CHAPTER XIII: HUMOROUS ROMANCES OF SPAIN

Cervantes, the bold metal of thy lance

Shatters the crystal turrets of Romance;

Down falls the wreck in ruin most immense

Upon the dreary plains of common sense.

L. S.

Cervantes' "Don Quixote"

Cervantes was one of the world's great satirists, a man gifted with

a keen and peculiar sense of the ridiculous. He would himself have

been the first to laugh at those modern critics who professed to

see in him a great poet, and indeed, at the end of his days, when

he assessed his life's work in his mock-heroic Voyage to Parnassus,

he admitted that he had not the poetic gift. That he had a golden

imagination is obvious to anyone who cares to read his Galatea,

imitative as it is, and Don Quixote overflows with imagination and

invention, although certain later passages of the wondrous satire

are extremely reminiscent of some of its earlier pages.

To me Don Quixote has always seemed one of the most precious and

curious of books, but probably for very different reasons from those by

which it makes its appeal to the majority of people, for it is because

of the information it affords concerning romantic literature and

customs that I treasure it most. Where the satire is really legitimate

I revel in the fun as much as it is possible for anyone to do, but

I feel that many of its passages are rather shabbily iconoclastic,

and that some of its strictures are levelled not only against the

absurdities of chivalric extravagance, but against the whole spirit

and structure of romance. It had been well, too, for Cervantes had

he confined himself entirely to the satiric vein, for when he essays

to employ the very literary vehicle at which he chiefly scoffed he

frequently becomes more maudlin--that is the only word for it--than

the most sentimental writers against whom he girds. His shepherds

and shepherdesses and his runaway nuns are long-winded and pedantic,

and he was indeed badly bitten by that tiresome Arcadian phase in

European literature which culminated in the prose pastoral, which

had its roots in false conventions and employed as its mise en scène

an atmosphere of sham rural felicity. Sannazaro, in his Arcadia,

had indeed piped the tune to which Cervantes danced for many a day

ere his own strong common sense showed him the fatuity of the models

which he followed. The author of the Pastor de Filida, Luiz Galvez

de Montalvo, was his own close friend, and there is every evidence

that he made wholesale raids upon the distinctly minor efforts of

such poetasters as Hebrao and Alonso Perez. The works of the men who

composed this school of pseudo-Arcadianism had none of the charm of

the delightful canvases of Watteau and Fragonard, silk-coated and

satin-gowned though their shepherds and shepherdesses be. The country

of the Spanish pastoral had a background of pasteboard scenery, and

theatrical effects of lighting flashed across its stage. It was peopled

by bores of the most intolerable description, who, instead of looking

after their live stock, as they were paid to do, wearied each other and

the wretched traveller who was unhappy enough to encounter them with

their amorous bellowings and interminable tales of misfortune. Little

wonder that the native good sense of Cervantes recoiled later from

this unworthy and unmanly nonsense. But it is extraordinary that

although he meted out such merciless treatment to chivalric romance,

he still retained a weakness for the follies of Arcady, from which,

to the last, he was unable to free himself.

The circumstances of Cervantes' career undoubtedly assisted him

to discipline his ideas. As a collector of taxes he had, perforce,

to come into contact with the seamy side of life, and much of his

time was spent in the Bohemian atmosphere of inns, where he was

compelled to lodge while he worked the district allotted to him. In

these circumstances and in these places he encountered men and women

of flesh and blood, and came up against the iron wall of hard,

solid reality. Such an experience is undoubtedly most valuable

to a man of romantic or imaginative temperament, gifted with

creative ability. It tempers his natural capacities and enlarges

his views. Doubtless Cervantes, when he first went his rounds, had

been in the habit of regaling his fellow-travellers in the posadas

in which he sojourned with high-falutin stories of errant shepherds

and wandering shepherdesses. We can imagine the degree of amusement

with which the rough muleteer, the blunt soldier, and the travelling

quack would greet those sallies. The criticism of such people is not

strained--it is annihilating! Can we doubt that the laughter with

which his earlier rhapsodies were received in company of this sort

blew away the fantastic cobwebs from Cervantes' brain?

I have already indicated that in the age in which he lived the romance

proper had fallen into considerable popular disfavour. This was due

partly to the circumstances of a changed environment, and partly to

the type of literary opinion which had recently been fostered by the

rise of the Spanish drama, which had brought about an entirely new

literary ideal. Can it be that Cervantes, finding that his audiences

regarded the Arcadian type of tale with disfavour, attributed this

to the circumstance that it was fashionable in high circles, and

fell back upon the romance, only to find that it too was greeted

with guffaws and laughed out of the inn parlour? Was it in the quips

and sneers of such audiences, the very antithesis of the romantic

personages of whom he had dreamed, that the idea of Don Quixote took

shape in his brain, and that in the laughter of clowns and men of the

hard world, of the struggling lower middle class, he perceived the

certain popularity which a caricature of chivalry would enjoy? So,

it seems to me, it may have been.

For many a year the sham romance of chivalry had been regarded as

a pest. Serious and responsible writers had thundered against it,

and there is every evidence that in a measure it stood between

a certain section of the people of Spain and anything like mental

advancement. It had, indeed, turned the heads of that portion of the

nation unaccustomed to think for itself, and unable to form a rational

opinion regarding its demerits. In all countries and at all times,

this class, usually impressionable and easily led, falls an easy prey

to the blandishments of the hack writer of sensational proclivities. It

is not too much to say that unhealthy sensationalism in literature

constitutes a real and active danger to national well-being. It seduces

the people from their duties, unfits them for the serious business of

life, renders them pretentious rather than independent, and leads them

to the belief that they reflect the virtues or vices of the absurd

heroes and heroines of their favourite tales. The one weapon which

the more sensible portion of the community can bring to bear against

such a pernicious condition of affairs is healthy ridicule, which

it usually meets with from the rational and the well-balanced. But

the danger exists that in the revulsion of public feeling against

literary extravagance not only the absurdities which have obsessed

the thoughtless and irritated the sensible will undergo destruction

and banishment, but those higher virtues and graces of which they

are the distorted reflection will not be discriminated against, but

will be demolished along with them. Such, indeed, was the fate which

befell the greater romances, those jewels of human imagination, which,

although Cervantes himself made an effort to save them, shared in the

general wreck and ruin of the fiction of which they were the flower,

until the taste and insight of a later day excavated them from the

super-incumbent mass under which they lay buried.

