admiration of Vega, declared that we owe a debt to Avellaneda, seeing
that but for him _Don Quixote_ would have remained a mere _torso_,
instead of a complete work. Such a piece of special pleading is, of
course, fallacious, since Cervantes had pledged himself to produce a
second part, and the book must have been nearing completion, in 1614,
when Avellaneda’s travesty was published. It is evident that he had
progressed as far as the nineteenth chapter, and was within ten chapters
of the end, when the Tarragonese bastard was put into circulation, and
Cervantes, changing his published plan of procedure, turns Don Quixote
from his purpose of entering the lists at Zaragoza and hurries him off
to Barcelona. With this counterfeit upon the market Cervantes could no
longer pursue the leisurely tenor of his way, and the injury he had
received spurred him to new flights of pungent humour. But although our
author in this Second Part of _Don Quixote_ deals with his enemy with
dignified restraint, and introduces him in person to drub him with the
jester’s bladder, rather than becudgel him with his own club, we descry
in the dedication of his last book of comedies (1615) how keenly he
felt the smart.
Avellaneda had charged him with disparaging the innumerable “stupendous
comedies” of Lope de Vega, and of persecuting the Inquisition. Cervantes
straightly denies both these imputations, declaring that he “adores
Vega’s genius, and admires his works continuous and virtuous,” and
protests that he is not likely to persecute any ecclesiastic--above all,
if he is a familiar of the Holy Office to boot. “But,” he writes in this
dedication to the Conde de Lemos, “that which I cannot help feeling is
that he charges me with being old and maimed, as though it had been in
my power to stop time from passing over me, or as though my deformity
had been produced in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion which
ages past and present have seen, or those to come can hope to see. If my
wounds do not shine in the eyes of him who looks on them, they are at
least honoured in the estimation of those who know where they were
acquired; for the soldier looks better dead in battle than alive in
flight. And so much I am of this opinion that if now I could devise and
bring about the impossible, I would rather be present again in that
wonderful action than now be whole of my wounds, without having taken
part therein.”
With this manly and characteristic protest we may, I think, close the
volume of this scandal, and press forward to the near close of
Cervantes’ career.
[Illustration: SANCHO’S DILIGENCE IN ENCHANTING DULCINEA.
_London, 1858._
_47th Edition._]
In this same dedication there is the intimation that _Don Quixote_ is
“waiting in the Second Part, booted and spurred, to do homage” to the
Conde de Lemos, and before the end of the year (1615) the completion of
the great work was published. The book was printed by Juan de la Cuesta,
who had printed the First Part, and Francisco de Robles was again
associated with Cervantes as publisher. The public received the new
volume with the same enthusiasm that they had extended to its
predecessor, and although posthumous criticism has in some instances
refused to regard it as equal in merit to the first instalment--Charles
Lamb went out of his way to refer to it as “that unfortunate Second
Part”--the general reading public of successive generations have agreed
in regarding it as the most diverting half of the novel. Cervantes
himself has declared, through the mouth of the scholar, Samson Carrasco,
that second parts are never good, but this rule found a striking
exception in the case of his own work. With increasing years the author
betrayed no sign of flagging vivacity; experience had lent him a surer
hand in the development of character; and while the Knight of La
Mancha’s adventures take on a less fantastic guise, and his reflections
increase in wisdom, the wit of Sancho Panza broadens and ripens, and the
humanity of the immortal comrades acquires a deeper note. Lamb wrote of
“that unworthy Duke,” and he condemned the Duchess as “most
comtemptible.” Many readers of Cervantes must at times have rebelled
against the ingenuity with which the Don’s ducal entertainers conspired
to make sport of their guest, and have deplored the means they employed
in accomplishing their purpose. But if Cervantes had not had resource to
these exalted conspirators we should have lost the passages between
Sancho and the Duchess, the story of the squire’s government, and the
course prescribed for the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Tobosco--surely
among the most richly humorous chapters in the whole story!--and,
finally, the death-bed scene, with the old knight-errant, disillusioned,
but resigned, dictating his will with his weeping friends around him,
and his faithful squire beseeching him “not to die this time, but even
take my counsel, and live on many years,” since “the maddest thing ever
a man can do is to die!”
