date. 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 146 Don Quixote, 
 
 there are extant, carefully preserved, many receipts, 
 schedules of expenditure, invoices, and accounts relating 
 to these transactions, written in a bold, clear hand. 
 In May, 1590, being sick of the grain and oil buying 
 in Andalucia, Cervantes bethought him of the usual 
 resource in those days of men of broken fortune, to 
 pass to the Indies, "the refuge and the sustenance 
 of desperate men of Spain." He therefore addressed 
 a memorial to the King, through the President of the 
 Council of the Indies, in June, 1590, in which, after 
 reciting his services by sea and land, especially at 
 Lepanto and in the Levant, his sufferings as a captive 
 in Algiers, his subsequent employment in Portugal 
 and in the Azores, during all which period he had 
 received no favour,^ he humbly solicits His Majesty 
 for one of three or four places which he learns at 
 that time to be vacant, — namely, the accountantship 
 of the new kingdom of Granada (in the North 
 of South America), or the governorship of the pro- 
 vince of Soconusco in Central America, or pay- 
 master of the galleys of Carthagena (then the chief 
 port of the Spanish-American trade), or magistrate of 
 the city of La Paz (in Bolivia).^ The petition seems 
 
 1 En todo este tiempo no se le ha hedio merced ningima — 
 meaning no favour in the shape of place or preferment. 
 
 - See the memorial in full, with the unsatisfactory' endorsement 
 (seeming to imply approval), by Dr. Nunez Morquecho, probably 
 a secretary — biisque por acd en que se le haga merced — ("Let 
 him seek about here for the favour he wants "), in Navarrete^ 
 p. 312. The document was found among others relating to
 
 Life of Cervantes. 147 
 
 to have been not unfavourably received, and it is said 
 that Cervantes might have been successful in obtaining 
 one of the places he asked for, but for his own impru- 
 dence or negligence in some point of conduct which 
 is left a mystery. In one of the autobiographical stanzas 
 of the Voyage to Parnassus, the poet seems to hint at 
 some incapacity on his part to preserve the good which 
 he had won from fortune.^ Probably, without imagining 
 anything worse to his discredit, Cervantes had a full 
 measure of the defects which belonged to one of his 
 gay, romantic, fervid temperament. The very qualities 
 which made him loved by his fellow-captives and 
 dreaded by his gaolers in Algiers, were those most 
 unsuitable to official life in Spain under such a ruler as 
 Philip. That he was careless, unthrifty, irresolute of will, 
 and too quickly moved from following the path of his 
 own good by dreams of some more romantic pursuit, is 
 easily conceivable of the author of DON QuixOTE. 
 
 Failing to get a place in America, Cervantes was 
 compelled to return to his miserable work of buying 
 
 Cervantes, in 1808, by Cean Bermudez, among the archives of 
 the Indies at Seville. It is most valuable as containing some par- 
 ticulars of his service nowhere else recorded. 
 ^ Apollo says to him : — 
 
 Tii mismo te has forjado tu ventura, 
 Y yo te he visto alguna vez con ella, 
 Pero en el imprudente poco dura. 
 
 (Thyself hast forged thine own destiny, 
 
 And Fortune I have seen some time with thee, 
 But from the imprudent she doth quickly fly.)
 
 148 Don Quixote. 
 
 corn and oil and wine for His Majesty's fleets, — a 
 service which brought him into close communion with 
 all the country people in the districts about Seville and 
 Granada. Up to 1598 he was employed in various 
 parts of the kingdom in this and the kindred office 
 of small tax-collector, at an annual salary, according 
 to his papers still extant, of three thousand reals, or 
 ;^30 a year,^ In 1594 we hear of him for a time as 
 being in Madrid, but it is in connexion with one of 
 those unpleasant passages which showed how unfit he 
 was for work of this kind, — demanding scrupulous exacti- 
 tude in the paying and receiving of moneys, and entire 
 distrust of his fellow-men. On two or three occasions, 
 through what appears to be nothing more than over- 
 confidence in his agents, he fell into trouble, having 
 to pay in his own person, or out of his own pocket, 
 for the failure of those in whom he trusted. In the 
 midst of these uncongenial occupations, we get just 
 one glimpse of the man of letters. In 1595, on the 
 canonization of San Jacinto, a Dominican house at 
 Zaragoza offered a prize of tJiree silver spoons to who- 
 ever should make the best gloss on a quatrain in praise 
 of the new saint. Cervantes entered the lists as a 
 competitor, and was successful in winning the first 
 prize. In 1596 he found a very different theme for his 
 pen. In that year an expedition was sent by Elizabeth, 
 in revenge for the affront offered her by Philip in his 
 Invincible Armada^ to " singe the King of Spain's 
 
 1 See Na'varrctc^ p. Tj.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 149 
 
 beard." A fleet under the command of Lord Howard 
 of Effingham entered the port of Cadiz, and a body 
 of soldiers was landed, under the orders of the Earl 
 of Essex, who burnt and destroyed what property of 
 His Spanish Majesty's they could not carry away, — to 
 the consternation of the citizens and the great glory of 
 Protestant England. The Spanish army and fleet, 
 under the Duke of Medina Celi, who ought to have 
 defended Cadiz, got themselves into places of safety, 
 and it was not until after the English had gone away 
 with their rich booty, — after destroying thirteen ships 
 and forty large galleons, and inflicting a wound to 
 Spanish finance from which it is said that Philip never 
 recovered, — that the Duke of Medina Celi marched in 
 with his brave soldiers. Cervantes wrote a satirical 
 sonnet on this occasion, ridiculing the display of tardy 
 valour made by the beplumed volunteers, and how, — 
 the English Earl having gone away without any fear, 
 — the great Duke of Medina came in triumphantly.' 
 The incident afforded Cervantes, moreover, a subject 
 for one of his smaller novels. La Espanola Inglesa, 
 written some years afterwards. 
 
 About this period Cervantes fell into the first of his 
 
 * The sonnet was first printed by Pellicer in his Life of 
 Cervantes^ from a manuscript in the Royal Library at Madrid 
 The concluding lines are : — 
 
 Ido ya el Conde sin ningun recelo, 
 Triunfando entrd el gran duque de Medina. 
 
 (The Earl departed without dread or damage, 
 
 In triumph there came in the great Duke Medina.)
 
 ISO Don Quixote. 
 
 money troubles in connexion with his office. Having 
 to remit a sum of 7,400 reals from Seville to Madrid, 
 he entrusted it to the hands of one Simon Freire, as 
 his agent. Freire became a bankrupt, and fled from 
 Spain. This involved Cervantes in a debt to the 
 Crown, for which, being unable to pay, he was thrown 
 into prison. Having reduced the amount by what he 
 had recovered from the bankrupt estate of Freire to 
 2,600 reals, Cervantes was released, after a detention of 
 three months; neither then nor at any time afterwards, — 
 although the affair hung over him to trouble him for 
 many years, — there being any charge implicating his 
 own personal rectitude.^ 
 
 On the 13th September, 1598, died Philip H. ; and 
 we know of Cervantes' presence in Seville at this time 
 through the satirical sonnet he wrote on the exaggerated 
 grandeur of the sepulchral monument which was raised 
 in honour of the dead King. On this occasion there 
 took place a curious wrangle in the Cathedral itself, car- 
 ried to most unseemly lengths, between the representa- 
 tives of the Inquisition and the civic authorities, which 
 was not settled without some painful scenes, — serving 
 to show that the people thought less of the deceased 
 monarch than of their own rights and dignities. The 
 catafalque, which one of the historians of the time 
 describes as one of the rarest mortuary structures which 
 human eyes ever beheld, was embellished with nume- 
 
 1 Cervantes seems to have been twice imprisoned in connexion 
 with this unhappy business, before he finally left Andalucia.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 151 
 
 rous statues by leading sculptors, and pictures by the 
 most eminent local painters, among whom Pacheco is 
 named. Cervantes seems to have regarded the whole 
 proceeding with great disgust, and wrote upon it an 
 ironical sonnet, which was as successful in hitting the 
 taste of the citizens as it was in winning his own good 
 opinion, for he praises it extravagantly in the Voyage 
 to Parnassus as " the principal glory of his writings." ^ 
 The sonnet, which has great merit in a line which 
 Cervantes rarely attempted, — and never without so 
 much success as proved that this was more congenial 
 to him than sentimental or romantic poetry, — is of irre- 
 gular structure, — or rather, it is a sonnet with a piece of 
 another attached to it, seventeen lines in all, — but of an 
 excellent wit and humour, and perhaps not least in- 
 teresting for this, that it seems to indicate what was in 
 Cervantes' secret mind regarding the character and rule 
 of Philip. 
 
 During this period of his life, Cervantes is said by 
 his biographers, upon what appears to be quite insuffi- 
 cient evidence, to have enjoyed the society of the 
 learned and lettered persons who then made Seville a 
 famous centre of the liberal arts. The only traces we 
 have of his acquaintance with his contemporary writers 
 are such as are found in the commendatory verses he 
 
 ^ Honra principal de mis escritos. The death of Philip was 
 doubtless regarded as a relief by the majority of his subjects, and 
 the new reign was looked forward to as the opening of a freer life. 
 Such a sonnet as this could hardly have been published in Philip's 
 life-time.
 
 152 Don Quixote. 
 
 lent to their books, — a form of compliment of which, 
 though he came to ridicule it afterwards, Cervantes 
 was very profuse. We may reasonably suppose that it 
 was about this time that he wrote the majority of his 
 Novelas, in several of which we find scenes and charac- 
 ters such as only could have been drawn from a familiar 
 and intimate knowledge of Seville and its environments. 
 That, before he left Seville, he was a second time cast 
 into prison because of his old debt incurred on account 
 of Simon Freire, is to be gathered from extant docu- 
 ments. That about this time, from between the end of 
 1599 and 1603, is to be placed that passage in his life 
 which brought him in connexion with La Mancha, and 
 was the source of DON QUIXOTE, seems highly pro- 
 bable. This was the lowest point he touched in his 
 fortunes. He had fallen into such poverty as to be 
 even dependent for bread on his friends, — on one of 
 whom, Pedro de Morales, who afterwards became a 
 distinguished actor, he lavishes tender expressions of 
 gratitude for aid rendered him in this his worst strait.^ 
 
 ' Pedro de Morales is twice mentioned, with more than usual 
 warmth, in the Voyage to Parnassus. In the first passage Cervantes 
 calls him "the asylum where his fortune was repaired." In the 
 second, towards the close of the poem, he says : — 
 
 El pecho, el alma, el corazon, la mano 
 Di i. Pedro de Morales y un abrazo. 
 
 (My bosom and my soul, my heart and hand 
 I Pedro Morales gave, in one embrace). 
 
 This benefactor of Cervantes lived to be one of the most famous 
 actors of the time, surviving Cervantes many years.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 153 
 
 Very little is known about the circumstances which 
 brought Cervantes to La Mancha. Some say that he 
 was commissioned to collect tithes on behalf of the 
 Grand Priory of San Juan,^ which had certain rights 
 in the district, and that his unpopularity in that cha- 
 racter caused him to be seized by a leading citizen of 
 Argamasilla and thrust into prison. Another theory 
 is that he was concerned in some enterprise connected 
 with the manufacture of saltpetre and gunpowder, 
 and that he incurred the wralfh of the people of 
 the neighbourhood through employing the waters of 
 the Guadiana in that industry to the prejudice of their 
 corn-fields, A third story is that while engaged in 
 
 * This was not the first time, — as it would appear from a com- 
 munication for which I am indebted to my friend Don Pascual de 
 Gayangos, — that Cervantes had been employed in the service of 
 the Prioiy of San Juan. Among the Spanish Manuscripts in the 
 British Museum (Add. 28, 364, No. 38), catalogued by Seiior 
 Gayangos (vol. iii. p. 757), is an interesting passage about 
 Cervantes, which has never before been noticed by any biographer. 
 It occurs in a letter from Sanctoya de Molina (the secretary of the 
 Council of the Military Orders in 1584) to Mateo Vasquez, the 
 King's . Secretary, in which he discusses the qualifications of 
 various persons for the vacant ofifices in the Order of San Juan. 
 Among them he names three, Ruben de Celis, Cetvantes, and 
 Canto. "El Ruben nO conviene de ninguna manera, y el Cer- 
 vantes es muy benemerito y sirvio el partido de Montanches muy 
 bien. No conoce d Canto" (Reuben will not do by any manner of 
 means, and Cervantes is very deserving and served the district of 
 Montanches very well. Nothing is known of Canto). Montanches 
 is in the province of Estremadura, and that Cervantes was 
 employed there is quite a new fact to his biographers. 
 VOL. I, X
 
 154 Don Quixote. 
 
 collecting certain dues or taxes in La Mancha, Cer- 
 vantes gave offence to certain high people of the place 
 by his satirical humour. Whatever the cause might 
 have been, it is certain, according to a tradition which 
 has been handed down from , that time to this, that 
 Cervantes was incarcerated for some time in a cellar 
 of a house in Argamasilla, called La Casa de Medrano. 
 A letter of his was extant up to the beginning of 
 this century addressed to an uncle, Juan Bernab^ de 
 Saavedra, a citizen of Alcazar de San Juan, soliciting 
 his aid and favour to rescue him from his miserable 
 condition.' The unanimous testimony of the people 
 of this neighbourhood points to a house, which is still 
 standing in pretty much the same condition as when 
 Cervantes was here, as the place where the author of 
 Don Quixote was imprisoned. I have little doubt 
 myself that it was here where the idea of writing the 
 book, which was " engendered in a prison," as we learn 
 from the author's prologue, was first conceived.^ That 
 
 1 Navarrete quotes the opening words of Cervantes' despairing 
 letter : — Luengos diasy inenguadas noches me fatigan e7i esta cdrcel, 
 6 niejor dire caverna (long days and troubled nights are wearing 
 me out in this cell, or, I should rather say, cave). This interesting 
 document, which was in existence up to the beginning of this 
 century, appears to be now lost. I have seen the cellar in which 
 Cervantes was confined, under the intelligent guidance of the good 
 priest of Argamasilla, and can vouch for its dismal condition. No 
 one would lightly commit a dog to such a hole. 
 
 " Don Aureliano Guerra y Orbe (see Athenaum^ Nov. 1867) 
 maintains that the prison of Seville was where Cervantes wrote, 
 or at least planned, Don Quixote. I cannot agree with this opinion,
 
 Life of Cervantes. 155 
 
 "Cervantes passed some time in La Mancha, and had 
 opportunities of studying the character of that singular 
 province and its not less remarkable people, is suffi- 
 ciently proved in DON Quixote. That he had con- 
 ceived some grudge against the Manchegans on account 
 of some affront or wrong suffered at their hands is 
 likely enough ; even though we may refuse to believe 
 that Don Quixote was intended to be a satire on La 
 Mancha and the Manchegans. 
 
 Argamasilla de Alba, the town whose name the author 
 of Don Quixote " would not recall," — which is suffi- 
 ciently identified, however, in the progress of the story 
 as the village where El Ingenioso Hidalgo lived, — has 
 acquired a renown which, to its present inhabitants, is 
 a little embarrassing, though they cannot be persuaded 
 to regard it as unflattering. The place is not unde- 
 serving of the honour which has been conferred upon 
 it. Among the towns of La Mancha, — an unlovely 
 region, inhabited by a rugged people, whose chief cha- 
 racteristic at sight is a curious mingling of shyness, cun- 
 ning, and ferocity, — Argamasilla holds no mean place, 
 and perhaps held a still higher one in Cervantes' time, 
 when all the traffic of the Indies must have passed 
 through the district. The town is substantially built, 
 with streets wider and cleaner than are usual in Spain, 
 
 for this, among other reasons, that Don Quixote must have been 
 written after Cervantes' visit to La Mancha. There is no evi- 
 dence of Cervantes being imprisoned at Seville after he left La 
 Mancha.
 
 156 Don Quixote. 
 
 amidst fertile and not unpleasant surroundings.' The 
 river Guadiana flows (when there is any water) through 
 it, as it did when the Duchess's messenger arrived there 
 to look for Sancho Panza's wife. Women may be seen 
 washing clothes in the sluggish stream, just as Sancho's 
 daughter was doing when called to hear news of her 
 father, the Governor. The Casa de Medrano, the house 
 where Cervantes was locked up, is still standing — a 
 solid structure of stone.^ On the outskirts of the vil- 
 lage are shown the ruins of a house which is affirmed to 
 have been the dwelling of Don Quixote, where may 
 be traced a window, out of which the Knight's books 
 might have been pitched by the Housekeeper into the 
 outer yard. The place of chief interest to the visitor, 
 however, next to the dungeon which held Miguel de 
 Cervantes captive, is the parish church, which, by its 
 size and grandeur, proves that Argamasilla was once a 
 much more considerable place than it is now. In the 
 north transept of this church, in one of the side chapels, 
 there is an oil picture enclosed in a retablo^ representing 
 the Virgin in the air, with angels about her, looking 
 
 * The traveller by the main line of railway from Madrid to the 
 South need not look out for Argamasilla at the station so named. 
 The village is ten miles away from the railway-station, by a very 
 bad road. 
 
 ^ Some twenty-five years ago it was used by Rivadeneyra as a 
 printing-office, from which was issued his two beautiful editions of 
 Do7i Quixote. This curious act of expiatory homage was rendered 
 more emphatic by the presence of the Infante Don Sebastian 
 Gabriel de Borbon, by whom the first sheets of the larger edition 
 were pulled from the press.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 157 
 
 down upon a gentleman and a lady kneeling in the 
 act of prayer. The gentleman is of about fifty years 
 of age, with high cheek-bones and lantern jaws, adust 
 complexion, wandering eyes, and large moustaches 
 The lady is much younger, and not uncomely. Below 
 the picture is an inscription setting forth how that Our 
 Lady appeared to this gentleman when given up by 
 physicians, on the eve of St. Matthew, in the year 1601, 
 and cured him, who had promised her a lamp of silver, 
 and called day and night upon her in his great affliction, 
 of a great pain he had in his brain through a chilliness 
 or dumbness which " curdled it within." ^ The portrait 
 is of one Rodrigo Pacheco, who is known to have been 
 the only hidalgo resident at Argamasilla at this period. 
 The lady was his niece. The picture was painted to 
 commemorate Rodrigo Pacheco's recovery from a mental 
 affliction, — he being the owner of the only house in the 
 village which corresponds to the description of Don 
 Quixote's. It must have been put up in the church 
 about the time when Cervantes was in La Mancha. 
 Lastly, Pacheco, as the leading man in Argamasilla, 
 was he by whose authority Cervantes was clapped 
 into the cellar under the house known as La Casa de 
 Medrano. 
 
 Such are the facts which, pieced out by local belief 
 
 ' The concluding words of the inscription, now to be read with 
 some difficulty, are " Clamandola de dia y de noche del gran dolor 
 que tenia en el celebro de una gran frialdad que se le quajo 
 dentro "
 
 158 Don Quixote. 
 
 and tradition, have been used to support the legend 
 which connects Cervantes' trials and experiences in 
 La Mancha with his next work, the HISTORY OF Don 
 Quixote.^ 
 
 ' Hartzenbusch tells us in a note on this subject in his larger 
 edition, that he once had a female servant, a native of Argamasilla, 
 who used to assure him in all seriousness that on an altar of the 
 church of her village there was painted a picture of Don Quixote. 
 D. Enrique de Cisneros, in an article in the Revista Espafiola, 
 November, 1869, gives a full account of the tradition and of the 
 evidence on which it rests. What is certain is that at this day it 
 is the common belief of the inhabitants of Argamasilla that Don 
 Quixote was their townsman. Cervantes himself is less spoken 
 of. Against this may be set the story of that more advanced 
 Spanish gentleman, who gravely assured a friend of Jarvis, the 
 translator, that " Cervantes was a wag, his whole book mere fiction, 
 and that there never was such a person as Don Quixote." (Trans- 
 lator's preface in Jarv'is's original edition.)
 
 Life of Cervantes. 159 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Return to Valladolid — Disappointed in his hopes of 
 Preferment — Writes Don Quixote — The Dtike of 
 Bejar — Publication of Don Quixote — Reception of 
 the Book — Its Object and Character discussed — 
 The Romances of Chivalry cind their Influence — 
 Their Annihilatio7i by Don Quixote. 
 
 THE four years between 1598 and 1602, in which 
 period must be placed his visits to La Mancha, 
 are among the obscurest in the Hfe of Cervantes. But 
 little is known, nor does he tell us himself, of what he 
 did or where he lived in the struggle with his relentless 
 evil fortune. For his fame, it was the darkest hour 
 before the dawn. In 1602, being then in his fifty-fifth 
 year, he must have begun to write DON QUIXOTE, 
 according to my calculations.^ He had duly qualified 
 himself by personal experience to tell the story of the 
 adventures of one who sought to revive the spirit of 
 
 * That Don Quixote could not have been written before 1591, 
 is proved by the mention in Chapter vi. of a book published in 
 that year. That it must have been written subsequently to 
 1596 is proved by the reference in Chapter xix. to an incident 
 which was not ended till September, 1596 (see Navarrete, p. 79). 
 There are other hints and allusions in the story which, I think, 
 show that it could scarcely have been begun while Philip II. was 
 alive.
 
 i6o Don Quixote. 
 
 the ancient chivalry. His own romance was ended. 
 The pathetic lines of Goethe might seem to be written 
 for his own case : — 
 
 Wer nie sein Brod mit Thriinen ass, 
 
 Wer nicht die kummervollen Nachte 
 Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, 
 
 Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte.' 
 
 Never had any man of letters to go through a severer 
 ordeal. At last his genius found the true path for 
 which it had been beating about so many years ; but 
 not until his prime of life had passed, when even that 
 brave heart must have been chilled and that gay spirit 
 deadened. In 1601, Philip III. removed the Court to 
 the old capital of Castile, Valladolid, by nature far 
 better situated for a metropolis than Madrid, which had 
 been the choice of his grandfather, Charles V. Thither 
 Cervantes repaired, in 1603, doubtless with some hope 
 of sharing in the Royal favour. But Philip III., though 
 he had some taste for letters, was a poor, weak creature, 
 even more completely abandoned to the debasing in- 
 fluences of priestcraft than his father had been, without 
 any of his father's talent or force of character. The 
 Duke of Lerma, " the Atlas who bore the burden of 
 this Monarchy," as Cervantes called him, was lord of 
 
 ' From Wilhebn Meister, Lehrjahre, ch. xii., thus Englished by 
 Thomas Carlyle : — 
 
 " Who never ate his bread in sorrow, 
 
 Who never spent the darksome hours 
 Weeping and watching for the morrow. 
 He knew you not, ye unseen Powers."
 
 Life of Cervantes. i6i 
 
 his Sovereign's will and dispenser of his power and 
 grace, — a man, says Quevedo, " alluring and dexterous 
 rather than intelligent ; ruled by the interested cunning 
 of his own creatures, but imperious with all others ; 
 magnificent, ostentatious ; choosing his men only by 
 considerations of his own special policy, or from per- 
 sonal friendship, or family ties." Under such a man it 
 was not likely that any portion of the King's benevo- 
 lence should light upon Miguel de Cervantes. More- 
 over, the crowd of suppliants at Court was very great. 
 A contemporary writer laments with pathetic zeal and 
 pious indignation the lot of many famous captains and 
 valiant soldiers, who, after serving the King all their 
 lives and being riddled with wounds, were not only 
 pushed aside into corners without any reward, but con- 
 demned to see unworthy men without merit loaded 
 with benefits, merely through enjoying the favour of 
 some Minister or courtier.^ The Duke of Lerma, as one 
 who professed a contempt for all letters and learning, 
 was even less likely to be influenced by Cervantes' 
 literary merits than by his services as a soldier, — services 
 which had now become an old story. Disappointed in 
 his hopes of preferment, Cervantes had to maintain 
 himself and his family by the exercise of his pen, — 
 writing, as we learn, letters and memorials for those 
 who needed them,- while busy upon DON Quixote. 
 
 ^ Fr. Sepulveda, quoted by Navarrete, p. 98. 
 2 And " in various agencies and businesses," says Navarrete, 
 vaguely, p. 99. 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 i62 Don Quixote. 
 
 His book was probably finished by the beginning of 
 1604, though it was some time before he was able to 
 print it. The story was probably handed about in 
 manuscript among his friends,' as seems to have been 
 the custom of that age, before he found a patron or a 
 publisher. The publisher was found at last in Francisco 
 Robles, the King's printer, to whom the copyright was 
 sold for ten years.- The patron appeared in the person 
 of the Duque de Bdjar, a nobleman described by a 
 writer of that age, — Cristobal de Mesa, — as himself both 
 a poet and a valiant soldier. The choice was not alto- 
 gether a happy one, for the Duke of Bdjar might be 
 said to have an ancestral claim to be regarded as 
 a patron of books of chivalries. It was to his great- 
 grandfather that one of the silliest and most extrava- 
 gant of the romances had been dedicated, by the 
 
 ^ There are two curious pieces of evidence in proof that Don 
 Quixote was known before it was printed. In the first edition of 
 the Picarajusttna^ composed by Francisco de Ubeda, — the Hcence 
 to print which is dated August, 1604, — there are some truncated 
 verses, Hke those in the beginning of Don Quixote, in which Don 
 Quixote is mentioned by name as already famous {Caialogo de 
 Salva, vol. ii. p. 157). Also in a private letter from Lope de Vega 
 to his patron, the Duke of Sesa, there is a malignant allusion to 
 Cervantes, speaking of poets. "There is none so bad as Cervantes, 
 and none so foolish as to praise Don Quixote.^'' The letter is 
 dated August 4th, 1604, showing how quick Lope de Vega was to 
 discover that in Do7i Quixote possibly his hated rival had at last 
 made a hit. 
 
 ^ That seems to have been the usual period for which a book 
 was licensed in that age. The sum which Cervantes received for 
 his copyright is not recorded.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 163 
 
 author, Feliciano de Silva, who is the writer specially 
 ridiculed by Cervantes, and the very book which is the 
 subject of a parody in the opening chapter of Don 
 Quixote.^ The Duke of Bejar was noted, moreover, 
 for his own uncommon affection for the books of 
 chivalries then in fashion, and it is probable that he at 
 first understood DON QuixOTE to be one such as he 
 was in the habit of reading. Learning of his mistake, 
 he refused, it is said, the dedication, and withdrew his 
 patronage from the author. Then, according to that 
 pleasant story first told by Don Vicente de Rios, was 
 enacted that scene which has been so favourite a sub- 
 ject with modern artists. Cervantes begged of the 
 Duke to give him a hearing before deciding against his 
 book ; upon which he was permitted to read a chapteV, 
 which the Duke found so much to his taste that he 
 graciously re-admitted the author into his favour, and 
 consented to receive the dedication. There is another 
 tradition which imputes to the Duke's confessor, — an 
 ecclesiastic who must have had a keener nose for 
 heterodoxy than most of his fellows, — the original 
 rejection of the dedication of DON QUIXOTE by the 
 Duke Bejar, and the subsequent neglect of the author." 
 
 * The Third Part of Don Florisel de Niquea was dedicated to 
 a former Duque de Bejar. See Salvo's Catalogue (vol. ii. p. 14). 
 
 ^ Cervantes is supposed to allude to this ecclesiastic in Part II. 
 C. xxxi. o{ Don Quixote, where there is a passage against those of 
 the religious profession who "govern the houses of Princes, 
 written with a bitterness and heat most unusual in our author. 
 Confessors seem to have been almost as obnoxious a race in his 
 eyes as duennas.
 
 1 64 Don Quixote. 
 
 The dedication itself, as I shall show in the proper 
 place, bears strong marks of having been tampered with 
 by some one not very well disposed to Cervantes.^ 
 
 The privilege of publication is dated the 26th of 
 September, and the Tasa the 20th of December, 1604. 
 The book itself, the First Part of Don OUIXOTE (it was 
 not so called in the first edition, which is evidence that 
 the author intended it to be complete in itself), was 
 printed by Juan de la Cuesta during 1604, and published 
 at Madrid in January, 1605." The impression was very 
 carelessly made, and swarms with blunders, typogra- 
 phical and otherwise, showing that it was not corrected 
 or revised by the author. The press-work, however, is 
 quite equal in execution to that of most books of that 
 age. 
 
 The reception which DON OuixOTE met with on its 
 first appearance was cordial beyond all precedent, and 
 such as must have convinced the author, who was 
 evidently doubtful of his new experiment, that here at 
 last his genius had found its true field of exercise. 
 The persons of culture, indeed, received the book coldly. 
 
 > See note to Dedication in Vol. II. p. 3. 
 
 ^ Those who are fond of dwelling on coincidences may find one 
 here of singular interest. The year during which Don Quixote 
 was being printed was also the year in which, according to the 
 best authorities, Shakespeare was producing his perfected Ha7nlet. 
 The two noblest works of human wit, their subjects bearing a 
 curious affinity one to another, each the stor)' of a mind disordered 
 by the burden of setting the world right, were thus begotten 
 in the same year. Ha^ilet and Don Quixote 1 — Does not the con- 
 junction throw light on each .'
 
 Life of Cervantes. 165 
 
 The half-learned sneered at the title as absurd, and at 
 the style as vulgar.^ The envy and malice of his rivals, 
 and especially of those who found themselves included 
 in the satire, were aroused against the author. The 
 chorus of detractors was swelled by all those, chiefly 
 persons in high station, whose taste in romance had 
 been ridiculed. So daring an innovation as a book, 
 professing to be of entertainment, in which Knights and 
 Knightly exercises were made a jest of, — in which 
 peasants, innkeepers, carriers, and other vulgar people 
 spoke their own language and behaved after their own 
 fashion, — had, since the revival of letters, never been 
 made. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body, with all 
 their patrons, dependents, and dupes, though they were 
 too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts 
 aimed at obscurantism, superstition, and bigotry, had 
 something more than a suspicion that DON QUIXOTE 
 was a book to be discouraged. In spite of the frowns 
 and the sneers of the quality, however, and the ill- 
 concealed disgust of the learned, Don Quixote was 
 received with unbounded applause by the common 
 
 ' Among those who sneered at Cervantes, the ingenio lego 
 (the lay, or unlearned, wit), as one of the minor fry of detrac- 
 tors, Tamayo de Vargas, called him, — was Gongora, who wrote a 
 satirical sonnet the year following on the Queen's accouchement, 
 in which Don Quixote, and Sancjio Panza, and his ass are intro- 
 duced, in ill-natured connexion with their author. Dr. Cristobal 
 Suarez de Figueroa, a writer of comedies, also pursued Cervantes 
 with great venom throughout his life, and made him the subject 
 of disparaging criticism after his death.
 
 i66 Don Quixote. 
 
 people.' The proud and happy author himself spoke 
 of his success with a frank complacency, which, in any 
 other man, would savour of vanity. Some seven or 
 eight editions of Don Quixote are supposed to have 
 been printed in the first year, of which six are now 
 extant, — two of Madrid, two of Lisbon, and two of 
 Valencia.- The number of copies issued from the press 
 in one j^ear were probably in excess of the number 
 reached by any book since the invention of printing.^ 
 
 ' Con general aplauso de las gentes — he says in the Second Part 
 oi Don Quixote^ speaking through the mouth of the Duchess. The 
 legend, revived in the present age, that Don Quixote hung fire on 
 the first pubhcation, and that the author wrote anonymously a 
 tract called El Buscapie (lit. the Search-Foot), in order to explain 
 his stor}' and its object, rests only upon the evidence of one 
 Ruidiaz, and is contradicted by all the facts of the case. No 
 such aid was necessary to push the sale of the book, whose pur- 
 pose had been sufficiently explained by the author in his preface. 
 The so-called Buscapie, published in 1848 by Adolfo de Castro, 
 is an impudent forgery, which has imposed upon no one. It is 
 the composition of Sefior Castro himself, who is q. farceur, of some 
 wit and more effronter)'. Ticknor is even too serious in the 
 attention which he bestows on Sefior Castro and his work, which 
 an English publisher has thought worthy of a translation. 
 
 2 Sefior Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions 
 of 1605 which have wholly perished ; one probably at Barcelona, the 
 press of which city was very active in that year ; one at Pamplona, 
 and probably one at Zaragoza, which were capitals of old king- 
 doms. See also Sefior Asensio's letter to the Ateneo, No. 23, p. 296 ; 
 and the Appendix on the Bibliography of Don Quixote at the end 
 of this volume. 
 
 ^ The ordinary obrada, or impression, of a book at this period, 
 I am told by Senor Gayangos, — and there can be no better authority, 
 — was 250 copies. But in the case of a popular book like Don
 
 Life of Cervantes. 167 
 
 But though all Spain talked of Don Quixote and 
 read DON QuiXOTE ; and though the book brought 
 him much fame, some consolation, and a few good 
 friends, it does not appear to have helped to mend the 
 fortunes of Cervantes in any material degree. In 
 accordance with the usual dispensation, the author de- 
 rived the least benefit from his success. Francisco 
 Robles and Juan de la Cuesta, doubtless, made a good 
 thing of it ; but to Miguel de Cervantes there must 
 have come but a small share of the profit. The laws 
 of copyright were, in that age, little regarded ; and it 
 may be questioned whether, in a book published in 
 Madrid, they could be enforced outside of Castile, 
 The pirates and the wreckers were busy upon DON 
 Quixote from its very earliest appearance ; and its 
 quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, 
 not only of Spain, but of the outside Spanish domi- 
 nions, though highly flattering to the author, could not 
 have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and 
 penury. 
 
 Taking the object of DON QuixOTE to he,^ what 
 
 Quixote^ it was probably 500 copies. Supposing eight editions to 
 have been issued in 1605, there would thus have been printed 
 4,000 copies in the first year, — a number unprecedentedly large in 
 an age when readers were few and books a luxury. 
 
 * We need hardly discuss the various theories which have been 
 put forth, from that time to this, which assign to Cervantes a 
 particular motive, and to his book, which some will have to be a 
 satire, a personal application. Charles V., Philip II., the Duke of 
 Lerma, Ignatius Loyola,— these are some among the suggested 
 originals of Don Quixote. What there is in the lives of either of
 
 1 68 Don Quixote. 
 
 Cervantes declared it, — " the causing of the false and 
 silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind," — 
 no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest Knight 
 of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous 
 as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and 
 accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of 
 Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of 
 puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished 
 lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and 
 Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons 
 and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invin- 
 cible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not 
 one was written, after the date of the publication 
 of Don Quixote.^ Such a revolution in taste was 
 
 the two Spanish monarchs to liken him to the Knight of La 
 Mancha it is difficult to see ; but there are people who are not 
 content unless they find in every book of humorous invention an 
 object and a motive. Those who have looked upon that wonder- 
 ful equestrian picture of Titian's in the Museo at Madrid, with its 
 weird, weary, far-off expression, are irresistibly led to think of 
 Don Quixote ; but the converse is by no means so clear, that on 
 looking at Don Quixote we are tempted to think of that most 
 unromantic of monarchs, Carlos Quinto. As to the Duke of Lerma, 
 they who can believe, on the faith of the cock-and-bull stories told 
 by the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy and the Jesuit Rapin, that Cer- 
 vantes satirised the all-powerful Minister in revenge for personal 
 injuries, may be consigned to the same limbo with the believers 
 in the Bacon-Shakespeare. The theory about Loyola was first 
 mooted by Bowie in his Letter to Dr. Percy. 
 
 ^ The last book of the kind written before Don Quix'ote, accord- 
 ing to Clemencin, was Policisne de Boecia, published in 1602. But 
 La Toledana Dzscreta, which is a romantic poem in ottava rima.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 169 
 
 never accomplished by any single writer before or 
 since. 
 
 To estimate the worth of the service performed by 
 Cervantes, — not in abolishing romance, as has been 
 absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as 
 with even a more perverse misconception of his pur- 
 pose it has been suggested,^ but in purging books of 
 fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and 
 restoring romance to truth and to nature, — we have to 
 consider the enormous influence exercised by this per- 
 nicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain 
 in the Sixteenth century. Thoroughly to deal with 
 even the bibliography of the romances called of chivalry 
 is not practicable within the limits of this volume, nor 
 is it necessary for the purpose of understanding Cer- 
 vantes' object in writing DON QUIXOTE. I must be 
 content with a brief sketch of the extent to which the 
 reading of " books of chivalries " prevailed in Spain, 
 and its effects upon public taste and morals. At what 
 precise period the chivalric romance had its origin in 
 Europe is an inquiry which need not occupy me here. 
 The class of books we have specially to consider I hold 
 
 was published in 1604; and a few chap-books and religious 
 romances, of small account, afterwards. 
 
 * Byron's oft-quoted line about Cervantes having "laughed 
 Spain's chivalry away," may be paired off for extravagance if not 
 for wit with Montesquieu's remark that " the Spaniards have but 
 one book, — that which has made all the others ridiculous." There 
 was little chivalry left in Spain to laugh away ; and Cervantes, of 
 all Spaniards, was the man least likely to aid in laughing it away. 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 170 Don Quixote. 
 
 to be essentially of Spanish growth, owing nothing 
 except the germs of some of the stories and a few 
 names of heroes and of places to the romances of 
 Northern Europe, of Gothic or of Gaelic origin. The 
 idea of Warton that the romances are of Arabic or 
 Eastern descent may be summarily dismissed. There 
 is nothing in the literature of the East in the least like 
 these stories, nor has any one ever succeeded in tracing 
 any of the tales of adventure to an Eastern source. 
 Some of the inventions, the apparatus, the furniture of 
 the romances are, of course, the common property of 
 mankind. As Hobbes observes, " impenetrable armour, 
 enchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying 
 horses, and other such things are easily feigned by them 
 that dare." The East had its heroes and its romances, — 
 its tales of love, of war, and adventure, — but they are 
 wholly distinct from the parallel inventions of Western 
 Europe. Rustem and Antar and Hatim belong to a 
 different order of beings from Amadis and Lancelot and 
 Tristan. At the root of Western Romance is the spirit 
 of chivalry — the spirit of which the exaltation of woman 
 was the essence, — an idea repugnant to the Oriental 
 mind, and alien to all Moslem sentiment. Chivalry, as an 
 institution, was a product of an order of society such as 
 could not exist except where there was freedom of in- 
 tercourse between the sexes. It was necessarily evolved 
 from the more or less artificial life which was led by 
 men and women in mediaeval Europe. The principle 
 of honour, on which chivalry was founded, was the salt 
 which kept society sweet in an age darkened by igno-
 
 Life of Cervantes. 171 
 
 prance and soured by superstition. In its purest form 
 the state was that so eloquently described in the famous 
 sentence of Edmund Burke : — " The generous loyalty 
 to rank and sex, the proud submission to dignified 
 obedience, and that subordination of the heart which 
 kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an 
 exalted freedom, — that sensibility of principle, that 
 chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, 
 which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which 
 ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice 
 itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." 
 
 However exaggerated such a description may be of 
 the condition of France in the Eighteenth century, it 
 is not untrue of the state of Spain in the Fifteenth. 
 South of the Pyrenees chivalry survived, long after its 
 spirit had fled from Western Europe. A century after 
 Chaucer wrote his Sir Thopas, which mocked at forms 
 and observances of knighthood, the knightly calling 
 was in full glory in Spain. In no country, indeed, did 
 chivalry make such strong root or flourish so luxuriantly. 
 The ceaseless wars with the Moors had trained the 
 whole manhood of the nation to soldiership. The 
 trade of fighting was familiar to every man of good 
 birth, so that the word for knight came to be synony- 
 mous with that for gentleman. The constant exercise 
 in arms made of chivalry, in Spain, a more sober and 
 serious business than elsewhere. As one of the native 
 writers says, with equal spirit and point, there was 
 developed by the chronic war with the Moor a cabal- 
 lerismo (there is none but a Spanish word for a quality
 
 172 Don Quixote. 
 
 purely indigenous) essentially distinct from the gay, 
 fantastic chivalry of the North. It extended to all 
 classes of the people. It was not confined to the 
 aristocracy. " Every Spaniard was a warrior, every 
 warrior a noble, and every noble a Knight of his 
 country." * They had not to go far to seek for adven- 
 tures. They had the Paynim at home : Mahound 
 and Termagaunt were at their doors. The long and 
 desperate struggle for existence evolved the highest 
 qualities of the race. And small wonder it was that 
 out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid 
 and the warriors of the heroic age (who should be 
 clashed as prse-chivalric) there sprung up that ranker 
 produce, the Knights Errant. Of these, the seekers 
 after adventure, the Bohemians of the Knightly order, 
 — Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming 
 mother. No other country in that age, or in the pre- 
 vious one, could show the world such a scene as that 
 gravely enacted before King Juan II. and his court, 
 when eighty Knights ran a-tilt with each other, and in- 
 curred serious loss of limb and permanent injury to 
 their persons, in order that one of them might fulfil a 
 fantastic vow made to his mistress.^ 
 
 ^ See the eloquent and judicious prologue to his Romancero 
 General, by Don Agustin Duran. 
 
 ^ See the account of the Paso Honroso, held at the instance of 
 Suero de Quifiones, before Juan II., in 1434, at the bridge of 
 Orbigo, near Leon (Appendix E at the end of Vol. II.) Knight- 
 Errantry, in fact, which was only a caprice in France or in England, 
 was a calling in Spain. No other country could afiford such a
 
 Life of Cervantes. 173 
 
 The romance of chivalry was the natural growth of 
 this fashion of Knight Errantry ; and, like its parent, it 
 flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in Spain. Aviadis 
 of Gaul and Belianis of Greece are, in fact, as much 
 " racy of the soil " as DON QUIXOTE itself. The theory 
 much favoured by French writers, who see French in- 
 fluence in all that displays imagination, that the romance 
 of chivalry had its origin in France, may be true of 
 most, but is certainly not true of Amadis and his race. 
 M. Baret, who maintains — " c'est la France qui a fourni 
 le canevas sur lequel le genie Castillan a brod^ le riche 
 tissu qui a si longtemps charm6 I'Europe," has himself 
 contributed the evidence by which to refute that posi- 
 tion.^ The Amadis and its compeers (excluding the 
 books of Provengal birth, such as Tirant lo Blanch) 
 have little in common with the Armorican or Norman 
 legends. No one can compare them with the romances 
 
 field for it, and to no other society was it suited. The grave and 
 wise Fernando de Pulgar, of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
 speaks of noblemen whom he knew who had gone into foreign 
 countries in search of adventures, " so to gain honour for them- 
 selves and the fame of valiant and hardy Knights for the gentlemen 
 of Castile," — boasting that there were more Spanish Knights of the 
 errant sort than those of any other nation. 
 
 * De D Amadis de Gaule et de son Jnftience, par Eugene Baret, 
 1853 — a work of much intelligence, to which recent Spanish critics 
 have been more indebted than they have cared to acknowledge. 
 M. Baret's main thesis is that Amadis of Gaul caxao. into Spain in 
 the suite of the literature of Provence, — a position, which, I think, 
 cannot be maintained. The Amadis is of a character essentially 
 distinct from any work of Provencal origin.
 