The Figure of Don Quixote

Don Quixote, the central figure of the mighty satire which gave its

death-blow to chivalry, is perhaps typical of the romance reader of

Cervantes' day. Crack-brained and imaginative to the verge of madness,

he is entirely lost to the uses of everyday existence. He lives in a

world of his own, and has nothing in common with that of his time,

to the spirit of which he cannot adapt himself. In this gentleman

of La Mancha the vices of the imagination are well portrayed, but

they are unaccompanied by those gifts through which imagination

can be rendered of utility to the community. Don Quixote dwells on

the heights of a chivalric Parnassus, a land of magic peopled by

the spectres and shadows which he has encountered in the books with

which his library is so well furnished. His imagination is thus not

even creative, but derivative; reliance upon the "idols he has loved

so long" has "done his credit in men's eyes much wrong," and he is

regarded by his neighbours as an amiable lunatic of no importance. But

the dreamer, when roused to action, can be a very terrible person if

his visions chance to direct him astray, and if he attempt to realize

a nightmare. Thus it was with Don Quixote. Scarcely mad enough for

confinement, but yet sufficiently crazy to become a public nuisance,

if not a public menace, he justly typifies the kind of person in

whom romance runs mad, and is thus of the same class as the small boy

who is incited to acts of petty larceny by the perusal of detective

stories, or the young lady behind the ribbon-counter who is under

the impression that she is the long-lost daughter of a mysterious peer.

It is symptomatic of such craziness that it craves companionship. It

is indeed a species of vanity which must have an audience, however

small or however unsuited to its purposes. Again, the element of

conspiracy is as the apple of its eye, and it must confide its ideas

and aspirations to one sympathetic ear at least. In Sancho Panza, Don

Quixote finds a strange confidant. The luckless peasant is completely

unable to comprehend his master's point of view, but is carried away

by his rodomontades and the glib and gorgeous promises of preferment

and prosperity which the crack-brained knight holds out to him. To

his participation in the wild scheme of the visionary Don, Sancho's

shrewd spouse violently objects, but when dreamer and dunce get

together common sense may hold its tongue and content itself with the

knowledge that it is not until windmills have been tilted at and sound

trouncings have been received that its advice will be listened to.

But though he begins his travels as a dunce, Sancho by no means remains

one. He profits from his experiences, and almost every page shows him

increasing in judgment and in that humour which is the salt of good

judgment. As his master grows madder, Sancho grows wiser, until at

last he becomes capable of direction and guidance toward the rueful

knight. As we proceed we begin to suspect that the peasant-squire

exists as a kind of chorus to illustrate the excesses of his master

and criticize his absurdities. But apart altogether from Don Quixote,

Sancho Panza is a striking and arresting figure in modern fiction,

possessing a philosophy of his own, rich in worldly wisdom and

abounding with practical ability. On the humorous side he is equal to

Falstaff, only whereas Falstaff's humour is typically English that

of Sancho Panza is universal. He is a world-clown, with the outlook

of a philosopher and the unconscious humour of a Handy Andy.

The Adventure at the Inn

The true measure of the character of Don Quixote is perhaps met with

in that chapter which recounts what occurred to him in the inn which he

took for a castle. The place seems to have been a very ordinary Spanish

posada. The host and hostess were kindly folk whom the knight at once

exalted to the rank of a castellan and châtelaine, and in the dowdy

maidservant, who has been immortalized under the name of Maritornes,

he saw a great lady who dwelt in their company. After the terrible

trouncing he had received from the Yanguesian carriers the wretched

knight was glad to rest his battered limbs in a miserable garret

of the place, while Sancho explained to the inn-folk the nature of a

knight-errant and the vicissitudes of errantry, which one day compelled

its adherents to undergo such hardship as the Don now suffered from,

and the next exalted them to the heights of sovereignty over many

empires. These explanations were seconded by the Knight of the Rueful

Countenance himself, who, sitting up in bed, entertained the hostess

and maidservant to a speech so grandiloquent that, lost in wonder at

his eloquence, "they admired him as a man of another world." But Don

Quixote, anxious to recover from his injuries, begged his squire to

procure from "the governor of the castle" the ingredients of a magical

balm of which he had read in some book of chivalry. These he obtained,

and Don Quixote busied himself by concocting the enchanted liquor

over the fire, saying over it many credos and paternosters. Then

he drank deeply of the awful compound, with distressing effect, and

Sancho, following his example, underwent a similar but more violent

experience, and was assured by his master that the balsam disagreed

with him because he had not received the order of knighthood!

Saddling his horse, the knight was about to proceed on his journey,

but before he set out he assured "the lord governor of the castle"

how deeply grateful he was for the honours he had received while

under his roof. The innkeeper suggested that the time for paying his

reckoning had come, but Don Quixote retorted that it was impossible

for him to do so, as no knight-errant of whom he had ever read was

wont to pay for board and lodging. The innkeeper protested loudly,

whereupon, clapping spurs to Rozinante, the knight rode out at the

gate. The innkeeper then attempted to extort his dues from Sancho

Panza, but without avail, as the squire quoted the same authorities

as his master, whereupon some of those who sojourned at the inn seized

him and tossed him in a blanket. Don Quixote, hearing his cries, rode

back, but although he stormed loudly the travellers still continued

to toss Sancho in the blanket, until at length, tired of the exercise,

they let him go.

Don Quixote's Love-Madness

In the space at our disposal it would be impossible to follow Don

Quixote step by step through the land of false romance which he had

created for himself. We will recall how Amadis on the Firm Island

bemoaned his separation from his lady-love, and how, when he came

to a locality known as the Black Mountain, Don Quixote resolved to

follow the example of the great hero of chivalry. Before he left his

native village he had placed his affections upon a country wench,

to whom he gave the romantic name of Dulcinea del Toboso, and now

that he had come to the Black Mountain he resolved to spend his time

in meditation upon the virtues and beauties of this super-excellent

damsel. After lecturing Sancho Panza upon the duty of a knight-errant

in meditation upon his lady, he became irritated with the squire

because he could not understand the reason for his amorous fury.

"Pray, sir," quoth Sancho, "what is it that you mean to do in this

fag-end of the world?"

"Have I not already told thee," answered Don Quixote, "that I intend

to copy Amadis in his madness, despair and fury? Nay, at the same

time I will imitate the valiant Orlando Furioso's extravagance when

he ran mad, at which time in his frantic despair he tore up trees

by the roots, troubled the waters of the clear fountains, slew the

shepherds, destroyed their flocks, and committed a hundred thousand

other extravagances worthy to be recorded in the eternal register

of fame."