Yet in the face of facts there are critics who would argue that the
Second Part was inferior to the First, both as a work of art and as a
commercial venture. It is certainly incorrect to say, as one writer
does, that “when the second part of _Don Quixote_ came before the world
it was universally felt that in nearly every respect it betrayed a great
falling off.” Nor can the following criticism, taken from the same
source, be accepted: “The fire of imagination, which had sustained him
throughout the earlier cycle of adventures, now began to burn low; there
was less wit in the speeches, less vivacity in the conversation, less
humour and pathos in the situations and incidents. He perceived that he
had a great
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE BECOMING AWARE OF THE CURDS IN HIS HELMET.
_Copenhagen, 1865-1869._
_54th Edition._]
rival to contend with, and that rival was himself. He had, properly
speaking, exhausted his originality in the first part, together with his
store of situations, his brilliancy of wit, his freshness of imagery,
his peculiar power of delineating singular characters, and placing them
in singular circumstances. There is wit in the second part, but it is
pale; comedy, but it is forced; vivacity, but it is artificial. You
discover nearly everywhere comparative poverty of invention, but a
perpetual tendency to imitate himself.”
What shall be said of _Don Quixote_ that has not been said already? or
why should we marvel because different men have read it differently? Is
it the joyfullest of books, as Carlyle calls it, or do we find it, with
Sismondi and De Amicis, the most melancholy of histories? Humour it has,
the ripest and rarest that has ever been translated into our language,
and pathos that touches the depths of the human emotion. Sir Walter
Scott speaks of Cervantes’ humour as “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”; yet others have declared that it lacks “a thread of pathos.”
Edward Fitzgerald praised it as “the most delightful of books.” Dr.
Johnson declared it to be one of the three books written by a man which
the reader wishes to be longer. From Swift to Heine, from Charles Lamb
to Sainte-Beuve, from Johnson to Schlegel, the literary giants of all
ages and all nationalities have joined in praise of _Don Quixote_.
In England and France and Germany it is still regarded as a romance,
unapproachable in its _genre_; a work of true genius, supreme,
imperishable. But in Spain it has passed from romance, in the national
mind, into the realms of reality. In La Mancha the people point to the
windmills as proof of the Don’s existence; in Argamasilla they show you
the house in which the Knight lived, and draw attention to the ruins of
a large, round window, out of which the curate and the barber consigned
Don Quixote’s library to the flames. Here is the sluggish Guadiana, in
which Sancho Panza’s daughter washed the family linen, and the parish
church which guards the veritable portrait of Rodrigo Pacheco, _alias_
Alonzo Quixano, known to fame as Don Quixote de la Mancha, and variously
styled the Knight of the Lions and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.
These good, simple Manchegans, who are too wise to mistake _Don Quixote_
for clumsy satire, and recognise the nobility, and wisdom, and virtue of
the gallant, fantastic knight-errant, who is “nobly wild--not mad,” have
not failed to detect the moral for the age, indeed for all ages, which
Mr. Austin Dobson has used as the kernel of his sonnet on the Don:
“Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest!
Yet would to-day, when courtesy grows chill
And life’s fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest--were it but a mill!”
[Illustration: WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE.
_Madrid, 1868._
_58th Edition._]
Cervantes survived the publication of _Don Quixote_ some six
months--long enough to see the false Second Part routed and extinguished
by his own all-conquering creation. Inspired to renewed activity by the
chorus of praise which greeted his latest production, we find him, in
his 69th year, arranging his plans for the output of three more
works--_The Weeks of the Garden_, the second part of the _Galatea_, and
the _Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda_, which latter was to be “either
the worst or the best of books of entertainment in our language.” The
sequel to the _Galatea_ and the projected _Weeks of the Garden_ were
probably never commenced, although he refers to them both again in the
prologue to _Persiles_, which was written on his death-bed, and
published by his widow in 1617.
