Part ten years before.

Cervantes had now but a few more months to live; and it must, in his declining years, have been a great consolation to find that the efforts of his genius were still appreciated by his countrymen; not to mention the relief from pecuniary embarrassments which the profits of the sale must have afforded him. Cervantes was now at the height to which his ambition had all along aimed; he had no rival; for Lope de Vega was dead, and the literary kingdom of Spain was all his own. He was courted by the great; no strangers came to Madrid without making the writer of Don Quixote the first object of their inquiry; he reposed in honour, free from all calumny, in the bosom of his family.

This same year he published eight comedies, and the same number of interludes; two only in verse, the rest in prose. It does not seem likely that these were written at this time; they must have been the works of his earlier years; but, like his novels, corrected and given to the public when his judgment was more mature. Several of them had, no doubt, been performed on the stage many years before, and remained with Cervantes in manuscript. The dissertation which he prefixed to them is full of interest, and is very curious and valuable, since it contains the only account we have of the early history of the Spanish drama.

In 1616, he completed and prepared for the press a romance entitled _Persiles and Sigismunda_, of a grave character, written in imitation of the _Ethiopics_ of Heliodorus; it was the work of many years, and is accounted by the Spaniards one of the purest specimens of Castilian writing. He finished it just before his death, but never lived to see it published. The dedication and prologue of Persiles and Sigismunda are very affecting; they are the voice of a dying man speaking to us of his approaching dissolution.

From the nature of his complaint, Cervantes retained his mental faculties to the very last, and so was able to be the historian of his latter days. At the end of the preface to _Persiles_, he tells us that he had gone for a few days to Esquivias, in hopes that country air might be beneficial to him. On his return to Madrid, he was accompanied by his friends, when a young student on horseback overtook them, riding very hard to do so, and complaining in consequence of the rapid pace at which they were going. One of the three made answer that it was no fault of theirs, but that the horse of Miguel de Cervantes was to be blamed, whose trot was none of the slowest. Scarcely had the name been pronounced, when the young man dismounted; and touching the border of Cervantes' left sleeve, exclaimed, "Yes, yes, it is indeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, the joy and darling of the Muses." This salutation was returned with Cervantes' natural modesty; and the worthy student performed the rest of the journey with him and his friends. "We drew up a little," says Cervantes, "and rode on at a measured pace; and whilst we rode, we happened to talk of my illness. The good student soon knocked away all my hopes, and let me know my doom, by telling me that it was a dropsy that I had got: the thirst attending which, not all the waters of the ocean, though it were not salt, could suffice to quench. 'Therefore, Senor Cervantes,' said he, 'you must drink nothing at all, but forget not to eat, and to eat plentifully; that alone will recover you without any physic.' 'Others have told me the same,' answered I; 'but I can no more forbear drinking, than if I had been born to nothing else. My life is fast drawing to a close; and from the state of my pulse, I think I can scarcely outlive Sunday next at the utmost; so that I hardly think I shall profit by the acquaintance so fortunately made. But adieu, my merry friends all; for I am going to die; and I hope to see you again ere long in the next world as happy as hearts can desire.' With that, we found ourselves at the bridge of Toledo, by which we entered the city; and the student took leave of us, having to go round by the bridge of Segovia."

This is all that we know of the last sickness of Cervantes: it was dropsy, and this dropsy, according to his own prediction to the student, increased so rapidly, that a few days after, on the 18th of April, 1616, he was considered to be past recovery, and it was thought advisable for him to receive the last sacrament of extreme unction, which he accordingly did with all the devotion of a pious Catholic.

He died on the 23d day of April, 1616, in the sixty-ninth year of his age; and was buried in the habit of the Franciscans, whose order he had entered some time previous to his decease. It is a coincidence worth remembering, that _Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra_ terminated his mortal course in Spain on the very same day that _William Shakspere_ died in England.