"Sir," quoth Sancho, "I dare say the knight who did these penances

had some reason to be mad. But what lady has sent you a-packing,

or even so much as slighted you?"

"That is the point," cried Don Quixote, "for in this consists the

singular perfection of my undertaking. It is neither strange nor

meritorious for a knight to run mad upon any just occasion. No, the

rarity is to run mad without a cause, without the least constraint

or necessity, for thus my mistress must needs have a vast idea of

my love. Waste no more time, therefore, in trying to divert me from

so rare, so happy, and so singular an imitation. I am mad and will

be mad until you return with an answer to the letter which you must

carry from me to the Lady Dulcinea. If it be favourable, my penance

shall end, but if not, then shall I be emphatically mad."

"Body o' me!" quoth Sancho, "why run you on at such a rate, Sir

Knight? All these tales of yours of the winning of kingdoms and

bestowing of islands rather appear to me as so much braggartry,

and now this latest mood of yours----"

"Now as I love bright arms," cried the Don, "I swear that thou art an

addle-pated ass. Know you not that all the actions and adventures of

a knight-errant seem to be mere chimæras and follies? Not that they

are so, but merely have that appearance through the malice and envy

of powerful enchanters."

As they talked they came near to a high rock, round which the wild

trees, plants, and flowers grew in profusion, and here the Knight of

the Woeful Figure resolved to perform his amorous penance. Throwing

himself on the ground, he broke into a loud frenzy of grief. "Go not

yet," he cried to Sancho, "for I desire that thou shalt be a witness

of what I will do for my lady's sake, that thou mayst give her an

account of it."

"Bless us," cried Sancho, "what can I see more that I have not seen

already?"

"Nothing as yet," replied Don Quixote. "Thou must see me throw away

mine armour, tear my clothes, knock my head against the rocks, and

do a thousand other things of that kind that will fill thee with

astonishment."

"Beware, sir," cried the squire. "If you needs must knock your noddle,

do so gently, I pray you."

The Army of Sheep

But surely the most mirth-provoking of all the adventures of Don

Quixote is that in which he takes a flock of sheep for an army. He

and Sancho were riding at bridle-pace over a wide plain, when they

perceived a thick cloud of dust in the distance.

"The day is come," cried the knight, "the happy day that fortune

has reserved for me, and in which the strength of my arm shall be

signalized by such exploits as shall be transmitted even to the

latest posterity. Seest thou yonder cloud of dust? Know then that it

is raised by a prodigious army marching this way and composed of an

infinite number of nations."

The wretched Don's brain was of course full to overflowing of the

accounts of those stupendous battles of myriads of paynims which,

as we have seen, are so frequently encountered in the old romances,

and he was delighted when Sancho pointed out that two separate hosts

seemed to be approaching from different points of the compass.

"Ha, so!" cried Don Quixote, flourishing his lance, "then shall

we assist the weaker side. Know, Sancho, that the host which now

confronts us is commanded by the great Alifanfaron, Emperor of the

Island of Taprobana. The other that advances behind us is his sworn

enemy, Pentapolin of the Naked Arm, King of the Garamantians."

"Pray, sir," quoth Sancho, "what is the cause of this quarrel between

two such great men?"

"It is a simple matter," answered Don Quixote. "The pagan Alifanfaron

dares to make his addresses to the daughter of Pentapolin, who has

told him that he will have naught of him unless he abjure his false

beliefs."

"If a battle be at hand," said Sancho nervously, "where shall I place

my ass, for I fear he will not prove of much avail in the charge."

"True," answered Don Quixote. "We will soon provide a destrier for

thee when the knights begin to fall from their saddles. But let

us scan their ranks. He who wears the gilded arms and bears on

his shield a crowned lion couchant at the feet of a lady is the

valiant Lord Luarcalco, Lord of the Silver Bridge. Yonder is the

formidable Micocolembo, the great Duke of Quiracia, wearing armour

powdered with flowers of gold. The gigantic form upon his right is

the dauntless Brandabarbaran, sovereign of the Three Arabias, whose

armour is made of serpents' skins, and who carries for a shield the

gate of the temple which Samson pulled down at his death. But our

allies also advance. Yonder marches Timonel of Carcaxona, Prince

of New Biscay, who bears on his shield a cat or in a field gules,

with the motto 'Miau.' Beside him rides Espartafilardo of the Wood,

whose blue shield is powdered with asparagus plants. But the pagans

press on. To the right cluster those who drink the pleasant stream

of the Xanthus, there the rude mountaineers of Massilia, behind them

those who gather gold from the sands of Arabia Felix, the treacherous

Numidians, the bowmen of Persia, the Medes and Parthians who fight

flying, the houseless Arabians, and the sooty Ethiopians."

"Upon my soul," cried Sancho, "surely thy magicians are at work again,

for not a single knight, giant or man can I see of all those you talk

of now."

"Blockhead!" cried Don Quixote. "Hark to the neighing of countless

horses, the fanfare of the trumpets, and the thunder of many drums."

"Surely this is sorcery," replied the puzzled Sancho, "for I hear

nothing but the bleating of sheep."

"Retreat, if thou fearest the engagement," replied the Don, with a

haughty sneer, "for I with my single arm am sufficient to give the

victory to that side which I shall favour with my assistance," and

with a loud and warlike cry he couched his lance, clapped spurs to

the lean side of Rozinante, and charged like a thunderbolt into the

plain, crying: "Courage, brave knights! Woe upon that great infidel

Alifanfaron of Taprobana."

In another moment he was among the flock of sheep, charging through and

through it, and piercing an animal at each thrust of his lance. The

shepherds, in great dismay, unloosed their slings and began to ply

him with stones as big as their fists. But, disdainful of this petty

artillery, he cried upon Alifanfaron, whom in imagination he was

about to engage, when a stone as big as a good-sized pippin struck

him heavily upon the short ribs. Thinking himself desperately wounded,

he pulled out the earthen flask which contained his magic balsam; but

just as he was in the act of raising this to his lips, a stone from the

sling of a shepherd struck it so forcibly as to shiver it to atoms,

and passing through it broke three of his teeth and tumbled him from

the saddle. The shepherds, fearing that they had killed him, picked

up the dead sheep and made off, leaving him more dead than alive.

Mambrino's Helmet

No less notable is Cervantes' account of the adventure in which Don

Quixote succeeded in obtaining the helmet of Mambrino. At a distance

he espied a horseman who wore upon his head something that glittered

like gold. Turning to Sancho, he said:

"Behold, yonder comes he who wears upon his head the helmet of

Mambrino, which I have sworn to make mine own."