Although _Persiles and Sigismunda_ has been extravagantly praised by
Valdivielso--“Of the many books written by Cervantes,” he says, “none is
more ingenious, more cultured, or more entertaining”--and although it
has gone into more editions than any of the minor works of its author,
this return to the monstrous artificial style which he had been the
means of destroying, is a paradoxical and incomprehensible variant of
his genius. In the last chapter of _Don Quixote_ he had caused the
Knight to aver: “I now declare myself an enemy to Amadis de Gaul, and
his whole generation; all stories of knight-errantry I detest.” Yet
within a few months of writing this passage he was engaged in
completing a conglomeration of adventures, experienced by a pair of
impossible lovers, under every kind of impossible condition. The Spanish
critics admire the book for the beauty and correctness of the language,
and the grace and charm of its style, but, as a work of creative art, it
lacks invention and originality; and, as a piece of fiction--a “pastime
for the melancholy and mopish soul”--it is tedious and ineffective.
But because it carries with it the biographically-conceived dedication
to the Conde de Lemos, we are grateful to Cervantes for his last
romance. In it we read of the return journey from the famous town of
Esquívias--“famous for a thousand things, one for its illustrious
families, and another for its most illustrious wines”--on which
Cervantes tells us he was overtaken by the grey student on the little
she-ass. His chance companion having addressed him as “the all famous,
the merry writer, and, indeed, the joy of the muses,” they resumed their
journey, in the course of which the infirmity of the merry writer was
touched upon. “At which,” says Cervantes, “the good student checked my
mirth in a moment: ‘This malady is the dropsy, which not all the water
of ocean, let it be ever so sweet drinking, can cure. Let your worship,
Señor 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
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO, ON THE ROAD TO TOBOSO.
_Paris, 1868._
_59th Edition._]
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 goodwill you have shown me.’”
In a letter to his “very illustrious lord,” the Archbishop of Toledo,
dated 26th March, 1616, Cervantes wrote: “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 relieve me: but, indeed, it increases so greatly that I
think it will make an end of me, although not of my gratitude.” In his
valedictory dedication to the Conde de Lemos he speaks of himself as
“with one foot in the stirrup, waiting the call of death.” “Yesterday,”
he continues, “they gave me extreme unction, and to-day I am writing.
The time is short, my agonies increase; my hopes diminish.” And then
comes his brave, blithesome, parting message: “Good-bye, humours;
good-bye, pleasant fancies; good-bye, merry friends; for I perceive I am
dying, in the wish to see you happy in the other life.”
This was his last greeting to his patron, and to the world that had
learned to love him so well. His dedication is dated 19th April, and on
23rd April, 1616--nominally on the same day that Shakespeare died--the
illustrious Spaniard heard the summons of Death, and passed into the
great beyond. He was buried as a member of the Franciscan Order in the
graveyard of the Convent in the Calle del Humilladero, to which his
daughter Isabel shortly afterwards retired. No stone marked the place
where the body of Cervantes was laid, but we know that his widow, his
daughters, and the other members of his family were laid to rest in the
same hallowed ground, and that in 1635, when the Trinitarian sisters
removed themselves to the Calle de Cantaranas, the remains of the
departed members of their Order were collected into a common heap and
carried by the sisterhood to their new Convent. The manuscripts, the
pictures, even the bones of the author of _Don Quixote_ are thus lost to
the knowledge of the world. But the man lives again to-day in the
commendations of his generals, in the testimony of his brothers-in-arms,
in the evidence of his devoted fellow-captives in Algeria, and in his
own modest biographical memoranda. We recognise him in the brilliant
description of him that has been penned by the Spanish biographer,
Aribau, as the man who “passed through the world as a stranger whose
language was not understood,” announcing “the dawn of a civilisation
which broke long afterwards.”
But even as Cervantes has given us the best picture of himself, he has
given us also the best epithet that has ever been penned concerning him.