As regards style of composition, Cervantes is without a rival in the Spanish language. For the purity of his writing, he is even to this day acknowledged, not only to be first, but to have no one who can come near enough to be called second to him. But this is not his greatest praise. He must ever be remembered as the originator of a kind of writing, which the greatest of men since his time have thought it an honour, of whatever country they may have been, to imitate. All modern romance-writers, and novel-writers (and what a mighty host are they!) must be content to be accounted the followers of Miguel de Cervantes.

With regard to _Don Quixote_, it need hardly be said that its object is satire upon the books of knight-errantry, which were so much used in the time of Cervantes, and especially by the Spanish. He conceived that these books were likely to give his countrymen false ideas of the world; to fill them all, but especially the young, with fanciful notions of life, and so make them unfit to meet its real difficulties and hardships. In order to exhibit the absurdity of such works (it must be remembered too, that the more famous books of knighthood had given rise to a host of spurious imitations, with all their faults and none of their beauties), the author of Don Quixote represents a worthy gentleman with his head turned by such reading, and then sallying forth and endeavouring to act in this plain matter-of-fact world (where there are windmills, and not giants--inns, and not castles--good honest hosts and hostesses, and not lords and ladies--chambermaids, and not peerless beauties--estates to be got by hard labour, and not islands to be given away to one's dependants as if by enchantment), endeavouring to act, we say, as if all that was said in _Amadis de Gaul_, and _Palmerin of England_, and _Olivante de Laura_, were really true. The absurdities into which the poor gentleman's madness constantly hurries him, the stern and bitter satire which is conveyed in these against the books which caused them all, did more towards putting down the extravagances of knight-errantry than many volumes of the bitterest invective. We of this present day cannot be really alive to all the great genius displayed in Don Quixote. The books which it satirises are now almost unknown; many who have heard of Amadis de Gaul have never read it, and still less have they read all the lineage of the Amadis. Besides, in some of the first of the chivalrous romances, such as Palmerin of England, the _Morte d'Arthur_, and others, there was undoubtedly very much talent and beauty of sentiment: and it was as such that Southey thought it right to translate them and present them to the English public some years ago; and deeply indebted are we all to him for his labours, which revived among us somewhat of the taste for the old and stately prose of the ancient romances--a taste which in our day has given rise to those beautiful editions in English of the tales of De la Motte Fouque. But we must ever remember that it was not for the purpose of ridiculing those and similar books that Cervantes wrote his "history"--one so keenly alive to the beauty of the poetry of the mediaeval writing as he was, never could have intended such a thing: it was to exterminate the race of miserable imitators, who, at his time, deluged Europe with sickening caricatures of the old romance. It has even been thought that he had intended another course in order to cure the disease, namely, that of himself composing a model romance in the style of Amadis, which, from its excellence, would make manifest the follies of men who had endeavoured to imitate that almost inimitable work. But the disease was past cure; the limb was obliged to be amputated; books of knight-errantry could not be reformed, he thought; and so rather than let them continue their mischief in their present shape, they must be quite destroyed; and this the satire of Don Quixote was by its author considered the most proper means of effecting.

This was indeed a daring remedy; and, as may be supposed, by some it has been thought that Cervantes, in lopping off an excrescence, did also destroy a healthy limb,--that, in destroying knight-errantry, he destroyed also the holy spirit of self-devotion and heroism. The Count Segur, we are told by an ingenious writer of the present time,[2] who joins the Count in his opinion, laments that the fine spirit of chivalry should have lost its empire, and that the romance of Don Quixote, by its success and its philosophy, concealed under an attractive fiction, should have completed the ruin by fixing ridicule even upon its memory--a sentence indeed full of error; for real philosophy needs not to be concealed to be attractive. And Sir William Temple quotes the saying of a worthy Spaniard, who told him "that the History of Don Quixote had ruined the Spanish monarchy; for since that time men had grown ashamed of honour and love, and only thought of pursuing their fortune and satisfying their lust."