"Now the truth of the story," says Cervantes, "was this: there were

in that part of the country two villages, one of which was so little

that it had not so much as a shop in it, nor any barber; so that the

barber of the greater village served also the smaller. And thus a

person happening to have occasion to be let blood, and another to

be shaved, the barber was going thither with his brass basin, which

he had clapped upon his head to keep his hat, that chanced to be a

new one, from being spoiled by the rain; and as the basin was new

scoured, it made a glittering show a great way off. As Sancho had

well observed, he rode upon a grey ass, which Don Quixote as easily

took for a dapple-grey steed as he took the barber for a knight,

and his brass basin for a golden helmet; his distracted brain easily

applying every object to his romantic ideas. Therefore, when he saw

the poor imaginary knight draw near, he fixed his lance, or javelin,

to his thigh, and without staying to hold a parley with his thoughtless

adversary, flew at him as fiercely as Rozinante would gallop, resolved

to pierce him through and through; crying out in the midst of his

career: 'Caitiff! wretch! defend thyself, or immediately surrender

that which is so justly my due.'"

The barber, seeing this awful apparition come thundering down upon him,

and in terror lest he should be run through by Don Quixote's lance,

threw himself off his ass on to the ground and, hastily rising, ran off

at the top of his speed, leaving both his ass and his basin behind him.

"Of a truth," said Don Quixote, "the miscreant who has left this helmet

has shown himself as prudent as the beaver, who, finding himself hotly

pursued by the hunters, to save his life cuts off with his teeth that

for which his natural instinct tells him he was followed."

"Upon my word," cried Sancho, "it is a right good basin, and worth

at least a piece of eight."

Don Quixote at once placed it on his head, but could find no visor,

and when he perceived that it had none, "Doubtless," said he, "the

pagan for whom this famous helmet was first made had a head of a

prodigious size, but unfortunately part of it is wanting."

At this Sancho laughed outright.

"I fancy," continued Don Quixote, "that this enchanted helmet has

fallen by some strange accident into the hands of some one who for

the lucre of a little money, and finding it to be of pure gold,

melted one half of it and of the other made this headpiece, which as

thou sayest has some resemblance to a barber's basin."

The Adventure of the Windmills

The most celebrated, if not the most amusing of Don Quixote's

adventures is certainly that of the windmills. Indeed "tilting at

windmills" has passed into a proverb. The dismal Don and his squire

had entered a certain plain where stood thirty or forty windmills,

and as soon as the knight espied them he cried: "Fortune directs

our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. See, Sancho,

there are at least thirty outrageous giants whom I intend to encounter,

and with whose spoils we shall enrich ourselves."

"What giants?" quoth Sancho Panza.

"Those whom thou seest yonder," answered Don Quixote, "with their long,

extended arms."

"By your leave, sir," said the squire, "those things yonder are no

giants, but windmills."

"Alas, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "thou art but little acquainted with

adventures. I tell thee they are giants, and therefore if thou art

afraid, turn aside and say thy prayers, for I am resolved to engage in

an unequal combat against them all." Without another word he clapped

spurs to his horse, crying out: "Stand your ground, ignoble creatures,

and fly not basely from a single knight who dares encounter you

all!" At that moment the wind rose and the mill-sails began to move,

at which the Don cried aloud: "Base miscreants! though you move more

arms than the giant Briareus, you shall pay for your arrogance." Then,

devoutly recommending himself to his lady, he bore down upon the first

windmill, and running his lance into the sail, transfixed it. The sail,

however, continued to rise, drawing up both knight and horse along

with it, until at last the lance broke into shivers and Rozinante

and his master fell a good distance to the ground.

Sancho Panza at once ran up to the dismounted knight, who seemed to

have fared badly. "Alas, your worship," he cried, "did not I tell you

they were windmills, and that nobody could think otherwise unless he

had windmills in his head."

"Peace!" replied Don Quixote, who had been badly shaken by the fall. "I

am verily persuaded that the cursed necromancer Freston, who continues

to persecute me, has transformed these giants into windmills. But,

mark you, in the end all his pernicious wiles and stratagems shall

prove ineffectual against the prevailing edge of my sword."

The Story of the Captive

One of the most remarkable of the tales which are interspersed

throughout the history of Don Quixote is that of the captive which the

hero encounters at a certain inn, and which, if it is not actually

based upon the facts of Cervantes' own personal captivity among the

Moorish pirates, certainly draws much of its substance and colour

therefrom. On 26th September, 1575, the Spanish vessel Sol, on which

Cervantes served as a private soldier, was separated from the rest

of the Spanish squadron in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, and,

falling in with a flotilla of Moorish pirates, was captured after a

desperate resistance. Cervantes himself was sold as a slave to one

Dali Mami, a Greek renegade, who found upon his prisoner certain

highly eulogistic letters from Don John of Austria and the Duke of

Sessa. These flattering credentials led his new master to suppose that

Cervantes was a man of consequence, and that he would presumably be

able to draw a large ransom for him. But although the great are often

quite ready to provide genius with grandiloquent testimonials which

cost them only the expense of a little ink and paper, they are by no

means prone to back their assertions of ability by tabling large sums

of money, and Cervantes continued to languish in captivity. In 1576

he attempted to escape with other prisoners, but their Moorish guide

played them false, and, threatened by hunger, the party was forced

to return to Algiers. In the following year Cervantes' brother was

ransomed, and he undertook to send a vessel to carry off Miguel and his

friends. Meanwhile the author of Don Quixote enlisted the sympathies of

a Spanish renegade, a Navarrese gardener named Juan. Between them they

dug a cave in a garden near the sea, and secreted in it, one by one,

fourteen Christian slaves, who were secretly fed during several months

by the help of another renegade known as El Dorador. The vessel sent

by Rodrigo de Cervantes stood in to the shore, and was on the point of

embarking those hidden in the cave when a Moorish fishing-boat passed

by, and so alarmed the rescuers that they put to sea again. Meanwhile

the treacherous El Dorador had revealed the plan to Hassan Pasha,

the Dey of Algiers, and when several of the crew of rescuers landed

on a second occasion to convey the fugitives on board, the Dey's

troops surrounded the garden, and the entire band of Christians was

captured. Cervantes, with that true nobility which characterized

him throughout life, took the entire blame of the conspiracy upon

himself. Dragged bound before Hassan, he adhered to his statement,

and although the unfortunate gardener was hanged, Hassan decided to

spare Cervantes' life, and for some reason known to himself purchased

the poet from Dali Mami for five hundred crowns. Perhaps the tyrant

expected an immense ransom from a man whose nobility of bearing must

have impressed him. But be that as it may, Cervantes at once began to

set on foot a third scheme of escape. He sent a letter to the Spanish

Governor of Oran, asking for assistance, but this was intercepted,

and the poet was sentenced to two thousand blows, which, however,

were never inflicted. Cervantes now conceived the idea of inducing the

Christian population of Algiers to rise and capture the city. In this

project he was assisted by some Valencian traders, but the scheme was

revealed to Hassan by a Dominican monk, and the Valencians, hearing

of the priest's treachery, and fearing lest they might be implicated,

begged Cervantes to make his escape on a ship which was about to start

for Spain. But Cervantes refused to desert his friends, and when he

was once more dragged before Hassan with a hangman's rope round his

neck, and threatened with instant death unless he revealed the names

of his accomplices, he obstinately refused to betray them.