 174 Don Quixote. 
 
 of the Sangreal and the Round Table without being 
 struck with their essential difference, not only in style, 
 but in tone and in spirit. There is no doubt that the 
 Breton romances were known in the Peninsula long 
 before any of native growth made their appearance. 
 In the Aviadis itself there are allusions to the charac- 
 ters in the older books. Arthur himself is mentioned — 
 " El muy virtuoso rey Artur." ' The names of Lancelot 
 and Tristan occur, and the Tabla Redonda is frequently 
 referred to as the pattern of chivalry. But the spirit 
 of Aviadis is as distinct from the spirit of the Mort 
 d' Arthur as one book can differ from another, both re- 
 lating to knightly adventures. The Amadis, which is 
 the purest type, as it is the first and by far the best, of 
 the Spanish romances, introduces us to a world entirely 
 strange, — as unlike that of Arthur and Lancelot as 
 Lyonnesse is to Trapisonda. The hero himself is cast 
 in a more refined and elaborate mould than any of the 
 Arthurian heroes. He has sensibility, tenderness, cul- 
 ture, and even virtue. As the perfect Knight, the model 
 man-at-arms, he is a far higher conception than Lan- 
 celot or any of the rough-and-tumble heroes of the 
 British school. The scenes in which he moves are 
 drawn with a more skilful hand ; the society is more 
 
 * A^nadis de Gaula, bk. i. ch. i. In the Fourth Book there is 
 mention of the king " Uterpadragon," father of Arthur, of "Tristan 
 de Leonis," and of "Mares de Comualla," — but only in a very 
 casual way, sho\ving that the wTiter had heard of these worthies, 
 but not indicating any kind of connexion between them and the 
 subject of his own story.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 175 
 
 highly developed, more civilised, and, on the whole, 
 more moral than that to which we are introduced in 
 the French books. In the history of Amadis itself, 
 there is no coarse word and no lewd idea, though much 
 freedom and simplicity. Sir Walter Scott, who should 
 be no mean judge, thought it "a well-conducted story." 
 Ticknor, who is not apt to be enthusiastic in these mat- 
 ters, praises it for its " lofty tone that rises to elo- 
 quence," — for its " earnestness and truth." Tasso has 
 called it " the most beautiful as well as the most profit- 
 able story of the kind that can be read." As a mirror 
 of the age when it was composed, when the spirit of 
 chivalry was a living and real influence, when a belief 
 in giants and magicians was a part of the national 
 religion, when to worship one's mistress and to insist 
 upon her pre-eminent beauty and virtue was the duty 
 of every well-born gentleman, nothing which has been 
 written in any tongue is superior to Amadis of Gaul, — 
 to which we have to add Cervantes' own opinion, that 
 it is " unique in its art, and the best of all the books 
 which have been composed in that kind." ^ 
 
 ' Compared with any of the romances of that age, or of the age 
 succeeding, to Amadis of Gaul must be assigned a very high 
 place. It is a well-constructed story ; the characters are drawn 
 with a certain skill and fidelity to nature ; the situations are, some 
 of them, highly dramatic ; the scenes, such as that between the 
 Child of the Sea (the youthful Amadis) and Oriana, in the First 
 Book, when they first become aware of their love ; the interview 
 between the lovers, after Amadis is acknowledged son of Perion, 
 King of Gaul ; the scene between mother and daughter, in the 
 Third Book ; and several others, are not less pure and natural in
 
 1/6 Don Quixote. 
 
 The kind was infinite ; for Amadis had a numerous 
 progeny. It is cnoucjh in this place to say that, from the 
 first to the last, covering a period of nearly two hundred 
 years, there were produced in Spain over seventy ro- 
 mances of chivalry ; this one fact alone testifying to the 
 enormous hold which this species of literature had taken 
 of the national mind. Of the extent to which the popular 
 morals as well as the popular taste were corrupted by 
 this kind of reading (it being understood that the 
 successors of Amadis departed very widely from their 
 ancestor in morals as in manners), we have abundant 
 testimony. Among other famous writers who declaimed 
 against the evil caused by the books of chivalries were 
 Luis Vives, Alejo Venegas, Diego Gracian, Melchior 
 Cano, Fr. Luis de Granada, and Arias Montano. 
 Venegas tells us that " the reading of Books of Chival- 
 ries were the sole entertainment of the country people 
 and persons of leisure, and the object of discussion to 
 the learned and intelligent men of the nation." The 
 Cortes and the Church inveighed strongly against the 
 
 feeling than simple and dignified in language. With what romance 
 of the Fifteenth or Sixteenth centuries can we compare Amadis ? 
 It is not only the best in its kind, but vastly better than the tedious 
 and artificial romances of the age succeeding, — the productions of 
 Gomberville, Calprenede, and Madame de Scudery. It is long; but 
 so are many good books. The hero fights too often, and wins 
 too certainly. There is a monotony in his unvaried triumphs, but 
 so there is in the exploits of Achilles, and the God-protected heroes 
 of Homer. After all, very few romances have been written from 
 that time to this so worthy of that name, so pure in spirit, so noble 
 in sentiment, as Amadis of Gaul.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 177 
 
 pernicious literature, and edicts were more than once 
 passed for its suppression. The Emperor Charles V., in 
 1543, issued a decree prohibiting the printing or sale of 
 these books in the Indies. Yet Charles himself, we are 
 told, chose Belianis of Greece for his favourite reading. 
 Father Passevinus, in 1593, preached a sermon averring 
 that it was the Devil himself who had inspired the idea 
 of translating Ainadis into Spanish, in order to aid the 
 revolt of Luther and to overturn the Catholic Religion. 
 As a last resource, the Priests attempted to stem the 
 flow of knightly romance by writing religious books in 
 imitation of those of chivalries. Fr. Gabriel de Mata, 
 in 1587, wrote of the exploits of St. Francis of Assisi 
 under the name of El Caballero Asisio. In 1554, 
 Heronimo de San Pedro had composed The Celestial 
 Chivalry, in which the same pious object was veiled under 
 a romantic name, and the Cavallero Peregrino, Con- 
 quistador del Cielo, which brought down romance proper 
 to the humble level of the religious tract. All these 
 laws and these decrees and devices could not, however, 
 wean the people from their favourite passion. Long after 
 chivalry was dead, — even though jousts and tourneys 
 still survived, — men continued to read Ainadis, and 
 J would read nothing else. Of the grave and potent Diego 
 Hurtado de Mendoza, we are told that, when sent on an 
 embassy to Rome, he took with him, as his only read- 
 ing, Amadis of Gaul and Celestina, — finding them, it is 
 added, more substantial than the epistles of St. Paul.^ 
 
 ^ Francisco de Portugal, in his Arte de Galanteria, 1682, p. 71. 
 This is not saying much, perhaps, for the entertainment to be 
 VOL. I. 2 A
 
 i/S Don Quixote, 
 
 Even the sainted Teresa, glory of Spanish piety, not 
 only found much pleasure and spent much time in 
 reading these wicked books, but, it is reputed, wrote 
 them herself.* Of Loyola, also, it is told that he formed 
 his idea of a Christian order upon that of chivalry. 
 The learned and acute author of the Dialogo de la 
 Lengua, lately identified as Juan Valdes the Reformer, 
 speaks of the ten years he wasted at Court, studying 
 Florisando, Lisuartc, and the rest.^ The characters, 
 the incidents, the names in Amadis were familiar in all 
 men's mouths, and found currency even out of Spain. 
 Elizabeth of England was dubbed Oriana by the gal- 
 lants of her court. Darioleta, the confidant, became a 
 synonym for a go-between, surviving even to this day 
 in cooker>'-books as a name for a cheese-cake. There 
 were some simple or devout enough to take the ro- 
 mance for a gospel, — who believed in Amadis as much 
 
 found in Amadis, but a good deal for the taste of Mendoza, — the 
 author oi LasaHllo de Tor7nes, and a prime favourite with Cervantes. 
 
 1 See the Life of this most romantic and sentimental lady, — a 
 female Quixote, if ever there could be one, — written by Dr. Fran- 
 cisco de Ribera. 
 
 ^ In the Dialogo de la Lengua, first published by Mayans y 
 Siscar in his Origenes, J-737) as Dialogo de las Lenguas, and so 
 generally cited. But Usoz y Rio, in his recent edition of the works 
 of this eminent Spanish Reformer (published under the auspices of 
 B. B. Wiffen), has proved that, seeing the subject was only the 
 Spanish language, it should be Dialogo de la Lengua. It was 
 written in the first half of the Sixteenth century, and is very 
 valuable for its just and acute remarks on the language. The 
 style of Amadis is praised by Valdes.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 179 
 
 as in any other hero or saint. In the Arte de Galanteria, 
 written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of 
 the Sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese 
 poet, Simon de Silveira, once swore upon the Evange- 
 lists that he believed the whole of Ainadis to be true 
 history. This is capped by another story in the same 
 book of how a certain Knight came home from hunting 
 and found his wife and daughters dissolved in tears. 
 Asking them what was the matter, — whether any child 
 or relation was dead, — they said " No ; but Amadis 
 is dead." They had come to the 174th chapter of 
 Lisuarte of Greece, where the old Amadis finally dies. 
 
 The influence of the Paluierins and of the Carlovin- 
 gian romances, which form a class by themselves, was 
 scarcely inferior to that of Aviadis. Palmerin of 
 England itself, the patriarch of the family, — that " Palm 
 of England," as Cervantes calls him, — may be placed 
 second to his rival in merit. The difference in spirit is 
 great between the two ; for Amadis is of the Fourteenth 
 century, when chivalry was in its early prime, and 
 Palmerin was not written till the Sixteenth century, 
 when the true ideal of knighthood had already been 
 dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adven- 
 ture. Southey, perhaps, ranks Palmerin too high in 
 the literary scale by placing it on a level with Amadis, 
 and averring that he knew " no romance and no epic in 
 which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their 
 successors, the long line of sons, grandsons, and 
 nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, 
 they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to
 
 i8o Don Quixote. 
 
 keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the 
 Primaleons and the Poliiidos, — the Florisels and the 
 Florisandos, were compelled to put in wonders on an 
 ascending scale ; to pile up adventure upon adventure ; 
 to make the dragons fiercer, the giants hugcr, the 
 fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more bloody. 
 The popular appetite, which craved for more and more 
 excitement with every successive stimulant, could only 
 be fed by inventions so monstrous that it is a wonder 
 the stomach of the readers of romances of chivalry did 
 not reject the nauseous aliment. Yet there is no 
 evidence of any decline in the production of these 
 books up to the date of the appearance of Don 
 Quixote. 
 
 It was to do battle with this brood of fabled mon- 
 sters, against whom the pulpit and the parliament had 
 preached and legislated in vain, that Cervantes took up 
 his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single 
 arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success 
 such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we 
 know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many 
 of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service per- 
 formed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, 
 has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more 
 certain than that his aim in DON QuiXOTE was, pri- 
 marily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. 
 What moral and social results followed, were the neces- 
 sary consequences of the employment of his rare wit 
 and humour on such a work. There is no reason to 
 believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious
 
 Life of Cervantes. i8i 
 
 intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give 
 " a pastime to melancholy souls " ^ in destroying " the 
 ^ authority and influence which the books of chivalries 
 have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was 
 not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly 
 romances as such, — still less by any ambition to repress 
 the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of 
 social and political abuses, — is abundantly proved by the 
 whole tenour of his book, if not by the evidence of his 
 life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of 
 romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more 
 of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their 
 spirit. He cannot help letting us feel, even in that 
 famous Inquisition which the Priest and the Barber 
 held on Don Quixote's library, that he has a kindness 
 for those he chastens. He specially excepts the good 
 books from the penalty of the fire, speaking highly of 
 Ainadis of Gaul and Palmeri?i of Ejiglayid. To argue 
 that because he burlesqued them, therefore he hated 
 them, is to go against the order of nature. The Orlando 
 Furioso is almost as much parodied in DON QuiXOTE 
 
 * See the Viaje del Parnaso, ch. iv. : — 
 
 Y he dado en Don Quixote pasatiempo 
 Al pecho melanc61ico y mohino 
 En cualquiera sazon, en todo tiempo. 
 (And I it is in Qidxofe who have given, 
 A pastime for the melancholy soul 
 In every age, and all time and season.) 
 
 Why cannot we believe the author, when he thus plainly and can- 
 didly avows his purpose "i
 
 i82 Don Quixote. 
 
 as is Aviadis of Gaul ; yet are we to conclude that 
 Cervantes despised Ariosto and proposed to annihilate 
 him ? That Cervantes had no fcelinjij against romances 
 of chivalry, as such, but only against bad romances, is 
 proved in DON OUIXOTE itself, where, through the 
 mouth of the Canon of Toledo, the author lays down 
 the rules on which a true romance should be written, 
 purposing himself to write one.' His complaint of the 
 majority of the old romances is that they were so full 
 of absurdities and extravagances as to bring such lite- 
 rature into discredit. The opinion of an acute Spanish 
 writer, Don Vicente de Salva, on this point we hold to 
 be a very sensible one : — " Cervantes did not intend to 
 satirise the substance and essence of books of chivalries, 
 but only to purge away the follies and impossibilities." 
 What is Don Quixote itself, it is shrewdly added, but 
 a romance of chivalry, " which has ruined the fortunes 
 of its predecessors by being so immensely in advance 
 of them } " ^ What was Cervantes' own last book, as 
 we shall presently show, but a romance of chivalry, — 
 not free, alas ! from some of the very errors he had 
 himself burlesqued ? Nay, what was Cervantes' own 
 life but a romance of chivalry? 
 
 ' See Don Quixote^ Part I. C. xlviii. Here, and in the chapter 
 before, Cervantes, through the mouth of the judicious Canon of 
 Toledo, criticises the books of chivalries because they are deficient 
 in art, and do not fulfil their purpose. He is opposed to them, not 
 because they are of chivalries, but because they are bad books. 
 
 - See the essay of Salvd's, in Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioieca, 
 vol. ii. p. 723-40. Paris, 1842.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 183 
 
 That, after all, the overthrow of the books of chival- 
 ries was but a small part of the good work which 
 Cervantes performed in Don Quixote is only to say- 
 that, like all great writers, he " builded better than he 
 knew." The pen of the genius, as Heine says, is ever 
 greater than the man himself - Rejecting all the many 
 subtle and ingenious theories as to what was Cervantes' 
 object in writing his book, — that it was a crusade against 
 enthusiasm, as even Heine seems to suspect ; that it 
 was a missionary tract, intended to destroy Popery and 
 throw down Anti-Christ, as some, even bearded men, 
 have dared to suggest ; that it was a programme of 
 advanced Liberalism artfully veiled under a mask of 
 levity, and, indeed, the forerunner of that gospel of 
 sentimental cosmopolitanism since preached by other 
 eminent persons supposed to resemble Cervantes in their 
 characters or Don Quixote in their careers; — I hold 
 that the author wrote but out of the fulness of his own 
 heart, — giving us, by a happy impulse, a fable in which 
 are transparently figured his own character, his own ex- 
 periences, and his own sufferings. What is the key but 
 this to the mystery which makes this book, on a purely 
 local subject of passing interest, the book of humanity 
 for all time, — as popular out of Spain as among 
 Spaniards ? A mere burlesque would have died with the" 
 books which it killed. A satire survives only so long as 
 the person or the thing satirised is remembered. But' 
 Don Quixote lives, and, by a miracle of genius, 
 keeps Amadis and Palmerm alive. What matter what 
 the lesson is the book teaches ? Mankind do not read it
 
 I $4 Don Quixote. 
 
 for the lessons. The truest wisdom and philosophy are 
 there, dressed in a humour and wit which none of the 
 sons of men have equalled ; but the wit and the philo- 
 sophy are one. The humour spells humanity. It is 
 this, the human clement, which is the perennial charm 
 of Don Quixote. The invention is the most original, 
 as well as the most simple, in literature. From this 
 book dates an epoch in the art of fiction. For once 
 Cervantes was happy in his opportunity. How could 
 his romance fail of holding the field against all the 
 romances ? It was drawn out of his own romantic life, 
 which had been a real Knight Errantry. The hero 
 himself, the enthusiast who is for ever mocked by For- 
 tune ; who aimed at reviving the old order of chivalry, 
 and is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the 
 vulgar ; who is for ever taking inns for castles, scullery 
 wenches for princesses, flocks of sheep for armies, wind- 
 mills for giants, barbers' basins for helmets ; who, in 
 spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indig; 
 nities, never ceases to command our love, respect, and 
 admiration, — is not this the greatest feat ever achieved 
 by the human imagination } The art by which Sancho, 
 the commonplace man of sense, is perpetually set 
 against the romantic enthusiast, out of his senses 
 though not bereft of his wits, — the two between them 
 possessing the world, as Coleridge says, — is that touch 
 of nature w4iich makes DON QUIXOTE a world's book.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 185 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Life at Valladolid — Arrival of the English Ambassador 
 — The Festivities at Court — Gongora — Affair of 
 Ezpeleta — Visit to Seville — Return to Madrid — 
 Cervantes^ Pursuits — Friends and Rivals— Publi- 
 cation of the Novels — The Voyage to Parnassus and 
 Appendix — Cervantes' Patrons — Publication of 
 Comedies and Farces — Poverty of the Author — 
 Foreign Opinion. 
 
 THE records of Cervantes' life at Valladolid are 
 brief and scanty. The publication of DON 
 Quixote did not lead to any improvement in the 
 author's fortunes ; and that same cruel destiny which 
 had marred his life pursued him still. The book 
 brought him much fame and a few friends ; but it 
 stirred up against him the malice of his rivals, espe- 
 cially of those who supposed themselves and their 
 works to have been the objects of his ridicule. Valla- 
 dolid, as the seat of the Court, was the resort of all 
 the most famous of the men of letters. Those men- 
 tioned as being intimate with Cervantes were Pedro 
 Lainez, a poet, whom he had introduced twenty years 
 before as one of the characters in his Galatea, under 
 the name of Damon ; Bartolom^ Leonardo de Argen- 
 sola who, with his brother Lupercio, was one of the 
 vol. I. 2 B
 
 i86 Don Quixote. 
 
 best writers of the age ; and Vicente Espinel, the 
 author of the Escudcro Marcos de Obrcgon, who after- 
 wards, Hke the Argensolas, forgot his friend, and spoke 
 snecringly of DON OuixOTE.^ Among those who could 
 not forgive Cervantes for writing Don Ouixote was 
 one, Luis de Gongora, at this period passing from his 
 pure and simple early style into the abyss of Cidtismo, 
 from whom — but that he was a priest, of a narrow, 
 envious nature, and jealous of every one who sought to 
 rise by the profession of letters — Cervantes might fairly 
 have looked for sympathy." 
 
 * Pedro de Lainez, one of the interlocutors in Galatea, and an 
 early friend of Cervantes, died at Valladolid in the year 1605 — his 
 widow living in one of the apartments of the house where Cervantes 
 lodged. The two Argensolas, whom Cervantes was always praising, 
 appear to have ill deserved his friendship. They followed in the 
 train of the Conde de Lemos, when that nobleman was appointed 
 Viceroy of Naples in 1610 ; and Cervantes seems to complain in 
 Chapter III. of the Voyage to Parnassus of promises made by 
 them and forgotten : — 
 
 Mucho esper^, si mucho prometieron, 
 Mas podra ser que ocupaciones nuevas 
 Les obligue d olvidar lo que dijeron. 
 (I hoped for much, for much they promised. 
 But may be occupations new and strange 
 Have caused them to forget all that they said.) 
 Vicente de Espinel, also an old friend, took occasion after Cer- 
 vantes' death to speak of his own Marcos de Obregon, published 
 in 1618, as superior to Doti Quixote. The only one of the fellow- 
 writers, his contemporaries, who, to his own honour, had never an 
 ill word to say of the author of Do7i Quixote^ is Francisco Quevedo 
 — the one of all nearest akin in genius to Cervantes. 
 '^ There is a satirical sonnet printed in Pellicer, attributed to
 
 Life of Cervantes. i»7 
 
 A satirical sonnet by Gongora contains one of the 
 earliest of the contemporary references to Don Quixote. 
 On the 26th of May, 1605, there was received at the 
 Spanish Court the Earl of Nottingham (late Lord 
 Howard of Effingham), the Lord High Admiral of 
 England, who came with a train of thirty or forty 
 noblemen and gentlemen to celebrate the new peace 
 between Spain and England, and also to be present at 
 the baptism of the son who had been born to Philip HL 
 The visit was one marked by a singular display of 
 splendour on the side of Spain ; the enthusiasm exhi- 
 bited over the English Lutherans, — the time-honoured 
 enemies of the faith and nation, — being, as we learn 
 from various contemporary references, not very much to 
 the taste of the rigid Catholics, who grudged the large 
 sums expended on the festivities. There is a sonnet, 
 written by Gongora on the occasion, which seems to me 
 to bear a significance deeper and other than that which 
 has been assigned to it by Spanish critics. In this the 
 coupling of the names of Don Quixote and Sancho 
 with the Lutherans is not only, I take it, an evidence 
 
 Gongora, attacking Lope de Vega with great bitterness, which on 
 account of its being in truncated verse might be taken to be the 
 work of Cervantes. That Lope so believed, is said to be proved 
 by a dirty and scurrilous sonnet in reply addressed to Cervantes 
 {Pellicer, p. no, in the Life prefixed to his Don Quixote). This 
 may have been that " bad, weak, graceless, and pointless sonnet;" 
 speaking ill of Don Quixote, to which Cervantes refers in the 
 Adjunta al Parnaso, for which his niece paid a real for postage. 
 I think Gongora's mischief-making hand is to bs traced in both 
 sonnets.
 
 iSS Don Ouixotk. 
 
 of Gongora's ill-humour with the festivities, but an 
 early suggestion, not only of Cervantes' un-nationalism, 
 but of his heterodoxy.^ From that day to this there 
 
 * The sonnet written by Gongora on this occasion is curious 
 enough, apart from its reference to Don Quixote, to be quoted at 
 length, as a specimen of the poet's sarcastic humour and an evi- 
 dence of the popular feeling on the Englishmen's visit : — 
 
 Pari(5 la Reyna : el Luterano vino 
 Con seiscientos herejes y heresias : 
 Gastamos un millon en quince dias 
 
 En darles joyas, hospedaje y vino : 
 ^ Hicimos un alardc 6 dcsatino, 
 
 Y Unas fiestas, que fueron tropelias, 
 Al Anglico legado y sus espias 
 
 Del que jurd la paz sobre Calvino : 
 
 Bautizamos al niiio Dominico 
 
 Que nacid par serlo en los Espafias : 
 Hicimos un sarao de encantamento: 
 
 Quedamos pobrcs, fue Lutero rico : 
 Mandaronse escribir estas hazaiias 
 A Don Quixote, d Sancho, y su jumento. 
 
 (The Queen brought forth : there came the Lutheran, 
 Six hundred heretics and heresies 
 In's train — a million in a fortnight flies 
 
 In gew-gaws, shows, and wine to greet the man. 
 
 We made parade— our feasts to follies ran, 
 To hurry skurry our festivities, 
 All for the English legate and his spies ; 
 
 Who Calvin's bible swore the peace upon. 
 
 The brat we christened Dominick, for he 
 Was born to be our Spain's Dominican ; 
 We gave a ball for fairy feast might pass, 
 
 We rested poor, that Luther rich might be ; 
 LTnto Don Quixote the commandment ran, 
 To write these deeds —to Sancho and his ass.)
 
 Life of Cervantes. 189 
 
 have not been wanting Spaniards who, even while 
 flattered by the attentions paid to Don Quixote by 
 foreigners, cannot rid themselves of a suspicion that 
 they have been earned at the expense of the nation, if 
 not of the Catholic religion. They half resent an 
 appreciation which seems to imply that the only good 
 book in Spain is that which ridicules what they feel to 
 be the leading Spanish weaknesses. In the reference* 
 to the mandate to Don Quixote, Sancho, and his ass 
 to write of the deeds of extravagant welcome on the 
 occasion of the Englishmen's coming, I do not think 
 that Gongora meant any more than to gibe Cervantes 
 for the liberality he had always shown in writing of 
 those who were the bitter enemies of his country and 
 his faith. On the strength of this sonnet, however, and 
 without any other evidence, the biographers have con- 
 cluded that the official account of the Earl of Not- 
 tingham's embassy, and of his reception by the 
 Spanish Court, was written by Cervantes ; and the 
 piece is even included among the works of Cervantes 
 in the larger Argamasilla edition. I confess I can see 
 no trace of Cervantes' hand in this dull and formal 
 narrative ; nor was it in the least likely that he 
 would be employed in such a work, being, so far as 
 
 The allusion to Dominico contains a play upon the young 
 Prince's name (he was baptized Felipe Dominico Victor, and lived 
 afterwards to be the well-known patron and model of Velasquez) 
 as well upon Dominico in its old sense of sefior, a conceit which 
 may not be produced in an English version. 
 
 ,--s
 
 190 Don Quixotk. 
 
 can be learned, without any favour at Court at this 
 time.' 
 
 A passing glimpse is obtained of Cervantes and his 
 family about this time by an unpleasant affair which 
 was the occasion of trouble, and perhaps of scandal, to 
 the household. On a night in June, 1605, Don Caspar 
 de Ezpeleta, one of the Court gallants, passing along the 
 street where Cervantes lived,- was suddenly assailed by 
 a man out of the darkness, who dealt him two severe 
 wounds and fled. Crying out for help, there ran to his 
 assistance the dwellers in the house near where he fell, 
 among whom were Miguel de Cervantes and some of 
 the women of his family. Don Caspar was taken into 
 Cervantes' lodging, where he died in a few hours, living 
 long enough, however, to bequeath some of his fine 
 clothes to a member of Cervantes' family, in recom- 
 pense of her services to him when wounded. In accord- 
 ance with the rude custom of Spanish law, Cervantes 
 and his family were taken off to the gaol, where they 
 were detained until after the inquiry into the cause of 
 Don Caspar's death. The formal depositions^ before 
 
 ' The tract is entitled : Relacion de lo sucedido en la ciudad de 
 Valladolid, &c. &c. It was published at Valladolid in 1605 ; and 
 is reprinted among Cervantes' works in the octavo Argamasilla 
 edition of 1864. 
 
 - Cervantes lived in the house opposite the slaughter-house, 
 near the wooden bridge over the small river Esqueva. The house 
 now pointed out as his is No. 14, Calle de Rastro. 
 
 3 See the account of the affair in detail as given by Pellicer, 
 with the depositions of the witnesses. Vida de Cervantes, p. 119, 
 in vol. i. of his edition oi Don Quixote.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 191 
 
 the Alcalde are still extant, and they are curious for 
 this only as throwing light upon the circumstances and 
 the manner of living of Cervantes at this period. The 
 family of Cervantes, — himself fifty-seven years of age, — 
 consisted at this time of his wife, Dona Catalina ; his 
 natural daughter, Isabel, aged twenty ; his widowed 
 sister, Andrea, aged sixty-one; Constanza, her daughter, 
 aged twenty-eight ; Doiia Magdalena de Sotomayor, 
 called his sister, but who must have been a cousin, over 
 forty ; and Maria, their servant. Out of the depositions 
 is to be gleaned these facts : — That the household was 
 poor, living in a not very high quarter, in a house 
 shared by other tenants ; that Miguel de Cervantes had 
 many visitors ; that he " wrote and transacted business " 
 there {escribia y trataba negocios, says his sister, Andrea) ; 
 and that the family were dependent on him, assisted 
 by some needlework of the women, for their living.^ 
 
 ^ There is no trace of any suspicion attaching to Cervantes, or 
 to any member of his family, of complicity in this affair. But one 
 of the witnesses speaks of a woman having been the cause of the 
 trouble, which is probable enough, — without witnesses. Don Caspar 
 de Ezpeleta had a repute for gallantry. There is in the British 
 Museum Library a manuscript diary by a Portuguese gentleman, 
 living at Valladolid at this time, in which the name of "Cervantes" 
 occurs, in a not very reputable connexion — being uttered by a 
 woman in a gambling-house. Sefior Gayangos wrote an article on 
 this Portuguese and his diary in the Revista de Espafia. I do 
 not myself-— ^(9« paz sea dicho — attach any importance to this dis- 
 covery. The name of Cervantes was common enough in that age. 
 Had there been any ground for the imputation that our Miguel 
 de Cervantes was a night-ruffler and a frequenter of gambling- 
 houses (he being now nearly sixty years of age), we may be sure
 
 ic)2 Don Quixote. 
 
 In 1606, ValladoHd having been found unsuitable for 
 the Royal residence, the Court was removed once more, 
 and for the last time, to IMadrid. Thither Cervantes 
 with his family followed, — not sorry, perhaps, to be 
 nearer the ancestral homes of Alcala and Esquivias. 
 There is some reason to believe that, after leaving 
 Valladolid, Cervantes paid a short visit to Seville, 
 where he had many friends, before settling in Madrid. 
 Among the manuscripts preserved in the Bibliotcca 
 Colonibina (the library founded by Fernando Colon, the 
 son of the great Admiral, in the chapter-house of the 
 cathedral), is one of the early part of the Seventeenth 
 century, including various comic pieces by Quevedo 
 and others, with the novel of the Tia Fingida, ascribed 
 to Cer\-antes, — the account of a burlesque tourney held 
 at San Juan de Alfarache, a village near Seville, on the 
 4th of July, 1606. In this, many of the poets and 
 men of letters residing in Seville took part, among 
 whom was Ruiz de Alarcon, afterwards well known as 
 a dramatist. It was a kind of poets' festival, at which 
 poems were recited, comedies acted, and a mock contest 
 fought with swords and spears, held in the open air, 
 on the banks of the Guadalquivir. A prose narrative 
 of the proceedings, in the shape of a letter to one 
 Don Diego de Astudillo, in the city of Seville, was 
 written by some one, whose name is not disclosed, who 
 acted as secretary of the revels. From internal evidence, 
 
 that we should have heard of it from the mouths of some of his 
 
 enemies.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 193 
 
 I am inclined to believe, with Senor Guerra y Orbe, 
 who first published the letter in 1864, that this secre- 
 tary might have been Miguel de Cervantes. The style 
 is very like his, and the letter abounds in phrases such 
 as occur in Don Quixote, with unmistakeable allusions 
 to the characters and incidents in the story. The names 
 assumed by the various competitors, such as Don Tal 
 Principe de Para-cual la Baja, Don Floripando Talhido, 
 Principe de C/mnga, one of the mantenedores (taken 
 by Alarcon, who was a Mexican by birth), and Don 
 Rocandolfo de la Insula Firme, are in the humour of 
 Cervantes, and seem to come from the same mint as 
 Brandabarbaran de Boliche and Pentapolin the Garaman- 
 tan. If not M^ritten by Cervantes himself, and one of 
 those " stray pieces going about hereabouts without the 
 name of their author," of which he has told us there 
 were many,' this letter to Astudillo is important, if only 
 for this, — as showing that even at this early date (1606) 
 the names, phrases, and incidents out of DON QuiXOTE 
 had become familiar in the mouths of the gay youth 
 of the period.^ 
 
 Of the first three or four years passed at Madrid, 
 there is nothing worthy of record in the life of Cer- 
 vantes, except that in 1608 was brought out that which 
 
 * See Prologue to the Novelas. 
 
 ' The tract is entitled, Algunos Datos nuevos para ilustrar el 
 Quijote, &c. &c., par Don Aureliano Fernandez Guerra y Orbe. 
 Madrid, 1864. Senor Guerra y Orbe (Phoebus ! what a name !) 
 makes out a very good case, and is entitled to much credit among 
 Cervantists for his discovery. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 C
 
 194 Don Quixote. 
 
 must be res^arded as the true second edition of the 
 First Part of DON OUIXOTE, the first which had the 
 benefit (though only partially) of the author's corrections 
 and alterations. With characteristic carelessness, while 
 he corrected some of the blunders and supplied some 
 of the omissions in the text, Cervantes left others un- 
 noticed, to the confusion of his critics, and commen- 
 tators, and translators thereafter.^ His two chief patrons 
 at this time were the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, 
 Don Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas, uncle of the Duke of 
 Lerma, and the Conde de Lemos, nephew and son-in- 
 law of the King's favourite. Both these high-placed 
 men were noted for their fondness for learning and 
 literature, and their liberality to poets and men of letters. 
 The Archbishop, by his position, was the most powerful 
 churchman in Christendom next to the Pope, and being 
 at the same time Inquisitor-General, — an office which he 
 assumed unwillingly after twice refusing it, — his friend- 
 ship must have been of singular value to the author of 
 Don Quixote. That he was a prelate in advance of 
 his age is shown by various acts of his life, such as his 
 rebuke to the Provincial Boards of the Inquisition for 
 their over-zeal in witch-finding ;2 his discouragement 
 of autos-de-fe, which were considerably fewer under his 
 administration than under any previous Inquisitor- 
 General ; and, lastly, by his appreciation of the merits 
 
 ' See my remarks in the Introduction and elsewhere as to the 
 value to be attached to this edition of 1608. 
 " See Llorente^ ch. xxxvii, 2, 51.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 195 
 
 of Don Quixote, — a book, as we shall see, always 
 under suspicion of the orthodox.^ The Conde de Lemos, 
 the Archbishop's kinsman, who in these years held the 
 important office of President of the Council of the 
 Indies, being removed to the Viceroy alty of Naples 
 in 1610, must also^ receive such credit for goodness 
 as is implied by the praises which Cervantes bestows 
 on him as a lover and a patron of literature. He 
 seems to have held out some promise of employment 
 to the author of DoN Quixote in his government of 
 Naples ; but the Argensolas, Bartolome, and Lupercio, 
 held a monopoly of his countship's favour ; and they, 
 it is suspected, and as Cervantes hints, intercepted the 
 Conde de Lemos' bounty. There is no reason to be- 
 lieve that from either of his two patrons Cervantes 
 received any favour more substantial than such as took 
 the shape of casual alms ; though with his usual pro- 
 
 1 One proof of the Archbishop's freedom from the prejudices of 
 his cloth and of the period is to be found in the fact that Don 
 Quixote was published — the Second Part, with his special appro- 
 bation — without any passage being marked as offensive to the 
 Catholic Faith, or included in the Index Expurgatorius. Yet at 
 Lisbon, outside of the Archbishop's jurisdiction, and where his 
 example was of no force, several passages, as I shall show, came 
 under the jealous eyes of the Holy Office. There can be no doubt 
 that Cervantes was greatly indebted during his lifetime to the pro- 
 tection of the Archbishop for what cannot but be regarded as his 
 singular immunity from the attentions of the Inquisition. It was 
 not until after the Archbishop's death that the Inquisition, in 
 1619, ordered a passage in Don Quixote to be expunged (Part II. 
 C. xxxvi).
 
 196 Don Quixote. 
 
 fusion of good-nature he speaks of them both as though 
 they were tlie supports of his life and the chccrers of 
 his now fast-coming old age. 
 
 Disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Cervantes 
 devoted himself more strictly henceforth to his books 
 and his literary projects. In 1609, being then in his 
 sixty-second year, he sought to make a provision for his 
 last days and to secure himself decent burial, according 
 to the fashion of the age, by entering the congregation 
 of the Oratory of the Knights of Grace — a confraternity 
 in connexion with a monastic order, though not itself 
 monastic, which was much patronised by the leading 
 men of letters as well as by the magnates of the Court, 
 in which number were included Lope de Vega, Quevedo, 
 the Prince of Esquilache, and others. His wife and his 
 sister Andrea had joined the Third Order of St. Francis 
 — the latter, who had been her brother's faithful and 
 devoted companion ever since his return from Algiers, 
 dying in October, 1609. About this period also, if we 
 may believe his biographer Navarrete, Cervantes had 
 become a member of a literary club or society, called 
 the Selvages, which was composed of the best wits of 
 Spain residing in the capital. 
 
 Stimulated, doubtless, by the applause with which 
 Don Quixote had been received, and believing him- 
 self now secure of his public, Cervantes, in his latter 
 years, took pains to gather together his various writings, 
 developing at the same time an activity and fecundity 
 in production most unusual in a man of his age. In 
 161 3 he published his Novelas Exemplares, some of
 
 Life of Cervantes. 197 
 
 which had been written many years before.^ In a dedi- 
 cation to the Conde de Lemos he speaks somewhat 
 bitterly of the evil tongues who, out of envy, had tried 
 to do him wrong, while offering to his patrons thirteen 
 (they were but twelve) of his tales, which, " had they 
 not been turned out of the workshop of his own wit, he 
 might presume to place by the side of the best ever 
 designed " {los mas pintados). In a lively prologue, 
 interesting, as all his prologues are, because of the 
 glimpses they give us of his life and character, 
 Cervantes claims to be the first who has written novels 
 in the Castilian tongue {el primero que he novelado en la 
 lengua Castellana), and explains why he has called them 
 novelas exemplares, because " there is not one of them 
 from which some profitable example (or instruction) 
 cannot be drawn." They are of various character and 
 merit, exhibiting in an extraordinary degree the versa- 
 tility of the author, and his deep and wide knowledge 
 of life under divers conditions. Those in which the 
 scene is laid in Seville, as the Rinconete y Cortadillo — 
 which, next to DON OuiXOTE, must be regarded as the 
 author's best piece of humour — were probably written 
 on the spot, exhibiting, as they do, so fresh and lively 
 
 ' Scott, who was a great lover and reader of Cervantes, admired 
 his Novelas excessively, and told Lockhart that it was from them 
 he conceived the idea of writing his own novels. The traces of 
 Monipodio and his fraternity are to be plainly detected in some of 
 the scenes in the Fortunes of Nigel; Dickens also being indebted 
 in Oliver Twist to Rinconete and Cortadillo. Monipodio is clearly 
 the original of Fagin.
 
 198 Don Quixote. 
 
 a picture of the vagabond and picaresque society.^ La 
 Espafiola Ifiglcsa, or T/ie Ejigl is h- Spanish Lady, a 
 charming, pathetic tale, full of a rare kindliness for 
 the heretic and the enemy, is founded on the sacking 
 of Cadiz by the Earl of Essex, in 1598. In it Elizabeth 
 and her courtiers are introduced in a way which is more 
 creditable to Cervantes' generous heart than to his 
 knowledge of a neighbour nation. Ricaredo, Arnesto, 
 and the other English personages, are amusingly unlike 
 any known types of that nation, and might be Tartar 
 chiefs or Indian caciques. La Gitanilla (The Little 
 Gipsey) is the original of all the modern gipsey stories, 
 which have for their basis a child of noble parentage 
 stolen by the tribe, and afterwards recovered to society, 
 — Weber taking from it not only the plot of his opera 
 oi Preciosa, but the name of his heroine. In this there 
 are some beautiful ballads and songs sung by the little 
 gipsey, and many touches of wild and natural pathos. 
 El Aniante Liberal (The Generous Lover) is drawn 
 from the author's experiences of life in captivity among 
 the Turks. Los Perros de MaJiudes, or The Colloquy of 
 Scipio and Berganza, is another reminiscence of the 
 Triana, and the Seville thieves' quarter, in which 
 Monipodio, the " Fagin " in Rinconete and Cortadillo, is 
 introduced. La Lhistre Fregona (The Illustrious Scullery 
 Maid) is one of the best constructed of the little stories, 
 the scene of which is really laid in a posada at Toledo, 
 which still survives in almost the same state as when 
 
 ^ See note i, p. 197.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 199 
 
 Costanza served there, under the name of the Posada de 
 Sangre. El Licenciado Vidriera (The Licentiate Glass- 
 house) is a sketch of an eccentric, whose brain was 
 turned by a love-potion, so that he conceived himself 
 to be made of glass, abounding in Quixotic humour. 
 El Zeloso Extremefio (The Jealous Estremaduran), and 
 El Casamiento Engafioso (The Deceitful Marriage) are 
 probably transcripts from real life. La Fuerza de 
 Sangre (The Force of Blood), Las Dos Doncellas (The 
 Two Damsels), and La Senora Cornelia^ are not 
 unequal in merit to the others, though no two are 
 alike in style and in character, — which has given rise 
 to a suspicion current even in Cervantes' life-time, that 
 they are not all the work of the same author.^ 
 
 As to this, however, there can be no doubt. By 
 Cervantes' contemporaries the Novelas were received 
 with a favour even more ungrudging than had been 
 bestowed on DON QuiXOTE. They were praised as 
 much for their elegant style as their singular invention. 
 So good a judge as Tirso de Molina gave Cervantes 
 the name of " The Boccacio of Spain " ; while even Lope 
 de Vega, who jealously followed wherever Cervantes 
 led, confessed that they were not wanting " in grace 
 and style." The Exemplary Novels, from which awkward 
 
 ^ There has been no adequate translation of the Novelas into 
 EngUsh. The best is that of James Mabbe (the translator of 
 Guzman de Alfarache), in 1640, who, however, only translated six 
 out of the twelve. Godwin praises it a little extravagantly, as 
 "perhaps the most perfect specimen of pure translation in the 
 language." There is a poor version, by one Kelly, in Bohn's series.
 
 200 Don Quixote. 
 
 designation there is no escape, have ever been esteemed 
 by his countrj'men as only second among Cervantes* 
 works to his DON OUIXOTE. For their language and 
 their composition they are even placed higher ; and 
 there can be no doubt that, among foreigners, they have 
 been unduly neglected, as, indeed, all of Cervantes' 
 works have been, and are likely to be, falling, as they 
 must do, under the shadow of the one great master- 
 piece of their author. 
 
 The year following, in 1614, Cervantes published his 
 Viaje del Paniaso, usually, but wrongly, in all the 
 modem editions, entitled Viaje al Parnaso. It is a 
 journey not to, but in and around, Parnassus, written in 
 tersa rima, in eight chapters, professedly in imitation 
 of an Italian poem by Cesare Caporali in the same 
 metre. The poem of Caporali, to which that of Cer- 
 vantes bears no resemblance whatever except in name 
 and measure, is now forgotten. That of Cerv^antes might, 
 perhaps, have shared the same fate but for its autobio- 
 graphical details. Ticknor's verdict that as a poem it 
 has " little merit " is too harsh a one. The leading idea 
 is a battle between the good and the bad poets, which 
 might have furnished Swift with a hint for his Battle of 
 tJie Books. The bad poets having taken unlawful pos- 
 session of Parnassus, Apollo summons Cervantes in 
 order to consult him as to those who should be enlisted 
 on his side to drive out the intruders. Mercury is sent 
 in a galley, built of allegory and rigged with verse — in 
 a passage which is the best in the poem for richness of 
 fancy and playful invention — to Cervantes on this mis-
 
 . Life of Cervantes. 201 
 
 sion. The occasion is seized by the poet for an enume- 
 ration of the good poets existing in Spain, in a style 
 which recalls that of the Canto de Caliope of. thirty 
 years before. Like the Canto de Caliope^ the Viaje del 
 Parnaso is spoilt by excessive good nature.' The inter- 
 minable roll-call of names of fifth-rate poetasters, most 
 of whom survive only in this record, even relieved as it is 
 here and there by a stroke of irony or sarcasm, is heavy 
 enough to sink even a more buoyant vessel than that 
 of Apollo's messenger, of which the rigging was all of 
 seguidillas, the yards of couplets, and the timbers of 
 stanzas.^ The conceit is too delicate a one to bear all 
 this living freight ; and it is no wonder that the Viaje 
 del Parnaso fell dead in its day, and remained forgotten 
 till nearly a century and a half afterwards.^ Its chief 
 interest to us lies in the fourth chapter, where the poet 
 gives us a list of his several productions, and some 
 
 ' The Viaje del Parnaso was dedicated to Don Rodrigo de 
 Tapia, a Knight of the Order of Santiago, of whom nothing is 
 known except that he was the son of Don Pedro de Tapia, a 
 member of the King's Council, and adviser to the Holy Office. 
 