He was thinking not of himself, but of Chrysostom, when he uttered the
eulogy in which we may apostrophise the body of Cervantes: “This body
...
[Illustration: DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE.
_Paris, 1858._
_60th Edition._]
was one enlivened by a soul which Heaven had enriched with the greatest
part of its most valuable graces ... who was unrivalled in wit,
matchless in courteousness, a phœnix in friendship ... prudent and grave
without pride, modest without affectation, pleasant and complaisant
without meanness; in a word, the first in everything good, though second
to none in misfortune.”
THE PROVERBS OF CERVANTES.
It has been declared, without provoking contradiction, that Spanish
proverbs are undoubtedly wiser and wittier, as well as more numerous
than those of any other language. At least a dozen collections of these
tabloids of wisdom have been published in Spain; the largest, which was
compiled by Juan de Yriarte, containing no fewer than 24,000 proverbs.
At least half-a-dozen volumes were in existence in the time of
Cervantes; and from these sources it may be presumed he went for much of
the sage and pointed witticisms with which Sancho Panza garnishes his
conversation. Though it was not the purpose of the author of _Don
Quixote_ to select the most characteristic and representative specimens
in the language, he has brought together in his book some 300 examples
of the _refranes_ which were then in current use; and from those which
he considered worthy of quotation I have made the following selection:
“The devil lurks behind the cross.”--I. 6; II. 33, 47.
“What is good is never too abundant.”--I. 6.
“Many go for wool, and come back shorn.”--I. 7; II. 14, 43, 67.
“One swallow does not make a summer.”--I. 13.
“There is no recollection which time does not obliterate, nor grief
which death does not destroy.”--I. 15.
“There is nothing certain in this life.”--I. 15.
“What hath been, hath been.”--I. 20.
“All will come out in the washing.”--I. 20, 22; II. 36.
“Do not ask as a favour what you can obtain by force.”--I. 21.
“When one door is shut, another is opened.”--I. 21.
“Let him be wretched who thinks himself so.”--I. 21.
“No discourse that is long can be pleasing.”--I. 21.
“Man goes as God is pleased.”--I. 22.
He who sings frightens away his ills.”--I. 22.
“‘No’ contains the same number of letters as ‘Ay.’”--I. 22.
“To do good to low fellows is to throw water into the sea.”--I. 23.
“The absent feel and fear every ill.”--I. 25.
“Many think to find bacon where there are not even hooks to hang it
on.”--I. 25; II. 55, 65, 73.
“He who does not intend to pay is not troubled in making his
bargain.”--I. 28.
“The danger is generally in the delay.”--I. 29, 46; II. 41, 71.
“A bird in the hand is better than an eagle on the wing.”--I. 31;
II. 12, 71.
“We must suit our behaviour to the occasion.”--I. 31; II. 3.
“To know where the shoe pinches.”--I. 32.
“You often find a good drinker under a bad cloak.”--I. 33.
“He who gives quickly, gives twice.”--I. 34.
“There is a great distance between said and done.”--I. 46.
“Diligence is the mother of success.”--I. 46.
“Every one is the son of his own works.”--I. 47.
“Since I am a man, I may come to be Pope.”--I. 47.
“When the head aches, all the members feel it.”--II. 2.
“Honours change manners.”--II. 4.
“Everyone is as God has made him, and very often worse.”--II. 4.
“He who covers thee, discovers thee.”--II. 5.
“The virtuous maid and the broken leg must stay at home.”--II. 5,
49.
“Better a daughter ill-married than well kept.”--II. 5.
“Great deeds are reserved for great men.”--II. 5.
“He who cannot take advantage of fortune when it comes, should not
complain if it passes him by.”--II. 5.
“The counsel of a woman is not worth much, but he who does not take
it is worth nothing.”--II. 7.
“Many littles makes much.”--II. 7.
“He who shuffles the cards does not cut them.”--II. 7.
“The lamb goes (to the butcher) as soon as the sheep.”--II. 7.
“Tell me with whom you live, and I will tell you what you
are.”--II. 9.
“Truth always gets above falsehood, as oil above water.”--II. 9.
“Not with whom thou art bred, but with whom thou art fed.”--II. 10,
32, 68.
“Madness must necessarily have more followers than
discretion.”--II. 13.
“Those who seek adventures do not always find happy ones.”--II. 13.
“It is other people’s burdens that kill the ass.”--II. 13.
“If the blind lead the blind, both are in danger of falling into
the ditch.”--II. 13.
“There is no road so level as to have no rough places.”--II. 13.
“To know how many three and two make.--II. 13, 36.
“The lance never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance.”--II. 16.
“Between a woman’s Yes and No I would not venture to stick the
point of a pin.”--II. 19.
“For God who sends the wounds, sends the cure.”--II. 19.
“Love looks through spectacles which make copper appear gold,
riches poverty, and weak eyes distil pearls.”--II. 19.
“Every sheep with his fellow.”--II. 19.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”--II. 20.
“Let him preach well who lives well.”--II. 20.
“He who does not rise with the sun, does not enjoy the day.”--II.
23.
“He who errs and repents recommends himself to God.”--II. 28.
“To talk of a rope in the house of one who has been hanged.”--II.
28.
“Where you least expect it up starts the hare.”--II. 30.
“He who lives a long life, must needs go through many evils.”--II.
32.
“Associate with good men and thou wilt be one of them.”--II. 32.
“The little birds have God for a caterer.”--II. 33.
All is not gold that glitters.”--II. 33.
“Four yards of Cuenca cloth keep one warmer than as many of fine
Segovia serge.”--II. 33.
To begin an affair is to have it half finished.”--II. 33.
“At night all cats are grey.”--II. 33.
“Nobody is born learned; and (even) bishops are made of men.”--II.
33.
“I am an old dog, and ‘tus, tus,’ will not do for me.”--II. 33, 69.
“A good name is better than great riches.”--II. 33.
“The corpse of the Pope takes no more ground than that of the
sacristan.”--II. 33.
“The fire gives light, and the flames brightness, and yet they may
both destroy us.”--II. 34.
“We make less account of that which costs us little.”--II. 34.
“A good heart overcomes evil fortune.--II. 35.
“The ass laden with gold mounts lightly up the hill.”--II. 35.
“There is nothing that costs less than civility.”--II. 36.
“There is no avenging yourself upon a rich man.”--II. 37.
“You may lose as well by a card too much as by a card too
little.”--II. 37.
“Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.”--II. 43,
49.
“To ‘Get out of my house!’ and ‘What do you want with my wife?’
there is no answer.”--II. 43.
“We are all equals when we are asleep.”--II. 43.
“The foolish sayings of the rich man pass for saws in
society.”--II. 43.
“As much as you have, so much you are worth.”--II. 43.
“Heaven always favours good desires.”--II. 43.
“To whom God wishes well, his house knows it.”--II. 43.
“There can be no true pleasantry without discretion.”--II. 44.
“We do not know what is good until we have lost it.”--II. 48.
“It is better for him whom God helps than for him who always rises
early.”--II. 49.
“She who desires to see, desires also to be seen.”--II. 49.
“When God sends the dawn, He sends it for all.”--II. 49.
“As long as I am warm, let them laugh (who will).”--II. 50.
“Ingratitude is the child of pride.”--II. 51.
“When you are at Rome, do as you see.”--II. 54.
“Man proposes and God disposes.”--II. 55.
“Until death, all is life.”--II. 59.
“He who falls to-day, may rise to-morrow.”--II. 65.
“Said the pot to the kettle, ‘Get away, blackface!’”--II. 67.
“What the eyes see not, breaks not the heart.”--II. 67.
“The righteous sometimes suffer for sinners.”--II. 67.
“Do away with the motive, and you do away with the sin.”--II. 67.
“He who rails is not far from forgiving.”--II. 70.
CHRONOLOGICAL REPERTOIRE OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE LIFE OF CERVANTES.