Meanwhile his family were doing their utmost to procure his release,

and in order that they might collect his ransom, his mother, the better

to inspire pity, actually passed herself off as a widow, though her

husband, a medical practitioner of great age, was still alive. By

tremendous exertions they succeeded in collecting two hundred and

fifty ducats, which they paid to a certain monk who went regularly to

Algiers, but this Hassan refused to accept, asking for one prisoner

of distinction, called Palafox, the sum of one thousand ducats. The

monk seems to have acted as an official ransomer to the Spaniards,

and when Hassan found that he would pay no more than five hundred

ducats for Palafox, he offered to ransom Cervantes for that sum by

way of making a bargain. So after five years of slavery the author

of Don Quixote was set free, and returned to his native soil. But

the Dominican monk who had revealed to Hassan his attempted escape,

and who was probably afraid that Cervantes would charge him with

this treachery, no sooner heard that he had landed in Spain than

he spread false reports regarding his conduct. These, however,

Cervantes was easily able to rebut, and his character as a heroic

leader among the captives was amply vindicated. The captive's story,

for which Cervantes had had the mournful privilege of collecting so

much 'local colour,' is recounted to Don Quixote by an escaped slave,

who, with his Moorish lady-love, has come to the inn where the woeful

knight is sojourning. I shall adhere to Cervantes' manner of recounting

it in the first person, but as it occupies a considerable portion of

the first part of his famous history, considerations of space will

necessitate its condensation.

"My family had its origin in the mountains of Leon, and although my

father had considerable substance, he had by no means been prudent in

his expenditure, and at an early age my brothers and myself were faced

with the necessity for carving out our own fortunes. One of my brothers

resolved to go to the Indies, the youngest embraced Holy Orders, and

I concluded that for my part I would be a soldier. With a thousand

ducats in my pocket I travelled to Alicant, whence I took ship to

Genoa. From that city I went to Milan, where I joined the forces of

the great Duke of Alva and saw service in Flanders. Some time after

my arrival in that country there came news of the league concluded by

Pope Pius V in conjunction with Spain against the Turks, who had at

that time taken the island of Cyprus from the Venetians. Hearing that

Don John of Austria had been given the conduct of this expedition,

I returned to Italy, enrolled myself in his service, and was present

at the great battle of Lepanto, on which glorious day the fable that

the Turk was invincible, which had so long deluded Christendom,

was dissipated. But instead of participating in this victory, I

was so unfortunate as to be made a prisoner in the course of the

engagement. Vehali, the bold pirate king of Algiers, having boarded

and taken the galley Capitana of Malta, the vessel of Andrea Doria,

to which I had been commissioned, bore up to assist it. I leaped

on board the enemy's ship, which, however, succeeded in casting off

the grappling-irons thrown upon it, and I found myself surrounded by

enemies who quickly bore me down. I was carried to Constantinople,

and was made a slave in the captured Capitana at Navarino.

"As I did not wish to burden my father with the collection of a ransom,

I refrained from letting him know of my circumstances. My master Vehali

dying, I fell to the share of a Venetian renegade called Azanaga,

who sailed for Algiers, where I was shut up in prison. As it was

thought that I might be ransomed, the Moors placed me in a bagnio,

and I was not forced to labour like those captives who had no hope of

redemption. Upon the courtyard of this place there opened the windows

of the house of a wealthy Moor, and it chanced one day that I was

standing underneath one of these, when there appeared from it a long

cane, to which was attached a piece of linen. This was moved up and

down, as if it was expected that some of us should lay hold upon it,

and one of our number stood immediately beneath it to see if it would

be lowered. But just as he came to it, the cane was drawn up and shaken

to and fro sideways, as if in denial. Another of my comrades advanced,

and had the same success as the former. Seeing this, I resolved to try

my fortune also, and as I came under the cane, it fell at my feet. I

untied the linen, and found wrapped up in it about ten gold coins

called zianins. I took the money, broke the cane, and looking upward,

beheld a white hand close the window in haste. Shortly afterward

there appeared out of the same casement a little cross made of cane,

and by this token we concluded that some Christian woman was a slave

in that house. But the whiteness of the hand and the richness of the

bracelets upon the arm made us think that perhaps we had to deal with

a Christian lady who had turned Mohammedan.

"For more than fifteen days we received no other token of the lady's

presence, although we watched carefully for the same, but we learned

that the house belonged to a Moor of high rank, called Agimorato. At

the end of this time the cane appeared once more, and on this occasion

I found that the linen bundle contained no less than forty crowns

of Spanish gold, with a paper written in Arabic, at the top of which

was a great cross. But none of us understood Arabic, and it was with

difficulty that we could find an interpreter. At last I resolved

to trust a renegade of Murcia, who had shown me great proofs of his

kindness. He agreed to translate it, and I found the contents were

as follow:

"'As a child I had a Christian nurse who taught me much of your

religion, and especially of Lela Marien, whom you call the Virgin. When

this good slave died, she appeared to me in a vision and bid me go

to the land of the Christians to see the Virgin, who had a great

kindness for me. I have seen many Christians out of this window,

but none has appeared to me so much of a gentleman as thyself. I am

young and handsome and can carry with me a great deal of money and

other riches. Pray consider how we may escape together, and thou shalt

be my husband in thine own country, if thou art willing. But if not,

it does not matter, for the Virgin will provide me a husband. Trust

no Moor with this letter, for they are all treacherous.'