 - Profuse as are the praises which are showered on the poets, — 
 good, and mediocre, and bad, — they did not satisfy everybody. 
 Manuel de Villegas, a respectable poet himself, best known by 
 his Eroftcas, Vi^hich are imitations of Anacreon, was offended with 
 Cervantes because he had not said enough in the Viaje of his 
 friend Bartolomd de Argensola, and assailed him as tnal poeta y 
 Quixotista. The motive with Villegas might have been a less 
 pious one than regard for his friend, seeing that he also was one 
 of the dependants on the bounty of the Conde de Lemos. 
 
 ' It was republished by Sancha in his useful, but most incorrect, 
 series of Cervantes' minor works in 1784. 
 VOL. I. 2D
 
 202 Don Quixote. 
 
 pregnant hints as to his condition of life, his poverty, 
 and its causes. Of far greater intrinsic value is the 
 Appendix, in which, under the name of the Adjimta al 
 Parnaso^ we have a charmingly characteristic present- 
 ment of the writer in his habit as he lived. The picture 
 of Pancracio dc Roncesvalles — the young exquisite who 
 comes in rustling silks, in starched ruff and frills, to 
 visit Cervantes, — is conceived in the author's happiest 
 vein, and may match with any of the living figures in 
 the Don Quixote gallery,^ The mingled grace, mo- 
 desty, and humour with which Cervantes speaks of his 
 literary projects and their fate contribute to make this 
 one of the most delightful of those only too brief tran- 
 scripts he gives us of his early life ; nor can we wonder, 
 contrasting the ambitious poem with the modest 
 appendix, that there should prevail among the book- 
 sellers of that age the opinion, so naively repeated by 
 Cervantes himself, that " of his prose much was to be 
 expected, but of his verse nothing." ^ 
 
 The next year, 1615, even while he was engaged in 
 the completion of that great work which was to be 
 the crown and sum of his literary achievements, — the 
 
 ^ Let Pancracio de Roncesvalles be set alongside of Osric, 
 "the water-fly" ; and Sancho Panza with Christopher Sly. They 
 are the only two parallels I can trace between the creations of 
 Cervantes and of Shakspeare, in neither of whom is to be detected 
 any hint of the other. Yet Shakspeare might have read Don 
 Quixote before he died ; though, certainly, Cervantes never knew 
 of Shakspeare. 
 
 - See the Prologue to the Coviedias y Entremeses, 1615.
 
 Life of Cervantes. • 203 
 
 Second Part of Don Quixote,— Cervantes brought 
 out a volume of eight comedies and eight farces {entre- 
 meses), which had never been played, and. perhaps 
 were never intended for representation. They had 
 probably been written some years before, and had been 
 laid aside in some coffer and forgotten. Induced by 
 the fame of the author, even though he. had been 
 told that his verse was less marketable than his prose, 
 a. bookseller wa5 found who" offered, to buy. them. "I 
 made the venture," says Cervantes in his preface to the 
 book ; " I sold them to the bookseller, who sent them 
 to the press. . He paid me a reasonable sum for them ; 
 I took my money meekly, without making account of 
 the quirks and quibbles of the players. I would they 
 were the best in the world, or, at least, of fair worth." ^ 
 The comedies are certainly not good ; one of them — Los 
 Baizos de Argel — is a mere re-cast of El Trato de Argel^ 
 written thirty years before. In them the author violates 
 every one of the canons of the dramatic art he had 
 himself laid down in DON QUIXOTE. Indeed, the fact 
 
 1 One Bias de Nasarre, who, in 1749, reprinted these plays of 
 Cervantes for the first time, gravely starts the theory that their 
 author made them purposely bad in order to caricature the plays 
 of Lope de Vega, just as he had written lJo7i Quixote^ to parody 
 the old romances. I agree with Ticknor, that Nasarre's sincerity 
 is greatly to be suspected. It was he who, as we shall see, 
 republished Avellaneda's spurious Second Part of Bon Quixote in 
 1752, averring it to be superior to that of Cervantes. It was 
 Nasarre who, Navarrete declares, wrote the misleading entry oppo- 
 site to the baptismal register at Alcdzar de San Juan {Navarrete, 
 p. 556 ; and p. 39 of Vol. I. of this Life).
 
 204 Don Quixote. 
 
 that he was induced to publish them at all proves, I 
 think, only that he was poor and in stress of money. 
 The farces are much superior to the comedies in spirit 
 and in style. In one or two of them, such as La 
 Guarda Cvidadosa (The Watchful Guardian), are abun- 
 dant traces of Cervantes' humour, and they have such a 
 bustle of life and movement as might even fit them at 
 this day for the stage. The publication was no suc- 
 cess, however ; and there is good reason to believe from 
 the tone of his private letters, as well as his printed 
 addresses to his patrons, that at this period, on the eve 
 of the crowning glory of his life, which was to be the 
 close of his career, Cervantes was no better off in worldly 
 means than before Don Quixote had been written. 
 
 A story told by Francisco Marquez de Torres, chap- 
 lain to the good Archbishop of Toledo, in the approba- 
 tion prefixed to the Second Part of DON QuixOTE, 
 dated February 27th, 161 5, may be properly introduced 
 here as throwing a light on the condition of Cervantes 
 and the opinion of his contemporaries about him at this 
 period. After speaking of the great popularity which 
 the works of Cervantes had won for their author, — not 
 only throughout Spain, but in France, Italy, Germany, 
 and Flanders, — the Archbishop's chaplain certifies that, 
 two days before, he had received a visit from several 
 French gentlemen who had come to Madrid in the train 
 of the French Ambassador,^ when, the name of Miguel 
 
 ^ The French ambassador, called by the Spanish commentators 
 the Duque de Umena, must have been the Due de Mayenne, who
 
 Life of Cervantes. 205 
 
 de Cervantes having been brought up in conversation, 
 they broke out into praises of his books, one of them 
 saying that he knew the Galatea almost by heart. 
 ," They interrogated me very minutely about his age, 
 his profession, his quality, and fortune. I found myself 
 compelled to say that he was an old man, a soldier, a 
 gentleman, and poor. To which one of them responded 
 in these precise words : — ' But does not Spain keep such 
 a man rich, and supported out of the public treasury ? ' 
 Another of those gentlemen broke in with this idea, 
 saying, with much acuteness : ' If it is necessity com- 
 pels him to write, may God send he may never have 
 abundance ; so that, poor himself, he may make the 
 whole world rich.' " ^ 
 
 was sent by the Regent Anne of Austria, to conclude the double 
 marriage of the Prince of Asturias (afterwards Philip IV.) with 
 Isabelle de Bourbon, and of Louis XIII. of France with the Infanta 
 Ana, eldest daughter of King Philip III. The " M. de Boulay," 
 who is quoted by some authorities (among others. Sir Richard 
 Burton in his preliminary notes to the Lusiads) as being the 
 recipient of a whispered remark by Cervantes to the effect that 
 "he could have made \\\'=, Don Quixote heXt^x but for the Inqui- 
 sition," I have been unable to identify. I do not believe in the 
 story. 
 
 ^ I think that Marquez de Torres' enthusiastic approval of 
 Don Quixote, which will be quoted in full in its proper place, 
 may be taken to reflect the opinion of Archbishop Sandoval, his 
 master, on Cervantes and on Don Quixote. Mayans y Siscar, 
 the first editor and biographer of Cervantes, has the incredible 
 fatuity to suggest that it was Cervantes himself who wrote this 
 approbation of Marquez de Torres ! — This is an abuse even of the 
 privilege conceded to a Quixote editor. 
 
 m
 
 2o6 Don Quixote. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Second Part of Doji Quixote commenced — Spurious 
 Second Part published — Its Character — Bitter 
 Attack on Cervantes — Parody of his Work — The 
 Mystery of Avellaneda — Attetnpts at its Solution — 
 Lope de Vega — His Relations with Cervantes — The 
 Second Part of Don Quixote published — Its 
 Character. 
 
 WHILE Cervantes was busy about the publication 
 of his novels, poems, and plays, he must have 
 already begun to write the Second Part of his DON 
 Quixote. In the Prologue to the Novelas, published 
 in 1 613, he promised that, if his life was spared, the 
 reader should see other works of his on which he 
 was engaged ; " first, and speedily, a continuation of 
 the exploits of Don Quixote and the pleasantries of 
 Sancho Panza." This must have been written about 
 June, 1613.^ A twelvemonth after, if we are to take the 
 date of Sancho's letter to his wife as the actual date on 
 which it was written,- Cerv^antes must have half com- 
 pleted his promised Second Part, being known certainly 
 
 ^ The dedication to the Conde de Lemos is dated i6th of July, 
 1613. 
 
 2 Sancho's letter to Teresa is dated July 20th, 16 14. See Don 
 Quixote^ Part II. C. xxxvi.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 207 
 
 by this time to be employed in its composition. But 
 before his book could appear, there happened to him 
 one of the severest of the many crosses which had 
 vexed his life and marred his fortunes. The blow was 
 struck in his tenderest part ; his very DoN QuixOTE 
 being turned, by a refinement of malice, into a weapon 
 for his bosom. In the summer of 1614 there appeared 
 at Tarragona, printed in close imitation of the form of 
 Cervantes' First Part,^ a book which claimed to be the 
 "Second Part of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote 
 of La Mancha, containing his Third Sally." The 
 author was announced to be the Licentiate Alonso 
 Fernandez de Avellaneda, a native of the town of 
 Tordesillas. The book was dedicated to the ^'■Alcalde, 
 regidors, and hidalgos of the noble city of Argamasilla, 
 happy country of the gentleman-knight Don Quixote," 
 &c. One Dr. Rafael Orthoneda gave his approbation 
 to the work, saying that it " ought to be printed because 
 it seemed to him to contain nothing immodest or for- 
 bidden." The Doctor Francisco de Torme y Liori, 
 Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Tarragona, gave his 
 
 * In form and type, as Salvd remarks, the book closely cor- 
 responds with one of the two issues of the first edition, printed by 
 Mey at Valencia, in 1605, with a frontispiece of a mounted knight, 
 with lance in rest, exactly similar to that in Mey's First Part — 
 thus proving, as Salvd remarks, that it was the intention of the 
 Tarragona printer to pass off this spurious Second Part as the 
 true one. Mey printed his own edition of Cervantes' Second 
 Part in 1616. The Tarragona counterfeit, now quite as rare as 
 any of the genuine early editions, is an octavo of 290 pages with 
 five of Contents.
 
 2o8 Don Quixote. 
 
 licence for the printing in his own hand, dated July 4th, 
 1614, in terms which justify the suspicion, not only that 
 the Vicar-General's taste in regard to things immodest 
 was as much blunted as that of Dr. Orthoneda, but 
 that there was a conspiracy among certain churchmen 
 to bring out the book in all haste and secrecy, before 
 the real DON Quixote appeared. 
 
 Concerning this publication, which involves one 01 
 the darkest of the mysteries which surround Cervantes' 
 life, a modern translator of DON QUIXOTE has put 
 forth the singular opinion that it was, after all, of no 
 great consequence ; that Cervantes had " no reasonable 
 grievance," except in the matter of the preface ; that, 
 so far as the continuation was concerned, "Cervantes 
 had no case, or a very bad one " ; that he ought to 
 have borne it better than he did, seeing that other 
 writers had been treated in the same way ; that Avel- 
 laneda's book would never have been heard of had 
 Cervantes behaved in some manly and good-natured 
 way. about it ; that, in short, we owe a debt to Avel- 
 laneda, seeing that but for him DON QUIXOTE would 
 have remained " a mere torso instead of a complete 
 work." 
 
 After this, from a gentleman who has so much regard 
 for Cervantes as to translate him, it ceases to be a 
 wonder, not only how any man should have written a 
 parody on DON QuixOTE, but how any man could have 
 praised the false Second Part as being equal, if not 
 superior, to the original. It is clear that they who 
 have such ideas are a breed not extinct. On behalf of
 
 Life of Cervantes. 209 
 
 poor Cervantes, it may be urged that this is no mere ques- 
 tion of literary ethics between the author of a book and 
 his imitator. So far as concerns the grievance of having 
 one's story continued by some other hand, men had suf- 
 fered as Cervantes suffered ; though the insinuation that 
 in one leading case, — that of Mateo Aleman, for whose 
 Guzman de Alfarache one Juan Marti wrote an un- 
 authorised second part, — the sufferer bore his wrong more 
 patiently than Cervantes is not borne out by history.^ 
 Cervantes, though he ended his original book with 
 a line from Ariosto, which might imply that he was 
 ready to surrender the task to some " mightier pen," 
 certainly never intended to part with his right of con- 
 tinuing the story. On the contrary, he distinctly inti- 
 mates, in the closing words of the last chapter, that he 
 hopes to publish to the world the third sally of Don 
 Quixote.^ He had announced, more than a year before 
 
 ^ That Mateo Aleman bore his insult patiently, — even if we 
 consent to put such a book as Guzman de Alfarache on the same 
 level as Do7t Quixote, — rests only on the assertion of that intrepid 
 crotcheteer, M. Germond de Lavigne. I cannot find any evidence 
 in support of it. On the contrary, there is Aleman's own preface 
 to his second part, in which he complains bitterly and in very 
 strong language of Marti. 
 
 ^ The words are :— Tienese noticia que lo ha hecho d costa de 
 muchas vigilias y mucho trabajo, y que tiene intencion de sacallos 
 d luz, con esperanza de la tercera saHda de Don Quixote. " It 
 has been ascertained that he has done so {i.e. that an academician 
 of Argamasilla has deciphered the meaning of certain writings 
 about Don Quixote) at the cost of many vigils and much toil, and 
 that he has the intention of publishing them in expectation of 
 VOL. I. 2 E
 
 2IO Don Quixote. 
 
 Avellaneda's publication, that he was well advanced 
 with his Second Part. That Avellaneda, whoever he 
 was, knew that Cervantes proposed writing his own 
 continuation to Don QuixOTE is proved by his words 
 in the preface, that Cervantes might well complain of 
 his (Avellaneda's) work in " depriving him of the profit 
 he expected from his Second Part," ' Here there is a 
 distinct intimation that Avellaneda knew of the real 
 Second Part as being about to be published, and that 
 he intended to forestall it, and spoil its success. That 
 Avellaneda had learned something of the general tenour 
 of Cervantes' Second Part, so far as it had been written, 
 — taking advantage of the author's carelessness or good- 
 nature, — is also proved, as we shall see by-and-by, by 
 the course which he makes his own hero take when 
 setting out on this third sally. 
 
 But all this is of secondary and of comparatively 
 small importance. Granted that Avellaneda had a right 
 to make use of Cervantes' general scheme and to con- 
 tinue his book, — even although he knew that Cervantes 
 was himself engaged in a continuation, — that this is no 
 
 Don Quixote's third sally." The line from Ariosto which is 
 added — 
 
 Forse altri canterk con miglior plettro 
 
 — is clearly but a common form of leave-taking, not intended to be 
 taken literally. 
 
 * Bien podia quejarse de su trabajo por la ganancia que le 
 qtiitaba de su Se^unda Parte, — surely an intimation most unusual 
 in a continuator who had only the honour of the book continued 
 at heart, and a sufficient proof of evil animus.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 211 
 
 ordinary case of imitation is surely proved by the spirit 
 of malice and of mischief which breathes through every 
 page of Avellaneda's book ; and not in the openly 
 hostile prologue only, but throughout the story. Had 
 any one of Shakspeare's contemporaries, ignoring the 
 poet's own conclusion to Hamlet, so turned the story 
 that Ophelia, rescued from the brook, should be con- 
 signed to a reformatory ; that Claudius should find 
 grace and become head of a religious house ; — Horatio 
 become an ornament of the Court of King Fortinbras ; 
 and Hamlet end his days in a lunatic asylum ; — we 
 should think it "a reasonable grievance," a trial even 
 for the sweet-tempered Shakspeare. But an outrage 
 greater than this did this veiled enemy of Cervantes 
 attempt to perpetrate on the world's masterpiece, — Cer- 
 vantes' one successful book. There have been imitators 
 and continuators who have not been wanting in reve- 
 rence for their author. Mateo Aleman had no reason 
 to complain that he who called himself Mateo Luxan 
 travestied his purpose or degraded his characters. The 
 writer of Pickwick Abroad assuredly never meant to 
 spoil Mr. Pickwick or to injure his author's conception. 
 In Avellaneda's Second Part of DON QUIXOTE, how- 
 ever, we see not only a studied ignorance of Cervantes' 
 design ; an absolute insensibility to any feeling of 
 romance or of chivalry, to the tenderness, the humour, 
 the pathos of the story ; a brutal incapacity to appre- 
 hend the spirit of the book ; but a deliberate intention to 
 spoil the work of Cervantes, — to rob him of its glory by 
 dragging it into the mire and besmirching it with filth.
 
 212 Don Quixote. 
 
 Avellaneda's Don Quixote is a common lunatic, who 
 ends by being shut up in a madhouse. His Sancho is 
 a mere vulgar glutton, a booby without sense or humour. 
 In place of the graceful and witty Dorothea, we have 
 the lewd drab Barbara. All grace, all tenderness, all 
 flavour have vanished from the story ; and the residuum 
 is but a dull, dirty, obscene book, which it is a disgrace 
 to the Spanish nation that any Spaniard should speak 
 of with even toleration.^ 
 
 * Even so intelligent a writer as Vicente Salvi has declared that 
 " if the Don Quixote of Cenantes had not existed, the romance 
 of Avellaneda would have been the most remarkable in Spain," 
 — a rather absurd opinion in its very terms, for certainly there 
 neither would nor could have been any romance of Avellaneda 
 had not the Don Quixote of Cervantes existed. The worst outrage, 
 however, which has ever been inflicted on Cervantes is the 
 acceptance of Avellaneda's book as a classic, and its inclusion 
 in the Biblioteca de 'los Autores Espafioles, under the editorship of 
 Don Cayetano Rosell (Novelistas Posteriores i. Cervantes, vol. i. 
 1864.) I cannot help suspecting that much of the sneaking kind- 
 ness which has been extended to Avellaneda in his own country 
 springs from an exaggerated spirit of EspahoUsnio, combined with 
 priestly prejudice, — from a sense that Cervantes has pushed his 
 victory too far not only over the Books of Chivalries, which are 
 nothing if not Spanish, but over the superstitions and weaknesses 
 of his own countrymen. See a curious outburst of this feeling in 
 some lines quoted by Emile Chasles at the end of his sympa- 
 thetic, but a little over-sentimental. Life of Cervantes. There is 
 also some curious evidence of this in a book published anony- 
 mously at Madrid, in 1750, known to be written by one Zavaleta, 
 in which, after a fulsome eulogy of the comedies of Lope de Vega 
 and of Calderon, the author launches out into an attack on Don 
 Quixote^ on account of its un-national spirit. Foreigners, we are 
 told here, relish and praise Doti Quixote^ — a book "dry, poor,
 
 Life of Cervantes. 213 
 
 The outrage on Cervantes would have been bad 
 enough had it ended here. But that this was no 
 ordinary imitation, — that Avellaneda was actuated, not 
 by any Hterary ambition, still less by any liking for 
 the story, in continuing DON QuiXOTE, — is sufficiently 
 proved by the Prologue, which is written in the bitterest 
 and most malignant tone of personal animosity against 
 Cervantes, breathing spite and jealousy in every word. 
 In this he is reviled with a fury which, in its extrava- 
 gance, becomes almost laughable; not only for his faults 
 as an author, but for his defects of character and his 
 bodily infirmities, — even for his wounds, his old age, and 
 his poverty. He is called " a cripple, a soldier old in 
 years though youthful in spirits (a curious reproach, 
 but evidently meant to sting), envious, discontented, a 
 backbiter, a malefactor, or, at least, a gaol-bird." He 
 is likened in his ruinous state to the old castle of 
 San Cervantes.^ He is reproached with having " more 
 tongue than hands," — his assailant, in his desire to note 
 his defect of speech, being so blinded by malignity as 
 to speak of that infirmity which Cervantes took to be 
 the chief glory of his life, the hand disabled at Lepanto. 
 
 dreamy, and, in fine, directed but to declare to the world the 
 fatuous valour of a frantic madman," — because they find in it a 
 picture of the Spanish character, with its tendency to vainglorious- 
 ness and fanfaronade. AH this is proof that in his own country, 
 though always largely read by the common people, Cervantes was 
 never, by the learned and cultured, appreciated until a compara- 
 tively late period. 
 ' See p. 31 of this volume.
 
 214 I^ON Quixote. 
 
 Finally, Avellaneda, after "unpacking his heart with 
 words," and cursing like a drab or a cloistered monk 
 in his rage, avows that his" object in writing his book 
 is to deprive Cervantes of the profit expected from 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 That all this constituted a tolerably just cause of 
 grievance must be allowed ; nor can we be greatly 
 surprised that even Cervantes' good nature gave way 
 at this last cruel and cowardly blow from some unseen 
 hand, though there is nothing for his friends to regret 
 in the manner in which he repaid the insult. Of course, 
 he should have had philosophy enough to bear it ; but 
 some allowance may, of our charity, be made for an 
 old man, approaching the close of his life, thus sud- 
 denly assailed in the quarter where he must have been 
 most sensitive, — in the book the writing of which was 
 the one happiness in a long life of adversity. If Cer- 
 vantes used some rough language in return, surely he 
 had provocation. What was the example before him 
 to follow .-* That he spoke what he felt, not what he 
 ought to have said, is an offence posterity has forgiven. 
 Nay, I cannot understand how any one would have 
 him behave otherwise. In all literature there is no 
 outrage such as this from which any great writer had 
 to suffer. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was 
 no ordinary quarrel between two men of letters, but a 
 deliberate personal attack on Cervantes, from some 
 motive deeper than that of literary jealousy. But who 
 could be the author ? That is a mystery, still unsolved, 
 which has a literature to itself. That Avellaneda was
 
 Life of Cervantes. 215 
 
 an assumed name is certain. No one of that name is 
 known in that age as a writer. Tordesillas is a town 
 of Old Castile, between Valladolid and Medina del 
 Campo, — a long way from Tarragona, — used in this 
 connexion, doubtless, as a blind. So much as this has 
 been proved by internal evidence and by the hints 
 dropped from the writer. Avellaneda, whoever he was, 
 was an Aragonese, a monk, a Dominican, a writer of 
 plays, and an intimate personal friend of Lope de Vega. 
 That he was an Aragonese, Cervantes himself pro- 
 nounces, from the style, his disuse of the article, his 
 use of the infinitive for the gerund, and certain other 
 peculiarities for which the writers of Aragon are noted. 
 That he was a monk is proved by his familiarity with 
 monastic observances and his frequent reference to 
 them. That he was a Dominican and a preacher is 
 strongly suspected by his profuse display of ecclesias- 
 tical learning, his quotations from the Fathers, and his 
 partiality for the Dominican Order. That he was a 
 writer of comedies himself is very probable, from the 
 personal offence he owns to taking at Cervantes* 
 criticisms of the drama. Lastly, that he was one of 
 Lope de Vega's intimate friends is seen from the zeal 
 with which he adopts his cause, making it a particular 
 charge against Cervantes that Lope de Vega is treated 
 with scant reverence in DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 Further than this no one has penetrated the secret 
 of Avellaneda. There have been innumerable conjec- 
 tures, however, as to the authorship of this spurious 
 Second Part of DON Quixote. Mayans y Siscar, Cer-
 
 ■2i6 Don Quixote. 
 
 vantcs' first biographer, declares that this disguised 
 enemy was so powerful that Cervantes did not dare 
 to name him. Cean Bermudez, at the commencement 
 of this century, surmised that Avellaneda might be 
 Blanco de Paz, — Cervantes' old enemy of Algiers, — an 
 opinion which has been adopted in our days by Senor 
 Benjumea. The voice is like that of Blanco de Paz, 
 indeed, who was a Dominican and an Aragonese, with 
 a curious rage of spite against Cervantes ; but as Senor 
 Asensio has pointed out, there is no proof that Blanco 
 de Paz ever returned to Spain from his captivity, and 
 it is extremely unlikely that he was alive, thirty-four 
 years after, to indulge in his ancient grudge against 
 his fellow captive. Adolfo de Castro, in a serious' mood, 
 suggested Luis de Aliaga, King Philip's Confessor, as 
 likely to have been Avellaneda ; and Aliaga's claims to 
 that distiction are certainly very strong. He was known 
 to have a peculiar hatred to the literary profession, 
 through having been a frequent subject of their satire. 
 He is said to have written plays himself. He was made 
 the subject of ridicule by Quevedo (Cervantes' friend), 
 in his Qiento de Cuentos, and other satires ; and wrote 
 a pamphlet in reply to Quevedo, called Venganza de la 
 Lengua Espailola, the style of which is said to be similar 
 to Avellaneda's. Some other coincidences are certainly 
 very remarkable, and can scarcely be accidental, tending 
 to confirm the conjecture that Aliaga was Cervantes' 
 hidden adversary, and that Cervantes knew him to be 
 Avellaneda. In the passage describing Don Quixote's 
 entry into Barcelona, in the company of Don Antonio
 
 Life of Cervantes. 217 
 
 Moreno, it is related that some wicked boys of the 
 city lifted the tails of Rozinante and Dapple, and stuck 
 under them some branches of furze ialiagas^). Aliaga 
 is known to have gone by the nickname of SancJio 
 Pansa, by reason of his large paunch and his thin legs, 
 and there is a virulent lampoon levelled at him by the 
 Conde de Villamediana, beginning : — 
 
 Sancho Panza, el Confesor 
 Del ya difunto Monarca.^ 
 
 In spite of all this weight of indirect testimony, I cannot 
 believe that a person so eminent in position and so 
 powerful in influence as Aliagar, the King's Confessor, 
 could have occupied himself in writing the spurious 
 Second Part of DON QuixOTE, nor do the motives 
 alleged seem to me strong enough to account for his 
 singular acrimony in that publication. Other names have 
 been mentioned,^ among them Alarcon, the dramatist, 
 
 * See Do?t Quixote^ Part II. C. Ixi. This was probably a skit at 
 Aliaga, who was the universal butt of the wits of the age ; but it 
 is no proof that Cervantes took Aliaga to be Avellaneda. 
 
 * Luis de Aliaga was appointed confessor to Philip III., through 
 the influence of the Duke of Lerma, in 1608, and Inquisitor-General 
 on the decease of the Archbishop Sandoval in 1619. He was 
 dismissed from these offices with ignominy, and banished to his 
 country house, in 1621, to the delight of all good men. Philip III., 
 on his death-bed, is said to have denounced Aliaga in terms which 
 implied that Aliaga had hastened his death. To this Villamediana 
 is supposed to allude in his verses. See more of Aliaga in Guerra 
 y Orbe's Algtinos Datos para iliistrar el Quijote. Madrid, 1866. 
 
 ' Bartolom^ de Argensola and the author of La Picara Justina 
 are two whose claims to the honour have been asserted. The 
 former was a friend of Cervantes, or called himself so, and at this 
 VOL. I. 2 F
 
 2i8 Don Quixote. 
 
 as one who might have disguised himself under the 
 mask of Avellaneda. Alarcon was thirty years of 
 age in 1614. In 1606, if one may believe that Cer- 
 vantes was then at Seville, assisting in the high jinks 
 at San Juan de Alfarache, Alarcon must have made 
 his acquaintance, he being one of the competitors in 
 the mock tourney. In 1608 Alarcon returned to Mexico, 
 his native country, but in 161 1 came again to Spain, 
 It is certainly curious that, while every other dramatist 
 of the age makes mention of Cervantes, — most of them 
 dipping largely into his repertory of inventions for their 
 comedies, — in none of Alarcon's dramas is there any 
 allusion to Cervantes or to Don Quixote. 
 
 I do not believe, however, that Alarcon, whose first 
 comedy was played at Madrid in 161 3, could have had 
 any sufficient motive for assailing Cervantes so venom- 
 ously as Avellaneda assailed him. Nor was Alarcon 
 any friend to Lope de Vega, which is fatal to the theory 
 of his being Avellaneda. Who, then, was the secret 
 enemy who dealt Cervantes this dastardly blow ; who 
 had motive enough to hate Cervantes and to degrade 
 the character of DON QUIXOTE ; who had interest 
 enough to get his scurrilous book published with the 
 approbation of archbishops and the superior clergy ; 
 who had cause to resent the freedom with which the 
 comedies of the day and their writers were treated in 
 Don Quixote ; who had his own personal reasons for 
 
 time (1614) was in Naples with the Conde de Lemos. The other 
 was vile enough to have forged Don Quixote^ but had no motive 
 for this particular villany. 
 
 "^
 
 Life of Cervantes. 219 
 
 being jealous of the fame and the influence of the 
 author ? The answer is — Lope de Vega ; who, through- 
 out his life, had run a race with Cervantes for popu- 
 larity ; had beaten him in some things, but had been 
 signally worsted by the appearance of Don Quixote. 
 In spite of the patriotic attempts of Spanish critics to 
 maintain the theory that the relations between Lope de 
 Vega and Cervantes were those of perfect amity, we 
 have abundant evidence to show that they were not.^ 
 On the part of Cervantes, the feeling of natural resent- 
 ment at a dispensation which placed a man whom he 
 regarded as not his superior in a position so far above 
 him in worldly esteem and in fortune, was one certainly 
 not inconsistent with a friendly disposition towards 
 Lope, and a generous recognition of his merits. No 
 one has spoken more warmly or more profusely in 
 favour of Lope de Vega. So early as 1584, when Lope 
 was but twenty-two years of age, — when assuredly he 
 could not have been much known and a word of praise 
 was most useful to him, — Cervantes had named him 
 among the rising poets of Spain, and had foretold his 
 greatness in the Canto de Caliope. In 1598, when he 
 was himself in the depths of poverty, he had written a 
 laudatory sonnet for Lope's poem of La Dragontea. It is 
 
 * Navarrete is one of those who tries zealously to maintain this 
 position. Pellicer is not so confident ; and Clemencin was clearly- 
 visited with strong suspicions of Lope, though he tries to conceal 
 them and to hold the balance even between the two. Ticknor has 
 summed up the case with great fairness in his note on the subject 
 (vol. ii. p. 118, 1863).
 
 220 Don Quixote. 
 
 quite true, as Ticknor observes, that in what Cervantes 
 says about Lope dc Vega there is a tone of " dignified 
 reserve and caution." There could not be much love 
 between the two men, even if their social positions had 
 been equal ; and it is all the more creditable to Cer- 
 vantes' sense of generosity that he was able to praise a 
 rival in whose popularity he could not but feel there 
 was implied so much of injustice to himself. In the 
 First Part of DON OUIXOTE, Cervantes had unques- 
 tionably spoken with great freedom of the popular 
 favourite. The famous Prologue is clearly levelled all 
 through at Lope de Vega, — his pedantry, his conceit, his 
 literary tricks and artifices. In the forty-eighth chapter, 
 where the Canon of Toledo discourses with such excel- 
 lent judgment of comedies and their makers, Lope is 
 principally aimed at and severely criticised, especially 
 for his degradation of his art to the taste of the vulgar. 
 But his faults are touched with much delicacy ; nor is 
 there a single word which can be tortured into an 
 expression of personal enmity. In this same chapter 
 some of Lope's dramas are selected for especial praise. 
 That Lope de Vega, now at the height of his fame and 
 greatness, should be, after the publication of Don 
 Quixote, in the very frame of mind to prompt him to 
 such a mean revenge as was taken by Avellaneda, is, 
 unfortunately, only too conformable with all that we 
 know of the nature of the man whom Alarcon, once 
 his friend and disciple, called — 
 
 Envidioso universal 
 De los aplausos ajenos.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 221 
 
 Of Cervantes especially, during his whole career, Lope 
 de Vega was the constant and sedulous rival, — treading 
 in his steps wherever he went, imitating everything he 
 did, and pursuing him through every field of letters 
 with a jealous tenacity to which I do not know any 
 parallel. Whatever the elder man wrote, the younger 
 copied. Cervantes wrote a pastoral, — Galatea ; Lope de 
 Vega wrote a pastoral, — Dorothea. Cervantes wrote 
 plays ; Lope de Vega wrote plays (here beating his 
 rival out of the field by his amazing productiveness). 
 Cervantes wrote novels ; Lope de Vega wrote novels. 
 Then Cervantes wrote DON Quixote ; and here Lope 
 de Vega's instinct must have told him there was no 
 copying Cervantes. It was a blow which shook his 
 throne, and fluttered the whole tribe of his panders 
 and parasites. The Prologue must by them have been 
 regarded as nothing short of Ihe-majeste. What Lope 
 thought of the new book he lost no time in telling his 
 friends. Writing to the Duke of Sesa on the 4th of 
 August, 1604, which was some four months before Don 
 Quixote was published (so that it must have been 
 either to an early copy or to the manuscript itself to 
 which he was referring), Lope says, giving the news of 
 the town to his patron : — " Of poets I speak not. 
 Many are in the bud for next year ; but there is none 
 so bad as Cervantes or so stupid as to praise Don 
 Quixote^ ^ That he had no good will to the book is 
 
 * See Nachtrage zur Geschichte der Dramatischen Literatur und 
 Kunst in Spanien von A. F. von Shack (Frankfurt am Main,
 
 222 Don Quixote. 
 
 proved by other evidences. He himself, in return for 
 Cervantes' frequent and profuse eulogies, had only once 
 (in the preface to Dorothea) spoken of his rival, and 
 then without a word of praise. After Cervantes' death, 
 though Lope made free and most unscrupulous use of 
 him, once actually introducing him by name on the 
 stage in a comedy, — Los Esclavos de Argel, which is 
 little more than a rifaciinento of Los Bafios de Argel, — 
 not one word was ever said of DoN QuixOTE. In the 
 Laurel de Apolo, which is the Canto de Caliope over 
 again, published fourteen years after Cervantes' death, 
 there are a few lines of stilted praise of Cervantes, but 
 only of his poetry. That the word went around among 
 Lope's satellites that Don OUIXOTE was to be depre- 
 ciated, is proved by testimony more ample than I have 
 any room for in this place.' 
 
 1854), pp. 31-34, — a most valuable work, throwing great light on 
 the literary history of Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth 
 centuries. Schack had access to the private papers of the repre- 
 sentative of the Duke of Sesa. There are supposed to be still 
 other letters, in some private collections in Spain, which their 
 possessors are afraid to publish lest they should bring scandal on 
 the " Phoenix of Spain," whose life, during his last years, according 
 to a recent publication, — Los Ultimos Amoves de Lope de Vega, 
 by Ribas y Canfranc, — was one not unworthy of a priest and a 
 familiar of the Inquisition. Lope de Vega seemed to have served 
 his patron as pimp as well as secretary. 
 
 ^ See Pellicer, Ticknor, and Guerra y Orbe passim. In El 
 Cavallero Venturoso^ by Juan de Valladares, — a work never pub- 
 lished, the manuscript of which is in the possession of Senor 
 Gayangos, — there is an allusion in the preface depreciatory of Don
 
 Life of Cervantes. 223 
 
 Who, then, but Lope de Vega could have written, if 
 not the spurious Second Part, at least Avellaneda's 
 brutal and malignant prologue? In this there have not 
 been detected any traces of Aragonese, — though even 
 such might have been introduced purposely, for the 
 better disguising the authorship. No one, as I think I 
 have shown, had so great a motive for injuring Cer- 
 vantes in his Don Quixote. No one was so capable 
 of doing him that injury as a priest, who was acute 
 enough to detect that the book boded his order no 
 good ; a familiar of the Inquisition, which holy system 
 had been brought to nought ; as a writer whose works 
 had been held up to ridicule ; as a dramatist whose 
 plays had been condemned ; finally, as the leading star 
 in the literary firmament which had been eclipsed. 
 That Lope de Vega, with his own hand, wrote the 
 spurious Second Part which was intended to forestall 
 and to spoil Cervantes' own Second Part, no one can 
 positively say. But every collateral circumstance, 
 every presumption and suspicion, every fact which has 
 hitherto been brought to light, tends to support and 
 confirm the opinion, — which even Spaniards are now 
 beginning to admit, — that Lope de Vega, singly or in 
 collaboration, was the author of Avellaneda's DON 
 Quixote. 
 
 Not very long had the author to plume himself upon 
 the success of his craven device. Cervantes was half 
 
 Quixote. The approbation is in Lope de Vega's hand, dated 1617. 
 Valladares was a priest.
 
 224 1^0^ Quixote. 
 
 through the fifty-ninth chapter of his Second Part, 
 where Don Quixote is on the road to the jousts at 
 Zaragoza, when Avellaneda's book reached him. That 
 he must have felt the foul blow deeply is apparent from 
 the frequent reference he makes thereafter to the impu- 
 dent attempt of his veiled imitator to usurp his place 
 and to rob him of his hero, and from the reply he 
 makes to his enemy in the Prologue. There are some who 
 think that Cervantes ought to have behaved differently. 
 Because he did not dissemble his anger, he is supposed 
 to have been guilty of a want of dignity. He is even 
 charged (a little absurdly) with not thinking enough of 
 his readers. He is reproached with having spoilt his 
 Second Part of DON QUIXOTE by the reflections upon 
 Avellaneda. The general verdict of mankind, however, 
 has amply vindicated the course which Cervantes took. 
 He might have behaved differently, but he did not, — 
 acting frankly according to his nature, which, we fear, 
 fell short of philosophy, in taking such notice as he 
 did of his ungenerous masked enemy. Nor is there 
 a single word he wrote in his own justification which 
 can fairly be said to be unworthy of the author of 
 Don Quixote. With exquisite art he has even made 
 use of the blundering thrusts of his adversary to em- 
 bellish and to enrich his own book. Avellaneda serves 
 him for a perpetual whetstone to his wit, and for new 
 occasions of humour. Nothing can exceed the delicacy 
 of the style in which the clumsy malice of the forger 
 of the spurious DON QuixOTE is made to administer 
 to the triumph of the real and true Knight ; nor is
 
 Life of Cervantes. 225 
 
 there a single line which, for the sake of the author or 
 of his invention, we have reason to wish away. 
 
 It would be strange, indeed, if there were not persons 
 both in Spain and out of it, in that age and in this, 
 who, unable to forgive or to understand Cervantes, 
 have preferred the false to the true Quixote, — the copy 
 to the original, — the base coinage to the sterling metal. 
 The Archbishop of Tarragona and his Vicar-General, 
 those seasoned vessels who found nothing immodest 
 in Avellaneda's Quixote, — nothing but what is chaste 
 entertainment and good morality, — have not been with- 
 out followers in Spain and elsewhere. Bias de Nasarre, 
 in his reprint of Avellaneda in 1732, declared the 
 character of the false Sancho to be more natural than 
 Cervantes' Sancho ; that Cervantes had borrowed his 
 own Second Part from Avellaneda ; that the glory 
 of Avellaneda is the greater for the droll reason 
 that "it needs more force of genius to add to first 
 inventions than to make them."^ Don Agustin Mon- 
 tiano, in giving his approbation to the book of 
 Avellaneda, speaking of Cervantes' harsh remarks on 
 his competitor, does not believe that any judicious man 
 would decide in favour of Cervantes, defending Avel- 
 laneda from the reproach of being "cold and without 
 mirth," and preferring his Sancho to the original.^ A 
 
 * Bias de Nasarre, who has figured before in this biography, 
 is said to have been one of those who affected French tastes, then 
 becoming fashionable. He assumed the name of Isidro Perales. 
 
 2 Agustin Montiano y Luyando, who signed the Approbation 
 for Nasarre's reprint of Avellaneda (the first ever made of the 
 VOL. I. 2 G
 
 226 Don Quixote. 
 
 greater than any of these false Spaniards, — Le Sage, — 
 perhaps to show his spite against a book from which he 
 could not steal, — " in this fair garden left to feed. To 
 batten on the moor," — made a French version of 
 Avellaneda, trimming and combing him into French 
 elegance, omitting his bawdry, and purging him of his 
 grossness. According to this judge of what was knightly 
 and romantic, " Avellaneda has very well sustained the 
 character of Don Quixote ; he has made a Knight 
 Errant who is always grave, and all whose words are 
 magnificent, pompous, and flowery." ^ The latest of this 
 school of odd, perverse antipathists is that acute and 
 ingenious Spanish scholar, M. Germond de Lavigne, — 
 said to be a disciple of Victor Hugo, — who has taken 
 up Avellaneda with warmth ; abusing Cervantes for 
 lack of generosity in not welcoming his traducer as a 
 concurrent ; and placing him on the same level of les 
 petites passions de rivalite. He denies the grossness of 
 Avellaneda and the delicacy of Cervantes ; avers that 
 the copyist is entitled to our respect because he has 
 conducted his story strictly according to " the logical 
 succession of the ideas of the master " ; declares the 
 plan of Avellaneda superior to that of Cervantes ; with 
 a sublime audacity charges Cervantes himself with pla- 
 
 book, and the only one till Rivadeneyra gave it the honour of a 
 place in his Biblioteca), was Secretary to Philip V., the first of the 
 Bourbons. 
 
 1 See Le Sage's preface to his translation, or rather rechauffage, 
 of Avellaneda, in the first edition of 1704. In this, Don Quixote 
 is turned into Dom Guichotte.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 227 
 
 giarism from the other ; finally, pronounces Cervantes 
 " un esprit Uger, frivole et vagabond " ! 
 
