We see sometimes appearing certain light little works connected
either with literary history or ancient poetry, or manners and
customs, which would be nothing but pretty and curious pamphlets,
if the Appendix which follows them were not swelled out of all
proportion with proofs and illustrations, annotated notes, documents
with sidenotes, bibliographic bibliography, considerations and
commentaries of all sorts, which put the reader to the torture. By
this proceeding of an exaggerated literary conscience, an opuscule of
thirty pages arrives sometimes at three hundred: it is in some sense
a case of erudite exaltation, sometimes also a vain-glory of the
investigator, who has a mind to climb up the pyramid of books he has
examined, proudly there to set up his silhouette, as we plant a flag
on a building as soon as it is complete.
As an epilogue to another volume of this series, /The Fan/, we
published a sketch of documentary bibliography to indicate the
principal works which we had searched for the little materials
necessary for that monograph. You will find there six or eight pages
of titles placed without order, and ending with this phrase of a man
out of breath, and expressing extreme fatigue--/et cœtera/.
And in this /et cœtera/ we have set now a hundred library shelves in
the shadow--sparing thus our most fastidious readers an extremely
bitter pill, and sparing ourselves also the fatigues of an
interminable catalogue of no great profit to any one, considering
the nature of the work in question, and the fashion in which we have
treated it.
At the conclusion of the three unpretending pieces of chit-chat which
we have just engaged in about /The Sunshade, the Glove, and the
Muff/, people may expect to see figuring here the lineaments or first
matters of the canvas on which we embroidered our bold arabesques.
People will be deceived. It will please us for this time to hide the
innumerable instruments of our thefts; they are still there by our
sides, making walls and barricades upon our tables and the seats
round about us. But if, on the termination of a task, we love usually
to put back regularly in order a library turned upside down by the
fever of researches, happy in being nourished by the intellectual
juice of old books, sometimes also we are prostrated by that intense
discouragement which "dumfounds a man," according to an every-day
expression. In fact, the result has not answered so great a working
up of material, a picture has been dreamed of too big for the frame,
the artist has been obliged to reduce himself, to resign himself,
and to put in nothing of his own essence; in short, the Mosaic
/littérateur/ looks at the Little Thing he has just finished beside
the Great Matter which he had conceived.
In like conditions, the /meâ culpâ/ is the sole preventive parade
that can be made in his retreat to questions which become twisted
into a note of interrogation on the smiling lips of the reader.
To make an inventory of the books we have consulted would be a
torture worse than that of Tantalus, for desire, far from looking
forward with eagerness, would look sadly back, like an old man who
sees again in memory the women of his twentieth year, whom he has
let fly under the willows without profiting in their pursuit by the
vigour of his legs.
These books--which we serve not up here--are full of documents which
we have not been able to enshrine, and it seems that the crumbs which
fall from the table make a larger volume than the repast which has
just been taken.
For the rest, a truce to sadness and superfluous regrets! Who knows
whether we are not odiously unjust to ourselves? Who knows whether
the little schoolboy path which we have chosen is not the prettiest,
the least rugged, the most unforeseen--that is to say, the least
painful and the most verdant, and at the same time the shortest?
Every work, however small it may be, requires distance, a time
of calm and oblivion. The eye of the painter wanders in distress
before one and the same picture for entire days; the brain of an
investigator becomes anchylosed and petrified by dreaming in one and
the same atmosphere of small ideas which remain attached to dress.
When we shall have unfurnished our skull of those delicate things,
/the Sunshade, Glove, and Muff/, to carry thither a current of more
serious conceptions, we shall perhaps have leisure to read again our
little work as strangers, and not as producers, and thus, doubtless,
we shall reflect with a satisfied smile, that there was much more in
us of wisdom than carelessness in not tarrying too long amongst such
charming trifles!
/LONDON/,
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
/May 1883./
IN TWELVE VOLUMES, CROWN 8VO, PARCHMENT BOARDS OR
CLOTH, PER VOLUME, 7S. 6D.
THE
OLD SPANISH ROMANCES
/ILLUSTRATED WITH ETCHINGS./
THE HISTORY OF DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA. Translated from the
Spanish of MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA by MOTTEUX. With copious
Notes (including the Spanish Ballads), and an Essay on the Life
and Writings of CERVANTES by JOHN G. LOCKHART. Preceded by a Short
Notice of the Life and Works of PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX by HENRI VAN
LAUN. Illustrated with Sixteen Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS.
Four Volumes.
LAZARILLO DE TORMES. By DON DIEGO MENDOZA. Translated by THOMAS
ROSCOE. And GUZMAN D'ALFARACHE. By MATEO ALEMAN. Translated by
BRADY. Illustrated with Eight Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS.
Two Volumes.
ASMODEUS. By LE SAGE. Translated from the French. Illustrated with
Four Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS.
THE BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA. By LE SAGE. Translated from the French by
JAMES TOWNSEND. Illustrated with Four Original Etchings by R. DE LOS
RIOS.
VANILLO GONZALES; or, The Merry Bachelor. By LE SAGE. Translated
from the French. Illustrated with Four Original Etchings by R. DE
LOS RIOS.
THE ADVENTURES OF GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE. Translated from the French
of LE SAGE by TOBIAS SMOLLETT. With Biographical and Critical Notice
of LE SAGE by GEORGE SAINTSBURY. New Edition, carefully revised.
Illustrated with Twelve Original Etchings by R. DE LOS RIOS. Three
Volumes.
IN TWELVE VOLUMES, CROWN 8VO, PARCHMENT BOARDS OR
CLOTH, PER VOLUME, 7S. 6D.