"The renegade to whom I had given the letter for translation promised

to assist us in every way in his power, should we venture upon making

our escape, and indeed the hearts of all of us rose high, for we argued

that the influence and means of the lady who had befriended me might

greatly help us in our efforts for freedom. I dictated a reply to the

renegade, who translated it into the Arabic tongue, offering the lady

my services and those of my companions, and promising on the word of

a Christian to make her my wife. Soon the cane was let down from the

window once more. I attached the note to it and it was drawn up. That

night we prisoners discussed the best means of effecting our escape,

and at last we agreed to wait for the answer of Zoraida (for such we

discovered was the lady's name), feeling assured that she could best

advise us how to proceed.

For some days the bagnio was full of people, during which time the

cane was invisible, but when we were once more left to ourselves it

was thrust through the window, and on this occasion the bundle which

depended from it contained a letter and a hundred crowns in gold. The

renegade speedily translated the missive, which stated that although

the writer could not contrive the manner of our escape, she could still

furnish us with sufficient money to enable us to buy our ransoms. She

suggested that having done this one of us should proceed to Spain,

purchase a ship there, and return for the others. She concluded by

saying that she was now about to proceed to the country with her

father, and that she would pass all the summer in a place near the

seaside, which she closely described.

"Every one of our company offered to be the man who should go to

Spain and purchase the ship which was to deliver the rest, but the

renegade, who was experienced in such matters, strongly opposed this

proposal, saying that he had seen too many such enterprises wrecked

by placing trust in a single individual. He offered to purchase a ship

in Algiers, and pretend to turn merchant, by which means, he said, he

could contrive to get us out of the bagnio and the country. Meanwhile

I answered Zoraida, assuring her that we would do all she advised,

and in reply to this she gave us, by means of the cane, two thousand

crowns in gold. Of this sum we gave the renegade five hundred crowns to

buy the ship, and through the good offices of a merchant of Valencia,

then in Algiers, I effected my own ransom with another eight hundred

crowns. But on the advice of this trader the money was not paid down

to the Dey at once, lest his suspicions should be aroused, but he

was informed that it would shortly be forthcoming from Spain, and

meanwhile I remained in the Valencian's house upon parole. Before

Zoraida finally departed for her father's summer residence she gave

us another thousand crowns, explaining, by letter, that she kept the

keys of her father's treasury, and on this occasion I made arrangements

for ransoming three of my friends.

The Flight from Algiers

"Soon after this the renegade purchased a vessel capable of carrying

above thirty people, in which he pretended to make several voyages

in company with a Moorish partner whom he took in order to avoid

suspicion. Each time he passed along the coast he cast anchor in

a little bay close to the house where Zoraida lived, so that the

people of the place should get used to his doing so. He even landed

on several occasions and begged fruit from Zoraida's father, which

he always received, for the old Moor was of a liberal spirit. But he

could never succeed in having speech with Zoraida herself. Our plan

was now upon such a footing that he asked me to fix a day upon which

we might make the great effort upon which everything depended. So I

collected twelve Spaniards known to be good oarsmen and whose comings

and goings were not very closely watched. It was arranged among us that

we should steal out of the town upon the evening of the next Friday,

and rendezvous at a certain spot near Agimorato's dwelling. But

it was necessary that Zoraida herself should be apprised of our

intention, and with this object in view I entered her garden one day

upon pretence of gathering a few herbs. Almost at once I encountered

her father, who asked me what I did there. I told him I was a slave

of Arnaut Mami, who I knew was a friend of his, and that I wanted a

few herbs to make up a salad. While we spoke Zoraida came out of the

garden house, and as it was quite the custom for the Moorish women

to be seen before Christian slaves, her father called her to come

to him. She was most richly dressed and wore a profusion of jewels,

and now that I beheld her for the first time I was astounded by her

beauty. Her father told her for what purpose I was there, and she

asked me if I were about to be ransomed. Speaking in lingua franca,

I replied that I had already been ransomed, and that I intended to

embark on the morrow upon a French ship.

"At that juncture the old Moor was called away upon business, and I

at once assured Zoraida that I would come for her on the morrow. She

immediately threw her arms around my neck and began to walk toward

the house, but her father returning at that moment espied us, and

came running to us in some alarm. Immediately Zoraida pretended to

be in a fainting condition, and explained to Agimorato that she had

suddenly felt indisposed. I yielded her up to him and they retired

into the house.

"Next evening we embarked and dropped anchor opposite Zoraida's

dwelling. When darkness had come we walked boldly into the garden,

and finding the gate of the house open entered the courtyard. Zoraida

immediately emerged from the house carrying a small trunk full of

treasure, and told us that her father was asleep, but as misfortune

would have it, some slight noise that we made awakened him and

he came to a window calling out, 'Thieves, thieves! Christians,

Christians!' The renegade at once rushed upstairs and secured him,

and we carried father and daughter on board. We also made prisoners

of the few Moors who remained on the vessel, bent to the oars, and

set out to sea.

"At first we endeavoured to make for Majorca, but a strong wind

arising, we were driven along the coast. We were in great fear that

we might encounter some of the Moorish cruisers which we knew to be in

the vicinity. I made every effort in my power to assure Agimorato that

we would give him his liberty on the very first occasion, and told him

that his daughter had become a Christian and desired to live the rest

of her life in a Christian land. On hearing this the old man behaved

as if suddenly seized with a frenzy, and rising cast himself into

the sea, whence we succeeded with difficulty in rescuing him. Shortly

afterward we drove into a small bay, where we set Agimorato ashore. I

shall never forget his curses and imprecations upon his daughter,

but as we sailed away he called out, begging her to return. However,

she hid her face in her hands and commended him to the Virgin.

"We had proceeded some little distance from the coast when the light of

the moon became obscured. All at once we nearly collided with a large

vessel, which hailed us in French, bidding us to heave to. Perceiving

that it was a French pirate, we made no answer, but pressed onward,

whereupon its crew launched a boat, boarded us and dragged us on board,

stripping Zoraida of all her jewels and throwing us into the hold. As

we neared the Spanish shore next morning they placed us in their

long-boat with two barrels of water and a small quantity of biscuits,

and the captain, touched with some remorse for the lovely Zoraida,

gave her at parting about forty crowns in gold. We rowed on through

the early dawn, and after some hours of plying the oars landed. After

proceeding some miles inland we came upon a shepherd, who on seeing

our Moorish dresses, made off and gave the alarm. Soon we encountered

a company of horsemen, one of whom chanced to be related to one of

our number. They placed us on their horses and we soon reached the

city of Velez Malaga. There we went straight to church to thank God

for His great mercy to us, and there for the first time Zoraida saw

and recognized a picture of the Virgin. With some of the money the

pirate had given Zoraida I bought an ass and resolved to discover

whether or no my father and brothers were still alive. That is,

gentlemen, the sum of our adventures."

The escaped Christian had scarcely finished his narration when a

splendid coach drove up to the door of the inn. From this equipage

there alighted a richly dressed gentleman and lady, who entered the

posada and were met with great courtesy by Don Quixote. The Christian

refugee recognized the gentleman as his brother, now a judge of the

Court of Mexico, who greeted him affectionately and introduced the

lady as his daughter. The man of many adventures with his Moorish bride

resolved to return with the judge to Seville, whence they intended to

advise their father of these strange happenings, that he might come to

see the baptism and marriage of Zoraida, for whose future, and that of

his sorely tried brother, the grandee resolved to make ample provision.

The Growth of Cervantes

It is in such a tale as the above that we observe how Cervantes'

style grows more supple and adaptable as his work proceeds. It is

clear that he has made an effort to shake off the literary trammels

of his time, and that he has succeeded. No longer does he find it

necessary to imitate such writers as Antonio de Guevara, as in the

passage in which Don Quixote describes the Age of Gold. He has shaken

off the rather recondite euphuism of some of the earlier passages,

and has become more human and familiar. His speeches are appropriate

to his characters; his dialogue is full of life and his narrative of

incident. But although in these pages we behold the evolution of a

realist, Cervantes never altogether throws off the cloak of academic

eloquence--only it becomes a carefully restrained eloquence which

has left affectation far behind.

The great and immediate success of Don Quixote was, however,

principally due to its large humour, and to its faithful portraiture of

the Spanish types of Cervantes' day. Into juxtaposition with figures

that were familiar to all he brought the extraordinary character of

the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, a burlesque original out of

another age, and yet not lacking in the dignity and greater qualities

of the times whose spirit he strove to imitate. Into the environment of

seventeenth-century Spain stalked the antiquated figure of Don Quixote,

disturbing its ordinary routine and quarrelling with its conventions,

carrying the days of chivalry in his head, and projecting their

phantasms on the landscape by means of the all too powerful light

of his imagination. But if the incongruity of the Don in a modern

setting roused grave and sober Spain to inextinguishable laughter, his

character and that of Sancho Panza were still recognized as triumphs

of creative fiction--the representatives of imagination run mad and

of the grossest common sense.

The perfection and finish of Don Quixote, and the consummate

craftsmanship with which it is conceived, cannot fail to commend

themselves to readers of discretion. It is full of the knowledge of

the man of the world; it breathes leisure and urbanity, its spirit is

that which stamps the work of the great master. Here there are no loose

ends, no clumsy constructions, no weaknesses of diction. It does not

seem to me that Cervantes wrote with any great facility, and herein

probably lies the measure of his great literary excellence. On the

other hand, no drudgery is apparent in his composition. He strikes

the happy medium between brilliant facility and that meticulous and

often nervously apprehensive mode which so frequently disgraces the

work of modern stylists. He is precise and wonderfully sure-footed,

and we cannot imagine him grasping in alarm at every projection

in the course of his ascent. Whatever the secret of his style, it

succeeded in producing a wonderfully equable yet varied narrative,

just and appropriate in expression. His entire canvas is filled in

and completed with a masterly eye to the smallest detail.

The Second Part of "Don Quixote"

We can see by the time which he permitted to elapse between the first

and second parts of his great romance how careful Cervantes was not

to hazard his well-won reputation upon an unfortunate sequel, and the

fictioneer of our own time, harassed by a public greedy for sensation

and flushed by momentary success, might well turn to him for an example

in this respect. It is often alleged that the circumstances of modern

literature do not permit of that leisure which is necessary to the

excogitation of a carefully developed technique or a sound style. This,

alas! is only too true. The successful author of to-day can scarcely

permit ten months, much less ten years, to elapse between one effort

and another, and to this feverish condition of things we undoubtedly

owe those disappointing sequels to great novels with which all of

us must be only too familiar. Ours is emphatically not an age of

connoisseurs. We eat, drink, and read pretty much what is given us,

and if we grumble a little at the quality thereof, we feel that no

complaints will alter the conditions which produce the things against

which we inveigh. The Spain of Cervantes' day offered a much more

critical environment. Bad or hastily conceived work it would not

tolerate. But there were elements within it which frequently did

much to hasten the publication of a sequel, and the chief of these

was undoubtedly literary piracy. Cervantes appears to have been

spurred on in the publication of the second part of Don Quixote by

the appearance in 1614 of a book by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda,

a spurious sequel to the first portion of his great work, the preface

of which is filled with personalities of the most insolent kind. That

he resented the piracy is shown by the circumstance that he put all

his other work aside and brought Don Quixote to a hurried conclusion.

In the last chapters of Don Quixote he was forced to write hastily

because his rival had stolen his plan, and it was necessary for him

to recast it as well as to bring out his novel with all speed. But,

these blemishes notwithstanding, much of the sequel is truly epical

in its grandeur. Don Quixote, if less amusing, is greatly more

thought-provoking, and Sancho Panza becomes even richer in common sense

and clear-sightedness. The portraiture of the remaining characters,

too, is sharper in outline than in the first part. The sequel, indeed,

is a great mirror in which the Spanish society of Cervantes' day is

reflected with all the thaumaturgy of genius. The immense success

which followed it must have afforded the greatest gratification to the

dying novelist, and must in great measure have consoled him for the

disappointments of a career spent in the shallows of exile and poverty.

Lazarillo de Tormes

The greatest humorous romance which Spain had produced prior to Don

Quixote was the Lazarillo de Tormes of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza,

a many-sided man and once Spanish Ambassador to England. He was of

noble extraction on both sides, and was born in Granada in 1503. As

a younger son he was destined for the Church, and studied at the

university of Salamanca, where, while still a student, he wrote

the novel which rendered him famous. Its graphic descriptions, its

penetration into character, and its vivacity and humour instantly

gained for it a high place in contemporary Spanish literature. But

Mendoza soon exchanged the clerical for the political sphere of

activity, and Charles V created him Captain-General of Siena, a small

Italian republic which had been brought beneath Spanish rule. Haughty

and unfeeling, Mendoza exercised a most tyrannical sway over the

wretched people committed to his care. They complained bitterly to

the Emperor regarding his conduct, and when this remained without

effect, his life was attempted by assassination. On one occasion,

indeed, his horse was killed under him by a musket-shot aimed at

himself. During his absence Siena was captured by a French army,

and as the weakness of the city was attributed to his withdrawal of

certain troops he was recalled to Spain in 1554.