 These attempts to rehabilitate Avellaneda have been 
 all in vain, as was the attempt to spoil Don Quixote. 
 The book of which Germond de Lavigne says, with 
 much effrontery, that it had 2in succh reel, seems to 
 have had but a short life.' Before the true Knight the 
 imposture disappeared. Upon Cervantes' second en- 
 trance into the lists Avellaneda was overthrown as easily 
 and completely as Belianis and Felixmarte had been 
 on his first adventure. To the credit of the Spanish 
 people, they would not read the false DON QuiXOTE, 
 having the true one. The effect on Cervantes himself of 
 Avellaneda's book was to induce him to hurry the pub- 
 lication of his own, — the last two or three chapters of 
 which clearly betray marks of haste. In September 
 1 6 14, he was engaged, among other poets, to write an 
 ode on the occasion of the beatification of Teresa de 
 Jesus by the Pope Paul V., which was printed the next 
 year among the selected ones. In 161 5, in his dedi- 
 cation of his Comedies to the Conde de Lemos, he 
 speaks of Don Quixote as "waiting in the Second 
 
 ^ The Hugonist is not even honest in his perversity, but, like 
 a true Frenchman, invents his facts to support his theories. In 
 order to make us believe in the popularity of Avellaneda he speaks 
 of a second edition of the spurious Second Part, of Madrid, 1615, 
 on the authority of an apocryphal entry in Ebert's Lexico7i. The 
 Spanish bibliographers know of no such edition. There never 
 was such an edition. Avellaneda's book was never published a 
 second time, and was snuffed out when Cervantes' own D071 
 Quixote appeared, — until revived, in 1732, by Nasarre.
 
 228 Don Quixote. 
 
 Part, booted and spurred, to do him homage." The 
 interesting Approbation, under the hand of Marquez 
 de Torres, the Archbishop's chaplain (to which I have 
 before referred), speaking in unusually warm language 
 of the author's writings, is dated the 27th of February, 
 161 5. The licence to print, however, was not granted 
 until the 5th of November of that year. The dedica- 
 tion to the Conde de Lemos is dated the last day of 
 October. In this the author speaks of his making haste 
 to publish, in order to be rid of "the disgust and 
 nausea " which another DoN QUIXOTE had caused 
 him ; and a story is told, doubtless in joke, of how 
 the Emperor of China, desiring to found a college, 
 had named him (Cer\-antes) Rector. But, asking the 
 Emperor's envoy what arrangements had been made 
 for paying his expenses to China, he is told, " None,, 
 not even in thought." So the author of DoN QUIXOTE, 
 being not only now infirm, but in much want of money, 
 prefers — " Emperor for Emperor, and Monarch for 
 Monarch," — the Conde de Lemos at Naples for his 
 benefactor and supporter. 
 
 The Second Part of DON QuiXOTE was published in 
 November, 161 5, the printer, Juan de la Cuesta, and 
 the bookseller or publisher, Francisco Robles, being 
 the same as for the First Part. The success of the new 
 volume was quite as great as that of its predecessor. 
 Cervantes' own opinion, put into the mouth of Samson 
 Carrasco, that " second parts were never good," ^ has 
 
 1 See Don Quixote^ Part I. C. iv.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 229 
 
 been in this instance signally confuted. By the majo- 
 rity of critics the Second Part of Don Quixote has 
 been preferred to the First, Despite of Charles Lamb, 
 who declared that in writing " that unfortunate Second 
 Part," Cervantes " sacrificed his instinct to his under- 
 standing," ^ the second conception must be pronounced 
 even superior to the first in execution. There is more 
 richness of colour, more play of fancy, more wealth of 
 invention. The author is on firmer ground, and surer of 
 his audience. The First Part was an experiment in an 
 untried field. In the Second, there is no longer any 
 doubt. The fable expands, the characters are more fully 
 developed, the action becomes more lively and more 
 picturesque. The author has fallen in love with his own 
 creations, and attends more carefully to their behaviour. 
 ,Don Quixote is less the man out of his wits, and more 
 the man of ripe sense. Above all, Sancho plays a 
 more important part in the piece, throwing off much of 
 
 ^ See Lamb's letter to Southey (August 19th, 1825): — "Marry, 
 when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and 
 put hhn upon writing that unfortunate Second Part, with the con- 
 federacies of that unworthy Duke and most contemptible Duchess, 
 Cervantes sacrificed his instinct." This is hardly in Lamb's best taste. 
 To abuse the Duke and Duchess for the parts they are made to take, 
 is like Partridge at the play telling the Queen to " go about her 
 business, for she is a vile, wicked wretch." Cervantes must be 
 supposed to know his own business. The Duke and Duchess 
 may be contemptible, but they were dramatically necessary. They 
 certainly, with all their tricks, do not degrade but rather exalt 
 Don Quixote in our esteem, while they contribute largely to our 
 entertainment.
 
 230 Don Quixote, 
 
 his clumsiness, and growing in humour and in wisdom. 
 Some new personages are introduced, such as Samson 
 Carrasco, and the Duke and Duchess, who throw into 
 higher relief the humour of the scenes, while they 
 relieve the monotony of the Errantry business. One 
 notable difference between the First and the Second 
 Part is that the parody of Ainadis, as the story pro- 
 ceeds, is, to a large extent, dropped. We have fewer 
 references in the Second Part to Knighthood and the 
 books of chivalries. Cervantes seems even to have 
 imagined that he had gone too far with his diatribe 
 against the romances, which he loved only too well 
 himself His purpose accomplished of destroying the 
 taste for the chivalric books, he sets himself to provide 
 his readers with an agreeable compensation. Some- 
 thing of the charm of the original book, of course, is 
 wanting to the continuation, — the naivete^ the simplicity, 
 the invention itself, which cannot be repeated ; but in 
 all the higher essentials of a work of genius the Second 
 Part of Don Quixote must be pronounced even 
 better than the First. There is more of human interest 
 in the story. There are fewer interruptions in the shape 
 of episodes and occasional poetry. The figures on the 
 stage are more various ; and they move and act, as well 
 as speak. The story itself is better constructed, with more 
 harmony between the parts, more freedom in the action, 
 more breadth of comedy, more flexibility of language. 
 How comparatively poor and dull had been the story 
 were the new Sancho away, with his proverbs ; his 
 governorship of Barataria ; his adventures in the Duke's
 
 Life of Cervantes. 231 
 
 castle ; the disenchantment of Dulcinea ! How imper- 
 fect our idea of the Knight without the adventure of 
 the Lions ; the converse with Don Diego de Miranda ; 
 the descent into the Cave of Montesinos ; the encounter 
 with Roque Guinart ; — without that final catastrophe, 
 so artfully contrived, which rounds off the story in the 
 only natural and perfect manner with the overthrow 
 of the Knight of the Rueful Feature by the Knight of 
 the White Moon ! 1 
 
 The marvel of all is that this book, with its frolic 
 grace, its abundant wealth of humour, of gaiety, and 
 of invention ; so rich in blood and overflowing with 
 the sense of existence ; so brimful of humanity, of love, 
 and of hope, should be the work of a man approaching 
 the seventieth year of a life of trouble, of toil, of pri- 
 vation, and of disappointment such as few men have 
 ever lived. 
 
 1 Heine, in his most genial and acute essay on Don Quixote^ 
 which, in my readers' interest, I have given in full in an Appendix, 
 makes the strange blunder of saying that it was by a " disguised 
 barber" that Don Quixote was overthrown. Cervantes would 
 never have made such a mistake as to fit Barber Nicholas with 
 armour and lance. The Knight of the White Moon was Samson 
 Carrasco, the wit and the scholar, — precisely the man created to 
 do that kindly office for Don Quixote ; nor was ever a d^nouetnent 
 brought about so naturally and simply, with art so perfect.
 
 232 Don Quixote. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Last Years — Pcrsihs and Sigisniunda — Cemantes* 
 Farewell — Death and Burial — General Summary 
 of his Life and Character — Estimate of Don 
 Quixote — Conclusion. 
 
 THE completion of his great work preceded but 
 by a few months the close of the author's career. 
 The brave, gay spirit was about to be quenched. The 
 soul that had " toiled and wrought " — 
 
 That ever with a frolic welcome took 
 The thunder and the sunshine — 
 
 was active and bold to the last, planning, in his sixty- 
 ninth year, new schemes of books. In the dedication 
 of the Second Part of DON QUIXOTE to the Conde de 
 Lemos, Cervantes had announced that in four months 
 the Travels of Persiles and Sigisniunda would be ready, 
 which was to be " either the worst or the best of books 
 of entertainment in our language." He had spoken of 
 the Persiles two years before in his prologue to the 
 Novels as a book in which he would compete with 
 Heliodorus, and also of another projected work, — TJie 
 Weeks of the Garden. In his dedication of his Comedies 
 he had again referred to " el gran Persiles" to Las 
 Semanas del Jarditi, and to the second part of Galatea 
 as forthcoming, " si tanta carga pueden llevar mis
 
 Life of Cervantes. 233 
 
 ancianos hombros " (if my old shoulders can carry so 
 heavy a burden). Of these projects, the only one 
 which he lived to carry out was his romantic story 
 of imaginary travels, after the manner of Heliodorus, 
 called Persiles and Sigisnmnda, which was not pub- 
 lished, however, till after his death.^ In the prologue 
 to the Persiles he tells us, in his own graceful style, of 
 an adventure which happened to himself when returning 
 from Esquivias, his wife's town, whither he had gone for 
 change of air, to Madrid. This is so pleasant a picture 
 of a cheerful old age, undimmed by time, care, or sick- 
 ness, that often as it has been quoted, I cannot refrain 
 from repeating it : — " As it fell out, beloved reader, 
 coming one day, I and two friends of mine, from the 
 famous town of Esquivias, — famous for a thousand 
 things, one for its illustrious families and another for 
 its most illustrious wines, — I was aware of one who 
 came spurring in great haste behind my back, wishing 
 to come up with us, a wish to which he gave voice, 
 calling out to us not to push on so fast. We waited for 
 him, and there came up on a little she-ass a gray 
 student, — for in gray was he all attired, — gaiters, shoes, 
 and sword in brass-bound scabbard, a shining Walloon 
 collar, with pleats of equal length, though sooth to say 
 there were but two of them, for the collar kept con- 
 
 • The Persiles was published, in 1617, by Cervantes' widow. In 
 the Approbation, dated September 9th, 1616, Josef de Valdivieso 
 assures the reader that " of the many books written by Cervantes, 
 none is more ingenious, more cultured, or more entertaining." 
 VOL. I. 2 H
 
 234 Don Quixote. 
 
 tinually falling to one side, and he catching it up with 
 great care and pains to keep it straight. Coming up 
 with us, he said : — ' Sure your worships are bound for 
 some office or benefice at Court, since it is there that 
 his most Illustrious Eminence of Toledo is, and his 
 Majesty as well, seeing the rate at which you are travel- 
 ling ; and, indeed, my ass has won the prize for his pace 
 more than once.' To which one of my companions 
 replied : — ' The nag of Sehor Miguel de Cervantes is 
 to blame for this, for he is a quick stepper.' Scarce 
 had the student heard the name Cervantes when, 
 alighting from his mount, his pad falling on one side, 
 his valise on the other, — for in all this splendour was he 
 travelling, — he made for me, and, hastily seizing me by 
 the left hand,^ cried : — 'Yes, yes ; it is he of the crip- 
 pled hand, safe enough, the all-famous, the merry 
 writer, and, indeed, the joy of the Muses,' To me, who 
 in these brief terms saw of my praises the grand com- 
 pass, it seemed to be discourteous not to respond to 
 them, so, embracing him round the neck, whereby I 
 made entire havoc of the collar, I said : — ' This is a 
 mistake in which many friends from ignorance have 
 fallen. I, sir, am Cervantes ; but not the joy of the 
 Muses, nor any of the fine things your worship has 
 said. Regain your ass and mount, and let us travel 
 together in pleasant talk for the rest of our short 
 
 * Here is evidence to show that, contrary to the old belief on 
 which the portraits and statues of Cervantes are founded, he had 
 still a left hand, though mutilated.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 235 
 
 journey.' The polite student did so ; we reduced our 
 speed a little, and at a leisurely pace pursued our 
 journey, in the course of which my infirmity was touched 
 upon. The good student checked my mirth in a mo- 
 ment : — ' This malady is the dropsy, which not all the 
 water of Ocean, let it be ever so sweet-drinking, can 
 cure. Let your worship, Senor Cervantes, set bounds 
 to your drink, not forgetting to eat, for so without other 
 medicine you will do well.' 'That many have told me,' 
 answered I, ' but I can no more give up drinking for 
 pleasure than if I had been born for nothing else. My 
 life is slipping away, and, by the diary my pulse is 
 keeping, which at the latest will end its reckoning this 
 coming Sunday, I have to close my life's account. Your 
 worship has come to know me in a rude moment, since 
 there is no time for me to show my gratitude for the 
 good-will you have shown me.' By this time we reached 
 the bridge of Toledo,^ whither I betook myself, — he 
 turning aside to take the road to Segovia." The 
 narrative, so characteristic of the gay, good humour 
 with which Cervantes bore his lot, even in the near 
 prospect of death, ends with a farewell to all that has 
 made life sweet for him : " Good-bye, humours ; good- 
 bye, pleasant fancies ; good-bye, merry friends ; for I 
 
 ' This is not the present bridge at one of the entrances into 
 Madrid, but an older one, long since pulled down to make room 
 for the existing structure with the comic figures of San Isidro and 
 his wife looking wistfully for water in the river below, which dates 
 from 1735.
 
 236 Don Quixote. 
 
 perceive I am dying, in the wish to see you happy in 
 the other life." ' 
 
 In the pathetic dedication of Persiles to his old 
 patron, the Conde de Lemos, are the last wqrds of 
 Cervantes, written on his very death-bed — 
 
 — As moving delicate, and full of life, 
 As when he lived indeed. 
 
 It is an extraordinary and most vivid picture of a 
 soul gay, humorous, and sweet-tempered to the end. 
 Quoting the words of an old poem, and turning them 
 so as to fit his own case, " with one foot in the stirrup, 
 waiting the call of Death," he tells the Count : — " Yes- 
 terday they gav^e me Extreme Unction, and to-day I 
 am writing. The time is short ; my agonies increase ; 
 my hopes diminish." He repeats his assurances of re- 
 gard and of love for his Excellency, and enlarges, with 
 his accustomed profuse good-nature, on the bounties of 
 which he has been the recipient (probably bounties of 
 no great price). His mind is still occupied with his 
 books. If by a miracle he survives, he purposes to 
 leave to the world as relics of himself his Weeks of the 
 Garden; the famous Bernardo (now for the first time 
 
 ^ One of the most recent of Cervantes' biographers, Ramon 
 Mainez, absurdly suggests that this adventure is "an ingenious 
 fiction, like that of the Quixote, one and the other conceived in 
 order to disclose his heart to the public, and make patent the 
 great injustice of his contemporaries " ( Vida de Cervantes, vol. i. 
 p. 340), a conjecture worthy to be ranked in silliness with Mayans' 
 theory that Cervantes himself wrote the formal Approbation pre- 
 fixed to the Second Part of Don Quixote.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 237 
 
 mentioned and never heard of again), and the sequel 
 to the Galatea, of which he knows that the Count is an 
 admirer. And so with a last prayer for God's blessing 
 on him, he ends on the 19th of April, 1616. Four days 
 afterwards he died.^ 
 
 Three weeks before his death, sick in his own house, 
 he had made profession of the Third Order of St. 
 Francis, whose habit he had assumed at Alcala in 161 3. 
 Too much importance must not be attached to this pro- 
 fession, which is an evidence rather of poverty than of 
 piety. There is no greater proof of the extent to which 
 the priestly caste had dominated the minds of Spaniards 
 in that age than in the existence of the opinion that it 
 was not possible for a man to die decently, or at least 
 to be sure of decent burial, unless he were enrolled in 
 one of the religious orders. In the case of Cervantes, 
 there is no special significance in an act which his 
 Spanish biographers have hailed as a conclusive proof 
 of his devotion to the Church. For certain he was not 
 one who, in Milton's sarcastic phrase — 
 
 —To be sure of Paradise, 
 Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, 
 Or in Franciscan thought to pass disguised. 
 
 His last act was in conformity with the general tenour 
 of his life as a good Spaniard, subservient in all the 
 
 ' Nominally on the same day with Shakespeare (April 23rd) ; 
 but allowing for the difference of styles,— England not having 
 adopted the Gregorian Calendar till 1751,— Shakespeare, a younger 
 man by nearly seventeen years, outlived Cervantes by some twelve 
 days.
 
 238 Don Quixote. 
 
 observances of religion to the national standard of 
 belief. Of the desperate condition of his fortunes, 
 even in these last days, when he was in the height of his 
 fame and popularit}^ we learn from a pathetic letter of 
 his to the Archbishop of Toledo, written on the 26th 
 of March, 1616.^ He might well fear that but for the 
 religious profession he would be unable to obtain for his 
 bones a safe resting-place. 
 
 His confidence in St. Francis was scarcely justified, 
 at least on earth. He was borne to the grave " with his 
 face uncovered," as was the custom with those who had 
 embraced the Franciscan profession. No ceremonies 
 else are recorded as taking place at his burial. His 
 rival, Lope de Vega, thirty years afterwards, more for- 
 tunate, was attended to the grave by immense crowds, — 
 
 ^ This is a translation of Cer\'antes' letter to the Archbishop : — 
 
 " My very illustrious Lord : A few days since I received your 
 most Illustrious Lordship's letter, and with it new proofs of your 
 bounty. If for the malady which affects me there could be any 
 relief, the repeated marks of favour and protection which your 
 Illustrious Person bestows on me would be sufficient to reheve me ; 
 but, indeed, it increases so greatly that I think it will make an 
 end of me, although not of my gratitude. The Lord God preserve 
 you as the executor of saintly deeds, so that you may taste of the 
 fruit of them there in his holy glory, as fervently desires your 
 humble servant, who kisses your most exalted hand." 
 
 — The original was in the possession of General San Roman, of 
 Madrid. I had hoped to be able to give my readers a facsimile 
 of it in this volume as an interesting relic of Cervantes, but at the 
 last moment this design has been frustrated through the owner's 
 sudden death.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 239 
 
 three bishops officiating at his tomb ; grandees bearing 
 his coffin, amidst the tears of the populace ; the funeral 
 lasting over nine days. The circling wheel of Time has 
 redressed the balance. To-day, while the author of 
 Don Quixote lives in every tongue, the name of Lope, 
 once a synonym for all that was excellent, is preserved 
 in the mind only as a word for facile and exuberant 
 production. 
 
 By Cervantes' will, which, like so many memorials of 
 him, has been lost, his wife Dona Catalina and the 
 Licentiate, Francisco Nuiiez, an inmate of his house,^ 
 were appointed executors, his only direction to them, 
 so far as we know, being that they were to bury him in 
 the graveyard of the Trinitarian Convent in the Calle 
 del Humilladero, — being led to choose this spot, doubt- 
 
 ^ Cervantes died in his house at the comer of the Calle de Leon, 
 abutting on the Calle de Francos. The house, a poor one, of one 
 story, was pulled down in 1833. On that which occupies the site 
 was affixed, by order of Ferdinand VII., a trophy composed of 
 appropriate devices, poetical and military, enclosing a medallion 
 (fancy) portrait. The Calle de Francos has since been renamed 
 "Calle de Cervantes." In 1609, Cervantes was living, as appears 
 by a document cited by Pellicer (p. 213 of his Vida de Cervantes), 
 in the Calle de la Magdalena. In 1610 he occupied a house in 
 the Calle de Leon. In 1614 he was living, as is shown by the 
 superscription of the letter quoted in the Adjunta al Parttaso, in 
 the Calle de las Huertas, fronting the houses occupied by the 
 Prince of Morocco. There is mention also of his living in another 
 house in the Calle del Duque de Alba. All these are neighbour- 
 hoods scarcely above the scale of those inhabited by the poor ; 
 though Cervantes' last residence in the Calle de Francos was 
 within a few doors of that occupied by the great Lope de Vega.
 
 240 Don Quixote. 
 
 less, through grateful remembrance of the old good 
 service of the Trinitarians on his behalf/ as well as 
 because his daughter, Isabel, was an inmate of this 
 religious house. In the same ground were afterwards 
 interred his wife and his daughter, and other members 
 of the family. No stone or inscription marked the spot 
 where he was laid. In 1635 the sisters moved into 
 another convent in the Calle de Cantaranas, exhuming, 
 as the custom was, all the bones of members of their 
 order and their friends, and transporting them to their 
 new abode. There, mixed with the remains of the 
 meaner kind, and undistinguishable from the others, 
 now rest what is mortal of Miguel de Cervantes.^ 
 
 Of the works about which in his days he showed so 
 much anxiety all but one have perished, and it would 
 have been no great loss to the world or to his reputation 
 if Per sites and Sigisimmda had shared their fate. This 
 is a romance in professed imitation of the Theagenes 
 and Chariclea of Heliodorus ; almost as dull and as 
 tedious as the original. Written in Cervantes' old age, 
 it bears the traces of its birth marked on its face. A 
 
 * Fr. Juan Gil, the Redemptorist to whom Cervantes owed his 
 release fronn captivity, was of the Trinitarian Order. 
 
 "His grateful country, at the instance of the Royal Spanish 
 Academy, has set up a bust (a reproduction of the fancy portrait 
 by Kent), with appropriate attributes, on the fagade of the Trini- 
 tarian Convent in the Calle de Cantaranas, with a suitable inscrip- 
 tion. This, with the mean and common-looking statue of Cervantes 
 in the Plaza de Cortes, makes the sum, I believe, of all that Spain 
 has done to celebrate the memory of Miguel de Cei'vantes.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 241 
 
 pair of lovers, under disguised names, meet with every 
 kind of adventure. They tell a great many stories, and 
 have a great many told to them ; and, after the classic 
 pattern, encountering shipwrecks, captivity, ravishment, 
 and every kind of peril by land and sea, from robbers, 
 pirates, savages, and algiiazils, — Persiles and Sigismunda 
 turn up at Rome, where the gentleman being shown 
 to be the heir to the " King of Thule," and the lady 
 the daughter of the Queen of Friesland, they are mar- 
 ried, receive the Pontifical blessing, and live happy, 
 blessed in a large and virtuous progeny.^ Persiles and 
 Sigismunda, which some Spanish writers have praised 
 as equal, if hot superior, to DON Quixote, is to me, 
 in spite of the style, which is elegant, refined, and 
 graceful, the most insipid of all Cervantes' works, — of 
 which it is almost incredible, had we not ample proof 
 of the extraordinary range and diversity of his powers, 
 that it should have been written by the hand which 
 wrote Don Quixote. That this book, a reversion to 
 
 ' In the Persiles are some bits of personal reminiscence, which 
 have been scarcely noted by any of the biographers. In bk. iii. 
 ch. X., there is an account of a fight with Algerine pirates, which 
 is probably taken from real life, and may be the story of the Sol. 
 There is also a sarcastic reference to the Alcalde and regidors of 
 some town unnamed, which may be Argamasilla. Persiles, like 
 all other of Cervantes' stories, has been a mine whence many in 
 various languages have drawn their materials. It has furnished 
 Fletcher with the plot and the ground-work, though with none of 
 the indecency, of the Custom of the Country. Persiles has been 
 more than once translated into English, the earliest translation 
 being of the date of i6ig. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 I
 
 24- Don Quixote. 
 
 the old artificial type of romance which Cervantes him- 
 self had done so much to explode, should have been so 
 carefully composed by him, in a spirit so faithful to the 
 classical traditions ; that he should have even regarded 
 it as likely to be the best of his works, is an enigma, 
 like some others in Cervantes' life, for which I am pre- 
 pared with no solution. I cannot believe that Cervantes 
 was insensible to the merits of DoN OUIXOTE. He 
 may have doubted of the success of his first experiment 
 on the public taste. His own words are sufficient to 
 prove that in the Second Part he doubted of it no more. 
 Nor is the mystery made clearer by the common trick 
 of holding the book to be something better than the 
 author. The theory that it was some inferior man 
 who, by a lucky hit, produced in some happy moment 
 of exaltation or temporary fit of greatness, a work of 
 which he himself knew not the value, is in contradiction 
 to every circumstance of Cervantes' life and at variance 
 with the history of Don Quixote himself. If ever 
 author and book were one, it was in the case of DON 
 Quixote and Cervantes. If ever a book grew naturally 
 out of the habit of the author's genius, and was evolved, 
 — to use the customary phrase, — out of the writer's 
 nature, it was DoN Quixote. 
 
 The man and the book cannot be considered apart. 
 Of the man, Cervantes, this picture, unless I have 
 failed egregiously in the painting, is surely one which 
 exhibits a most interesting personality. There is no life 
 of a man of letters which is so attractive for precisely 
 the very qualities which have contributed to give im-
 
 Life of Cervantes. 243 
 
 mortality to Don Quixote. I do not know that his 
 character can be better summed up than in the words 
 of Aribau, one of the most judicious of his Spanish 
 biographers : " Fearless in peril, strong in adversity, 
 modest in triumph, careless and generous in his own 
 concerns, delighting in conferring favours, indulgent to 
 the well-meant efforts of mediocrity, endowed with a 
 sound and very clear judgment, of an imagination with- 
 out example in its fecundity, — he passed through the 
 world as a stranger whose language was not understood. 
 His contemporaries knew him not, but regarded him 
 with indifference. Posterity has given him but tardy 
 compensation. It has recognised him as a man who 
 went before his age, who divined the tastes and the 
 tendencies of another society, and making himself 
 popular with his inexhaustible graces, announced the 
 dawn of a civilisation which broke long afterwards.^" 
 
 If of any man it can be said that he was before his 
 age, and therefore his age knew him not, it is of Miguel 
 de Cervantes. Probably he himself did not know the 
 full value, as he certainly was late in learning the true 
 direction, of his genius. A gallant soldier, in an age 
 when it seemed to him that his country was at the 
 head of all civilisation, he did not comprehend that this 
 was a civilisation fatal to romance and to individual 
 enthusiasm. The knowledge came in his last years. 
 
 * See the concluding sentences of the very judicious but too 
 concise Life of Cervantes by Aribau prefixed to the edition of Cer- 
 vantes' works, published in ih.^ Biblioteca de los Autores Espaholes ,
 
 244 Don Quixote. 
 
 and its fruit was DON QuiXOTE. His life up to that 
 time was one incessant struggle against the spirit and 
 the taste of his time, even when he condescended, for a 
 living, to imitate that spirit and to administer to that 
 taste. Of his philosophy, and of the purpose he had 
 in view when he wrote his books, especially his DON 
 Quixote, there has been a great deal written, — a great 
 deal that is extravagant and beside the mark. My 
 own view is that he took life, as he did all his trials, 
 with a gay good-humour, not troubling himself much 
 about philosophy. He wrote simply because he must, — 
 out of the fulness of his heart when able, but generally 
 out of the necessities of his position. 
 
 Neglected for some hundred and fifty years after his 
 death, it is only in recent times that his countrymen 
 have awakened to the discovery that in the author of 
 Don Quixote they possessed a genius who was a 
 credit to Spain. Within the last thirty years there has 
 been an extraordinary recrudescence of enthusiasm over 
 El Manco de Lepanto, — the Joy of the Muses, — the 
 Prince of Spanish Wits. That enthusiasm has run to 
 bounds which must have furnished the shade of Cer- 
 vantes with abundant subject for laughter. They have 
 discovered in DON Quixote things which would have 
 startled the author himself to know. They have found 
 him to be, in his treatment of lunacy, a greater than 
 Boerhaave, the predecessor of Pinel. They have proved 
 him for jurisprudence an equal to Justinian. They have 
 testified to his extraordinary merit as a geographer. They 
 have demonstrated him for seamanship second to none.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 245 
 
 Last and greatest feat of all, they have discovered that 
 he is a theologian, as devout in his religion as profound 
 in his elucidation of its mysteries.^ 
 
 This is the climax of the long and loud chorus of 
 jubilation which has gone up in various shapes of essay, 
 paean, ode, and eulogy, disguised under the names of 
 commentary and criticism, in honour of Miguel de 
 Cervantes, to whom his country scarce gave bread 
 when living. Of this enthusiasm, which has now ripened 
 into a sort of cult, with its priests and its acolytes, 
 more profuse of voice than of offering, — its chanting 
 and its dancing boys, — what is to be said, except that 
 it is very creditable to the discrimination (though tardy) 
 
 ^ Dr. Hernandez Morejon, physician to Ferdinand VII., wrote 
 a book to show that, in his treatment of Don Quixote's malady, 
 Cervantes equalled Hippocrates and Boerhaave in precision, and 
 that he anticipated Pinel in his application of moral remedies to 
 mental diseases. Don Antonio Martin Gajntro, mh.\?, Jurispericia 
 de Cervatttes (1870) finds \Vi.Doti Quixote a treasure of judicial and 
 juridical learning. Don Fermin Caballero, in Cervantes Geografo, 
 has no difficulty in proving the author of Don Quixote to be a 
 profound geographer. In Cefvantes Maritio, Don Cesareo Fer- 
 nandez finds abundant evidence to show Cervantes was a perfect 
 mariner. Finally, and to cap all, we have that eminent priest 
 from Toledo, Jose Maria Sbarbi, who has written a tract, entitled 
 Cervantes Teologo, in which he insists that Cervantes' knowledge 
 of theology, in all its mysteries, was at least equal to his pro- 
 ficiency in any of the other sciences. This is the same Sbarbi 
 who once wrote a letter scouting the idea of the translatability of 
 Don Quixote. Certainly, if Sbarbi were allowed to be right in 
 his theological discoveiy, there would be no need to discuss the 
 question of Don Quixote's translatability.
 
 246 Don Quixote. 
 
 of his countrymen, though not a little misleading if we 
 are to judge soberly of the man and his work. It is 
 not that Cervantes is not entitled to all the homage 
 which Spain renders him to-day, by way of compen- 
 sation for her past neglect. That neglect was all the 
 more ungrateful seeing that Cervantes was nothing if 
 not vmy Espauol, — a very Spaniard, — a man " in whom 
 the ancient Gothic humour more appeared Than any 
 that drew breath " in Spain. To-day, the eulogies are 
 a little hyperbolical, as some of them are scarcely 
 deserved. In respect of Cervantes' orthodoxy, for 
 instance, it is a little too absurd that we are to accept 
 Don Quixote as not only a book of humour, but a 
 book of religion, — of the religion of which Father Juan 
 Sbarbi is a member, which necessarily excludes all 
 others. Let it be understood, once for all, that I do 
 not propose to claim Cervantes as one alien to the 
 faith of his country. There was no character, perhaps, 
 which he, as one who had fought and bled for Christen- 
 dom, would have more energetically repudiated. That 
 Cervantes was perfectly loyal to the only religion he 
 could know, may be accepted as beyond question. 
 That he had no idea whatever in Don Quixote of 
 opposing himself to the cardinal articles of the national 
 faith, is abundantly clear from the whole tenour of the 
 man's life and writings. He was a good Catholic, as 
 the term was. He could hardly be anything else in 
 those days. This did by no means imply a ready sub- 
 mission to all the despotic claims of the Church in 
 matters not concerned with the essentials of religion.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 247 
 
 To say that he never dreamt of heading a movement 
 for free thought, is to say no more than that he was 
 not a Constitutionist or an Irreconcileable.* He took 
 his faith easily, as a wise man should, not caring to 
 make it a burden to him. He was not of the stuff 
 of which confessors and martyrs are made, which is 
 no reproach to a man of letters, who had to live by the 
 writing of books. He was what is called a Humanist, 
 in the wider and truer sense, not troubling himself 
 about other people's consciences, — neither theologian 
 nor latitudinarian, — but simply one whose head was 
 clear of the follies and extravagances of the reigning 
 superstitions, and his heart full of all love and tender- 
 ness for his fellow men, — such love and tenderness as 
 he has put into Don Quixote. 
 
 The secret of the perennial freshness of Don QUIXOTE 
 is but partially revealed in the story itself The art, 
 indeed, is, in its kind, exquisite. As a mere story-teller, 
 Cervantes must be reckoned as one of the very first in 
 that calling. In the mere technical part, too much can- 
 not be said for the consummate ease and grace of the 
 narrative, careless and almost reckless of literary effort 
 as it is. No work was ever produced by human art so 
 perfectly simple and sincere, so utterly devoid of self- 
 consciousness, or any vulgar trick of authorship. The 
 
 ' Nay, there are some who have said as much. M. Germond 
 de Lavigne, of whom we have spoken before, the admirer and 
 defender of the spurious Don Quixote, wrote for a Madrid journal, 
 La Discusion, in 1868, a paper showing that Cervantes was a 
 member of the party of the Federal Republic.
 
 24S Don Quixote. 
 
 story grows rather than is constructed. The wit, the 
 humour, the good sense, and the human nature, which 
 are the distinguishing characteristics of DON OUIXOTE, 
 are so carefully blended, and rise so naturally out of the 
 situations, as to defy analysis. Of the invention, what 
 can be said which is not an echo of a thousand voices ? 
 Of Don Quixote himself, " cette imagination hautaine 
 qui n'6tait que hors de propos," as Sainte Beuve finely 
 says, he is the most lovable personage in all fiction. 
 He has stood as the model which all who have followed 
 Cervantes have never been tired of copying. Every 
 imitation and every caricature only serves to exalt the 
 original. Hudibras and Uncle Toby, Colonel New- 
 come and Mr. Pickwick, what are all these, and many 
 others, but the descendants of the hero of La Mancha, 
 who stands as much higher than any of his progeny as 
 Amadis does than his children and grandchildren ? 
 That " errant star of Knighthood made more tender by 
 eclipse," ^ is still the type of all true chivalry. The 
 pathos, the dignity, the fine sense of honour, the cour- 
 tesy and kindliness which survived so much rough and 
 ignoble treatment, make up such a picture of the true 
 gentleman as can never be obsolete. It is Cerv^antes' 
 peculiar glory, — a glory which is shai'ed by Shakespeare 
 alone among the sons of men, — that he has given per- 
 manence and immortality to an image of his own crea- 
 tion. Don Quixote is even a more w^onderful product 
 of genius than any single one of Shakspeare's men, — of a 
 
 ^ Charles Lamb.
 
 Life of Cervantes. 249 
 
 type more original, more rare, and more individual than 
 any figure in the more crowded gallery of Shakspearian 
 portraits. What character could be conceived less 
 likely to endure than such a one, according to any 
 scheme of probabilities ? A gentleman of La Mancha, 
 whose wits have been turned by the reading of romances 
 of chivalry, going about in quest of adventures in com- 
 pany with a village boor through that most unromantic 
 of districts, — all the odds were surely against such a 
 conception as this being received with favour by the 
 nations of the world. It was impossible to imagine 
 a fable, constructed out of such materials, lasting to be 
 " the Bible of the people." The wits of the time, Cer- 
 vantes' contemporaries, might well be confounded by 
 the audacity of such an invention. If it served to point 
 a local, transient folly, was there anything antecedently 
 less likely to win the suffrages of mankind and to live 
 for ever in the hearts of all people for all time to come ? 
 Yet this is the miracle which the pen of Cervantes has 
 wrought. By means so simple as even to this day to 
 be a wonder to the ordinary race of critics, who cannot 
 comprehend a success achieved in defiance of all the 
 rules of art, he has contrived to make this passing skit 
 against a reigning delusion a parable for ever, and the 
 best and most cheerful as well as the healthiest of para- 
 bles. Why need we seek for any hidden moral or 
 allegory in DON QuixOTE ? It is good enough for the 
 story alone. We read it not for the moral, but for the 
 adventures, — passing over, we fear, a good deal of the 
 wisdom, kindly common sense, and perpetual flow of 
 VOL. I. 2 K
 
 250 Don Quixote. 
 
 human nature for the sake of the ever-fresh incidents, 
 the pictures of life on the road, the delightful confabu- 
 lations between master and man, the play of characters, 
 the healthy, open-air spirit of life, and the humour 
 which is so closely interwoven with the whole texture 
 of the fable. As for this humour, which is the living 
 principle of Don OuixOTE, it is of a quality peculiar 
 to Cervantes, — the gift which differentiates his genius. 
 It is, to use the congenial words of Scott, "the very 
 poetry of the comic, founded on a tender sympathy 
 with all forms of existence, though displaying itself in 
 sportive reflection, and issuing, not in superficial laughter, 
 but in still smiles, the source of which lies far deeper." 
 We have been recently told by one of that race of 
 critics who have never been able to forgive Cervantes, — 
 a mere uncultured wit, an ingenio lego, — for writing so 
 good a book, that of "that finer and more delicate 
 humour through which there runs a thread of pathos, 
 Cervantes had but little " ; that his humour, for the 
 most part, is of " that broader and simpler sort, the 
 strength of which lies in the perception of the incon- 
 gruous." Such a bold word as this argues that the 
 critics of Cervantes are richer than we could have sus- 
 pected, by one humourist at least, of a remarkable 
 breadth and simplicity. There is no " thread of pathos " 
 in Don Quixote, indeed, for the humour and pathos 
 are so interwoven that it is one web. The character of 
 the hero is of a pathos all compact, which surely is the 
 essential mark of his humour among all other kinds of 
 humour. What would the critic have } Is there no
 
 Life of Cervantes. 251 
 
 pathos in the scene of Don Quixote's final overthrow 
 by the Knight of the White Moon, when, with the 
 point of the victor's lance at his throat, he avers : — 
 "Dulcinea del Toboso is the fairest woman in the 
 world, and I the most unhappy Knight on earth ; speed 
 thy lance, Knight, and quit me of life, since you have 
 quitted me of honour," — that scene which affected the 
 heart of Henri Heine almost to breaking? Is there 
 no pathos in the death-bed of Alonzo Quijano, when, 
 his illness having cleared his brain, he confesses his 
 follies, with the weeping Sancho by his side, praying 
 his master to get well again and resume his errantries, 
 " for there is no greater madness in the world than to 
 let oneself die " ? 
 
 Some have even been found to say, with Sismondi, 
 that Don Quixote is the saddest book that ever was 
 written ; which is not less true than to say it is the 
 most humorous. Therein lay the consummate power 
 of the writer, — the proof of his mastery of the true 
 sources of smiles and tears, — that in his medicine in- 
 tended for the melancholy there is that which mocks 
 the laughter which it raises. There is an aspect in 
 which Don Quixote may well be called a sad book. 
 It is the elegy over a fallen state, at which it may be 
 perceived that the author is laughing as much to hide 
 his own emotion as out of mere high spirits. Some of 
 the scenes in which Don Quixote is buffeted and be- 
 laboured beyond all reason, as the reader is inclined 
 to think, — to a degree which makes him angry with 
 the author, — do they not witness to this pathetic
 
 252 Don Quixote. 
 
 mood on the part of Cervantes,' — the old man who had 
 lived to see his own visions of chivalry mocked and 
 dispelled by the vulgar age in which his lot was 
 cast ? 
 
 To me it seems a paradox, not less flagrant than any 
 other of the many of which Cervantes and his works 
 have been the object, to say that DON Quixote is 
 without pathos. As merely a comic book, a droll 
 story, it certainly could never have held its place 
 among the books of the world. Admirable as the 
 humour is, of the purest and rarest kind, — a humour 
 that ripples along as a perpetual accompaniment 
 of the story, which reveals itself in every act of the 
 characters, and is part of their life and motion, — 
 the humour alone would not account for the ever- 
 green vitality of DON QUIXOTE. The story itself 
 is of the simplest, — the first of all novels having this 
 peculiar distinction that it dispenses with such attrac- 
 tion as comes of love-making. The love business here 
 is entirely parenthetical when it is anything else than 
 burlesque. Yet his disdain of this almost universal 
 spice with which to flavour his book has not tended 
 in any appreciable degree to reduce its interest. The 
 women in DON Quixote, though entirely secondary 
 and subordinate, like all Shakspeare's women who are 
 not monsters, are not less vividly pictured and strongly 
 individualised than the men. The Housekeeper and 
 the Niece, although they appear but very seldom, and 
 say but little, who cannot picture them unassisted by 
 the artists ? The beautiful Dorothea, the love-sick
 
 Life of Cervantes. 253 
 
 Clara, the frolicsome Duchess, even poor Maritornes, 
 are creatures of flesh and blood, who live and move 
 on the canvas. We can say of them, as Rafael Mengs 
 said of the famous Velasquez picture in the Madrid 
 Gallery, Las Hilanderas : — " This is painted not with 
 the hand, but with the heart." Master Nicholas, the 
 Barber ; the Priest ; Samson Carrasco, the man of keen 
 resolve and ready wit ; Don Antonio Moreno, that 
 pleasant portrait of a Spanish country gentleman ; 
 Gin^s de Pasamonte, the prince of picaroons ; Roque 
 Guinart, the gallant freebooter ; the Duke, half-ashamed 
 of his practical jokes on Don Quixote ; the page 
 who goes in search of Teresa Panza ; the several inn- 
 keepers, all differing from one another, — there is no 
 character, however small or unimportant, who is not 
 touched with the breath of life. And the composition 
 is not less admirable than the drawing of the individual 
 figures. The behaviour of each in relation to the others 
 is always in character. Sometimes this behaviour is so 
 natural and life-like that we seem to be witnessing the 
 scene in action, rather than to be reading of it; and 
 as in some of the delightful colloquies between Sancho 
 and the Duchess, to have overheard their interview 
 from some secret place. 
 
 As to the perpetual contrast between Don Quixote 
 himself, — the man of imagination, the enthusiast, — and 
 Sancho, — the man of common sense, the "practical 
 man," — which is the leading feature and the motive of 
 the book, it is here that the genius of Cervantes, by 
 universal acknowledgment, has achieved its highest
 
 254 l^ON Quixote. 
 
 triumph. Don Quixote must not be taken as a man 
 out of his senses. He is only out of his wits : his 
 understanding is deranged. While under his delusion, 
 and only so long as he is under it, he is incapable of 
 reasoning accurately, but he does not lose his faculty of 
 reason in all matters else. When not under the influ- 
 ence of his craze, he speaks with judgment, soberness, 
 and uncommon good sense. His heart remains un- 
 touched, and his sense of honour is never lost, but 
 rather rendered more acute ; it being here that he is 
 " finely touched." Sancho, as Coleridge remarks, is the 
 converse of Don Quixote. He is the animalist as 
 opposed to the idealist. " Put him and his master 
 together, and they form a perfect intellect ; but they 
 are separated and without cement ; and hence, each 
 having a need of the other for its own completeness, 
 each has at times a mastery over the other." The 
 humour of such a parallel and contrast has its roots 
 deep in human nature. It is no mere artificial conjunc- 
 tion of two natures brought together for comic effect, as 
 in those couples of a lower art, — Hudibras and Ralpho, 
 and Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, and others in that 
 kind, of which the climax of burlesque is reached in 
 Tartarht de Tarascon, which is an impossible attempt 
 at a combination of the two natures in one person, but 
 a conjunction which " possesses the world," in Cole- 
 ridge's phrase, and hence a conjunction which the world 
 cannot let perish. 
 
 There is a great deal more to say of the book and 
 of the man, but I shall perhaps best consult the interests
 
 Life of Cervantes. 255 
 
 of my readers if I reserve what of comment or of 
 illustration I have to make to the passages I have 
 selected for annotation. This Life of Cervantes is 
 designed but as an introduction to the story of DoN 
 Quixote, with no other aim than to serve as a key 
 to the book and a help to the elucidation of its 
 motive.
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. — Genealogy of Miguel de Cervantes. 
 
 B. — Abstract of the Proceedings in Algiers. 
 
 C — The Bibliography of Don Quixote. 
 
 D. — The Romances of Chivalry. 
 
 E.— Henri Heine on Cervantes and Don Quixote. 
 