[2] Kenelm Digby, Esq., in his beautiful book entitled _Godefridus_, one of the volumes of the _Broad Stone of Honour_.

But surely such censure is misdirected--surely the downfall of Spain may be traced to other causes. It is not the spirit of heroism, or of Christian self-devotion, which Cervantes would put down. His manly writing can never be accused of that: misfortune had taught him too well in his own earlier days how to appreciate such a virtue. In nothing is his consummate skill perceived more than in the way in which he prevents us from confounding the follies of the knights-errant, and of the debased books of romance, with the generous heart and actions of the true Christian gentleman. In spite of all his hallucination, who can help respecting Don Quixote himself? We laugh, indeed, at the ludicrous situations into which his madness is for ever getting him; but we must reverence the good Christian cavalier who, amidst all, never thinks less of any thing than of himself and of his own interest. What is his character? It is that of one possessing virtue, imagination, genius, kind feeling,--all that can distinguish an elevated soul, and an affectionate heart. He is brave, faithful, loyal, always keeping his word; he contends only for virtue and glory. Does he wish for kingdoms? it is only that he may give them to his good squire Sancho Panza. He is a constant lover, a humane warrior, an affectionate master, an accomplished gentleman. It is not, then, by describing such a man that Cervantes desired to ridicule real heroism; surely not: he would only shew that, even with all these good qualities, if they were misdirected or spoiled by vain imaginations, the most noble could only become ridiculous. He would teach us, that this is a world of _action_, and not of _fancy_; that it will not do for us to go out of ourselves and out of the world, and lead an ideal life: our duties are around us and within us; and we need not leave our own homes in order to seek adventures wherein those duties may be acceptably performed. He perceived that by knight-errantry and romances some of the holiest aspirations of the human heart were, according to the adage, which affirms that "there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous," by over-description and fulsome language, in danger of being exposed to ridicule, and so of being crushed; and he resolved, by excess of satire, to put a stop at once to such a danger,--to crush those books which were daily destroying that which he held most dear--the true spirit of chivalry, the true devotion of the Christian gentleman. "When the light of chivalry was expiring, Cervantes put his extinguisher upon it, and drove away the moths that alone still fluttered around it. He loved chivalry too well to be patient when he saw it parodied and burlesqued; and he perceived that the best way of preserving it from shame was, to throw over it the sanctity of death."[3]

[3] Vide _Guesses at Truth_.

With respect to the present edition, little need be said beyond what the title-page itself implies. With what degree of judgment the "cumbrous matter" has been removed, must be left to the public to determine. The Editor may, however, say, that the task which he at first undertook with some trepidation, gradually assumed an easier and more pleasant aspect; and he may add, that the result has been such as to satisfy himself of the success of the experiment. He trusts that he has placed in the hands of the mass of our reading population, and especially of the youth of England, an edition of Cervantes' immortal work, in a convenient, but yet not too condensed form--retaining all the point, humour, and pathos of the original, without any of the prolixity, or the improprieties of expression, which have heretofore disfigured it. The judgment passed upon one of the books in our hero's library by his inquisitorial friends may well be applied to his own work: "Had there been less of it, it would have been more esteemed. 'Tis fit the book should be pruned and cleared of some inferior things that encumber and deform it: keep it, however," &c.--(_Page 23._)

It only remains to add, that the excellent translation of Motteux has been principally adhered to in the present edition.

_London, December 1st, 1846._

NOTES.

_The holy brotherhood._--Most readers would suppose at first sight that the Inquisition is meant by this term, which occurs so often in the work; it is not so, however. The "holy brotherhood" alluded to was simply an association for the prevention of robberies and murders in the less frequented parts of Spain.

_Mambrino's helmet._--Orlando Furioso must be referred to for the history of this enchanted and invulnerable headpiece, which is several times alluded to in Don Quixote.

The Life and Achievements

OF

DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA.