We are obliged to "Beginner" for the proffered contribution to our
collection of Book Reviews. That is, however, a department of the
paper our noble friend the BARON DE BOOK-WORMS reserves for his own
pen. But as _Mr. Punch_ has never been known to discourage beginners,
he finds room here for the interesting contribution, which perhaps
should more appropriately have been addressed to his _confrère_ at the
office of the _Athenæum_:--
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_Don Quixote_. By MIGUEL CERVANTES. We have conscientiously plodded
through this voluminous work, which is certainly not entirely without
merit. It purports to recount the daily doings of a resident in a
village of La Mancha (Spain) who, accompanied by a clownish retainer,
went forth in search of adventures. He was not very happy, his day's
sport being invariably rounded oft by a sound drubbing, received
either by himself, his Squire, or both. We wish Lord MACAULAY had
lived to see the publication of this work, and had with fuller leisure
relieved us of the task of reviewing it. Remembering his method of
procedure as illustrated in his article on Dr. NARE's _Memoirs of Lord
Burleigh_, he would doubtless by careful enumeration have been able to
show that from first to last _Don Quixote_ had more ribs broken than
any man has actually possessed since ADAM was privy to a diminution of
their original number. He seems also to have had a perpetual renewal
of teeth, keeping pace with their frequent removal by brute force. As
for the number of legs and arms he had fractured, MACAULAY's Schoolboy
would have shrunk from the task of computing their aggregate.
These are blemishes upon a work that is, at least, well intentioned,
and which might have been more successful had our author been inclined
to give his hero credit for more acumen. When he represents _Don
Quixote_ as running tilt at windmills under the impression that they
are armed knights, and when he pictures him charging a flock of sheep
in the belief that it is an ordered army, we think he too grossly
trifles with the assumed credulity of his readers. Exaggeration
is, indeed, the bane of a work that, from first page to last, bears
evidence of the drawback of extreme youth on the part of the author.
We have been pleased to notice some indications of humour in the
conversation of _Sancho Panza_. But it is the pennyworth of sack to
an intolerably large quantity of bread. What we have written has been
without desire to discourage Mr. CERVANTES, whom we shall be glad to
meet with again, bringing with him the fruits of unremitted practice
and of maturer views of life.
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