 VOL, I. 2 L
 
 T 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 GENEALOGY OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. 
 HE descent of Miguel de Cervantes from Nunc Alfonso, 
 
 A called El Gran, or The Great, — Alcaide (Governor) 
 of Toledo, and a Rico Hombre of Castile, born 1090, and 
 died 1 1 43, in battle against the Moors, — has been traced by 
 Navarrete, on the authority of Mendez de Silva and other 
 genealogists, according to the genealogical tree to be found 
 on the next page. 
 
 Cervantes' kinship with the Royal house of Spain is made 
 out by Mendez de Silva through a daughter of Nuno Alfonso, 
 El Gran, who married the Count Pedro Gutierrez de Toledo. 
 The thirteenth in direct succession from her was Dona 
 Mariana de Cordoba, who married Don Fadrique Enriquez, 
 Admiral of Castile, the great-grandson of Alfonso XII. Their 
 daughter. Dona Juana Enriquez de Cordoba, was the second 
 wife of Juan 11. , King of Aragon and Navarre. Their son 
 was King Ferdinand of Aragon, who married Isabella (the 
 CathoHc) of Castile, and made the kingdoms of Spain into 
 one. Their grandson was Charles V., the father of Philip II. 
 and of Don Juan of Austria.
 
 Appendix. 259 
 
 DESCENT OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, 
 
 NuNO Alfonso 
 
 (married Teresa Barroso). 
 I 
 
 Alfonso Munio 
 
 (the first called Cervatos). 
 I 
 
 Gonzalo DE Cervantes 
 
 (the first called Cervantes). 
 
 I 
 
 Juan Alfonso 
 
 (Commander in the Order of Calatrava). 
 
 I 
 
 Alonso Gomez 
 
 I 
 
 Diego Gomez 
 
 (the first who settled in Andalucia). 
 
 I 
 
 Gonzalo Gomez 
 
 (a Veinticuatro of Seville). 
 
 I 
 
 RODRIGO 
 
 (called El Sordo (the Deaf) ; his brother Diego vi^as the founder of the 
 
 branch in La Mancha). 
 
 I 
 
 Juan 
 (a Veinticuatro of Seville). 
 
 Diego 
 (a Commander in the Order of Santiago). 
 
 Juan 
 (Corregidor of Osuna, 1531-58). 
 
 RODRIGO 
 
 \ 
 
 I I I I 
 
 Andrea Rodrigo Luisa MIGUEL 
 
 (Three times (Served in various (Became a (The author of 
 
 married. campaigns, and Carmelite Nun jDon Quixote). 
 
 A wridow in died in Flanders, in 1565.) 
 1576). date unknown).
 
 26o Don Quixote. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ABSTRACT of the proceedings at the inquiry into the 
 conduct of Miguel de Cervantes during his captivity 
 in Algiers, together with the depositions of the witnesses. 
 (From Navarrete, Vida de Cemantes, Ilustraciones y Docu- 
 mentos.) 
 
 In the city of Algiers, a territory of the Moors in Barbary, 
 on the loth of October, 1580, before the Illustrious and Most 
 Reverend Father Juan Gil, Redeemer on behalf of his Spanish 
 Majesty, there appeared Miguel de Cervantes, who has been a 
 slave but is now free and ransomed, and presented the following 
 petition : — 
 
 JNIiguel de Cer\'antes, native of the city of Alcala de Henares, 
 in Castile, being at present in Algiers, ransomed and about 
 to depart in freedom, declares that, being on his way to Spain, 
 he desires, — and it is to him of importance, — to make an 
 information with witnesses, concerning not only his life and 
 conduct in captivity, but also other things touching himself in 
 person, in order that it may be presented, if necessary, before 
 His Jilajesty's Council, and enquired into for his interest. 
 And because there is no Christian person in this Algiers who 
 has jurisdiction between the Christians, and your Reverence 
 being in this Algiers as a redeemer of captives, the repre- 
 sentative at once of his Majesty as of his Holiness the 
 Supreme Pontiff, whose delegates the Redemptorist brethren 
 are, therefore, in order to give force and authority to the said 
 information, he prays your Reverence to be good enough to 
 assume this office and jurisdiction, and hear the evidence in 
 this case. 
 
 Father Juan Gil having acceded to this request, an inquiry
 
 Appendix. 261 
 
 is held, and certain formal interrogatories, in all twenty-five, 
 are put to a number of witnesses, Christian captives in Algiers, 
 or those who have been lately redeemed, referring to the con- 
 duct of Miguel de Cervantes during his captivity, especially 
 in regard to his various attempts to free himself and other 
 prisoners. The evidence of the principal witnesses, stripped 
 of legal phrases and formal repetitions, is as follows : — 
 
 Alonso Aragones, native of Cordova, replies in detail to 
 each of the inquiries, and affirms especially that he knew 
 Cervantes for about four years; that the frigate which was 
 to make the attempt at a rescue in 1577 came twice to Algiers, 
 failing on the second voyage ; that he knew one called El 
 Dorador (The Gilder), on whose information Cervantes was 
 seized, and had known him when he was a Mahomedan (that 
 is, before he made pretence of turning Christian again) ; that 
 the Dey Hassan, enraged at Cervantes for his project, ordered 
 him to be put among his own Christian slaves, and to receive 
 2,000 blows with a stick, though, through the intercession of 
 some who went bail for him, they were not inflicted. He 
 knew the renegade Giron also, and of his converse with Cer- 
 vantes \ and of the purchase of the vessel by the money 
 advanced by Onofre Exarque, which was done under Cer- 
 vantes' direction, who managed everything, and went about 
 and planned as the author of all. This witness was one of 
 those whom Cervantes invited to escape in the second vessel, 
 and testified how the plan miscarried through the treachery 
 of Blanco de Paz, who gave information of it to the Viceroy, 
 getting for his reward an esciido of gold and a jar of butter, 
 averring that when the decree went out against any one 
 concealing Cervantes, they all supposed that when the Viceroy 
 laid hands on him he would not escape with his life, or, at 
 least, not without the loss of his ears or nose, so cruel was 
 the temper of the Viceroy, and so great the eclat the affair 
 made throughout Barbary; that Cervantes, of his own free 
 will, delivered himself up, the Viceroy rejoicing much to get 
 him into his power, that he might be able to crush the Valen- 
 cian merchants who had been participators in the attempted 
 escape ; but that the said Miguel de Cervantes, heeding neither
 
 ?62 Don Quixote. 
 
 the cruel threats nor the promises with which he was assailed 
 would blame no one, guiding the affair to so happy an issue, 
 and answering the Viceroy's questions so dexterously, that the 
 said Viceroy was confounded and remained content, without 
 being able to confirm the truth of what he had already learnt 
 through Blanco de Paz ; and throughout this affair the said 
 ^liguel de Cervantes showed very great spirit and discretion, 
 taking the business on himself alone and on four other gentle- 
 men who were already at liberty. And this witness vouches that 
 if the said Miguel de Cervantes had told what he knew, many 
 gentlemen who were concerned in the affair, regarded by their 
 patrons and masters as poor people, would have been dis- 
 covered and come into the hands of Hassan Pasha, by whom 
 they would not have been released but for hea\7 ransoms, 
 and, moreover, the said merchants would have been deprived 
 of their goods and made slaves. And this witness knew, 
 moreover, that Miguel de Cervantes was imprisoned in the 
 Moor's gaol five months, loaded with chains and condemned 
 to much hardship, and thence was placed in a galley, with 
 double fetters and shackles. And he avers to have seen 
 Cervantes, in all the time of his captivity, mix and converse 
 very familiarly with the highest of the Christians, ecclesiastics, 
 religious persons, men of education, gentlemen, and his 
 Majesty's captains, conducting himself decorously, respectably, 
 and cheerfully; and the witness is aware that Miguel de 
 Cervantes has been on friendly and intimate terms with the 
 Redemptorists, having frequent converse with them and dining 
 at their tables. 
 
 Diego Castellano, a captive ensign, native of Toledo, testi- 
 fied that he had known Cervantes since 1570; was also one of 
 the slaves invited to escape in the vessel of the renegade 
 Giron. He confirmed what the previous witness has said 
 about Cervantes' behaviour when the attempt miscarried; 
 how he went before the Dey of his own accord, and, in spite 
 of all threats, would accuse no one but himself ; how that he 
 was saved from punishment by the intercession of a Spanish 
 renegade named Maltrapillo, who was a great favourite with 
 the Dey. He affirmed that with the little Cervantes pes-
 
 Appendix. 263 
 
 sessed, he would relieve poor Christians, helping them to 
 perform their daily tasks and to live their lives, 
 
 Rodrigo de Chaves, native of Badajoz, himself just ran- 
 somed, deposed that he had known Cervantes for three years ; 
 and was able to answer as the other witnesses had answered 
 to the interrogatories. 
 
 Bernardo de Vega, inhabitant of Cadiz, said that he had 
 known Cervantes since he had been made captive. They 
 were both under one master, who was wont to treat Cervantes 
 with great severity, loading him with double chains and making 
 his hfe miserable, all with a view of getting a large ransom for 
 him, he being supposed to be a person of consideration. The 
 witness, after speaking of the affair of the attempted escape 
 (in 1577) as a topic of conversation among the principal 
 people of Algiers, averred that Cervantes was a man very 
 discreet, and of habits and tastes so good that all rejoiced to 
 deal and to converse with him, adding that, though his society 
 was sought by the leading captives, soldiers, and priests, he 
 was amiable, and courteous, and free with all the world. 
 
 Juan de Valcazar, native of Malaga, had known Cervantes 
 for six years ; had been taken captive with him in the Sol, and 
 had been his mate in Deli Mami's house; could not testify as to 
 the matters of the escapes, having been then with his master 
 at Tetuan ; but affirmed that Don Juan of Austria, the Duke 
 of Sesa, and the other powerful captains, held Cervantes in 
 great esteem as a good soldier; spoke of the persons con- 
 cerned in the attempted flight to Oran ; testified to the worthy 
 and Christian conduct of Cervantes in relieving the poor cap- 
 tives and keeping up their spirits, comforting them in their 
 affliction, and keeping them steadfast in their faith. 
 
 Domingo Lopino, a captain, native of Sardinia, confirmed the 
 testimony of the previous witnesses as to the conduct of Cer- 
 vantes on the two occasions when his schemes of escape by sea 
 were frustrated, bearing witness to the good character and repu- 
 tation in which Cervantes was held in Algiers, especially after 
 his generous action in exculpating his companions and taking 
 the whole blame of the project of escape upon himself ;_ for 
 which action he (the witness) and they all coveted his society
 
 264 Don Quixote. 
 
 and friendship, and envied his virtue and faithfulness. Fur- 
 thermore, this witness confirmed all that had been said of the 
 treacherous and hostile behaviour of Blanco de Paz, who had 
 come to him and offered him gifts and promises of protection, 
 visiting himself daily in the gaol, in which he was confined 
 in chains, to try to make him testify against Cervantes. 
 
 Fernando de Vega, native of Toledo, had known Cervantes 
 for two years, and confirmed the good report which had been 
 given of him during this time. 
 
 Cristobal de Villalon, native of Valbuena, had known Cer- 
 vantes since 1576, and had been concerned in the attempts at 
 escape. Cervantes himself had said to him, when the attempts 
 failed, to have no fear, for he would save them all and take 
 all the blame upon himself. 
 
 Don Diego de Benavides, native of Baeza, had only been 
 two months in Algiers, having arrived from Constantinople to 
 be ransomed ; and could not speak of his personal knowledge 
 of the facts, but had enquired of the other Christians, what 
 gentlemen there were in Algiers, persons of quality, with whom 
 he could have communion, and ihey had replied to him that 
 there was one in especial, very accomplished, noble, and vir- 
 tuous, who was of a good disposition, and friendly with other 
 gentlemen ; and this was said of Miguel de Cen-antes. There- 
 fore this witness sought him out, and, when he found him, the 
 said Cervantes, in very kindly terms, offered him a lodging, 
 linen, and such money as he had, and took him along with him 
 to where they at present messed together, and occupied one 
 chamber, treating him so kindly that this witness found in him 
 a father and mother, — a thing new in the world, — and they 
 were waiting for an opportunity to return together to Spain. 
 
 The Ensign Luis de Pedrosa, native of Osuna, had been two 
 years a captive in Algiers, during which time he had known 
 Cervantes : confirmed all that the previous witnesses had said, 
 part of which was within his own knowledge, and part notorious 
 in the city; spoke of Cervantes as the grandson of Juan de 
 Cervantes, late corregidor of Osuna through the nomination 
 of the Conde de Urena, father of the then Duke of Osuna, 
 who had been greatly esteemed in that city as a noble and
 
 Appendix. 265 
 
 honourable gentleman. This the witness knew because his 
 own father (de Pedrosa) had been a great friend of the corre- 
 gidor's. He testified that Cervantes had consulted him in 
 the business of the projected escapes by sea; that, when the 
 second attempt miscarried, Cervantes sent word privately to 
 this witness bidding him and the rest be of no fear, for he was 
 able to get them all off, telling them to cast the blame upon him ; 
 that, when Cervantes had eluded the fierce Viceroy's wrath so 
 cleverly, he won great fame, praise, and honour, and showed 
 himself worthy of the highest reward ; that, although there were 
 other no less worthy gentlemen there, Cervantes took the lead 
 of them all in doing good to the captives and in honourable 
 actions, for he had a special grace in everything he did, and 
 was so clever and clear-sighted that none came near him. In 
 regard to the business of Blanco de Paz and the information 
 laid by that person before the King, this witness averred that 
 it was because Cervantes was the leader and actor in every- 
 thing that Blanco de Paz was jealous of him, though all they 
 of good quality and worth in the city complained of Blanco de 
 Paz. 
 
 Brother Feliciano Enriquez, native of Yepes, a Carmelite 
 friar, had known Cervantes during the whole time of his cap- 
 tivity ; had been concerned in the projects of escape ; had 
 been for some time unfriendly to Cervantes through having 
 heard ugly reports of him from a person, but, finding them 
 afterwards to be all calumnies, had become a great friend of 
 his, as were all the rest of the captives, who envied his gentle- 
 manly. Christian, honest, and virtuous conduct {su hidalgo 
 proceder, Cristiano y honesio y virtuoso). 
 
 At the end of these formal depositions is appended, at the 
 request, as it is said, of Cervantes, the personal testimony of 
 Father Juan Gil himself, of the Order of the Most Holy 
 Trinity, and official Redeemer of captives for Castile at 
 Algiers. Father Gil begins by declaring that he knows all the 
 witnesses who have given evidence in this case, and certifies 
 to their being persons of honour and veracity, whose evidence 
 is nothing but the truth in all they have said and sworn. He 
 certifies, moreover, for the information of the King's Council, 
 VOL. T. 2 M .
 
 266 Don Quixote. 
 
 to whom these depositions are to be sent, that as written by 
 the regular notary of the Christians at Algiers they are to be 
 taken as faithful and authentic transcripts of the evidence. 
 Lastly, in his own person Father Gil testifies that during the 
 six months he has been at Algiers, on his mission of redemp- 
 tion, he has dealt, conversed, and communed with Miguel de 
 Cervantes closely and familiarly, and that he knows him for a 
 very honourable man, who has served his Majesty many years ; 
 and that especially in this captivity he has performed work 
 which deserves that he should receive much favour from his 
 Majesty, as appears from the testimony of all the witnesses at 
 this inquiry, who are men of credit and repute among all, or 
 otherwise they would not be admitted to his communion and 
 intimacy. 
 
 As a postscript to this document is a still more elaborate 
 and detailed certificate by Dr. Antonio de Sosa, who, not 
 being able to give his evidence in person because of the close 
 and rigorous confinement in which, as a slave, he is kept by 
 his master, sends his written answers to all the interrogatories. 
 Dr. Antonio de Sosa, who seems to have been a person of 
 superior learning and capacity among the captives, affirms that, 
 for the three years and eight months of his captivity in Algiers, 
 he knew, and had frequent and famiUar converse with, Miguel 
 de Cervantes. The said Cervantes, he declares, often com- 
 plained to him that his master would insist upon his being a 
 Spanish gentleman of very high quality, and therefore treated him 
 with especial rigour, loading him with chains and putting him to 
 extraordinary hardships, in order to force him to ransom himself. 
 As to the business of the first attempt at escape in 1577, and 
 the hiding of the captives in the cave, Dr. Sosa declares that he 
 was informed of every stage of it, up to the time of Cervantes 
 himself taking refuge there, — exposing himself to the manifest 
 peril of a very cruel death, such as the Turks are wont to in- 
 flict on those who engage in such enterprises. As to Blanco 
 de Paz, Dr. Sosa testifies that it was he who, out of malice and 
 envy of Cervantes, gave such information to the Dey as spoilt 
 the second scheme of escape ; for which the said Blanco de 
 Paz was held in great odium and abhorrence by the other
 
 Appendix. 267 
 
 Christians, who, but for Dr. Sosa's interference, would have 
 beaten him for his wicked deeds, even though he v.^as a priest. 
 As to the questions about Cervantes' general behaviour during 
 his captivity, Dr. Sosa vouches that during the period of his 
 knowledge of him he had not seen or noted any evil or scan- 
 dalous thing in him, nor would he have held familiar com- 
 mune had he known him for otherwise than as an honour- 
 able and good Christian. Returning to Blanco de Paz, Dr. 
 Sosa declares that though the said Blanco de Paz claimed 
 authority and credit in Algiers as a commissary of the Holy 
 Office, he was never able to produce his powers, though taking 
 informations and administering oaths in that character, to the 
 scandal of the Holy Ofiice ; whose name he used against his 
 enemies, and especially against Miguel de Cervantes. 
 
 (These documents, signed by Father Juan Gil, of which the 
 originals were discovered by Cean Bermudez in 1808, still 
 exist in the archives of Simancas. These are among the most 
 important of the materials on which the biographer of Cer- 
 vantes has to rely for the history of his captivity in Algiers ; 
 nor is it possible to have clearer or stronger testimony. 
 Cervantes' purpose in insisting upon this formal and elaborate 
 inquiry is obvious enough. He considered himself to be still 
 in the public service. He had to account for the years of his 
 captivity. His enemy, Blanco de Paz, for reasons not very 
 clear, had sent to the Government a false and scandalous 
 report of Cervantes' conduct in Algiers. It was necessary 
 that the charges therein made, which seem from the obscure 
 hints we get of them to be chiefly directed at Cervantes' reli- 
 gious opinions and practice, should be rebutted ; nor was there 
 any way of meeting them fairly and openly in Cervantes' 
 interest, for the credit of his family who had received some 
 favours in the matter of his ransom, and for his prospects of 
 advancement in the King's service, except by such a formal 
 process as that which was instituted before Father Juan Gil.)
 
 268 Don Quixote. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 A COMPLETE Bibliography of Don Quixote, including 
 all the books necessary to a DoJi Quixote library, 
 most of which I have had the opportunity ot consulting 
 directly in the process of this work, would be an epitome 
 of Spanish literature. A mere catalogue of all the editions 
 of Do7i Quixote, with the translations, would occupy more 
 space than I can spare. Nor would such a catalogue serve 
 any object but that of curiosity. The greater number of the 
 Spanish editions, of which the list is yearly increasing, are 
 worthless, even to the book-collector, and worse than useless 
 to the student of Cervantes. To enumerate and describe all 
 the translations in all the fifteen languages into which Don 
 Quixote, according to the latest computation, has been ren- 
 dered, is a task which might appal a Mezzofanti. I have the 
 less hesitation in declining to give a complete list of all the 
 editions of Don Quixote, seeing that to no human being could 
 it afford either pleasure or profit, while the attempt to supply 
 it would seriously burden this undertaking and throw my 
 scheme of publication out of balance. 
 
 In this Bibliography what I have sought to do is to quote 
 every edition of Doji Quixote in Spanish, or in any other lan- 
 guage, which is necessary to the history or the study of Cervantes' 
 masterpiece, rejecting such as are merely curious.
 
 Appendix. 269 
 
 Sect. I. — Don Quixote in the Original. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Compuesto 
 por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra^&^c. 1605. Madrid: 
 Juan de la Cuesta. 
 
 This is the first edition of Don Quixote, a quarto of 664 
 pages, of which 632 form the text. The hcence (Privilegio) 
 is dated the 26th of September, 1604; and the "Tasa" 
 (valuation for tax) December 20th, 1604. On the title-page, 
 after the imprint, are the words Vendese en casa de Francisco 
 de Robles, librero del Rey, miestro Senor — " Sold at the house 
 of Francisco de Robles, bookseller to our Lord the King." 
 In the centre of the title is a device of the printer, Juan de la 
 Cuesta, a hand holding a hawk, unhooded, and a lion couchant, 
 with the legend Post tenebras lux. This motto, common to 
 all Cuesta's books, and, in fact, often used by other printers of 
 the age, refers, of course, to the invention of the art of printing, 
 — without any special reference, as in these days has been 
 rashly assumed, to Cervantes and his design in Don Quixote. 
 This first edition, now one of the rarest of books, is fairly well 
 printed, with ornamental capitals and a few other typographical 
 embellishments ; but it swarms with blunders of the press, 
 having apparently never been revised by the author. A copy 
 was sold last year at Baron Seilliere's sale for ^113. A 
 fac-simile of this and of the first edition of the Second Part, 
 reproduced by photo-typography, was brought out at Barcelona 
 in 1872, under the auspices of Colonel Don Francisco Lopez 
 Fabra ; with a supplementary volume containing 1633 notes 
 by Don Eugenio Hartzenbusch. These, for the most part, are 
 arbitrary emendations and corrections of the author, which had 
 been adopted by Hartzenbusch in the text of his two editions 
 of Argamasilla, — to be spoken of hereafter.
 
 2/0 Don Quixote. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Do7i Qta'xoie, &-r. Em Lishoa. Im- 
 fresso com Usetica do Satito Officio tor Jorge Rodriguez. 
 1605. 
 
 This, as Salva clearly demonstrates, must be the second 
 edition printed of Don Quixote, for it contains, what no other 
 of the early editions does, the passage in C. xxvi. about Don 
 Quixote's rosary (see note in loco), exactly as in Cuesta's first 
 edition. It is a quarto of 462 pages, printed in double columns. 
 The a})probation is dated February 26, 1605, a little more than 
 two months later than that which is affixed to Cuesta's first 
 edition. It is even rarer than any of the Madrid editions. 
 Portugal, at this date, 1605, was under the Spanish crown. 
 
 There was a second edition printed at Lisbon, in 1605, by 
 Pedro Crasbeeck; an octavo of 916 pages; equally rare with 
 the first, and equally without authority from, or profit to, the 
 author. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, &~'C. Con Privilegio de 
 Cast ilia, Aragon, y Portugal. Madrid: Juan de la 
 Cucsta. 1605. 
 
 This, the second of the two only genuine editions, printed 
 in 1605 by Juan de la Cuesta, and sold by Francisco Robles, 
 though in form, size, the character of the print, and the number 
 of pages, precisely similar to his first, contains some curious 
 and important variations. By Navarrete and by Ticknor it 
 was taken to be the first of the two Cuesta editions ; but that 
 this could not be is clearly demonstrated by Salva. In the 
 first place, the privilege carrying the author's rights, or such as 
 in that day could be enforced, includes Aragon and Portugal, 
 as well as Castile. It is evident, therefore, that Robles, having 
 reason to complain of the breach of his copyright through the 
 printing of surreptitious editions in Aragon and Portugal, was 
 induced to issue a second impression {obrada) with the addi- 
 tional words on the title-page which we have quoted. Another 
 proof that this was the second edition is afforded by the alte- 
 rations made in C. xxvi., where Don Quixote makes his
 
 Appendix. 271 
 
 rosary, not of his shirt-tails, but of oak-galls — a change, doubt- 
 less, made by the author at the instance of the censorship. 
 In other respects this second edition is even more carelessly 
 printed than the first, having apparently been hurried through 
 the press. A curious misprint appears in the very title-page, 
 where the book is said to be dedicated to the Duque de Bejar, 
 " Conde de Barcelona " instead of " Benalcazar," — the Count- 
 ship of Barcelona having been one of the minor titles of the 
 Crown since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, ^c. Impnso con licencia 
 en casa de Pedro Patricio Mey. 1605. 
 
 This is a small octavo of sixteen preliminary leaves and 768 
 pages, better printed than any of the preceding. The text fol- 
 lows that of Cuesta's second edition. From the words 'v\ the 
 title-page we may presume that Pedro Patricio Mey was an 
 honest man, as well as a good printer, and bought his privilege 
 of reprinting Do7i Quixote from the owner of the copyright. 
 
 There was, as Salva and Gayangos maintain, a second edi- 
 tion, or impression, made at Valencia in 1605 — closely resem- 
 bling the other in appearance, but with a few different 
 readings. 
 
 These may be reckoned the six existing editions of 1605 — 
 of which he who possesses one may be reckoned supremely 
 happy among Quixote, and Quixotic, collectors. I have spoken 
 elsewhere of other supposed editions of 1605, which, however, 
 as they are now non-existent, need not occupy a place in this 
 Bibliography. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, ^fc. En Brusselas, pot 
 Roger Velpius. 1607. 
 
 This, the Brussels edition, the first printed out of Spain 
 (Brussels was still under the Spanish dominion), though not 
 pretending to a licence and clearly a piratical enterprise, pos- 
 sesses some distinctive features which make it valuable in a 
 Quixote collection. In the first place, it is well printed, as
 
 2/2 Don Quixote. 
 
 were all the books of Roger Velpius, in a smaller form than 
 any which had yet appeared. The text has been revised by 
 some intelligent reader, who (of course, without authority) 
 made some corrections, a few of which were afterwards adopted 
 by the Spanish Academy. There is a brave attempt to reduce 
 to order the passages about the stealing of Sancho's ass ; but 
 other blunders quite as bad are retained. The book is, perhaps, 
 quite as rare as any of the genuine first editions. I possess a 
 copy, the gift of my late friend, Mr. J. Y. Gibson. 
 
 El Ingcnioso Hidalgo Don Quixote^ &=€. Madrid: Juan de la 
 Cuesfa. 1608. 
 
 This, the true second edition, made under the eyes of the 
 author, and containing many alterations and corrections, has 
 served as the basis of all the editions of the Spanish Academy, 
 and must be regarded as the most valuable which the true 
 bibliographer (distinguished from the book-fancier) can pos- 
 sess. Mr. John Ormby, it is true, adopting the heresy of 
 Hartzenbusch, contends that "no particular sanctity" attaches 
 to the corrections here made ; " that it is plain that he (Cer- 
 vantes) was not even aware of any such corrections having 
 been made," and that " they must stand or fall on their own 
 merits like those of any other printer." By any other printer ! 
 — But this is to beg the whole question. The printer of the 
 edition of 1608 was Cervantes' authorised printer of the editions 
 of 1605. Is it credible that without the authority of the 
 author, — that author being, in 1608, resident in Madrid, as 
 he was not in 1605, — Juan de la Cuesta would venture to 
 correct the text in a material passage as the text is here 
 corrected, putting in a long speech by Sancho (the lamen- 
 tation over Dapple, which critics have admired as one of the 
 most admirable and characteristic pieces of invention in the 
 book), and, in two or three places, supplying omissions and 
 amending blunders in the text ? Surely, as I have contended 
 elsewhere, the very fact that some corrections were made, 
 and not all that might have been made, is in itself a proof 
 that no one but Cervantes could have been the corrector.
 
 Appendix. 273 
 
 If it had been the printer who corrected, and was able to 
 invent so capital a scene as that of Sancho bewailing the loss 
 of his ass, why did he not correct more and correct com- 
 pletely ? And where does it appear that Cervantes was " not 
 even aware of the corrections ? " That he was aware of some 
 corrections is clear from the words put into Sancho's mouth 
 in C. iv. of the Second Part, where, talking of this very 
 incident, he says : — " I set up a lamentation which, if the 
 author of our history has not put in, you may reckon that 
 he has not put in a good thing." Is it possible to believe 
 that Cervantes would so speak of a passage not written by 
 himself, but composed and inserted by the printer without 
 authority? And how can it be said that he was not even 
 aware of the corrections, — this passage of Sancho's lamenta- 
 tion being one of them? The question, however, seems to 
 be settled, for English translators and English readers at 
 least, by the authority of the Spanish Academy, which has 
 based its fourth and last edition of 1819 upon Cuesta's edition 
 of 1608. Let the judicious Cervantophile, therefore, never 
 cease to strive to obtain, as the nucleus of his Don Quixote 
 library, the edition of 1608, which in the book market is 
 almost as rare as any of the first editions. 
 
 There was an edition of the First Part published at Milan 
 (then under Spanish rule) in 1610, and a second edition at 
 Brussels, by Roger Velpius, in 161 1, — neither of any critical 
 value. These are all the editions of the First Part, published 
 in Cervantes' lifetime, now extant, though there is reason to 
 believe that there was an edition of Barcelona (to which Cer- 
 vantes seems to allude in C. iii. Part II.), and probably of 
 Zaragoza, Pamplona, and Antwerp, within the first decade 
 of the Seventeenth century, all of which have disappeared. 
 
 The Second Part. 
 
 Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la 
 Mancha, &'c. Madrid : Juan de la Cuesta. 16 15. 
 
 This is the first edition of Cervantes' Second Part, in quarto, 
 of 584 pages, very similar in form and execution to Cuesta's 
 VOL. I. 2 N
 
 274 1)0N Quixote. 
 
 First Part, with the same device and legend on the title-page. 
 There is a long and interesting "approbation," written by 
 Marquez Torres, the Secretary to the Archbishop of Toledo 
 (Cervantes' patron), dated February 27th, 1615. The " pri- 
 vilegio" is dated March 30th, and the dedication to the Conde 
 de Lemos October 31st. The book is even rarer than any of 
 the early editions of the First Part, nor is it more carefully 
 printed. It is to be remarked that Don Quixote is styled in the 
 title-page not El Ingenioso Hidalgo, but El Ingenioso Caballero, 
 — a change which Clemencin attributes to carelessness, but 
 which is more likely due to design. At the opening of the 
 Second Part of the story, Don Quixote is a fully-dubbed 
 Knight {armado caballero), and not merely a hidalgo. 
 
 Only one other edition of the Second Part is known to have 
 been published in Cervantes' lifetime, namely, that of Brussels, 
 in 161 6, by Huberto Antonio, in which the approbation of 
 Marquez Torres is omitted. 
 
 In this place we have to notice the spurious Second Part, 
 published under the name of Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, 
 in 1 6 14, after Cervantes had given public notice of the ap- 
 proaching completion of his own Second Part ; the full title 
 of this false Quixote, the character and mystery of which we 
 have fully investigated in C. ix. of the Life of Cervantes, is 
 Segiuido Toino del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, dr^c. It 
 is dedicated to the "Alcalde, Regidores, and hidalgos of the 
 noble city of Argamasilla, happy country of the gentleman 
 knight {hidalgo caballero) Don Quixote of La Mancha." It 
 was published at Tarragona, in a quarto of 572 pages, without 
 approbation, tasa, or licence, under a feigned name. The 
 book is now very scarce. It was reprinted in 1732, and again 
 in 1805, with omissions of some of the xaler chapters. It 
 was deemed worthy of being put into a French dress by 
 M. Le Sage, and afterwards by M. Germond de Lavigne (in 
 English by Stevens), and had better be forgotten for a vile, 
 malignant, and indecent libel, without grace or worth of any 
 kind.
 
 Appendix. 275 
 
 The Complete Don Quixote. 
 
 El Ingentoso Hidalgo Don Quixote, ^^c. {Ambas Paries.) A 
 Costa de Juan Simon. Barcelona, 16 17. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 This, according to Salva, is the first complete edition of the 
 two parts of Don Quixote, published the year after the author's 
 death. The two parts, however, are not printed uniformly, 
 nor by the same printers, and it is doubtful whether they were 
 intended to be issued together. 
 
 Primera y Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo, 6^f. 
 Madrid: Francisco Martinez. 2 vols. 4to. 1637. 
 
 This, according to Navarrete, is the first complete edition. 
 It is poorly printed, like all the rest of this century, on vile 
 paper, with the dedications and prefatory verses omitted. 
 There were three or four editions, mostly based on the above, 
 in the years following, equally bad and now equally rare. 
 
 Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Do7i Quixote, o^c. En 
 Bruselas, por Juan de Monma7'te. 1662. 2 vols. 8 vo. 
 
 An edition distinguished as being the first in which Cer- 
 vantes' title was wantonly and foolishly altered into Vida y 
 Hechos del Itrgejiioso, &-r. — an innovation adopted by all the 
 subsequent editions, until the Academy's first edition of 1780. 
 This edition has the further distinction of being the first 
 which was " embellished " with plates. These embellishments, 
 which herald the long line of vile attempts to make Dofi 
 Quixote a picture-book, are remarkable, even among the Don 
 Quixote illustrations, for their ugliness and ludicrous inap- 
 propriateness to the text. 
 
 There were several other editions with plates, sometimes 
 styled "muydonosas y apropriadas a la materia," pubhshed 
 in the Netherlands and in Spain, equally worthless for anything 
 else than as testifying to the continued popularity of the 
 book throughout the Seventeenth century. In the edition of 
 Madrid, 1674, by Andres Garcia de la Iglesia, it is said in the
 
 276 Don Quixote. 
 
 dedication that " the works of Cervantes were current amidst 
 the general applause through all the world," and that in Spain 
 the editions were repeated almost every year. 
 
 Vida y JFIecJws del Bigenioso, &^c. Londres, 1701. 2 vols. 4to. 
 with plates. 
 
 This edition, mentioned by Navarrete on the faith of the 
 "Index of Faulder," should be the first ever printed in England. 
 I cannot learn anything about it, however, from any other 
 authority, and am inclined to disbelieve in its existence. We 
 may pass over all the other many succeeding editions to 
 come to — 
 
 Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso, c^c. Londres : J. and R. Tonson. 
 4 vols, large 4to. 1738, with copperplates designed by 
 Vanderbusch and engraved by Vertue and Vandergucht. 
 
 This edition is remarkable as being the first in which due 
 honour was paid to Cervantes in the treating of his immortal 
 work as a classic, and not a mere book of drolleries. Its 
 origin is told by Mayans y Siscar (the editor), in his Prologue 
 to the Pastor de Filida, Valencia, 1792. Queen Caroline, 
 wife of George II., being of a romantic turn and fond of 
 reading books of imagination, formed a collection of these, 
 which she called The Library of the Sage Merlm. Talking of 
 her design one day to Lord Carteret (the well known Minister), 
 an admirer of Spanish literature, he told her that one book 
 was lacking, " the most agreeable and witty ever written in 
 the world," of which there was no edition worthy of a place 
 in her collection. He undertook, therefore, to have Don 
 Quixote published at his expense, in a style worthy of the 
 author. He carried out his promise by bringing out this 
 magnificent edition, printed by Tonson, with all the luxury of 
 his well-known press, and edited by Don Gregorio Mayans y 
 Siscar, a learned gentleman of Valencia, who was assisted by 
 Pedro de Pineda, a teacher of Spanish, and apparently by 
 other scholars. The editor wrote for it the Life of Cervantes, 
 — a biography necessarily very imperfect, — seeing that many
 
 Appendix. 277 
 
 essential documents were then undiscovered, yet the first in 
 which any attempt was made to elucidate the history of the 
 author. The text was also amended and corrected in many 
 places, — the original verses restored, and many of the ex- 
 crescences which had grown round the book in its passage 
 through the Spanish and Flemish presses, lopped off. The 
 copper-plates were done on a scale of great magnificence, so 
 far as the engraving was concerned, the engravers being Vertue 
 and Vandergucht. The artist, however, one Vanderbusch, by 
 no means corresponded in skill and in imagination to his 
 author,— his inventions being incredibly bald, vulgar, and gro- 
 tesque, without any spark of real humour, or sense of harmony 
 with the text. Finally, there was afifixed to the first volume 
 a portrait of Cervantes, which, without any description, was 
 lettered Retrato de Miguel de Cervantes por el Mis mo. (The 
 Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes by Himself.) This, as we 
 have pointed out elsewhere {Life of Cervantes., C. v.;, which 
 is the original of all the extant portraits purporting to be of 
 Cervantes, was made up by the artist, William Kent, out of 
 the verbal description given by Cervantes of himself in the 
 prologue to his Novelas. With all its defects, the edition 
 which I have cited always as Lord Carteret's, is a noble book, 
 worthy of the author and of England, and deserving of a place 
 in the library of every lover of Cervantes. 
 
 Stimulated by the production of Lord Carteret's edition of 
 the Spanish masterpiece in a foreign country, the Spanish 
 Royal Academy was put on its mettle, and after many years' 
 labour, — its pace being quickened at last by the announce- 
 ment of still another critical edition to appear in London, — 
 was delivered of its first great work, to which the original title 
 was restored of — 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, &>€. Madi-id: 4 vols, 
 imp. 4to. 1780. 
 
 In this edition the Academy corrected many of the blunders 
 and misprints which had crept into the text, while it adopted 
 several of Mayans' suggestions and emendations. The print
 
 ■2^S Don Quixote. 
 
 and paper are of superb quality, and the presswork under the 
 famous Ibarra, prince of Spanish printers, very excellent, 
 though not better than Tonson's. The plates were designed 
 by the most famous Spanish artists of the day. They are a 
 little less grotesque, because more Spanish, than in previous 
 editions, and are fairly well engraved ; but still absurdly 
 false, affected, and inapi^ropriate, — the artists appearing not to 
 have given themselves the trouble of reading the book they 
 illustrated. The portrait (of which more is said in another 
 place), professing to be taken from an original picture in the 
 possession of the Conde del Aguila, is merely a reproduction 
 of Kent's imaginary picture of Cervantes, with a few details 
 and flourishes introduced. In this edition, which can hardly 
 be said to keep its value in the market except in the eyes of the 
 hunters after editions de luxe, the chief features are the Life 
 of Cervantes and Analysis of Don Quixote, by Don Vicente de 
 los Rios, an officer of Engineers. Don Vicente is a passionate 
 admirer of Cervantes, and is worthy of praise for some con- 
 tributions to our knowledge of the man and of his book, but 
 he is tedious and pedantic, and with his frequent parallels to 
 the Iliad and the Aincid not a little absurd. 
 
 The next step in the bibliography of Don Quixote was a 
 very notable one. It was the publication of — 
 
 La Hisioria del famcso cavallero Don Quixote, 6-r., con 
 a?inotadones, indices, y varias lecciones, por el Reverendo Don 
 Juan Bowie. 6 vols, in 3, roy. 4to. (The first volume 
 printed in London, and the rest at Salisbury.) 17 81. 
 
 Though he had no right to alter his author's own title, and 
 though he takes some unaccountable liberties with his book, 
 John Bowie is deserving of the eternal good- will of all Cer- 
 vantophiles as having been the first who, in any language or in 
 any country, devoted to the text of Don Quixote the patient 
 care, industry, and learning which up to that time had been 
 the perquisites of the ancient classics. Bowie, who was the 
 incumbent of Idmestone, a small Wiltshire village, spent four- 
 teen years of his life, as he tells Dr. Percy, in learning Spanish, 
 so that he might annotate Don Quixote. He succeeded so
 
 Appendix. 279 
 
 far as that he produced an edition which, however decried on 
 its first appearance and for a long time unsaleable, has now 
 attained its proper rank in literature. Bowie's knowledge of 
 the romances of chivalry and of the Italian romantic poetry 
 was most extensive, and he was the first who traced the nume- 
 rous references and parallels in Don Quixote to their originals. 
 Subsequent Spanish commentators and editors have borrowed 
 largely from the Wiltshire parson, while they have not been 
 always scrupulous in acknowledging their debts. Not the least 
 valuable feature of Bowie's edition is the series of indexes of 
 proper names and leading words, — of infinite use to every 
 student of Don Quixote, when once he has the key to Bowie's 
 somewhat eccentric way of denoting the places where the words 
 occur. 
 
 A second and a third edition of the Royal Academy fol- 
 lowed in 1783 and 1787, — of no other value than as testifying 
 to the constant demand for Don Quixote. The next impor- 
 tant critical edition was — 
 
 El Jngenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, 6^^. Nueva edicion, cor- 
 regida de nuevo, con nuevas itotas, con nuevas estampas, 
 con nueva analisis, y con la vida nuevamente comentada 
 por Don Juan Atitonio Pellicer. Madrid: Sancha. 
 1797-8. 5 vols. Svo. 
 
 There is not so much that is new in this edition as the 
 flowing promise of novelties in the title-page indicates. Pel- 
 licer took a great many of his notes, — almost all verifying the 
 passages in the romances referred to, — from Bowie, with insuf- 
 ficient acknowledgment. Pellicer's own notes are few, and his 
 criticisms of no great value, as when he remarks that ingenioso 
 was meant by the author to apply, not to his hero, but to his 
 book. The " nuevas estampas " promised are by Navarro, — of 
 a hideousness equal to any of the old. 
 
 There were several re-impressions of Pellicer's edition, one 
 in Paris, one in Bordeaux, one in Barcelona, and one in Leipzig 
 (1800), with Beneke's vocabulary of Quixote words (not with- 
 out value to the student). No other editions need occupy us 
 until we arrive at —
 
 28o Don Quixote. 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, d^c. Madrid. 1819. 
 4 vols. 8vo. 
 
 This is the fourth and, up to the present date, the last 
 edition of the Academy, in which several corrections are made, 
 — the First Part being more directly based upon Cervantes' 
 own edition of 1608 than before, — for the reason given that 
 this edition was " the latest choice of the author," and therefore 
 preferable to the first (of 1605), "which was neither made 
 under his eyes nor received the last touches of his hand." 
 There are some new plates from designs by Rivelles, which 
 are not quite so bad as those in preceding editions, though 
 still bad enough. Some years ago it was reported that the 
 Academy was about to bring out another edition of Don 
 Quixote ; but apparently it has been content to delegate that 
 duty to Seilor Hartzenbusch, one of its members. For the 
 present this Academy's edition of 18 19 is indispensable to 
 the Don Quixote library, as containing the purest and best 
 text on what we must take to be the highest authority. 
 
 The next in order, passing over a great number of editions, 
 mostly reprints of the Academy's editions of 181 9, was — 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote, ^'C. Co?nentado por Don 
 Diego Clemencin. Madrid : 1833-9. ^ '^o\i,. 4to. 
 
 This is the famous edition of Clemencin, with a commen- 
 tary more full, minute, and elaborate than any of which Don 
 Quixote has ever been the object. Perhaps no book, ancient 
 or modern, has been dissected, analysed, criticised, and illus- 
 trated with so free a hand, and, on the whole, with so much 
 industry, patience, and learning as Don Quixote has been by 
 Seiior Clemencin. I have had frequent occasion to comment 
 upon the commentator, to differ with him, and to protest 
 against his treatment of a book which, with all his zeal on the 
 author's behalf, he seems to have been constitutionally incapable 
 of understanding. Nevertheless, it would be ungrateful of me 
 not to acknowledge my indebtedness to Clemencin for a very 
 large portion of the knowledge I possess of Don Quixote
 
 Appendix. 281 
 
 This edition was to have been supplemented, according to the 
 editor's original design, by an extra volume of notices of the 
 Spanish romances of chivalry ; but Don Diego Clemencin 
 died before his work was completed, — the concluding volume 
 being edited by his sons. Possibly this may account for some 
 of the imperfections and redundancies in these six volumes. 
 An index to Clemencin's notes, by Mr. Charles F. Bradford, 
 of Boston, was published at Madrid in 1885, and forms an 
 indispensable addition to these six volumes, with which it is a 
 pity it was not printed uniformly. 
 
 The next critical edition, — passing over reprints and editions 
 de luxe, — one of the most sumptuous of the latter being 
 Moran's magnificent Don Quixote in two volumes folio, printed 
 at Barcelona in 1862, with woodcuts of scenes and places 
 more appropriate than most illustrations to the book, is — 
 
 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Do7i Quixote^ &>€. Edicion corregida 
 con especial studio de la pritriera, por Don Juan Ejigenio 
 Hartzenbusch. Argamasilla de Alba: Rivadeneyra. 
 4 vols. 1 2 mo. 1863. 
 
 This is the first of the two editions put forth by Hartzen- 
 busch, in a beautiful form, with every grace of type, paper, 
 and printing. Unhappily, Hartzenbusch, — the son of a 
 German carpenter who was naturalised in Spain, — though him- 
 self a man of letters more eminent than any of those who 
 edited Don Quixote, and professing a profound regard for 
 Cervantes and admiration for his work, was unable to keep 
 his hands from ddacing the text, through a sheer itch for 
 emendation. Not content with pointing out in his notes how 
 the passage might have been better turned or rendered clearer, 
 Hartzenbusch boldly alters the text to suit his theories, — a 
 liberty unpardonable in any commentator, and all the more 
 inexcusable in Hartzenbusch ; who was a man of talent and 
 judgment, himself a poet and dramatist, who for many years 
 held a leading place in the literature of his adopted country. 
 Hartzenbusch was born in 1806, and filled the office for many 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 282 Don Quixote. 
 
 years, up to his death, of librarian of the National Library 
 at Madrid. He is best known as the author of Los Amantes 
 de Teruel, — a drama founded upon a famous episode of a 
 pair of lovers who died for love in 1217, the subject of many 
 earlier ballads and plays. Hartzenbusch died at a good old 
 age in 1S85. 
 
 To the beautiful facsimile reproduction of the first editions 
 of the two Parts, published under the auspices of Colonel 
 Lopez Fabra (referred to above), there was appended a supple- 
 mentary volume of 1,633 notes by Hartzenbusch, almost 
 entirely conjectures in emendation of the text. Some of 
 these are new, and in some places the notes of 1843 have 
 been omitted or corrected. There are very few of any real 
 value, the commentator being more intent upon displaying his 
 own ingenuity than in discovering the author's meaning. 
 
 There have been several editions of Z)o?i Quixote in Spain 
 in recent years, mostly distinguished by " illustrations." The 
 only professedly new edition is that of Ramon Leon Mainez, 
 in five volumes, published at Cadiz in 1877. It is of small 
 critical value, the editor's commentary being distinguished 
 rather for enthusiasm than for judgment. 
 
 There is an edition of Do7i Quixote published at Palencia in 
 1884, purporting to be based on an original manuscript sup- 
 posed to be of Cervantes. This I have not seen, but cannot 
 believe the pretension to be well founded. 
 
 TRANSLATIONS OF DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 The editions of Don Quixote in foreign languages are 
 infinite in number, and of every variety of merit. In this 
 place I am only able to speak of those which seem to me 
 to be of literary or bibliographical value. Beginning with 
 the English, as I have a right to do, seeing that the first 
 translation made of Don Quixote was an English one, there 
 is, first: —
 
 Appendix. 283 
 
 The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant Don 
 Quixote of the Mancha. Printed for Ed. Blount & 
 W. Barret, 2 vols, small 4to, 1612-20. 
 
 The translator's name, as appears from the dedication to 
 Lord Walden, is Thomas Shelton, — though who or what 
 Shelton was, has baffled all inquiries. In his dedication, 
 Shelton speaks of having translated, *' some five or six years 
 ago, the History of Don Quixote (meaning the First Part) out 
 of the Spanish tongue in the space of forty days," — which, if 
 true, would sufficiently account for the slovenly character of 
 his work. There is some mystery about this publication 
 which has never been cleared up, for all the discussion which 
 there has been on the subject. No one has ever seen a date 
 to the First Part ; nor is there any title-page of the First Part 
 in any copy I have examined. Usually, the engraved title- 
 page of the Second Part is prefixed to the First, with the 
 printed words The Second Parte amended in writing into The 
 First and The Second Parte. There are two pieces of evidence 
 proving the First Part to have been published in 161 2. The 
 first is an entry in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, 
 under the names of Edward Blounte and William Barrett, 
 January 19th, 161 1, of a book called The Delightful History 
 of the Witty Ktiight Don Quixote." The second is the book- 
 seller's dedication of Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the 
 Burning Pestle (the first of the since innumerable imitations 
 of Don Quixote), dated 1613, in which it is mentioned that 
 "Don Quixote was the elder above a year." This date (16 12) 
 scarcely agrees with the fact that Shelton's translation was 
 based on the Brussels edition of 1607, if we are to take 
 Shelton's assertion literally, that he was occupied five or six 
 years on his work. In regard to the date (1620) of the 
 Second Part, there is also some confusion. The dedication 
 is to the Duke of Buckingham, and it is signed, not by Shelton, 
 but by Blount; and the entry in the Stationers' Register is under 
 the name of Edward Blount, with the date December 5th, 16 15, 
 which was only a few months later than the date of the issue of 
 the original Second Part at Madrid. The Second Part is far
 
 284 ^o^ Quixote. 
 
 more loosely and hastily translated than the First, which has 
 given rise to the belief that it was not the work of Shelton 
 but of some other hand. There is even some reason to doubt 
 whether there was any Thomas Shelton other than Edward 
 Blount himself. However this may be, it is a book which, in 
 spite of its numerous and glaring faults, is worthy to be prized 
 for its language alone as a treasure of quaint, delightful, rough 
 English, in which the spirit of Cervantes survives better than 
 in any of the more modern versions. A second edition of 
 Shelton, corrected and revised, but little bettered, by Captain 
 Stevens,>'as pubhshed in 1652; and there were several editions 
 in the last century. 
 
 The History of the most renowned Don Quixote and Sancho 
 Panza, now made English according to the humour of 
 our modern language. Folio. London, 1687. 
 
 This was by John Phillips, Milton's nephew, — a poor, ribald 
 piece of work, without a spark of the original humour, now 
 deservedly forgotten. 
 
 77ie History of the renowned Don Quixote. Translated from 
 the original by several hands, and published by Peter 
 Motteux. 4 vols. i2mo. London, 1701. 
 
 This is Motteux's version, of which I have spoken fully 
 elsewhere. It has been rated far too high by Lockhart, who 
 brought out a new edition in 1822, with original notes (almost 
 wholly taken from Pellicer), and translations of the ballads. 
 It is to be noted that Motteux's work clearly shows marks of 
 the " several hands " employed, the language being by no 
 means uniform, with some chapters better than others. The 
 Second Part is generally closer to the text and more carefully 
 executed than the First, — which is not usual in the translations 
 of Don Quixote. There have been recent reprints of Motteux, 
 of which the only merits are the handsome type and paper. 
 The etchings in one of them by Los Rios are spirited and 
 Spanish, but not Quixotesque or faithful to the text.
 
 Appendix. 285 
 
 The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman^ Don Quixote 
 of La Afaticha. Translated by Charles Jarvis. 2 vols. 
 4to. London, 1742. 
 
 This was a posthumous work of the painter, Charles Jervas, 
 the friend of Pope, of which I have spoken fully elsewhere. 
 It is the translation best known in commerce, holding its 
 ground apparently to the present day, — I am puzzled to know 
 why, except that it is a commonplace and unhumorous produc- 
 tion, with the few naughty words in the text softened for polite 
 modern ears. There are numerous revised versions of Jarvis, in 
 which his style is still farther smoothened and conventionalised. 
 
 The History and Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated from 
 the Spanish by T. Smollett. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1755. 
 
 This was evidently an enterprise started by the booksellers 
 in opposition to Jarvis. Smollett knew nothing of Spanish, 
 and seems to have used a French original. It is very loose 
 and vulgar, and altogether worthless, save for some happy 
 turns of English. 
 
 T/ie History of Don Quixote. Illustrated with engravings 
 after R. Smirke, R.A. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1818. 
 
 A translation made by the artist's sister, who seems to have 
 had no more Spanish than her predecessors. The plates are 
 strikingly unlike anything in the text. 
 
 The Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha. A new 
 translation by A. J. Duffield. 3 vols. Svo. London, 1851. 
 
 — With all the poetry, as appears from a recent republication 
 of it, done by Mr. J. Y. Gibson. 
 
 The Ingenious Ge?ttleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. By 
 John Ormsby. 4 vols. Svo. London, 1885. 
 
 — Of which I may be excused from giving any opinion, other 
 than is contained in my references to some of Mr. Ormsby's 
 readings and theories.
 
 286 Don Quixote. 
 
 FRENCH. 
 
 Le Valeureiix Don Quixote de la Manche^ &>c. Traduit ficl^le- 
 ment de I'Espagnol, par Cesar Oudin. 8vo. Paris, 1616. 
 
 This, the first translation of the First Part only, is usually 
 joined to F. Rosset's Histoire du Redoubtable et Ingemeux 
 Chevalier Don Quixote. 8vo. Paris, 16 18. Neither has any 
 merit except a certain naivete and quaintness of expression, or 
 any value save for the old language. 
 
 Histoire de l admirable Don Quixote de la Manche. 4 vols. 
 i2mo. Paris, 1677-8. 
 
 This is by Filleau de St. Martin, and, like nearly all the 
 French versions, very unfaithful. None of the European 
 translators have departed more widely from the spirit of Cer- 
 vantes than the French, evidently under the idea that this 
 was some barbarous genius who had to be trimmed and clipped 
 to be made presentable to the polite world. 
 
 Florian published what he called a translation of Don 
 Quixote in 1799, but it is a mere abridgment, adapted to the 
 French genius, having nothing but a certain grace of style, — 
 as unlike the original grace of Cervantes as possible, — to 
 recommend it. There is no other French version worthy of 
 mention till we come to — 
 
 Llngenieux Hidalgo Do7i Quichotte, Traduit et annotd par 
 Louis Viardot. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1836. 
 
 First published with the woodcuts of Tony Johannot, which 
 are very spirited, but very un-Spanish. M. Viardot's is by 
 far the best of the French translations, in spite of the trenchant 
 attack which was made upon it by Biedermann in Don 
 Quichotte et la tache de sestraducteurs. (Paris, 1839.) Viardot 
 was a competent Spanish scholar, who had some knowledge 
 of Spain and of the character of its people. He has a habit 
 of shirking difficulties,— sometimes of omitting whole pas-
 
 Appendix 287 
 
 sages, which he cannot understand or is afraid to tackle, — 
 but he has a good style of his own, and has Frenchified 
 Cervantes with much success. 
 
 The more recent French versions are those of Damas- 
 Hinard (1847), Furne (1858), and Lucien Biart (1878), — the 
 last with a sympathetic preface by Prosper Merimee. I do 
 not think any of them equal to Viardot's, Biart's being pro- 
 fessedly accomniodated to the humour of the French. 
 
 Of the other European translations it is needless to give a 
 detailed account. The oldest German version is of the date 
 162 1, extending to only a portion of the First Part. The 
 version of Tieck, to highly applauded by Heine, is lively 
 and spirited, but by no means faithful. Of the other modern 
 translations that of Braunfels, the latest (4 vols. sm. 8vo. 
 Stuttgart, 1884) is, by those competent to form an opinion, 
 judged to be the best. 
 
 The earliest Italian version is that of Franciosini, of which 
 the first complete edition is that of 1625. It seems to me 
 more faithful to the letter of Cervantes than any of the early 
 foreign versions ; and it has this special value in the eyes of 
 the students of Cervantes, that at the time it was written 
 Spanish must have been a familiar language in Italy. I have 
 myself found much assistance in Francosini, in understanding 
 words and phrases, now obsolete in Spanish, and unexplained 
 by any of the commentators. Franciosini's translation seems 
 to hold its place to this day in Italy. 
 
 Of the Dutch, Russian, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian, 
 Romaic, Servian, Guzerati, and other versions, I may perhaps 
 be excused from speaking, feeling myself but indifferently well 
 qualified to give an opinion. To the mass of my readers it 
 will be sufficient to know that D071 Quixote has been translated 
 into all these languages, and is a popular book in every one of 
 them, however badly translated. 
 
 THE OTHER WORKS OF CERVANTES. 
 
 This Bibliography of Do7i Quixote cannot be complete 
 without some notice of the other works of the author, referred
 
 2SS Don Quixote. 
 
 to in my Life of the author. Of these it will be sufficient to 
 cite the dates of their appearance, and the best extant editions. 
 
 The Galatea was published in 1585, at Alcala de Henares, 
 in an octavo of 575 pages, with sixteen preliminary pages. 
 Frequently reprinted during the Seventeenth century, it seems 
 to have afterwards fallen off in popularity, till reproduced in 
 2 vols. 8vo. by Sancha, 1794. There is a French version, or 
 rather paraphrase, by Florian, in which great liberties are taken 
 with Cer\-antes. There is a modern Enghsh translation by 
 G. W. Gyll (1867), which I have not seen. 
 
 The Novelas Exemplares were first published in 16 13, by 
 Juan de la Cuesta, and were frequently reprinted. The Tia 
 Fingida^ which some have ascribed to Cervantes, but which 
 was never claimed by him, was first published at Berlin in 
 1818 by Franceson and F. A. Wolff, from a manuscript of one 
 Francisco de Pdrras. The Novels (without this addition) 
 were included in Sancha's edition of Cervantes' minor works, 
 in 1783. They have never been properly edited, and are best 
 to be read in Rivadeneyra's recent editions of Cervantes' com- 
 plete works, of which by-and-by. There is an old French 
 translation by Rousset, including two stories not by Cer\-antes, 
 published in 1640, and a modern agreeable version by Viardot, 
 of 1838. The first English translation, under the title of 
 Exemplarie Novells, by Don Diego Puede-Ser {i.e. James 
 Mabbe), was published in 1640. It includes only six out of 
 the twelve stories. There is a recent English translation of 
 the whole by W. K. Kelly, in Bohn's Library. 
 
 The Viaje (originally spelt Viage) del Far?iaso was first 
 published in Madrid, by "the widow of Alonso Martin," 1614, 
 in a small 8vo of 96 pages. The early copies of this impres- 
 sion had a sonnet by Cervantes, headed " The Author to his 
 Pen," which was afterwards omitted, it is said because of a 
 notion that it seemed in the last three lines to hint at pecu- 
 niary assistance as being needed by him. It was once reprinted 
 at Milan in 1624, but not again till by Sancha in his collection, 
 in 1784, together with the Numancia and El Trato de Argel. 
 There is a very good French version of the poem by Guardia 
 (1864), with a long biographical appendix; and a most excel-
 
 Appendix. 289 
 
 lent and spirited one in English by the late J. Y. Gibson, 
 1853, with an interesting introduction and notes. 
 
 The Ocho Comedias y Ocho Entremeses — nuevos, nunca 
 representados — were published by the widow of Alonso Martin 
 in 16 1 5. They were reprinted in 1749, with a curious preface 
 by Bias de Nasarre, in 2 vols. 4to. These have never been 
 translated, though some of the Entremeses, or Interludes, 
 might well bear being turned into Enghsh, being full of 
 humour and spirit. In addition to these acknowledged plays 
 of his, which are all that survive, there is an Auto, or Sacred 
 Drama, entitled Comedia de la Soberana Virgen de Guada- 
 lupe, first published anonymously in 1617, which Seiior 
 Asensio has reprinted in his series of the Bibliofilos Andahices, 
 claiming it to be the work of Cervantes, — I think on doubtful 
 evidence. 
 
 Of the posthumous work of Cervantes, Los Trabajos de 
 Persiles y Sigisniunda, the first edition was published in 16 17 
 by Juan de la Cuesta. It contains an interesting epitaph 
 on the author by Francisco de Urbina, and a eulogistic 
 sonnet by Francisco Calderon. There were three or four 
 editions of Persiles in the same and in the succeeding year ; 
 but it was not printed agai^i till by Sancha, in 2 vols., 1781. 
 
 A complete edition of all the works of Cervantes, edited 
 in a manner worthy of the fame of the author, is up to the 
 present time a desideratum. There is no edition containing 
 all his writings which can be said to be satisfactory. The 
 truth is, that the fame and popularity oi Don Quixote are so 
 great as to overpower and oppress the children of the same 
 family, some of whom suffer undeserved neglect from the 
 exclusive favour which is bestowed on the favourite. None 
 of the minor works, in prose or poetry, have received any 
 care or attention. They are reproduced mechanically, because 
 they are the works of Cervantes, but they have never been 
 edited, even in that partial and imperfect way that Don 
 Quixote has been edited. The best, because the fullest and 
 most complete, edition of the Opera Omnia of Cervantes, is 
 undoubtedly that which was produced under the joint editor- 
 VOL. I. 2 P
 
 290 Don Quixote. 
 
 ship of Rosell and Hartzenbusch, intAvelve handsome volumes, 
 of which the Don Quixote forms four, printed at Argamasilla 
 in 1864. This, in all externals, in beauty of type and paper, 
 and in splendour of press-work, is worthy of Cervantes. But 
 it includes several pieces which can on no sufficient evidence 
 be proved to be his, while, except the volumes containing the 
 Don Quixote, it does not appear to have received much critical 
 revision. As for the Don Quixote in this edition, unhappily 
 it has been treated in Hartzenbusch's method, — the text being 
 arbitrarily altered in many places to suit that editor's ideas 
 of what Cervantes ought to have written, without regard to 
 the author's own words. This wanton and ungodly dese- 
 cration of the text must ever deprive Hartzenbusch's edition 
 of any claim to be recognised as final or sufficient. 
 
 There is a humbler and more compact edition of Cervantes' 
 works, published by Rivadeneyra in one volume, forming the 
 first of the series of the useful Biblioteca de los Autores 
 Espaiioles, which is, perhaps, the best which the student can 
 have. It contains the life by Aribau, Galatea, the Novelas 
 Exemplares, Don Quixote, Persiles and Sigisfnunda, the 
 Viaje del Parnaso, and some selected short pieces of verse. 
 There is an edition of the complete works published under 
 the care of Agustin Garcia de Arrieta, in 10 vols. 32mo, at 
 Paris, 1826, containing the life by Navarrete (without the 
 valuable Jlustracioiies y Documentos), the Analysis by Don 
 Vicente de los Rios, the Numancia, and one or two of the 
 Interludes, — without the Persiles. But the form is incon- 
 veniently small, and the title is a misnomer, for these are not 
 all the works of Cervantes.
 
 Appendix. 291 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 THE romances of chivalry, the popular taste for which, in 
 its extravagance, it was the object of Cervantes in his 
 Don Quixote to correct, may be said for the most part to owe 
 their survival to the book which overthrew their influence. 
 Seeing the extent to which they have been used by Cervantes 
 in the composition of his own romance, and the close con- 
 nexion between the adventures and incidents recorded in 
 them and those which are introduced into Don Quixote^ some 
 account of these once famous books of chivalries, by the reading 
 of which the wits of Alonso Quixano were turned, so that he 
 imagined himself a Knight Errant, is absolutely indispensable 
 for the proper understanding of Don Quixote. I will not 
 attempt in this place to give my readers a complete history 
 of that literature which, especially in Spain, attained to a 
 growth so monstrous and to a popularity so amazing. They 
 must be content with a concise bibliography only of such of 
 the books as are directly mentioned by Cervantes, or to the 
 scenes and characters of which he has made reference in Don 
 Quixote, — by way of a general supplement to the brief notes 
 which are appended to the English text. 
 
 There has been no better classification of the romances than 
 that which is proposed by Sehor Gayangos, in his excellent 
 Discurso Pnliniinar to the Libros de Caballerias, published in 
 the Biblioteca de los Autores Espafioles (1857). Sehor Gayangos 
 divides the Romances into six classes : — ist, the Breton 
 Age ; 2nd, the Carlovingian ; 3rd, the Greco-Asiatic ; 4th, the 
 Divine or Religious Books; 5th, the Historical; and 6th, the
 
 292 Don Quixote. 
 
 Translations or Paraphrases of the Romantic Poems of Italy 
 into Spanish. For my own purpose, seeing that I confine 
 myself simply to the books in Don Quixote's library and to 
 those mentioned by Cervantes, it will be more convenient to 
 adapt a simpler, though probably less logical, division into 
 five classes, viz. : — tst, the Romances of Castilian Origin, of 
 which Amadis of Gaul is the type ; 2nd, the Books of Pro- 
 vengal or Valencian growth; 3rd, the Carlovingian Romances; 
 4th, the Breton ; and 5th, all others of various kinds, not to 
 be brought into any of the other categories. 
 
 Class i.— THE CASTILIAN ROMANCES. 
 
 Sect. I. — The Family of Amadis. 
 
 The first of the series of purely Spanish books of chivalries, 
 as Cervantes himself has said, and the parent of this species 
 of literature in the Peninsula, was unquestionably Amadis of 
 Gaul. The age of this book, as from internal evidence was 
 plainly to be gathered, has now been incontestably proved by 
 Sehor Gayangos to be considerably earlier than has hitherto 
 been supposed ; and to the same authority we are indebted 
 for having cleared up all doubts as to its origin. For many 
 generations the Amadis has been held to be of Portuguese 
 invention, — the authorship being credited to Vasco de Lobeira, 
 a knight of King Joam I.'s court, who flourished during the 
 latter half of the Fourteenth century. Southey, in the preface 
 to his translation, or rather abridgment, of Amadis, unhesi- 
 tatingly accepted the theory of Vasco de Lobeira being the 
 author, and indeed such was the general belief even in Spain. 
 By the French, of course, who claim everything that is 
 romantic, or witty, or humorous to be theirs by divine 
 right, the source of Amadis is declared to be France. The 
 Comte de Tressan, who made what is, in a double sense, a 
 free travestie of some of these Spanish romances, pretends to 
 have seen a manuscript of Amadis in the Picard language in 
 the Vatican ; but his veracity is probably no more to be 
 trusted than his logic when he gravely argues that because the
 
 Appendix. 293 
 
 first three books ot Amadis are superior in tone and in taste 
 to all succeeding ones, therefore they must have been originally 
 French. Sir Walter Scott seems to have been first, in an 
 article in the Quarterly Revietv, to suggest, from a curious pas- 
 sage in the book itself, that Lobeira could not have been the 
 original author. The question has since been threshed out, 
 and there is no longer any reason to doubt, — ist, that Amadis 
 was of Castilian birth ; and, 2nd, that the story in some shape 
 was current in Spain before the middle of the Fourteenth 
 century. I must be content here to quote one leading fact in the 
 long process of argument by which this point has been settled, 
 referring those who desire to investigate the matter further to 
 Gayangos' Prelhiiinary Disco2(rse, or to Baret's L' Amadis de 
 Gaule (1853). In a poem, by the famous Lopez de Ayala, 
 Chancellor of Castile, who fought at the battle of Najera, and 
 was taken prisoner by the Black Prince and brought to 
 England, he describes himself as having foolishly wasted much 
 time in reading those lying books, Amadis and Lancelot. Now 
 the battle of Najera was fought in 1367, when Ayala was 
 five-and-thirty years of age. As the reference is obviously to 
 the days of his youth, the Amadis, spoken of as a well-known 
 book, must have been current at least as far back as 1350. 
 It could not, therefore, possibly have been a translation from 
 the Portuguese of Vasco de Lobeira, who was known to have 
 been knighted at the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385, and there- 
 fore is presumed not to have been older than twenty-five at 
 that date. (See Gayangos and Baret.) A further and con- 
 clusive proof that Lobeira was not the original author is found 
 in a curious passage in ch. xl. bk. i. of Amadis, relating to 
 a certain adventure of that chaste hero with Briolania, Queen 
 of Sobradisa, in which the writer confesses that he was com- 
 pelled to alter " what in effect had been written " {aqiiello 
 que en effecto se escrivia) in deference to the wishes of the 
 Infante Alfonso of Portugal, who, having taken pity on the 
 disconsolate damsel, insisted that her love should be returned. 
 So returned it was (under protest of the compiler), who reluc- 
 tantly makes Amadis break his vows of constancy to Or'ana, 
 with the result to Briolania of twins, — a boy and a girl. The
 
 294 Don Quixote. 
 
 shame-faced reluctance with which the author, or compiler, who 
 might have been Lobeira, but was more probably Montalvo, 
 records this incident, so damaging to the hero's character, — 
 apologising to posterity for having been compelled to yield to 
 the Royal wish, — is most amusing. It is obvious, as Scott 
 observes, that the work upon which Lobeira made this inter- 
 polation was not his own, but a translation or paraphrase of 
 some older stor)\ In conclusion, what is established by the 
 latest researches is that there was an Aviadis in three books 
 current in Spain at least as late as the middle of the Fourteenth 
 century, and probably earlier; that Lobeira translated this 
 original Spanish story into Portuguese ; that a subsequent 
 Spanish author, Garci Ordonez de Montalvo brought back the 
 romance into Castilian, with additions of his own; — pruning it, 
 according to his own statement, of many superfluous phrases 
 and antique words, and putting others in their place of a 
 " more polite and elegant style," with the object of " inspiring 
 the gentle hearts of warlike youth and animating the immortal 
 memory of the art of Chivalry, no less most honourable than 
 glorious." 
 
 Montalvo, according to his preface, must have written after 
 the conquest of Granada in 1492. Tlie date of the original 
 first edition of Amadis is unknown, but Senor Gayangos is of 
 opinion that the book was printed before the close of the 
 Fifteenth century. He himself in his catalogue quotes the 
 edition of Salamanca of 15 10 as the earliest extant; but since, 
 there has appeared at Sotheby & Wilkinson's sale of the 
 Baron de Seilliere's Library, an edition of Zaragoza, believed 
 to be unique, of the date of 1508, The full title of this 
 precious volume is — 
 
 Los quatres libros del Virtuoso Cavallero Amadis de Gaula, 
 coitiplidos. 
 
 The Fourth book is supposed to be entirely the work of 
 Montalvo, but it is more probable that he expanded the 
 original three books into four. Baret is of opinion that the 
 original Amadis ended with the arrival of the hero at the 
 court of King Lisuarte, after the battle with the giants (bk. ii.
 
 Appendix. 295 
 
 ch. xviii.). Certainly there are some incidents in the Third 
 Book, and, indeed, the whole of the adventures in Con- 
 stantinople and in the Island of the Devil, with the slaughter 
 of the Dragon, which seem to me to have a more modern 
 cast. I am inclined to believe that the passages extolling the 
 piety of Amadis and recording his benefactions to the Church, 
 his endowments of monasteries, and which are curiously out of 
 gear with the rest of the story, have been interpolated. The 
 end of the Fifteenth and the beginning of the Sixteenth 
 century was the period when the ecclesiastical power in Spain 
 first reached its high development, under Isabella the Catholic, 
 The Fourteenth century, when the romance was begotten, 
 was not so religious. The magic in the Amadis proper is of 
 the most primitive kind, and the supernatural scarcely per- 
 ceptible. Arcalaus is but a feeble hand at sorcery ; and 
 Urganda a very unimaginative fairy, whose powers are quite 
 unequal to her good intentions. As to all that relates to the 
 birth of Esplandian and his mysterious bringing up, it is 
 clearly introduced by Montalvo in order to lead up to his 
 own story, and the Fifth book of Amadis, called — 
 
 Las Sergas del vertuoso cavallero Esplandian, hijo de Amadis. 
 
 Inasmuch as there is a Sixth book extant, with the date 
 of 1 5 10, it is not unreasonably conjectured that the date of 
 the first edition of Esplandian must be before 15 10. None 
 is now known earlier than 1525. Esplandian is the son of 
 Amadis, out of Oriana, born before their nuptials, as was so 
 often the case with the heroes of chivalric romance. Montalvo 
 relates with much simplicity how the fairy Urganda appeared 
 to him, and while urging him to his task, spoke of his being 
 almost too silly and unlettered a man to hold such an office 
 as that oiRegidor in the State. The adventures in Esplandian 
 are of less interest than those in Amadis, the son being merely 
 a copy of the father in all his exploits, only more valiant and 
 less virtuous. 
 
 The Sixth book of Amadis is that directed to the great and 
 notable deeds of Don Florisando, Prince of Cantaria, son of
 
 296 Don Quixote. 
 
 Don Florestan, and nephew of Amadis. It is by an unknown 
 hand, and very scarce in any edition. 
 
 The Seventh book treats of the great deeds in arms of 
 Lisuarte of Greece, the son of Esplandian, and of Perion of 
 Gaul, son of Galaor, his uncle. The anonymous author, in a 
 dedication to the Archbishop of Seville, declares that he 
 found the manuscript (written in Greek by the magician 
 Alquife) in London, whence he brought it to Spain and trans- 
 lated it, with emendations. This was a common form with 
 the writers of these romances, which Cervantes has parodied, 
 in order to heighten their readers' curiosity. Many of the 
 passages in the original story of Amadis are introduced here, 
 with Amadis himself, and the adventures have a strong family 
 likeness to those of the parent romance, only that they are 
 described with less simplicity and more exaggeration. The 
 geography is even wilder, and includes a greater range of 
 country, — the Knights being called in to assist at a domestic 
 piece of business, lighting for the Spanish King against El 
 Miramolin {Amir-al-Momenin) in the neighbourhood of Cor- 
 dova. 
 
 The Eighth book of Amadis is concerned with the deeds 
 of the same Lisuarte of Greece, nephew of Amadis, by another 
 hand, Juan Diaz, who apparently was not aware of the exist- 
 ence of the Seventh book until its publication, for he originally 
 called his own the Seventh. In this, the old Amadis, now 
 King of Great Britain, is hard pressed by a combination of 
 his enemies (pagans) in his capital of Fefiiisa (Winchester?) 
 until relieved by his nephews and a strong contingent of 
 Knights Errant, raised in every part of Christendom, — the 
 Pope consenting, at the prayer of the confederates, and in 
 view of the great peril the true religion is in, to relax his 
 ordinance against Knights Errant. In the end the Christians 
 conquer, and the heathen are compelled to abandon their 
 designs upon Great Britain. In the 174th chapter, the old 
 Amadis dies, and is buried with extraordinary ceremony. 
 The book is not less rare than others of the series, the first 
 edition being apparently that of Seville, in 1526. 
 
 The Ninth book is styled the Chronicle of the very valiant
 
 Appendix. 297 
 
 atid puissant Prince and Knight of the Burning Sword Aniadis 
 of Greece, the son of Lisuarte of Greece. This is by Feliciano 
 de Silva, who is also beUeved to have written number 7 in 
 the series {Lisuarte of Greece). In this, the chivalric romance 
 is carried to its utmost pitch of extravagance, Silva changing 
 the style of the older books into one peculiar to himself, of 
 extraordinary floweriness and rodomontade, such as Cervantes 
 has most frequently ridiculed in Don Quixote. In Atnadis 
 of Greece, all the old heroes, or such as survive of them, are 
 introduced, with adventures very similar though more tedious 
 and insipid, and one novelty, which is the pastoral element, 
 now for the first time mingled with the warlike business, — 
 marking a change in the popular taste. 
 
 The next, or Tenth in the series, is also by Feliciano de 
 Silva, called the Chroriicles of Do?i Florisel de Niquea and the 
 brave Anaxartes, sons of Amadis of Greece, in two parts. This 
 was first printed at Valladolid in 1532. It exhibits Silva in 
 his topmost frenzy of chivalric invention, with some new 
 personages, and a further development of the pastoral business. 
 
 The Eleventh book of Amadis, called the third part of 
 Florisel de Niquea, is also by Feliciano de Silva, and is dedi- 
 cated to the recording of the prodigious adventures of Don 
 Rogel of Greece, the son of Florisel. It was first published at 
 Seville, in 1536, with a continuation in 155 1, enlarging upon 
 the amours of Don Rogel with the fair Archisidea. This 
 continuation is remarkable for a long prologue, addressed to 
 the Queen Dona Maria, daughter of Charles V., in which 
 Silva enumerates the warlike deeds of her father, especially 
 his campaign against the Protestants in Saxony, from which 
 it is supposed that the book was intended to celebrate as in 
 an allegory, says Gayangos, the military and domestic virtues 
 of the Emperor Charles. 
 
 The Twelfth book is Don Silves de la Selva, less known 
 than any of the preceding, by Pedro de Lujan, published in 
 1546. 
 
 The Thirteenth book is that of Esferamundi, son of Rogel 
 and Archisidea, of doubtful origin. The only existing version 
 is an Italian one, said by the author, Mambrino de Roseo, to 
 VOL. I. 2 Q
 
 298 Don Quixote. 
 
 have been taken from the Spanish ; but Gayangos supposes 
 it to be of Roseo's invention. 
 
 There is a still more dubious Fourteenth book, called 
 Penalva, written in Portuguese, in which the author, not satis- 
 fied with the death of Amadis in the Eighth book, brings him 
 to life again in order to finish him off with more ceremony. 
 Nothing is known of Fenalva, except from a notice in Nicolas 
 Antonio's Biblioiheca Nova. 
 
 Here ends the long line of Amadis of Gaul in his native 
 country, — the most famous and the most popular of all the 
 series of Spanish romances, not only in Spain but among 
 foreign nations. A complete collection of these romances in the 
 original folios is a treasure such as has hitherto baffled the quest 
 of the keenest bibliomaniac. Perhaps my friend Don Pascual 
 possesses a larger and rarer library of books of chivalries than 
 any which exists. Few of them have been reprinted since the 
 Sixteenth century, and nearly all remain in the Gothic letter. 
 The volume of Libros de Caballerias, published in Rivadeneyra's 
 series, includes only the four parts of the original Amadis 
 with the Sergas de Esplandian. The translations are numerous. 
 Nicholas D'Herberay, Sieur des Essarts, at the instance, it is 
 said, of Francis I., turned six of the first books of Amadis 
 into French in 1540; and the series has been continued in 
 French by other hands, with the addition of new books, until 
 a Twenty-fourth book is reached by an anonymous translator, 
 which appeared at Paris in 1615. These later French con- 
 tinuations are wanting in all the redeeming qualities of the 
 original At?iadis : the style is debased, and the native sim- 
 plicity and grace degraded into looseness and obscenity. In 
 the Twenty-third book the adventurers betake them to America, 
 a country which up to then had never been mentioned. 
 Even the original translations of D'Herberay, though interesting 
 for their picturesque old French, depart greatly from the 
 Spanish text, the manners of the heroes being Frenchified 
 as well as their language, while Gaul, the ancestral home of 
 the Amadises, is made to be not Wales, but France. There 
 are two early English translations of Afnadis, by Thomas 
 Paynel and by Anthony Munday, — one of Esplandian, and
 
 Appendix. 299 
 
 some of the later heroes, — all of which are now very scarce, 
 Amadis having been almost as much read in England for a 
 time as he was in Spain. Southey's version of the romance 
 is but an abridgment, with many of the characteristic scenes 
 omitted, — written with much elegance and spirit, however, and 
 in a form which makes the old story even now very readable. 
 There are Italian versions of most of these books, — Bernardo 
 Tasso having founded on Amadis his poem of Amadigi di 
 Francia (mistaking Gaul for France), and the greater poet, 
 his son, praising it as "the most beautiful and, perhaps, the 
 most profitable story of its kind that can be read." 
 
 3 Sect. II. — The Palmerins. 
 
 The next family of romances belonging to this cycle, almost 
 equal in popularity to the Amadises, and quite as prolific, is 
 that of the Palmerins. The first of these, and the parent of 
 the race, is Pabnerin of Oliva, said to have been the work 
 of a carpenter's daughter of Burgos (Gayangos says Ciudad 
 Rodrigo), which was first printed at Salamanca in 151 1. Eight 
 editions followed in quick succession. This Palmerin was the 
 son of Florendos, who was the son of Primaleon or Pigmaleon, 
 King of Macedonia. Being of unlawful birth, he was exposed 
 by his mother in an olive plantation, whence his name de 
 Oliva. After many adventures in the manner of Amadis, 
 though told with far less spirit and simplicity, Palmerin 
 becomes Emperor of Constantinople. To him succeeded his 
 son Primaleon, by the same pen, after whom came Polindo, 
 followed by Platir and Flotir, none of them of much 
 account. 
 
 The Sixth in this series, and by far the best as well as most 
 famous, is Palmerin of England, son of the King Duardos or 
 Duarde (Edward), and of Flerida, daughter of Palmerin of 
 Oliva. This " Palm of England," as Cervantes calls it, was, 
 like Amadis of Gaul, his great competitor, for a long time sup- 
 posed to be of Portuguese origin — the work of one Francisco 
 Moraes, of Evora. But the discovery of a Spanish version, 
 printed at Toledo in 1547, proves, as Vicente Salva was the
 
 300 Don Quixote. 
 
 first to point out in the Repertorio Americatio (vol. iv.), that 
 the author was Luis Hurtado, whose name is revealed in an 
 acrostic addressed to his readers. (See the whole question 
 discussed in Gayangos' tract, De Palmerin de Jtiglaterra y de 
 su Ferdadero Alitor. Madrid, 1862.) As a story Palmerin is 
 only inferior to Amadis, on the general scheme of which it is 
 founded. Palmerin has a brother, Florian, who is to him what 
 Galaor is to Amadis. The difference of spirit between the 
 two books is simply the difference of their ages. Amadis is of 
 the Fourteenth century, when chivalry was still a living faith 
 and a real institution ; Palmerin is of the Sixteenth century, 
 when the pure ideal of Knighthood had been blotted out by 
 the spirit of gold-seeking, the product of the American dis- 
 coveries. When Luis Hurtado wrote, Knights and Knight- 
 errantry were already shadows of the past, with no more 
 reality than the dragons they slew and the magic they encoun- 
 tered. The story of Palmerin, as being more modern, has 
 more of human interest than the other. The action is more 
 varied, the motives less strained ; there is more sensibility, as 
 Ticknor remarks, to natural scenery; and the personages, as 
 Cervantes says, talk more easily and naturally. In regard to 
 the fighting, Southey observes most judiciously : — " When the 
 author of Amadis has a combat to describe, he fairly fights 
 it : in this he exceeds all poets and all romancers ; even 
 Ariosto and Tasso are far inferior to him. The author of 
 Palmerin, on the contrary, sets everything before your eyes : 
 he paints the lists and the spectators, and enters into the feel- 
 ings both of those who are engaged and those who look on." 
 Southey concludes a very laudatory notice of the book (of 
 which he produced an English version in 1807, which is still 
 very readable), by declaring : — "I know of no romance and no 
 epic in which suspense concerning the conclusion is so success- 
 fully kept up." In many respects Pahnerin of E72gland differs 
 notably from all the other romances, and chiefly by a more 
 modern cast of thought and a greater show of literary art. It 
 does not appear to have been reprinted so often as most of 
 the others; and of the original edition of 1547-48 only two 
 copies are known to be extant, one of which is in the British
 
 Appendix. 301 
 
 Museum. There was an early English translation in 1602 by 
 "the Grub-Street Patriarch," Anthony Munday (probably from 
 the French), which is a wretched piece of work, wherein it is 
 confidently stated, " gentlemen may find choice of sweet inven- 
 tions, and gentlewomen be satisfied in courtly expectations." 
 
 The Portuguese carried on the line of Palmerin to two or 
 three generations, but with these, though the scene is still laid 
 in England, we are not here concerned. 
 
 The two classes of the Amadises and the Palmerins 
 make up what Gayangos calls the " Greco- Asiatic," and 
 Duran the " Galo-Grecian " cycle. I should rather call it the 
 Hispano-British class. All the principal heroes, though they 
 go far afield for adventures, are of British, Welsh, or Scottish 
 origin. Their homes are in the British islands. Amadis 
 comes to be King of Great Britain himself, and Palmerin is 
 son of a King of England. In fact, all internal evidence tends 
 to confirm the hypothesis that the original and typical romance, 
 which is Amadis of Gaul, grew into being with the arrival of 
 the English contingent in Spain, in 1367, under the Black 
 Prince, — himself the most famous warrior of the day, with the 
 flower of British, Norman, and Gascon chivalry, in aid of the 
 cause of Don Pedro against his bastard brother Henrique. 
 This was the first time in history that Spain was brought into 
 actual contact with England ; and though the campaign was 
 of little permanent benefit to either side, it cannot be doubted 
 that the spectacle of this armoured host, under the leadership 
 of the great and victorious Prince, left a deep impression on 
 the popular imagination. It is true that the knowledge gained 
 of England and of Englishmen was somewhat vague. The 
 geography of Amadis is rather confused, seeing that Windsor 
 (Vindilisora) is made an island, and Amadis has to take ship 
 from Wales to get to Great Britain, while he is able to ride 
 from London to the Insula Firme, which should be a peninsula 
 on the coast of Brittany. But clearly the writers meant to 
 point to Great Britain as the principal seat of chivalry in 
 the Fourteenth century, as undoubtedly it was, — the Court of 
 Edward III. being the most distinguished in that age as the 
 most perfect system of Knighthood, on the model of th^;
 
 302 Don Quixote. 
 
 Round Table, while the Black Prince was well known in Spain 
 by his feats, and might well be regarded as the Knight Errant 
 tar excellence — the model fighting man. 
 
 Sect, III. — Independent Romances. 
 
 Of the stories belonging neither to the Amadis nor to the 
 Palmerin series which Gayangos includes in his Greco-Asiatic 
 cycle, the most notable is that of Belianis of Greece, written 
 by one Gerdnimo Fernandez, an advocate of Madrid, under 
 the name of the Sage Friston. This was the favourite book 
 of Charles V., distinguished by Cervantes for its "excessive 
 choler," needing " a little rhubarb to purge it." It is one of the 
 most foolish and extravagant of the series, although the Arch- 
 bishop of Rosis (cited by the author) avers Belianis to be 
 without an equal among the Knights of that age for piety, " in 
 which quality he excelled the most sequestered of monks," — 
 as he very well might do. 
 
 Among the numerous Knights of the independent sort is 
 Don Cirongilio de Tracia, by Bernardo de Vargas, published 
 1545 — known only as having been one of the books in the 
 innkeeper's collection, together with Felixviarte or Florismarte 
 of Hircania, which was also in the library of Don Quixote. 
 Among these may be reckoned Don Florambel de Lticea, whose 
 adventure with a Princess in the dark is supposed to have 
 suggested the scene between Don Quixote and Maritornes. 
 Lepolemo, or the Knight of the Cross, is another of the books 
 which were in Don Quixote's library, described by Gayangos 
 in terms which scarcely seem to justify the sentence pro- 
 nounced on him by the Priest at the Inquisition. It differs 
 much from its class. The adventures, though marvellous, 
 are not incredible. The geography is less wild, though the 
 scenes are laid in places hitherto untrodden by the foot of 
 Knight Errant, such as Tripoli and Kairwan. In place of 
 dwarfs and damsels there are monks and chaplains. There 
 are no enchantments, giants, or anything supernatural. The 
 author is said to be Xarton, who, though versed in the magic 
 arts, is of good intent and nature, — more like Cid Hamet
 
 Appendix. 303 
 
 Benengeli, it has been said, than are any of the other Sages 
 who have written such books. Olivante de Laura is another 
 book which has the honour of having been included in Don 
 Quixote's Hbrary, and conveyed to the yard for its arrogance 
 and siUiness. Lastly, there need only be mentioned in this 
 class The Knight of Fhcebus or Alfebo, whose adventures are 
 included in the four parts of The Mirror of Princes and Knights 
 (not to be confounded with El Espejo de las Caballerias to 
 be mentioned hereafter). This has the distinction of being 
 by general consent the most puerile and stupid of all the 
 books of chivalries, — marking the very lowest point touched 
 by the human imagination concerning itself in these inven- 
 tions. Yet, though directly satirised and burlesqued by Cer- 
 vantes, to the Knight of Fhcebus is to be assigned the singular 
 glory of having been twice reprinted after the appearance of 
 Don Quixote, — in 161 7 and 1623. 
 
 Class II.— THE PROVENCAL ROMANCES. 
 
 The romances of native Spanish birth, but which were 
 either written originally in the Valencian or Catalan dialect, 
 or owe their inspiration to a kindred Provengal source, stand 
 naturally apart from those of Castilian growth. The most re- 
 markable of them, and, indeed, one of the three principal 
 books of chivalries for their matter or their style — Amadis 
 and Palmerin of England being the other two — is Tirante el 
 Blanco, — or, as it was called in its native tongue, Tirant lo 
 Blanch, — or, to give him his full title, Lo valoros e strenu 
 Cavalier Tirant lo Blanch, Princep del Lmperi Grech de Con- 
 testinoble : Valencia, 1490. 
 
 This, the earliest existing book of chivalries in Spain, is the 
 work of the " magnificent and virtuous cavalier," Johannot de 
 Martorell, said in the title-page to have been translated from the 
 English into Portuguese and thence into the vulgar tongue, — 
 following the usual form in these books. The Spanish version 
 did not appear till 151 1, and is described by Gayangos as 
 extremely unfaithful and little else than an abridgment, poorly 
 executed. The date of the composition of the book is given,
 
 304 Don Quixote. 
 
 by the author himself, as 1460, so that it is probably earlier 
 than any of the Spanish romances, excepting the original 
 Amadis. It differs essentially from any other romance, and 
 breathes a curiously foreign tone, showing how distinct were 
 the provinces in which the Proven^l civilisation was preserved 
 from the other parts of the kingdom in the Fifteenth century. 
 The spirit is more refined. The society described is of a 
 higher development, softer and more luxurious — Provengal and 
 not Castilian, — the manners more profligate than in the Spanish 
 or even the Breton romances. The exploits of the heroes are 
 more matter-of-fact and less marvellous than in any of the 
 other romances. There is, in fact, very little of chivalry in the 
 book. The Knights, as Cervantes says, " eat and sleep, and 
 die in their beds, and make their wills before death." They 
 resort to science and to cunning, as well as to brute valour 
 and strength, using artillery and engines, as well as swords 
 and spears. There are no miracles, and only one small piece 
 of magic. Tirante himself is rather a skilful general than a 
 valiant soldier. There is a self-conscious air and a distinct 
 trace of humour in the story, which mark it as the product of 
 a less simple and heroic age. The dress, the weapons, the 
 habits and customs belong, indeed, to the Fifteenth century, 
 — but it is the Fifteenth century of Provence, not of Spain. A 
 great portion of the story is laid in England. The Prince of 
 Wales, Guy Earl of Warwick (Varoych), the Tower of London, 
 the Order of the Garter, are introduced. " Lo Duch da 
 Lancastre, lo Duch de Glocestre, lo Duch d'Atreria (?), 
 lo Comte de Salasberi " figure among the English leaders. 
 The hero, Tirante, does not appear until the plot is con- 
 siderably advanced. The dominions of the King of England 
 are invaded by a vast army of heathen from the Great 
 Canary, who lay siege to London. The unbelievers succeed 
 in obtaining possession of the English capital. The castle 
 of the Earl of Warwick himself is besieged, such un-chivalric 
 means being used for its reduction as " bombardes, balestes, 
 colobrines, e springardes." At last the Earl, after incredible 
 efforts, relieves his castle and his countess ; the Paynim host 
 is defeated, and London recovered. The King of England,
 
 Appendix. 305 
 
 for joy, marries the daughter of the King of France, and the 
 realm is given up to merry-making. At the jousts held in 
 honour of the wedding, Tirante the White appears, and over- 
 throws various doughty Knights, and returns home to lead the 
 Greek forces against the Soldan of Babylon. Tirante wins an 
 easy victory, after tremendous slaughter of the enemy, and 
 returns to Constantinople, to be engaged, after several love 
 affairs and much amorous correspondence, to the Emperor's 
 daughter, but dies of a pleurisy before the match can come 
 off, after leaving 100,000 ducats personalty. I cannot under- 
 stand what Scott and Southey mean when they denounce 
 Tirante for its profligacy. The former declares " it must 
 have been written in a brothel." The latter says he " never met 
 with a book which implied so beastly a state of feeling in the 
 author." From this it is clear that neither Scott nor Southey 
 ever read Tirante in the original, but must have derived their 
 notion of it from the pretended French translation by the 
 Comte de Caylus, — which is no translation at all, but an obscene 
 parody. In the original Valencian book there is nothing 
 impure and very little that is improper, though much that is 
 loose. Cervantes' own opinion of the book, which, after a 
 somewhat ambiguous sentence, he deliberately exempted from 
 the flames, is most judicious. A copy of the original edition 
 of Tirant lo Bla?ich brought ;z{^6o5, at Baron Seilliere's sale. 
 
 There is a very rare book called Cifar, dealing with the 
 adventures of a Knight who came to be King of " JVlenton," 
 which belongs to this class, but, as it is not mentioned by 
 Cervantes, I will pass it over, with others of the family. 
 
 Class III.— THE CARLOVINGIAN ROMANCES. 
 
 The romances included under this head by Gayangos are 
 those, next to those of Amadis, most frequently men- 
 tioned and most commonly used in Don Quixote. They 
 relate to the wars and conquests of Charlemagne and the 
 exploits of the Twelve Peers, and are all founded upon 
 the fabulous Chronicle attributed to Turpin, or Tilpin, Arch- 
 bishop of Rheims. As the historical Turpin died in 778, he 
 VOL. I. 2 R
 
 3o6 Don Quixote. 
 
 could not have been the author of this Chronicle, which speaks 
 of events long after that date. The best opinion is that the 
 Chronicle styled Gesta Caroli Magni was written by Pope 
 Calixtus II., who was elected to the Papal Chair in 1119, 
 with a view to stimulate the crusade against the heathen, and 
 especially to extend the worship of the Apostle St. James, 
 better known as Santiago, in his shrine of Compostela. The 
 Latin Chronicle is a mass of improbable inventions, attributing 
 to Charlemagne and his Peers exploits such as were absolutely 
 impossible. It has served, however, as the mine whence a 
 great many romancists, including Ariosto and Boyardo, have 
 drawn their materials. A Spanish version of Turpin's Chronicle, 
 with several new lies added to suit the national taste, was 
 written by Nicolas de Piamonte, and published at Seville in 
 1528. This was frequently reprinted, and is probably the 
 direct source whence the Spanish Carlovingian romances were 
 drawn. The earliest and the most elaborate of these romances 
 was the Espejo de Cabalkrias, or Mirror of Chivalries, treating 
 of the feats of Don Roldan (Orlando) and Don Reynaldos de 
 Montalvan. Of this there were four parts, apparently by 
 different authors, of which the first was published at Seville 
 in 1533. There is a separate series of romances, of which 
 Reynaldos is the principal hero, also in four parts. There is 
 another book, in two parts, of which the giant Morgante is 
 the leading hero, — the second part being little else than a 
 translation of Pulci's semi-burlesque poem of Morgante 
 Maggiore. To this class belongs the curious book of Gnarino 
 Mesquino, written originally in Italian by Andrea de Florencia, 
 which is included by the author of the Dialogo de la Lengua 
 (Juan Valdes), "among the most lying of books, of a style 
 so vile that there is no good stomach which can stand the 
 reading of them." 
 
 Many of the references, however, in Don Quixote to the 
 Carlovingian heroes, — to Orlando especially, — are probably 
 meant to apply not to the knights of the prose romances, 
 but to the personages in the poems of Orlando Furioso and 
 Orlando Itmamorato. and a few to the Carlovingian ballads.
 
 Appendix. 307 
 
 Class IV.— THE BRETON ROMANCES. 
 
 These, though usually claimed as being the original stock 
 whence all the books of chivalries were drawn, are of com- 
 paratively infrequent mention in Don Quixote. Merlin, Arthur, 
 and Lancelot figure indeed among the heroes who influence 
 Don Quixote's actions, but the Spanish books in which their 
 adventures are described are but rarely mentioned. The 
 oldest now existing, and probably the earliest in point of date, 
 is El Baladro del Sabio Merlin., or. The Cry of the Sage Merlin, 
 — the cry which he uttered when dying, which was heard three 
 leagues off. This was printed at Burgos in 1498, and is a 
 translation, according to Gayangos, of an Italian book of the 
 Fourteenth century. Lancelot du Lac was introduced into 
 Spain in 15 15, under the name oi Lafizarote del Lago, in the 
 Demanda del Sancto Grial ; and Tristan de Leonis, at a very 
 early period, under that name. The only truly Spanish hero 
 of this class of romances referred to by Cervantes is Tablatite 
 de Ricamonte, who may be said to be a connecting link be- 
 tween the Knights of the Round Table and the Twelve Peers, 
 as he partakes of the character both of the Breton and the 
 Carlovingian books. 
 
 The truth is that the Breton romances never were so popular 
 in Spain as those of indigenous growth. Arthur, and Lancelot, 
 and Tristan were regarded as foreigners, while Amadis and 
 Palmerin were natives. The deeds of the one may have 
 kindled the spirit which led to the composition of the other ; 
 but we must make a distinction between the origin of the insti- 
 tution of chivalry and that of the literature of which it was the 
 inspiration. I am unable to hold with M. Baret in his ingenious 
 attempt to prove that, while Amadis is essentially Spanish, 
 the germ of the romance is foreign,— that the theme has been 
 imported from France, and is the issue of the same spring 
 whence came the romances of the Round Table. The state- 
 ment that A?nadis and his family came in the suite of the 
 Provencal literature is certainly not borne out by the facts. 
 The spirit of the purely Spanish romance is essentially distinct 
 from that of the Arthurian, and still more so from the Pro-
 
 3o8 Don Quixote. 
 
 venial. It is true that Cervantes himself, through the mouth 
 of Don Quixote, assigns to King Arthur and his Round Table 
 the origin of chivalry ; but chivalry is one thing and chivalric 
 romance another, nor is there the least proof of any connexion 
 between the romantic literature of Spain of the Fourteenth, 
 Fifteenth, and Sixteenth centuries, with that which took its 
 source in Brittany two or three centuries earlier, except so far 
 as they were both the product of the ideas and feelings which 
 gave rise to chivalry. 
 
 Class V.— MISCELLANEOUS ROMANCES. 
 
 There remain a few other romances, not to be classified in any 
 of the above orders, of uncertain character. Some are founded 
 on history, and were probably developed out of the ballads, 
 such as the romance of the Moor Abindarraez and the Fair 
 Xarifa, which is referred to in Don Quixote. An example of 
 a purely imaginary romance, not connected with any of the 
 great families, is the history of E?irique Fi (son) de Oliva Rey 
 de ffierusa/em, in which there is a character (Conde Tomillas) 
 mentioned in Doti Quixote; and the story of La Linda 
 Magalona, which is a reproduction of the old French legend 
 of Pierre de Provence et la Belle Maguelonne, of the Twelfth 
 century. The chronicle of T/ie Nine of Fame (Los Nueve 
 de la Fama), in which is included the Life of the celebrated 
 Bertrand de Guesclin, is probably also the subject of an 
 allusion in Don Quixote. 
 
 These seem to exhaust the number of the books of chivalries 
 which it was Cervantes' purpose to assail, because of their 
 corrupting influence on the popular taste and morals, I have 
 elsewhere maintained that it was not the composition of 
 romances of chivalry at which his satire was levelled, but 
 against the bad and extravagant books which were multiplied 
 so enormously in Spain, in consequence of the success which 
 was achieved by A/nadis, by Palmerin, and one or two others 
 whose character and authority Cervantes certainly never in- 
 tended to destroy, — he himself being a great lover of romances 
 of chivalry.
 
 Appendix. 309 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 HEINE ON CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE. 
 
 IN the following translation of Heine's charming essay on the 
 genius of Cervantes and the character of Don Quixote^ 
 I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Francis Storr, the translator 
 of the Reisebtlder, &c. The essay appeared originally as an 
 introduction to an illustrated German edition of Don Quixote, 
 translated by Ludwig Tieck, in 1837. 
 
 " Life and Doings of the ingenious Knight Don Quixote 
 de la Mancha, described by Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra." 
 So ran the title of the first book that I read after I had reached 
 years of childish discretion, and had mastered, after a fashion, 
 my alphabet. How vividly I still recall those early days when 
 I stole out of the house at daybreak and hurried to the Palace 
 Gardens, where I could read, without fear of interruption, my 
 Don Quixote. It was a beautiful day in May ; in the calm 
 morning light the lusty spring lay open-eared, drinking in the 
 adulations of her sweet flatterer, the nightingale, and the 
 nightingale's song of praise had so caressing an air, such a 
 melting rapture in it, that the shyest buds burst open, and the 
 amorous grasses and balmy sunbeams kissed and kissed again, 
 and trees and flowers shivered with pure ecstasy. But I sat 
 myself down on an old moss-grown stone bench near the 
 waterfall in the " Avenue of Sighs," as it was called, and 
 feasted my small soul with the great adventures of the bold 
 knight. In my childish simplicity I took everything in grave 
 earnest ; however ridiculous the turns that fortune played the 
 poor hero, I said to myself, " It cannot be helped ; to be
 
 310 Don Quixote. 
 
 laughed at, I suppose, is a hero's part, no less than to be 
 wounded," and my heart was indignant at the ridicule even as 
 it bled for his wounds. I was a child, and knew not of the 
 irony which God has put into the world, and which the great 
 poet has reproduced in his miniature world of fiction, and in 
 my ignorance I shed the bitterest tears when the noble knight 
 for all his nobleness reaps only ingratitude and drubbings. I 
 was unpractised in reading, and pronounced every word aloud, 
 so that birds and trees, brooks and flowers, could follow my 
 reading, and as such innocent creatures know as little as 
 children of the irony of the world, they too, like me, took all 
 in sober earnest, and wept with me over the poor hero's woes. 
 An old superannuated oak actually sobbed aloud, and the 
 waterfall wagged more desperately his white beard, and seemed 
 to rail against this wicked world. We felt that the knight's 
 heroism deserved our admiration none the less because the 
 lion turned his back on him without deigning to fight ; that 
 his deeds were all the more meritorious because his body was 
 weak and shrivelled, his armour rusty and rickety, and his 
 charger a sorry jade. We despised the base rabble who 
 braved it in their silk mantles, their courtly phrases, and 
 ducal titles, and spurned a man so vastly their superior in 
 intellect and nobiUty of soul. Dulcinea's knight continued to 
 rise in my esteem and win my heart more entirely the longer I 
 read in the wonderful book, and I never missed for one day 
 my garden reading, so that by autumn I had reached the end 
 of the story. That day I shall never forget when I read of 
 the grievous encounter wherein my hero was destined to so 
 ignominious a fall ! 
 
 It was a dull day : ugly rain-clouds drifted across the leaden 
 sky, the yellow leaves were falling dismally from the branches, 
 heavy tear-drops hung on the petals of the few belated flowers 
 that, fading, drooped their languid heads ; the nightingales had 
 long been mute ; wherever I looked decay stared me in the 
 face, and my heart was near to breaking as I read how the 
 noble knight lay stunned and bruised upon the ground, and, 
 without raising his visor, cried in faint and hollow tones, which 
 sounded like a voice from the grave, to his conqueror,
 
 Appendix. 311 
 
 " Dulcinea is the fairest woman in the world, and I the 
 unhappiest knight on earth, but it is not meet that my weak- 
 ness should disown this truth — stay not thy lance. Sir 
 Knight ! " 
 
 Alas ! this shining knight of the silver moon, who overcame 
 the bravest and noblest of men, was a disguised barber ! ^ 
 ***** 
 
 Eight years have passed since I wrote for the Fourth Part of 
 the Reisebilder this description of the impressions produced on 
 me at a far more distant date by the perusal of Don Quixote, 
 Heavens ! How the years fly by ! It seems as if it were but 
 yesterday that I finished the book in the Avenue of Sighs in 
 the Palace Gardens at Diisseldorf, as if my heart were still 
 thrilling with admiration for the deeds and sorrows of the 
 worthy knight. Has my heart remained constant for all these 
 intervening years, or has it, after strange wanderings, returned 
 to the early feelings of childhood ? The latter supposition is 
 the more likely, for I remember in the course of each lustrum 
 of my life to have read Dofi Quixote with distinct alterna- 
 tions of feeling. In the exuberance of youthful vigour, when 
 with rash hand I plucked at the roses of life and clomb the 
 highest peaks to be nearer to the sun, and o' nights dreamed 
 of nothing but eagles and chaste maidens, i)on Quixote 
 seemed to me a dry and heavy book, and if it came in my way 
 I petulantly thrust it aside. Later on, when I had grown to 
 man's estate, I became somewhat more reconciled to Dulcinea's 
 luckless champion, and went so far as to laugh at him. " The 
 fellow 's a fool," I said; and yet, 'tis strange but true, in all my 
 life wanderings I have been haunted by the shadows of the 
 gaunt knight and his fat squire, especially when I came to some 
 critical parting of the ways. Thus I recollect on a certain 
 journey to France awaking one morning in the post-chaise and 
 observing in the early mist two well-known figures riding beside 
 me, and the one on the right side was Don Quixote de la 
 Mancha upon his abstract Rosinante, the other on the left was 
 
 See p. 254.
 
 312 Don Quixote. 
 
 Sancho Panza on his positive donkey. We had just reached 
 the French frontier. The noble knight of La Mancha bowed 
 his head reverently before the tricolour which waved its 
 greetings to us from the high boundary post, while Sancho 
 saluted with a somewhat colder nod the first French gendarmes 
 who made their appearance. At last, however, my two friends 
 spurred ahead and were lost to sight, but I still caught now 
 and again Rosinante's fiery neigh and the ass's answering 
 bray. 
 
 At that time I held that the humour of Don Quixotism 
 consisted in the vain endeavour of the noble knight to bring 
 back to life a past that was long dead and buried, and the 
 consequent abrasions that his poor body and in particular his 
 back suffered by contact with hard facts. Alas ! I have since 
 discovered that it is a no less thankless folly to attempt pre- 
 maturely to bring the future into the present, and that the 
 assailant of the powerful interests of the day has but a sorry 
 jade, frail arms, and a puny frame ! At modern Quixotism, as 
 of old, the man of sense shakes his wise head. And yet 
 Dulcinea del Toboso is the fairest woman in the world ; and, 
 although I lie helpless in the dust, I will never eat my words. 
 There is no help for it. Despatch me with your lances, ye 
 silver knights of the moon, ye disguised barbers' 'prentices ! 
 What was the fundamental idea that the great author sought 
 to embody in his great book ? Was his sole purpose to destroy 
 those romances of chivalry which were so much the rage with 
 Spanish readers of the time that neither comminations of the 
 Church nor State edicts were able to cope with them ? Or was 
 it his intention to cast ridicule on exhibitions of human 
 enthusiasm in general and on military heroism in particular ? 
 Ostensibly his end and aim was to WTite a satire on the 
 romances of knight-errantry, and so, by showing up their 
 absurdities and turning the laugh against them, effectually to 
 secure their overthrow. And he was a brilliant success. What 
 neither the bench of bishops with their exhortations nor the 
 bench of judges with their threats could bring about, a poor 
 writer accomplished with his pen. The blow that he dealt to 
 the old romances was so fatal that soon after the publication of
 
 Appendix. 313 
 
 Don Quixote the taste for that class of literature died out in 
 Spain and no more books of the kind were printed. But the 
 pen of genius is always greater than the writer himself, and its 
 influence extends beyond his immediate purpose. Without 
 any clear consciousness of what he was doing, Cervantes has 
 written the greatest of all satires against human enthusiasm. 
 This assuredly cannot have been suspected by the hero who 
 spent the greater part of his life in knightly encounters, and 
 who, even in veteran old age, was wont to congratulate himself 
 on having taken part in the battle of Lepanto, although this 
 glory cost him his left hand. 
 
 Concerning the person and circumstances of the author of 
 Don Quixote, his biographer has little to relate ; nor do we 
 lose much by the lack of such particulars, gathered, as they 
 usually are, from the female gossips of the neighbourhood. 
 They see but the husk ; we see the man — his undistorted 
 form and feature. 
 
 He was a handsome, powerful man, Don Miguel Cervantes 
 de Saavedra, — a high forehead and a large heart, eyes with a 
 strange magic in them ; just as some men possess the power of 
 seeing through the earth and viewing its buried treasures or 
 corpses, so the great poet's eye pierced through the hearts of 
 men, and saw what was hidden therein. To the good his 
 glance was a ray of sunlight warming and lighting up their 
 whole being ; to the bad his glance was a sword piercing the 
 marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. 
 His glance penetrated to the very soul and questioned it, and, 
 if it refused to answer, put it to the torture, and the soul lay 
 bleeding on the rack, while its fleshly covering, it may be, 
 assumed an air of patronising superiority. Can we marvel, then, 
 that many were offended at him, and gave him scant aid on 
 his earthly pilgrimage? Thus he never attained rank or 
 affluence, and from all his weary wandering he brought home 
 no pearls, but only empty shells. They tell us that he had no 
 notion of the value of money, but I warrant that he appreciated 
 its full value when he found himself penniless. Yet, never 
 did he prize it so highly as his honour. He had debts, and 
 among his works there is a charter which Apollo is supposed 
 VOL. I. 2 S
 
 314 Don Quixote. 
 
 to grant to poets, whereof the first paragraph runs as follows : — 
 " If a poet declares he has no money, his simple affirmation 
 shall suffice, and no oath shall be demanded of him." He 
 loved music, flowers, and women, but even in his love for the 
 sex he often was ill bested, especially in his youth. Was he 
 crushed by the consciousness of future greatness when smarting 
 from the prickles of saucy young rosebuds ? Once on a bright 
 summer afternoon, in his sallet days, he was walking by the 
 banks of the Tagus, in the company of a fair coquette of sixteen 
 summers, who kept mocking at his tender speeches. The sun 
 had not yet set, it still glowed in all its golden splendour, but 
 already high up in heaven was a tiny faint moon like a white 
 cloudlet. " Seest thou," said the young poet to his lady love, 
 *' Seest thou up yonder that small pale disk ? The river that 
 flows by us seems to receive its feeble image on its proud 
 tide solely out of charity, and at times the ruffled waves cast 
 it mockingly ashore. But wait till the old day comes to 
 die ; as soon as darkness comes on, yonder pale disk will wax 
 brighter and brighter, the whole river will be flooded by its 
 light, and these insolent and despiteful billows will then be 
 ravished at the sight of the bright orb, and rise with rapture to 
 meet it." 
 
 It is in the works of poets that we must seek their history, 
 for there are to be found their most private confessions. 
 Throughout Cervantes' works, and in his plays even more 
 than in Don Quixote, we discover what I have already 
 mentioned, that he was an old soldier. In fact, the Roman 
 proverb, "Life is a long battle," finds in his, case a double 
 application. He served as a common soldier in most of those 
 wild games of war which Philip II. played in every part of the 
 world, for the honour of God and his own amusement. The 
 fact that Cervantes devoted the whole of his youth to the 
 greatest champion of Catholicism, that he fought in person for 
 the Catholic cause, is a strong presumption in favour of the 
 view that he had those interests at heart, and a refutation of 
 the widespread theory that it was only through fear of the 
 Inquisition that he was withheld from ventilating in Don Quixote 
 the Protestant ideas that were then in the air. No; Cervantes
 
 Appendix. 315 
 
 was a true son of the Roman Catholic Church ; not only did 
 he bleed for her literally in knightly encounters beneath her 
 sacred standard, but his whole soul suffered in her cause 
 a cruel martyrdom during his long captivity among the 
 Infidels. 
 
 For most of the details of Cervantes' life in Algiers we are 
 indebted to accident. The history of his captivity shows that 
 Cervantes was great as a hero no less than as a writer, and gives 
 the lie direct to that polished man of the world who, by his 
 false warblings, persuaded Augustus, and convinces all German 
 pedants that he was a poet, and that poets are cowards. ^ No; 
 the true poet is also a true hero, and carries in his breast that 
 patience which, according to the Spanish proverb, is a second 
 courage. There is in all history no grander spectacle than 
 that of the noble Castilian who serves the Uey of Algiers as 
 a slave, constantly meditating his release, indefatigably laying 
 his bold plans, calmly facing all dangers, and, when his scheme 
 miscarries, preferring to suffer death and torture rather than 
 betray his accomplices. His bloodthirsty keeper is disarmed 
 by such magnanimity and virtue ; the tiger spares the caged 
 lion, and cowers before the terrible one-armed cripple whom 
 he might despatch with a single word. " The one-armed " is 
 the name by which Cervantes is known through all Algiers, 
 and the Dey confesses that he cannot sleep safely, or be sure 
 of the safety of his city, his army, and his slaves, unless he 
 knows that the one-handed Spaniard is in good custody. 
 
 I have already observed that Cervantes was to the end 
 a common soldier, but having in this subordinate position 
 distinguished himself, and even attracted the notice of his 
 great commander, Don John of Austria, he received, on his 
 return from Italy to Spain, a highly-flattering despatch, 
 addressed to the king, in which his claims to promotion were 
 most strongly urged. The Algerian pirates who captured him 
 on the Mediterranean, seeing this letter, took him for a person 
 of the highest rank, and accordingly demanded so enormous 
 
 ' Horace's confession, " Tecum Philippos, et celerem fugam, 
 Sensi, relicta non bene parmula."
 
 3i6 Don Quixote. 
 
 a ransom that his family, in spite of all their efforts and 
 sacrifices, were unable to raise it, whereby the wretched poet's 
 captivity was aggravated and prolonged. Thus the recognition 
 of his eminence proved for him a fresh source of misfortune, 
 and thus to the end of his days he vvas flouted by that savage 
 dame, the goddess Fortune, who can never pardon genius for 
 attaining to glory and renown without her patronage. 
 
 But are the misfortunes of genius always the mere result of 
 blind chance, or are they rather the necessary consequences of 
 his mind, his nature, and his surroundings? Is it he who tilts 
 at the world of realities, or does the world of hard facts engage 
 in an unequal contest with the man of high ideals ? 
 
 Society is a democracy. When an individual towers above 
 his fellows, the masses try to thrust him back by ridicule and 
 abuse. They will have no one better or cleverer than the rest. 
 If any one by the irrepressible force of genius does succeed in 
 raising himself above humdrum mediocrity, he is straightway 
 ostracised and persecuted with ruthless mockery and slander, 
 till he is compelled to withdraw into the privacy of his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 Yes, society is essentially republican. It hates all sovereignty, 
 whether intellectual or material. And the latter kind of 
 sovereignty supports the former more than is generally supposed. 
 We ourselves were convinced of this fact soon after the July 
 Revolution, when the spirit of republicanism manifested itself 
 in all social relations. The laurels of a great poet were no less 
 odious to our republicans than the purple of a great king. 
 Even intellectual inequalities they determined to do away 
 with, and considering all ideas that originated on the territory 
 of the State as common property, they were logically bound 
 to decree an equality of style. As a matter of fact, a good 
 style was decried as aristocratic, and we frequently heard it 
 maintained that " the true democrat will write like the masses 
 — an honest, straightforward, matter-of-fact style." Most 
 members of the advanced party found no difficulty in following 
 this precept, but it is not given to all of us to write badly, 
 especially if one has formed a habit of writing well, and in such 
 a case there was a huaand cry, "The fellow is an aristocrat,
 
 Appendix. 317 
 
 a stickler for form, a friend of art, an enemy of the people." 
 I have no doubt they were sincere in their denunciations, 
 like St. Jerome, who counted his good style a sin, and scourged 
 himself soundly by way of penance. 
 
 There is in Don Quixote no trace of anti-Catholicism ; 
 neither is there any of anti-absolutism, and the critics who 
 detect such are clearly mistaken. Cervantes was bred in a 
 school which implicitly believed in unquestioning obedience 
 to a suzerain, and even put this tenet into poetry. Their 
 suzerain was the King of Spain, and that at a time when the 
 brightness of his majesty covered the whole earth. The 
 common soldier basked in the beams of that majesty, and 
 willingly sacrificed his individual freedom, because at the same 
 time he was satisfying the national pride of the Castilian. 
 
 The political greatness of Spain at that period could not 
 help exalting and enlarging the genius of her writers. What 
 was said of the empire of Charles V., — that the sun never set 
 on it, — applied no less to the genius of a Spanish poet. The 
 wild wars against the Moors were ended, and as, after a 
 thunderstorm, the flowers are most fragrant, so poetry puts 
 forth its fairest blossom after a civil war. We observe the 
 same phenomenon in England at the time of Elizabeth, when 
 there arose a contemporaneous school of poets, which presents 
 many striking parallels with the poets of Spain. As in England 
 Shakspeare, so in Spain Cervantes, was the head and front of 
 the school. 
 
 Like the Spanish poets under the three Philips, the English 
 poets under Elizabeth have all a certain family likeness, and 
 can lay no claim to originality in our sense of the word. They 
 differ from their contemporaries not by any particular mode of 
 thought and feehng or any particular style, but only by the 
 peculiar depth, intensity, tenderness, and force that they mani- 
 fest. Their works are more interfused and inspired by the 
 divine air of poetry. 
 
 But both poets are not only the consummate flower of their 
 own age, but also the germ of succeeding ages. As Shak- 
 speare, by the influence of his works, more especially on 
 Germany and on the France of to-day, may be justly regarded
 
 3i8 Don Quixote. 
 
 as the founder of the modern drama, so Cervantes deserves to 
 be honoured as the founder of the modern novel. On this 
 topic I may be allowed to make a few passing observations. 
 The old-fashioned novel, the so-called romance of chivalr}\ has 
 its origin in Mediaeval poetry ; it was at first a prose rendering 
 of those epic poems whose heroes belonged to the mythic cycle 
 of Charlemagne and the Holy Grail. The subject-matter 
 was invariably chivalrous adventure. It was the romance of 
 the aristocracy, and the dramatis personcz were either fabulous 
 monsters of fancy or knights with golden spurs ; of common 
 folk there was never a trace. These romances of chivalry, 
 which were then degenerating into grotesque absurdities, 
 Cervantes overthrew with his Don Quixote. But in writing a 
 satire which was the death-warrant of the earlier romances 
 he furnished at the same time the prototype of a new 
 departure in that branch of creative literature which we call the 
 modem novel. This is ever the way with great poets ; they 
 erect something new while subverting the old ; their work when 
 most destructive is always at the same time constructive. 
 Cervantes founded the modem novel by introducing into the 
 romance of chivalry a faithful portraiture of the lower classes, 
 and scenes from everyday life. This peiichant for descriptions 
 of the life and character of the vulgar herd, of rogues and 
 beggars, is not peculiar to Cervantes, but common to all his 
 literary contemporaries, and noticeable not only in the poets 
 but also in the painters of the time. A Murillo who steals 
 heaven's own hues to paint his lovely Madonnas withal, 
 portrayed no less lovingly the dirtiest denizens of this 
 earth. Possibly it was enthusiasm for art itself that made this 
 noble Spaniard find the same satisfaction in the faithful copy 
 of a beggar-boy catching lice as in the representation of the 
 ever-blessed Virgin ; or was it the charm of contrast which 
 drove the highest nobility, — a spruce courtier like Quirado or 
 a powerful minister like Mendoza, — to write their novels full 
 of vagabonds and jail-birds ? Doubtless they were glad enough 
 to escape from the monotony of high society and transport 
 themselves in imagination into a sphere of life as far removed 
 as possible from their own, just as in the case of many
 
 Appendix. 319 
 
 German writers we may discover a similar tendency, which 
 impels them to fill their novels with descriptions of high 
 life, and always make their hero a count or a baron. In 
 Cervantes we never find this one-sided tendency and love of 
 representing the low and vulgar apart and by itself. He' 
 always intermingles the ideal with vulgar reality; but one 
 serves as light and shade to the other, and the aristocratic 
 element is as marked a feature as the plebeian. 
 
 This aristocratic, chivalrous, high-born element is, however, 
 certainly missing in the English romance writers, who were the 
 first to imitate Cervantes, and who, to the present day, con- 
 tinue to regard him as their model. A prosaic generation, 
 these English novelists, since the sceptre passed from Richard- 
 son ; the prudish spirit of their times is shocked even by a 
 racy description of the life of the masses, and it is across the 
 Channel that those bourgeois novels have originated which 
 reflect the petty prosaic life of the middle classes. The 
 English public were flooded with this washy literature down to 
 quite recent times, when the great Scotchman brought about a 
 revolution, — or, to be accurate, a restoration, — in novel 
 writing. For as Cervantes introduced the democratic element 
 into the novel, which, at that time, was dominated by the one- 
 sided spirit of chivalry, so Walter Scott reintroduced the 
 aristocratic element when it had been wholly supplanted by 
 prosaic Philistinism. Thus, by an opposite process, Scott 
 restored to the novel that exquisite balance and symmetry 
 which we admire in Cervantes' Don Quixote. 
 
 I have called Walter Scott the second greatest English poet, 
 and his novels masterpieces ; but it is only to his genius that I 
 intended to refer in pronouncing this encomium. His novels 
 I cannot place on the same level as the great romance of 
 Cervantes, who in epic genius is vastly Scott's superior. 
 Cervantes, as I have already remarked, was a Catholic poet, 
 and it is, perhaps, to this circumstance that he owes the epic 
 grandeur and calm serenity of soul which overarches his 
 bizarre creations like a crystal dome. He has, besides, that
 
 320 Don Quixote. 
 
 calm dignity which characterises the Spaniard. The 
 Spaniards can justly boast of having produced the best 
 novel in the world, as the English may, with equal justice, 
 claim to have attained the highest excellence in the drama. 
 
 Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Goethe form the triumvirate of 
 poets who, in the three provinces of poetry, — the epic, the 
 drama, and the lyric, — have attained the highest excellence. 
 
 In ascribing the highest achievements in drama, romance, 
 and lyric poetry to this great triumvirate, I am far from any 
 wish to depreciate the poetical merits of other great writers. 
 Nothing is more foolish than the question, "Which of the 
 poets is the greater ? " Flame is flame, and we cannot 
 determine its weight in pounds and ounces. Only a critic 
 with the prosaic mind of a cheesemonger would think of 
 taking his scales to weigh genius. Not only the ancients, but 
 several of the moderns also, have produced works in which the 
 pure flame of poetry burns as brightly as in the masterpieces 
 of Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Goethe. And yet these names 
 are linked together by some mystic bond. A kindred spirit 
 shines forth from their creations ; an immortal tenderness 
 inspires them, like the breath of Heaven ; and modesty 
 blooms there as in her native soil. Goethe reminds us 
 constantly not only of Shakspeare, but also of Cervantes, 
 whom he resembles even in the minutiae of his style, — in his 
 delightful prose, which is dashed with a touch of the most 
 delicate and innocent irony. Cervantes and Goethe resemble 
 one another even in their defects, — in the prolixity of their 
 style, in those long periods in which they occasionally indulge, 
 suggesting to us a train of royal equipages. Now and again, 
 there is but a single thought seated in one of those long-drawn 
 periods, which rolls with solemn pomp along, like a lumbering 
 gilded court coach, with its six plumed horses. But this 
 single thought is always something great and noble, if not 
 royalty itself.
 
 Appendix. 321 
 
 My limits have permitted me only to indicate very briefly 
 my judgment on the genius of Cervantes and the influence of 
 his book. On the positive value of his novel I can still less 
 allow myself to dilate, as it would invite questions involving 
 a disquisition on the principles of esthetics. I can only here 
 venture on a few general remarks concerning the form of the 
 romance and the two central figures. The form is that which 
 from the first has been selected as the most appropriate for 
 this class of writings, — a description of travel. Here I need 
 only cite the first romance of antiquity, the golden ass of 
 Apuleius. Later writers sought to relieve the monotony of 
 this form by what we now term the plot of a novel. But, 
 through poverty of invention, most novelists of to-day have 
 borrowed their plots from one another, or at best used the 
 plots of their predecessors, with slight modifications, so that, 
 in consequence of the constant repetition of the same 
 characters, situations, and complications, novel reading at last 
 began to pall upon the public. To escape from the ennui of 
 threadbare plots, they betook themselves for a time to the old- 
 fashioned primitive form of description of travel. This form, 
 however, is certain again to be discarded as soon as an original 
 writer arises with some fresh and unhackneyed form of novel. 
 In literature, as in politics, the law of action and reaction is 
 constant. 
 
 To proceed to the two leading figures who call each other 
 Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who are always parodying, 
 and yet so marvellously supplementing and setting off each 
 other that the pair really form the one and indivisible hero of 
 the novel, — these two give evidence of the author's taste, and 
 in an equal degree of his profundity. While other novelists, 
 who make their hero set out on his adventures as a solitary 
 traveller, are reduced to monologues, letters, or diaries, in 
 order to communicate to the reader his thoughts and senti- 
 ments, Cervantes is always able to introduce a natural 
 dialogue ; in which the one speaker is always parodying the 
 other^ and so bringing out more clearly the author's purpose. 
 We have had endless imitations of this dual hero that lends 
 such an artistic naturalness to Cervantes' romance, and 
 VOL. I. 2 T
 
 322 Don Quixote. 
 
 whence, as from a single germ, the whole novel, with all its 
 luxuriant foliage, scented blossoms, gleaming fruits, apes and 
 birds of paradise that swing from its branches, has grown and 
 spread like some giant Indian tree. 
 
 But it would be unjust to set all this down to slavish imita- 
 tion. It was an obvious desire to introduce two such characters 
 as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one of whom, the practical 
 nature, seeks adventures, while the other, half from dog-hke 
 devotion, half from selfishness, follows after through rain and 
 sunshine, and we must have often met such a pair in real life. 
 It is true that in order to recognise the pair everywhere, in art 
 as well as in life, under the most various disguises, we must 
 fix our eye on essential and inward characteristics, not on the 
 accidental and outward appearance. I might quote endless 
 instances. Are not Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to be 
 found equally in Don Juan and Leporello, as in the persons of 
 Lord Byron and his servant Fletcher ? Do we not recognise 
 the same two types and their reciprocal relations under the 
 shape of the Knight of Valdsee and his Caspar Larifari, and 
 equally under the shape of many an author and his publisher ? 
 The publisher clearly sees his author's follies, but faithfully 
 accompanies him in all his ideal aberrations for the sake of 
 the hard coin that they bring him. So our good pubhsher, 
 Sancho, though he often gets only cuffs and kicks over the 
 business, still manages to keep fat, while the noble knight 
 grows leaner every day. 
 
 Not only among men, but also among women, I have often 
 recognised a typical Don Quixote and his squire. In particular 
 I remember a beautiful English girl, a romantic blonde, who 
 had run away from a London boarding-school in the company 
 of a lady friend, and was roaming about the world in search ot 
 a true-hearted lover, like the one her dreams had pictured on 
 balmy moonlight nights. Her friend, a stumpy brunette, 
 hoped to turn the opportunity to account, and gain, if not an 
 ideal paragon, at least a presentable husband. I see her still 
 with her dreamy blue eyes and slight figure, standing on the 
 shore at Brighton and gazing far away across the waves with 
 longing looks towards the French coast. Her friend all the
 
 Appendix. 323 
 
 while was cracking nuts, munching the kernels and throwing 
 the shells into the sea. 
 
 Yet neither in the masterpieces of other artists, nor in nature 
 itself, do we find these two types and their mutual relations to 
 one another so accurately portrayed as in Cervantes. Every 
 trait in the character and appearance of the one has its counter- 
 part in some contrasted and yet cognate feature of the other. 
 Each particular has its significance as part of an elaborate 
 parody. Even between Rosinante and Sancho's ass there is 
 the same ironical parallelism as between the knight and his 
 squire, and even the two beasts symbolise, and, after their 
 fashion, support, the same ideas. And as in their mental 
 complexion, so also in their manner of speech, the master and 
 servant present a most remarkable contrast. And while on 
 this head, I cannot help glancing at the difficulties which beset 
 the translator who has tried to render in German the homely, 
 ragged, low-born speech of good Sancho. His rude, and very 
 often unsavoury, saws and proverbs remind us exactly of King 
 Solomon's fool, Markulf, who, just like Sancho, expresses the 
 practical wisdom of the vulgar in brief sayings, which serve as 
 a set-off to sentimental idealism. On the other hand, Don 
 Quixote's is the polished language of the higher ranks, and 
 even in the gra?idezza of his well-rounded periods he is an 
 impersonation of the noble hidalgo. At times his style is too 
 prolix, and the knight's language resembles a haughty court 
 dame in a flounced and furbelowed silk dress with a long 
 rustling train. But the Graces, disguised as pages, bear up 
 the tail of her train with a roguish smile, and the long period 
 ends with some graceful turn of wit. 
 
 To sum up in a sentence the respective characters of Don 
 Quixote's and Sancho Panza's language, we may say that when 
 the knight speaks he seems always mounted on his high horse ; 
 when the squire talks he seems always seated on his lowly 
 ass.
 
 INDEX 
 
 OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS IN THE INTRODUCTION AND 
 THE LIFE OF CERVANTES. 
 
 Abbreviations : — C. stands for Cervantes ; D. Q. for Don Quixote ; 
 n. refers to the note on the page quoted. The titles of all the works of 
 Cervantes and all books quoted are in Italics. 
 
 Abderrahman, a renegade in Al- 
 giers, 87 
 
 Academy, Spanish, adopts Kent's 
 portrait of C, 120 
 
 claims to have discovered the 
 
 original, 121 
 
 their text of D. Q., 17 
 
 Acquaviva, Cardinal, mission to 
 Madrid, 47 
 
 Cervantes takes service with 
 
 him, 47 
 
 death of (1574), 48 n. 
 
 Adjunta al Pamaso, account of, 202 
 Aguila, Conde del, his supposed 
 
 true portrait of C, 121 
 Alarcon, Ruizde, the dramatist, 192 
 
 conjectured to be Avellaneda, 
 
 217-18 
 
 his opinion of Lope de Vega, 
 
 220 
 
 Alcala de Henares, birthplace of 
 
 C, 35 
 
 account of, 36, 37 
 
 Alcazar de San Juan, reputed 
 
 birthplace of C, 38 
 
 entry in parish register of, 39 
 
 Alcazarquivir, battle of, 91 and n. 
 Aleman, Mateo, author of Guzmati 
 
 de Alfarache, 209 and n. 
 Alfonso Nuno, 33 
 
 Algerine experiences, frequently 
 referred to by C. in his works, 
 97 n. 
 
 pirates, treatment of their 
 
 slaves, 80 
 
 Algiers, account of kingdom of, 78 
 
 piracy in, 79 
 
 Algunos Datos nuevos para ilustrar 
 
 el Qm'Jote, 193 n. 
 Aliaga, Luis de, conjectured to be 
 
 Avellaneda, 216 
 
 account of, 217 n. 
 
 supposed allusions to in D. Q., 
 
 217 
 Alliance, Christian, against the 
 
 Turks, S3 
 Allies, second expedition of, against 
 
 Turks, 67, et seq. 
 
 ineffectual campaign, 68, ei seq. 
 
 Aluch Ah, or Uluch, Ouloudg 
 
 Ali, Lochiali, Luchali, 58 and n. 
 out-manoeuvres Doria at Le- 
 
 panto, 62 
 character of, 58 
 
 Capitan Pasha in second 
 
 naval campaign, 68 
 
 mentioned in Spanish ballads, 
 
 137 n. 
 Amadis of Gaul, origin of, 1 73 
 influence of, 174 and n.
 
 326 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Amadis of Gaul, character of, 175 
 
 C.'s opinion of, 175 
 
 progeny of, 1 76 
 
 Aniante Liberal^ El, novel by C, 
 97 n., 198 
 
 Amaranta, La, comedy by C, 138 
 
 Aniiguo Madrid, El, quoted, 43 «. 
 
 Antonio, Dom, claimant of Throne 
 of Portugal, 108, 109 n. 
 
 Antonio, Don Nicolas, theory con- 
 cerning C.'s birthplace, 38 
 
 Arco, Alonzo del, Spanish painter, 
 122 
 
 Argamasilla, C. imprisoned in, 
 
 153 
 
 account of, 154-5-6 
 
 picture in Church of, 156-7 
 
 Argel, Topogj-afia de, by Haedo, 
 
 37, 76 n. 
 Argensola, Bartolome Leonardo de, 
 
 185, 1S6 n., 195, 201 n. 
 
 thought to be Avellaneda, 
 
 217 n. 
 
 Argensola, Lupeixio de, 185, 186 
 
 ».. 195 
 Arguello, commander at Lepanto, 
 
 57 
 Aribau, quoted on character of C, 
 
 243 and n. 
 Arms of Cervantes, 31 n. 
 Armada, Invincible, 148 
 Amaut Mami, C. captured by, 77 
 Arte de la Pintura, by Pacheco, 
 
 116 «. 
 Ascendeiicia Ilustre, the, by Mendez 
 
 de Silva, 37 n. 
 Asensio y Toledo, Don, discovers 
 
 a clue to a portrait of C, 1 24, 
 
 126 71, 
 
 his collection of portraits by 
 
 Pacheco, 1 16 7?.; quoted, 144 w., 
 166 n. 
 
 Astudillo, Don Diego de, letter to, 
 ascribed to C, 192 
 
 Avellaneda, Licentiate Alonso Fer- 
 nandez de, author of false 2nd 
 Part of D. Q., 207 
 
 Avellaneda taunts C. with being 
 maimed, 66 
 
 ill-natured allusion to C.'s 
 
 high descent, 35 
 
 supposed to be Blanco de 
 
 Paz, 95 n. 
 
 — — a Dominican, 215 
 
 conjectures of Mayans y Sis- 
 car (215), Cean Bermudez (216), 
 Adolfo de Castro and Asensio, 
 (216) as to who he was 
 
 — — his false 2nd Part an injuiy to 
 
 C, 208, 212 
 •■ evidences of spiteful intention, 
 
 213-14 
 further conjectures as to who 
 
 he was, 215, 218-27 
 
 supposed to have been Lope 
 
 de Vega, 218 
 
 Avendafio cuts down number ot 
 acts in plays to three, 139 
 
 Aviles, Don Vicente, possessor of 
 Pacheco's sketches, 116 «. 
 
 Azores, expeditions to, 109 ; C.'s 
 part in, 109 
 
 Ballads of Cervantes, 137 n. 
 Bafios de Argel, Los, play by C, 
 
 80 )i. 
 Barbarigo, Agostino, Venetian 
 
 Admiral, 57 
 Baret, M., on Amadis of Gaul, 
 
 173 and n. 
 Baretti, his enmity to Bowie, 23 
 
 and n. 
 Batalla Naval, La, Comedy by C, 
 
 138 
 Bazan, Don Alvarode, Marquess 01 
 
 Santa Cruz, 109 
 Bejar, Duke of, dedication of D. Q. 
 
 to, 162-63 
 
 Story of C. and, 163 
 
 Bernardo, El, C. proposes to write 
 
 a book of that name, 237 
 Beliaizis of Greece, Charles V.'s 
 
 fondness for, 177 
 Biblioteca Colombina at Seville, 192
 
 Index. 
 
 IV 
 
 Birthplace of C, controversy con- 
 cerning, 37-41 
 Blanco de Paz, enemy of C. , 95 
 
 informs against C, 88 
 
 conjectured to be Avellaneda, 
 
 216 
 Blomberg, Barbara, supposed 
 mother of Don Juan of Austria, 
 
 S4«- 
 Borbon, Infante Don Sebastian 
 
 Gabriel de, helps to print an 
 
 edition of Don Quixote^ 156 n. 
 Bosque Amoroso, El, comedy by C, 
 
 138 
 Boulay, de, M., story of, concerning 
 
 C. and the Inquisition, 205 «. 
 Bowie, editor of U. Q., account of, 
 
 22, 23 
 Buckle's History of Civilisation 
 
 quoted, 106 
 Burial of C, 238-39 
 Burial of Lope de Vega, contrasted 
 
 with that of C, 238 
 Burke quoted on Chivalry, 171 
 Biiscapic', El, 166 n. 
 Byron quoted, iii ;/., 169 n. 
 
 Caballero Asisio, El, 177 
 Cahallero Celestial, El, 177 
 Caballero, Fermin, on C. as a geo- 
 grapher, 245 n. 
 Caballero Peregrino, El, 177 
 Cahallero Venturoso, El, by Val- 
 
 ladares, 222 n. 
 Caballerismo, Spanish, 171 
 Cabeza de Vaca, Juan de, one of 
 
 C.'s sureties, 145 
 Cabrera, Don Ramon, his MSS. 
 said to have been used by 
 Clemencin, n. 24 
 Cajes, Eugenio, a Spanish painter, 
 
 122 
 Calderon, Juan, commentator, n. 
 
 25 
 Calle del Duque de Alba, C.'s 
 residence in the, 239 n. 
 
 Calle de Francos, now Calle de 
 Cervantes, 239 n. 
 
 Calle de Leon, C.'s residence in 
 the, 239 «. 
 
 Calle de la Magdalena, C.'s resi- 
 dence in the, 239 n. 
 
 Cano, Melchior, 176 
 
 Cantaranas, Calle de, C.'s bones re- 
 moved to the, 240 and «. 
 
 Canto, a competitor for employ- 
 ment with C, 153 «. 
 
 Canto de Caliope, in La Galatea, 129 
 
 Caporali, Cesare, 200 
 
 Caracciolo, author of Commen- 
 taries, 62 n. 
 
 Carducho, Vincenzo, Spanish 
 painter, 122 
 
 Caro, Rodrigo, author, 116 n. 
 
 Carteret, Lord, his edition of D. Q., 
 118 
 
 Casamiento En^aHoso, El, novel by 
 C, 196 
 
 Castaiieda, Gabriel de, fellow-cap- 
 tive with C, 60 n. 
 
 bears letters home from C, 
 
 81 and n. 
 
 Castro, Adolfo de, author of Et. 
 
 BuscapiJ, 166, 216 
 Catalina, Doiia, wife of C, 130 
 joint-executrix of C.'s will, 
 
 239 
 
 Cean Bermudez discovers docu- 
 ments in Se\'ille, 40 
 
 Cevallos, Geronimo de, author of 
 Discurso de los Razones, 106 n. 
 
 Cells, Ruben de, competitor for 
 office with C, 153 n. 
 
 Cervantes, Andrea, sister of C, 92 
 
 Cervantes, Gonzalo de, 34 
 
 Cervantes, Juan de, grandfather of 
 
 C, 33, 34 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, birth of, 
 
 31 
 
 parentage of, 32 
 
 name of, 32 «. 
 
 youth and life at Alcala, 41 
 
 early training, 43
 
 328 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, studies at 
 Alcala probably, not Salamanca, 
 44 and n. 
 
 love of poetry, 45 
 
 journeys into Italywith Card. 
 
 Acquaviva, 48 
 
 enlists as a soldier, 49 
 
 at Naples (1570), 54 
 
 at the Battle of Lepanto, 59 
 
 • his conduct in the battle, 60 
 
 is wounded, 61 
 
 invalided at Messina, 64 
 
 character of his wound, and 
 
 how far maimed, 65 and n. 
 
 rewards for services at Le- 
 panto, 66 
 
 rejoins regiment of Figueroa 
 
 (1572), 67 
 
 takes part in second expedi- 
 tion against Turks, 69 ; at Naples 
 
 (1573), 69 _ 
 
 in garrison in Sardinia 
 
 (1573-4), 71 
 
 obtains leave of absence, 74 
 
 capture by Algerine pirates, 
 
 77 
 
 slave to Deli Mami, 77 
 
 plots to escape, 80 
 
 his family try to ransom him, 
 
 81 
 
 attempts to rescue a body of 
 
 captives, 82 
 
 fails and is punished, Z}, 
 
 inspires dread in Hassan 
 
 Pasha, 83-85 
 
 becomes slave to Hassan, 86 
 
 writes rhymed epistle to 
 
 Mateo Vasquez, 86 
 
 • plots a third time to escape, 87 
 
 imprisoned for attempts to 
 
 escape, 88 
 mystery about his treatment, 
 
 efforts to raise sufficient 
 
 ransom, 92 
 
 investigation held before 
 
 Father Juan Gil after release, 95 
 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, testimony of 
 his fellow-captives, 96 
 
 returns to Spain, 97, 98 
 
 resumes soldiering, 108 
 
 ser\'es in expedition to 
 
 Azores, 109 
 
 abandons military career. III 
 
 life in Portugal, 1 1 1 and n. 
 
 writes his first acknowledged 
 
 work, La Galatea, 112 
 
 his natural daughter Isabel, 
 
 112 and 11. 
 
 his marriage, 113, 130 
 
 description of the supposed 
 
 portrait by Pacheco, 124 
 
 hesitation in his speech, 127 
 
 and «., alluded to by Avellaneda, 
 127 and «., and by C. in Viaje 
 del Parnaso, 1 27 n. 
 
 life in Madrid, 133, et seq. 
 
 adopts literature, 133 
 
 his poverty ; struggle for exis- 
 tence as a man of letters, 134 
 et seq. 
 
 writes an infinite number of 
 
 ballads, 136 
 
 wi'ites plays, 137 et seq. 
 
 quits play-writing, his reasons, 
 
 143 
 
 removes to Seville, 145 
 
 appointed Commissary, 145 
 
 applies for employment in the 
 
 Indies, 146 
 
 supposed imprudence or un- 
 
 thrift, 147 and n. 
 
 a tax-collector, 148 
 
 gets a prize for best quatrain 
 
 in praise of S. Jacinto, 148 
 
 writes satirical sonnet on 
 
 occasion of Howard's expedition 
 to Cadiz, 149 
 
 satirical sonnet on monument 
 
 of Phihp II., 150-51 
 
 imprisoned for Freire's debt, 
 
 said to have mixed with men 
 
 of letters in Seville, 151
 
 Index. 
 
 329 
 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, second im- 
 prisonment, 152 
 
 extreme poverty in La 
 
 Mancha, 152 
 
 imprisonment at Argamasilla, 
 
 154 
 
 begins to write D. Q., 159 
 
 and n. 
 
 removes to Valladolid, 160 
 
 completes 1st Part of D. Q., 
 
 161 
 
 life at Valladolid, 185 
 
 affair of murder of Don Caspar 
 
 de Ezpleta, 190 
 
 household of, and mode of 
 
 life at Valladolid, 191 
 
 story of a Cervantes in a 
 
 gambling-house, 191 
 
 removes to Madrid, with the 
 
 Court (1606), 192 
 
 visit to Seville (probable), 192 
 
 enters congregation of the 
 
 Oratory of Knights of Grace, 196 
 
 publishes his Novelas Exetitp- 
 
 lares, 196 
 
 publisheshis ViakdelParnaso, 
 
 200 
 
 publishes his Comedies and 
 
 Interludes, 203 
 
 writing second part of D. Q., 
 
 (1613), 206 
 
 indignation of, against Avel- 
 
 laneda, 214-24 
 
 effect of appearance of false 
 
 2nd Part on, 227 
 
 makes religious profession, 237 
 
 dies (April, 1616), 237 ; nomi- 
 nally same day as Shakespeare, 
 237 n. 
 
 estimate of, 245 and w. 
 
 as story-teller, 247-48 
 
 Cervantes, Miguel de, another of 
 
 name, 39 
 Cet-vantes Geografo, by Fermin 
 
 Caballero, 245 n. 
 Cervantes Marino, by Fernandez, 
 
 245 n. 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 Cervantes, Rodrigo de, father of C, 
 
 33 
 Cervantes, Rodrigo de, brother to 
 
 C, 35; accompanies Miguel to 
 
 Spain (1575), 75 
 
 ransomed, 81 
 
 takes part in expedition to 
 
 Azores, 109 
 Cervantes, San, castle of, 31 w 
 Cervantes Teologo, by Juan Sbarbi, 
 
 245 n. 
 Cervantes Vindicado, of Juan 
 
 Calderon, 25 n. 
 Cervatos, original of Cervantes, 
 
 31 «•. 34 , . . , , 
 
 Charles V., supposed original of 
 
 D. Q., 167 
 
 Titian's portrait of, at Madrid, 
 
 168 n. 
 
 China, Emperor of, story that he 
 invited C. to become head of a 
 college in China, 228 
 
 Chivalries, books of, their popu- 
 larity in Spain, 169, et seq. 
 
 not of Eastern origin, 170 
 
 influence of Breton romance 
 
 slight, 174 
 
 Aniadis of Gaul, a "well- 
 conducted story," 175 
 
 evil caused by, 176 
 
 edict of Charles V. against, 
 
 177 
 
 religious books of, composed 
 
 as an antidote, 177 
 
 Chivalry in Spain, 171 
 
 Cid, answer of the, quoted, 129 n. 
 
 Cisneros, Don Enrique de, article 
 in Revista Espanola, 158 w. 
 
 Claras Varones de Sevilla, by Caro, 
 116 n. 
 
 Coleridge, quoted, 184 
 
 on contrast of Sancho's cha- 
 racter and D. Q., 254 
 
 Colmenares, Diego de, quoted, 
 42 «. 
 
 Colon, Fernando, his library at 
 Seville, 192 
 
 2 U
 
 330 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Colonna, Ascanio, 128 
 
 Marco Antonio, 54, 12S 
 
 Comcdias y Entremeses, account of 
 
 the, 203 
 Comrnentarios de la Jornada de las 
 
 Islas Azores, ill n. 
 Commentary, how far needful, 
 
 20, 21 
 of Clemencin, most complete, 
 
 21 
 
 its character, 23-25 
 
 of Hartzenbusch, 22 
 
 Commentator, Bowie the first, 22 
 Commentators, the lesser, 22 
 Confusa, La, comedy by C, 138, 
 
 142 
 Conquistador del Cielo, El, 177 
 Cordova, Don Martin de, governor 
 
 of Oran, 87 
 Cornwallis, Sir Charles, quoted, 
 
 105 
 Cortinas, Leonor de, C.'s mother, 
 
 tries to ransom him, 33, 92 
 Covarubbias, his Tesoro de la 
 
 Le7igua Castellatia, n. 15 
 Cuesta, Juan de la, prints ist Part 
 
 of D. Q., 17, 164 
 Custom of the Country, Fletcher's, 
 
 derived from C.'s Per sites, 241 n. 
 Cyprus, fall of, 52, 53 
 
 Davila quoted, 106 
 
 Death of C, 237 
 
 Deli Mami, C.'s master in cap- 
 tivity, 77 
 
 Dialogo de la Lengua, by Valdes, 
 178 and n. 
 
 Dickens, C, indebted to C.'s Jiin- 
 conete y Cortadillo, 197 «. 
 
 Disposition of fleets at Lepanto, 
 56 £^ seq, 
 
 Don Quixote, first treated as a 
 classic, 5 
 
 English translators, 6 et seq, 
 
 the book a witness to the man 
 
 C, 27 
 
 reception of, 164 
 
 Don Quixote, editions of, 166 
 theories respecting its object, 
 
 167 and n. 
 abolishes romances of chivalry, 
 
 169 
 
 C.'s aim in writing, 180 
 
 C.'s object in composing, 183-4 
 
 drawn from C.'s own life, 184 
 
 true 2nd edition of, 194 
 
 general estimate of the book, 
 
 247 et seq. 
 originahty of the conception, 
 
 249 
 
 C.'s humour, 250 
 
 how far a sad book, 251 
 
 Dorador, El, betrays C.'s scheme 
 
 of escape, 83 
 Doria, Giovanni Andrea, 54 
 Dos Dontellas, Las, novel by C, 
 
 199 
 Dragontca, La, of Lope de Vega, 
 
 112 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 1 10-12 
 Drama in Spain, 143 n. 
 Ducat, value of, 92 n. 
 Dunham, Rev. Dr., author of 
 
 History of Spain, quoted, 107 n. 
 
 Ecclesiasticism rampant in Spain, 
 
 105 et seq. 
 Editions of D. Q., 5 
 Elicio, character in Galatea, 129 
 Esclavos de Argel, Los, comedy by 
 
 Lope de Vega, 222 
 Espaiiola Inglesa, La, novel by C, 
 
 93 «•, 97 n. 
 Espinel, Vicente, author of El 
 
 Escudero Marcos de Obregon, 186 
 
 and n. 
 Espinosa, Cardinal, 47 
 Essex, Earl of, sacks Cadiz (1598), 
 
 198 
 Estimate of D. Q., Cervantes', 242 
 Expeditions to the Azores, 108 
 Expunged passages in D. Q., 195 n, 
 Ezpleta, Don Caspar, his murder, 
 
 190
 
 Index. 
 
 33t 
 
 Fabra, Lopez de, facsimile repro- 
 duction of D. Q., 22 
 Family of Cervantes (1585), 133 
 Farnese, Duke of Parma, presides 
 
 at Tournament of Piacenza, 71 
 Felipe Dominico Victor, Infante 
 
 of Spain (Philip IV.), 188 «. 
 Fernandez, Cesareo, on C. as a 
 
 mariner, 245 n. 
 Figueroa, Dr. Cristobal de, 165 n. 
 Ftlena, early pastoral poem of C, 
 
 46 
 Ford, Richard, on translation of 
 
 D. Q., 3 
 Francis (St.) of Assisi, 177 
 Francisco de Portugal, author of 
 
 Arte de Galanteria, 177 «., 179 
 Freire, Simon, debtor to C, 150 
 Fueros of Aragon, 104 and n. 
 Fuerza de Sangre, La, novel by C. , 
 
 199 
 
 Galatea, La, C.'s first acknowledged 
 work, 113 
 
 estimate of, 128 
 
 Gallardo Espanol, El, novel by C, 
 
 97 «. 
 Galleass, description of, 56 n. 
 Galley, description of war, 56 n. 
 Gamero, Don A. M., on C. as a 
 
 jurist, 245 ti. 
 Gayangos, Senor, 153 n. 
 on editions of D. Q., 166 n. 
 
 article of, in Revista de 
 
 Espana (on Cervantes in Valla- 
 do lid), 191 
 
 Genealogy of C, 34 n. 
 Germania, slang language, 14 n, 
 Gil, Father Juan, 41 
 
 ransoms C. ; his character, 
 
 93 n. 
 
 Giron, the Licentiate, a renegade, 
 
 plots with C, 87 
 Giron, Pedro, Duke of Osuna, 33 
 Gitanilla, La, novel by C, 137 «., 
 
 198 
 Goethe quoted, 160 
 
 Goletta, La, fall of, 70 
 
 Gongora, Luis de, 186 and n., 187 
 
 sonnet of, in ridicule of C, 
 
 165 w., 187, 188 
 
 Gi'an Sultana, La, comedy by C., 
 97 n. 
 
 Grandezas de Espafia, of Pedro de 
 Medina, 116 n. 
 
 Gregory XIII., 67 
 
 Guarda Cuidadosa, La, farce by C, 
 204 
 
 Gueudeville, quoted, 16 
 
 Guerra y Orbe, Seiror, 154 «., 193 
 and n. 
 
 Guevara, Antonio de, Commissary- 
 General, 145 
 
 Hasdo's Topography of Algiers, 37, 
 
 76 m. 
 Hallam, critique of La Numancia, 
 
 141 n. 
 Hartzenbusch, his text of D. Q,, 
 
 18 ; as commentator, 26 ; story 
 
 regarding picture in church in 
 
 Argamasilla, 158 n. 
 Hassan Pasha succeeds Rabadan as 
 
 Dey, 78 n. 
 
 Dey of Algiers, 82, 83 «. 
 
 his cruelty, 84, 89 
 
 Heine quoted, 183 
 
 blunder of, respecting D. Q.'s 
 
 final overthrow, 231 n. 
 
 Hilanderas, Las, picture of Ve 
 
 lasquez, 253 
 Hobbes quoted, 170 
 Holy League against the Turks 
 
 ^\ et seq, 
 dissensions in, 55 
 
 dissolved (March, 1573), 69 
 
 Howard of Effingham, expedition 
 
 against Cadiz, 149 
 Hoyos, Lopez de, C.'s mfister at 
 
 school, 43 
 Humilladero, Calle del, C, buried 
 
 in convent in the, 239 
 Humour, C.'s, 250
 
 332 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Hiisire Fregona, La, novel by C, 
 
 198 
 Imprisonment of C. at Seville, 150 
 
 in Argamasilla, 153 
 
 Ingenio Lego, C. termed, 165 
 Inquisition in Spain, 107 ef seq. 
 Inventor}' of C.'s wife's goods, 131 
 Iriarte, Juan de, list of Algerian 
 
 captives, 39 
 Isabel, natural daughter of C, 
 
 112 n. 
 Isabel of Valois, verses on her 
 
 death by C, 45 
 Isidro, San, statue of, on bridge of 
 
 Toledo, 235 n. 
 
 Jaffier succeeds Hassan as Dey of 
 
 Algiers, 94 
 Jarvis, the translator, 1 1 and n. 
 Jaureguy, Juan, paints C. 's portrait, 
 
 115 n. 
 Jerusalen, La, comedy by C, 138 
 Juan, a slave of Hassan, 82 
 Juan de Alfarache, San, burlesque 
 
 tournament at, 192 
 Juan, Don, of Austria, relationship 
 
 to C, 33 w. ; conduct at Lepanto, 
 
 61, 62 
 
 a knight errant, 72 
 
 gives letters of recommenda- 
 tion to C, 74 
 
 Jurispericia de Cervantes, by Ga- 
 mero, 245 w. 
 
 Kent, William, designs an imagi- 
 nary portrait of C, 1 18 
 
 Knight-errantry, 172 and n. 
 
 Knight of the \Vhite Moon, the, 
 231 and n. 
 
 Khilidg, title of Aluch Ali, 58 n. 
 
 La del Mayo, comedy by C. , 1 38 
 Lainez, Pedro, friend of C., 185 
 
 and 186 n. 
 Lamb, C, opinion of 2nd Part 
 
 of D. Q., 229 
 
 Language of C, 13 ^/ seq. 
 
 Laurel de Apolo, poem by Lope de 
 
 Vega, 222 
 Lavigne, ^L Germond de, 209 n. 
 
 and 227 71. 
 
 admires false 2nd Part of 
 
 D. Q., 226-27 
 
 claims C. as a Federal Re- 
 publican, 247 n. 
 
 Lemos, Conde de, 194-95 
 
 C.'s patron, 197 
 
 Lepanto, battle of, 55 et seq. 
 
 slain and wounded at, esti- 
 mate of, 63 
 
 historyof, by Cayetano Resell, 
 
 59 w. 
 
 Lerma, Duke of, 160 
 
 Le Sage : translates AveUaneda's 
 2nd Part, 226 and n. 
 
 Licenciado Vidriera, El, novel by 
 C, 199 
 
 Life of C., necessary to apprecia- 
 tion of D. Q., 27 
 
 Life and character of C., general 
 estimate of the, 243 et seq. 
 
 Lives of C, 29 
 
 Lockhart, translation of Spanish 
 ballads, 10 n. 
 
 Lope de Vega, correspondence of, 
 29, 221; wntes Dragonfea, 112 
 
 drives C. out of the field as 
 
 playwTight, 143, 144 n. 
 
 malignant allusion to C. in 
 
 letter to Duke of Sesa, 162 «., 
 199, 221 
 
 probable author of false 
 
 2nd Part of D. Q., 219 ^/ seq. 
 
 ridiculed by C, 220 
 
 his rivalry with C., 221 
 
 Loyola, original of D. Q., accord- 
 ing to Bowie, 168 «., 178 
 
 Luxan, Mateo, iio/?t de plu»te of 
 Juan Marti, 211 
 
 Mabbe, James, translator of novels, 
 199 n.
 
 Index. 
 
 333 
 
 ainez, Ramon, life of C, 29 ; 
 
 theory of the adventure with 
 
 the student in prologue to 
 
 Persiles, 236 n. 
 Maltrapillo, 89 n. 
 Mancha, La, C.'s visits to, 153 
 Martjuesa, La, ship in which C. 
 
 fought at Lepanto, 55 
 Marquez de Torres, Francisco, 
 
 story told by, 204-5 
 Marquino, the wizard, 141 
 Marmolejo, Luis, 145 
 Marriage of C, 130 
 Marti, Juan, author of the unautho- 
 rised 2nd Part of Guzman de 
 
 A If ar ache, 209 
 Mata, Fr. Gabriel de, writes El 
 
 Caballero Asisio, 177 
 Mateo, San, galleon in which the 
 
 brothers C. fought at Terceira, 
 
 109 
 Maxwell, Sir William Stirling, his 
 
 Life of Don John of Austria, 
 
 59 «. 
 Mayans y Siscar, Life of C, 29, 
 
 178 n. 
 Mayenne, Due de, French am- 
 bassador {1615), 205 n. 
 testimony of gentlemen in 
 
 his train to C.'s popularity 
 
 abroad, 205 
 Medina Celi, Duke of, 149 
 Medina, Pedro de, an author, 
 
 116 n. 
 Medrano, Casa de, tradition that 
 
 C. imprisoned in, 154 
 
 account of, 1 56 
 
 Mendez de Silva, genealogy of C, 
 
 31 n., 33, 34, 37, and n. 
 Mendoza, Diego Hurtado de, 48 
 Mengs, Rafael, quoted, 253 
 Mesa, Cristobal de, poet, 162 
 Mey, Valencian printer, 207 n. 
 Milton quoted, 237 
 Modon, port of, 69 
 Molina, Tirso de, calls C. the 
 
 Boccaccio of Spain, 199 
 
 Moncada, Don Miguel de, 49 
 Monipodio, 197 «., 198 
 Montane, Arias, 176 
 Montanches, district of, 153 n. 
 Montemayor, Jorge, 128 
 Montesquieu quoted, 169 n. 
 Montiano y Luyando, Don Augus- 
 
 tin, preference for false 2nd 
 
 Part of D. Q., 225 and n. 
 Morales, Pedro de, friend of C, 
 
 152 and n. 
 Morejon, Dr. Hernandez, on C, as 
 
 a physician, 245 n. 
 Morquecho, Dr. Nuiiez, 146 n, 
 Mostagan, C.'s stay at, in Barbary, 
 
 112 
 Motteux, Peter Anthony, translator 
 
 of D. Q., 89 and n. 
 Muley Moloch, Sultan of Morocco, 
 
 91 n. 
 Muiiez, Ximena, 33 n. 
 Murad, Hadji, 89 n. 
 
 Nasarre, Don Bias, 42 ;/. 
 
 republishes C.'s Comedias, 
 
 203 n. 
 
 appreciation of Avellaneda's 
 
 false 2nd Part of D. Q., 225 
 
 Navarrete, Life of C, 29 
 
 Navarino, 58 
 
 Neglect of C. by Spaniards, 244-6 
 
 Nottingham, Earl of, visit of, to 
 Spain, 1S7 
 
 Novelas Exemplares, account of, 196 
 
 reception of, 199 
 
 translations into English, 
 
 199 n. 
 
 prologue quoted, 115 n,, 117, 
 
 206 
 Niievos Docutnentos para ilustrar 
 
 la vida de Miguel de Cervantes, 
 
 by Asensio, 126 n. 
 Numancia, La, critique of, 139-4I 
 Numantia, 140 n. 
 Nunez, joint executor of C.'s will, 
 
 239 
 Nufio, Alfonso, El Gran, 33
 
 334 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Ocho Comedias y Entremeses, 42 «., 
 
 203 
 Ochoa, Apuntespara una Biblioteca, 
 
 182 n. 
 Oldfield, Dr., writes preface to 
 
 Carteret*s edition of D. Q., n8 
 Olivar, Father Jorge, official 
 
 ransomer of captives, 85 
 Onofre Exarque, merchant in 
 
 Algiers, 88 
 Ormsby, Mr. John, his theories of 
 
 C. andD. Q., 18, 250 
 Orthoneda, Rafael, his approbation 
 
 of Avellaneda's false 2nd Part, 
 
 207 
 Osorio, Rodrigo, agreement with 
 
 C. to publish his plays, 144 n. 
 Ozell, one of Motteux' translators, 9 
 
 Pacheco, Rodrigo de, portrait of, 
 in church in Argamasilla, 157 
 
 Francisco, painter, his portrait 
 
 of C, 115 a seq., 151 
 
 book on his works, by Asen- 
 
 Sio, 117 71. 
 
 Palacios y Salazar, Dona Catalina, 
 
 C.'s wife, 130 
 
 her death (1626), 131 n. 
 
 Falmerin of Etigland, description 
 
 of, 179 
 Pancracio de Roncesvalles, 202 
 
 and n. 
 Paseo d la Patria de Don Quixote, 
 
 Un, by Serrano, 130 n. 
 Paso Hotiroso, El, 172 n. 
 Passevinus, Father, sermon against 
 
 Amadis, 177 
 Pathos of D. Q., 250-2 
 Pedro San, Heronimo, writes El 
 
 Caballero Celestial, 177 
 Pedrosa, Luis de, 89 
 Pellicer, commentator of D. Q., 
 
 23 
 Perales, Isidro, assumed name of 
 Nasarre, 225 n. 
 
 Perros de Mahudes, Los; or, Colloquy 
 of Scipio and Berganza, 198 
 
 Persiles y Sigismunda, novel by 
 C, 97 n. 
 
 announced by C. as forth- 
 coming, 232 
 
 anecdote of C. and the student 
 
 in prologue to, 233-5 
 
 C. 's farewell words in dedica- 
 tion to, 236 
 
 account of the work, 240-2 
 
 bits of personal reminiscence 
 
 in, 241 n. 
 
 Philip II., his rule and character, 
 100-2 
 
 dies (1598), 150 
 
 Philip III., character of, 160 
 Phillips, translator of D. Q., 7 
 Piacenza, tournament at, 71 
 Picara Jtistina, La, D. Q. men- 
 tioned in verses in, 162 n. 
 
 Pius V,, Pope, forms the Holy 
 League, 52 et seq. 
 
 miraculous intelligence of 
 
 victory of Lepanto, 63 and n. 
 
 Policisne de Boecia, said to be last 
 romance written before produc- 
 tion of D. Q., 168 n. 
 
 Polo, Gil, author of Diana EnamO' 
 rada, 1 28 
 
 Ponce de Leon, Manuel, captain in 
 Figueroa's regiment, 67 
 
 Portrait of C. from his own descrip- 
 tion, 126-7 
 
 Portraits of Cervantes, 116 K., 114 
 et seq. 
 
 Portugal conquered by Alva, 108 
 
 Posada de Sangre, La, 199 
 
 Preciosa, opera of, by Weber, 198 
 
 Pulgar, Fernando de, on knights 
 errant, 173 ;/. 
 
 Prologue to ist Part of D. Q. 
 
 to N'ovelas Exemplares, 197 
 
 to Comedias y Entremeses, 
 
 41. 203 
 
 to Persiles y Sigismunda, 
 
 251
 
 Index. 
 
 335 
 
 Quesada, Don Pero Diaz Carillo, 
 the Governor of the Goletta, 75 
 
 Quevedo, describes character of the 
 Duke of Lerma, 161 
 
 relations with C, 186 
 
 Quiiiones, Suero de, hero of the 
 Paso Honroso, 172 n. 
 
 Quixote, Don ; sec Don Quixote 
 
 Rabadan Pasha, Dey of Algiers, 78 
 Ramirez, Capt. Geronimo, 76 
 Ransom, amount of C.'s, 94 
 
 raised by C.'s family, 92 
 
 paid off in Dec. 1584, 99 
 
 Rapin, the Jesuit, i68 n. 
 
 Relacion de lo sucedido en la 
 
 ciiidad de Valladolid, 190 n. 
 Ribas y Canfranc, author of a book 
 
 on Lope de Vega, 222 «. 
 Ribera, Francisco de, author of a 
 
 Life of Sta. Teresa, 1 78 n. 
 Rios, Vicente de Los, discovery of 
 
 C.'s baptismal register, 32 ; 
 
 relates story concerning dedica- 
 tion of D. C. to Duke de Bejar, 
 
 163 
 Rinconetey Cortadillo, novel by C, 
 
 197 and n. 
 Rivadeneyra, the publisher, 156 n. 
 Robles, Francisco, publisher of 
 
 D. Q., 162 
 Romance language in Spain, 137 n. 
 Romance, Spanish, meaning of, 
 
 136 n. 
 Romances of chivalry, essentially 
 
 Spanish, 171 
 Rosell, Cayetano, approves Avel- 
 
 laneda's false 2nd Part of 
 
 D. Q., 212 n. 
 
 his history of battle of Le- 
 
 panto, 59 n. 
 
 Rueda, Lope de, first who gave 
 form to Spanish drama, 41 
 
 C.'s reference to, 41 
 
 Ruidiaz, 166 n. 
 
 Saavedra, Juan Bernabe de, 154 
 
 additional name assumed by 
 
 C, 32 
 
 Salva, Pedro, favourable opinion of 
 Avellaneda's 2nd Part of D.C., 
 212 
 
 Vicente, on C.'s aim in 
 
 writing D. Q., 182 
 
 Sancha, printerof C.'s works, 201 «. 
 
 Sancho and Don Quixote, contrasts 
 of their characters, 253-4 
 
 Sanctoya de Molina, letter to 
 Mateo Vasquez, 153 n. 
 
 Sandoval y Rojas, Don Bernardo, 
 Archbishop of Toledo, character 
 of, protects C, 194, 195 «. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve quoted, 2, 20, 248 
 
 Santa Cruz, Marquess of, his expe- 
 ditions to the Azores, 57 
 
 his character, 1 10 
 
 Santisteban, Mateo de, testimony to 
 
 C.'s conduct at Lepanto, 60 n. 
 
 San Juan, Priory of, C. employed to 
 collect tithes for, 153 and n, 
 
 San Roman, General, possessor of 
 an original letter of C.'s 238 w. 
 
 Sarmiento, first discoverer of C's 
 birthplace, 40 
 
 Sbarbi, Jose Maria, on C. as a theo- 
 logian, 245 n. 
 
 Schack, discovery of correspond- 
 ence of Lope de Vega, 29; History 
 of the Spanish Drama, 222 
 
 letter of Lope de Vega quoted 
 
 by, 221 n. 
 
 Schlegel, August, on translator's 
 
 office, 4 ; on La Ntunancia, 
 
 142 n. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, love for C.'s 
 
 novels and obligations to them, 
 
 197 n. 
 
 praises Amadis, 175 
 
 Scotti, Count Alberto, challenger 
 
 at Piacenza, 72 
 Second Part published (1615), 228 
 
 not inferior to the First, 229- 
 
 231
 
 336 
 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 Second Part of D. Q., false, how 
 printed, 207 et seq. 
 
 how far its appearance in- 
 jured C, 208 et seq. 
 
 Selim II,, 52 
 
 Selvages, the, literary club, 196 
 Semanas del Jardin, Las, 232 
 Sefiora Cornelia, La, novel by C, 
 
 199 
 Serrano, D. Jimenez, 130 n. 
 Sesa, Duke of, writes letters of 
 
 recommendation on C.'s sailing 
 
 for Spain, 75 ^ '^^ 
 
 backs up petition to king to 
 
 ransom C, 92 
 
 backs up C. 's petition for em- 
 ployment, no n. 
 
 Shakspeare and C, 164, 202 n. 
 
 Shelton, Thomas, translator of 
 D. Q., 67 
 
 Silva, Feliciano de, author of 
 romances of chivalr)', 163 
 
 Silveira, Simon de, 179 
 
 Sismondi's opinion of D. Q., 251 
 
 Smollett, translator of D. Q., 12 
 
 Sol, El, vessel in which C. em- 
 barked for Spain, 75 
 
 captured by Turks, 77 
 
 Soria, town in Old Castile, claims 
 
 to be Numantia, 140 n. 
 
 Sosa, Dr. Antonio de, fellow- 
 captive with C, 76 n. 
 
 Sotomayor, Nicolas de, supposed 
 second husband of Doiia Leonor 
 de Cortinas, 134 n. 
 
 Southey's opinion of Pahnerin of 
 Englaiid, 179 
 
 Spain, survey of, under Philip II., 
 99 et seq. 
 
 seeds of decay in her great- 
 ness, lOI 
 
 revenue and its application, 
 
 103 
 
 sale of offices, 104 
 
 poverty of the commonalty, 
 
 104 
 
 Spanish infantry, the, 51 
 
 Stage, early Spanish, description 
 
 by C, 42 
 Statues of C, false, 65 n. 
 Swift, might have taken a hint from 
 , Viaje del Parnaso, 200 
 
 Tapia, Don Rodrigo de, 201 n. 
 Tartarm de Tarasco7i, by Daudet, 
 
 254 
 Tasso, Torquato, admires Amadis, 
 
 175 
 Terceira, island of, attack on 
 
 (1582), 109 
 
 second expedition, no 
 
 Tercio, the Spanish, composition 
 
 of, 51 n. 
 Teresa de Jesus, Sta., 178 and n. 
 
 beatification of, 227 
 
 Tesoro de la Lengiia Castellana, I5«. 
 Text of D. Q., Spanish Academy's, 
 
 18-19 
 Theogenes and Chariclca of Helio- 
 
 dorus, 240 
 Tia Fingida, La, novel attributed 
 
 to C, 44 n., 192 
 Ticknor's opinion of the supposed 
 
 portrait of C, 126 71. 
 History of Spanish Literature, 
 
 139 n. 
 Toledana Discreta, La, 168 n. 
 Toledo, Don Antonio de, fellow- 
 captive with C, 82 
 Archbishop of, letter of C. to, 
 
 238 n. 
 Canon of, on books of chival- 
 ries, 182 and n. 
 Tolondron, Baretti's, 23 
 Topografia de Argel, by Hsedo, 37, 
 
 76 «. 
 Torme y Liori, Doctor Francisco 
 
 de, licenses false 2nd Part, 207 
 Torres, Don Antonio Gonsalez de, 
 
 76 n. 
 Baltasar de, merchant in 
 
 Algiers, 88 
 Marquez de, his approbation 
 
 of 2nd Part of D. Q., 228
 
 Index. 
 
 337 
 
 Tournament of Piacenza, 71 
 Translation of D. Q., 3 
 Translator, duty of a, 15 
 Translators, English, 6-12 
 Trato de Argel, El, comedy by C, 
 
 80,93 «M 97 n-, 142 
 
 critique of, 138-9 
 
 Turks, power of the, 52 
 
 Tunis, expedition against, resolved 
 
 upon, 70 
 
 desperate condition of, 73 
 
 intended succours under Don 
 
 Juan delayed, 73 
 
 its capture by the Turks, 74 
 
 Tur<niesca, La gran, comedy by C., 
 
 138 
 
 Ultimas Amores de Lope de Vega, 
 
 Los, 222 n. 
 Unica y Bizarra Arsinda, La, 
 
 comedy by C, 138 
 Urbina, Diego de, 60 n. 
 Urefia, Conde de, 33 
 Usoz y Rio, 178 m. 
 
 Vald^s, Juan, the reformer, 178 
 Valdivieso, Josef de, 233 n. 
 Valencia, Don Francisco, captive 
 
 in Algiers, 82 
 Valladares, Juan de, author of the 
 
 Cavallero Vettturoso, 222 n. 
 Valladolid, C.'s residence in {1603), 
 
 160 
 Vargas, Tamayo de, his name for 
 
 C, 165 
 
 Vasquez, Mateo, secretary of 
 
 Philip I L, 86 
 Venegas, Alejo, 176 
 on evil caused by reading 
 
 books of chivalries, 176 
 Venganza de la Lengua EspaHola, 
 
 Aliaga's, 216 
 Veniero, Sebastian, Venetian ad- 
 miral, 54 
 Viaje del Parnaso, published, 200 
 
 character of, 201 and n. 
 
 Viedma, Captain, the captive in 
 
 D. Q., 85, 89 
 Villamediana, Conde de, lampoon 
 
 of, on Aliaga, 217 
 Villegas, Manuel de, author of the 
 
 Eroticas, 201 «. 
 Viriatus, character in Numaneia, 
 
 140 n. 
 Viv&, Luis, 176 
 
 Will of C, 239 
 Women in D. Q., 252 
 
 Ximenez, Cardinal, founder of 
 University of Alcald, 36 
 
 Yanez quoted, 106 
 
 Zaragoza, siege of, Numaneia 
 
 played at the, 141 
 Zavaleta, an author, 212 n. 
 Zeloso ExtreincHo, El, novel by C, 
 
 199 
 
 END OF VOL. L 
 
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