But while thus employed in Italy as a statesman and a soldier Mendoza

had not been idle in a literary sense, for he had written his political

commentaries, a paraphrase of Aristotle, a treatise on mechanics,

and other notable works, none of which, however, have achieved for

him a tithe of the popularity of his first literary effort.

Lazaro, or, to give him his diminutive name, Lazarillo, was the son

of a miller who plied his trade by the banks of the river Tormes,

from which he took his name. When he was only ten years old his

father was killed in a campaign against the Moors, and as his mother

was unable to support him she gave him into the charge of a blind

man who wandered about the country as a beggar. While at the bridge

of Salamanca the boy noticed an animal carved in stone in the form

of a bull, and was told by his master that if he placed his ear to

the effigy he would hear it roar. He did so, when the old man gave

his head such a violent thump against it as almost to bereave him of

sense, and, laughing brutally, told him that a blind man's boy must

needs have his wits about him. "I have no silver or gold to give you,"

said he, "but what is far better, I can impart to you the result of

my experiences, which will always enable you to live."

The little Lazarillo had much difficulty in getting enough food to

keep body and soul together. The old beggar kept his bread and meat

in a linen knapsack, the neck of which was tightly secured. But the

boy made a small rent in one of the seams of the bag, and thus helped

himself to the choicest pieces of meat, bacon, and sausage. It was

his task also to receive the alms which charitable people bestowed

on the blind man, and part of this he secreted in his mouth, until,

by dint of practice, he was able to hide a goodly treasure of copper

money in that receptacle. It irked him on a hot day to watch the

beggar drinking his wine while he himself went thirsty. The wine was

kept in a large jar, and from time to time he managed to get a sip of

the cooling liquor. But his master soon discovered the practice and

kept the jar between his knees, with his hand on its mouth. Lazarillo

therefore bored a small hole in the bottom of the jar, which he

closed with wax. At dinner-time, when the blind beggar sat over the

fire, the wax melted, and Lazarillo, putting his mouth to the hole,

absorbed the wine. His master was enraged and surprised when he found

that the liquor had vanished, and attributed its disappearance to

magical means. But the next time his charge attempted the feat the

crafty old mendicant seized the jar with both hands and dealt him

such a blow on the face with it as to break the vessel and wound

the boy severely. From that day Lazarillo bore a grudge against the

sightless old tyrant, and took a sly revenge by guiding him over the

worst roads he could find and through the deepest mud.

Resolving to quit a service the perquisites of which were all kicks

and no halfpence, Lazarillo led his master to the Arcade at Escalona,

beside which a brook ran rather swiftly. In order to cross this it was

necessary either to jump or to wade almost up to the neck in water, and

when this was explained to him the old beggar chose the former method

of negotiating it. The crafty Lazarillo told him that the narrowest

place was opposite a great stone pillar, and the wretched mendicant,

taking a step or two backward to give him impetus, leapt with such

force that he crashed into the pillar, at the bottom of which he

immediately fell unconscious. With a shout of triumph Lazarillo ran

off, and from that day never set eyes upon the blind man again.

The next master whose service he entered was a priest, and if his

experiences with the beggar had been unhappy, they were as nothing

to what he now had to bear, for the holy man was a miser of the most

pitiful description, and starved him in a shameful manner. He kept his

bread in a large wooden chest, to which Lazarillo got a travelling

tinker to fit a key during the priest's absence, and was thus able

to regale himself daily, until his miserly master discovered the

shortage. This he attributed to rats, and as there were several holes

in the box he carefully mended it with small pieces of wood; but still

the bread disappeared, and as one of the neighbours had seen a snake

in the priest's domicile the padre concluded that this reptile was

the cause of the depredations. To avoid discovery, Lazarillo slept

with the key of the chest in his mouth, but one night his breathing

caused a whistling sound upon the orifice of the implement, and the

old priest, taking this for the hissing of the snake, delivered such a

shrewd blow in the direction of the noise as to render the unfortunate

Lazarillo an invalid for some considerable time. When he had recovered,

the old priest took him by the hand and, leading him into the street,

said to him: "Lazarillo my son, thou hast great natural gifts; thou

art indeed far too clever for an old man like me, and I assure thee

that I do not wish to see thee more. Farewell."

Lazarillo, however, was not long in attaching himself to another

master, who appeared to be a gentleman of birth and breeding. But

now he found that he was in worse straits than ever, as though his

master seemed a cavalier of family, he had not a penny in the world,

and was entirely dependent for his daily bread upon what the boy

could beg from charitably disposed persons. One day the landlord

called for the rent, and the gentleman, assuring him that he would

fetch it from his banker's, sallied forth and never returned, so that

once more the wretched urchin was without a master.

He next succeeded in obtaining the patronage of a pardoner who

travelled from place to place selling indulgences and relics. On one

occasion they stayed at an inn, where his master struck up a friendship

with an alguazil, or constable. One night the pair sat late carousing,

when a quarrel arose between them, and next day, as the pardoner was

preaching in the church preparatory to selling his wares, the alguazil

entered and denounced him as an impostor. The pardoner, with a great

show of piety, prayed loudly that the heavenly powers would vindicate

his character and would punish the alguazil, who immediately fell to

the ground in the most dreadful convulsions. Some of the congregation

prayed the pardoner that he would attempt some mitigation of the wrath

of heaven upon his traducer, and the holy man stepped from the pulpit

and laid a bull which he pretended he had received from the Pope upon

the sufferer's forehead. The man instantly rose as if cured, and the

people, convinced that a miracle had occurred, at once bought up the

pardoner's entire stock. But the acute Lazarillo soon discovered that

the pair had been in league with one another.

The last master to whose service Lazarillo attached himself was the

Arch-priest of Salvador, in whose service he flourished exceedingly,

and one of whose servants he married. But scandal crept into his

household, and with the death of his wife he found himself as poor

as ever.

Here the tale ends. It is impossible in such a brief sketch as this

to do justice to the great degree of insight into the workings of the

human heart which characterizes the authorship of this little novel,

the first of its kind. Lazarillo de Tormes was the forerunner and

exemplar of the entire school of the Picaresque novel, which at a

later date became almost typical of Spanish fiction, and which gave

rise to such masterpieces as Guzman de Alfarache, the Gil Blas of

Le Sage, and the novels of Scarron, and the spirit of which to some

extent was mirrored in our own Laurence Sterne; nor is its influence

by any means defunct, as can readily be seen by reference to certain

of the works of Mr Maurice Hewlett and Mr Jeffery Farnol.

Guzman de Alfarache

Mateo Aleman, the author of the great Picaresque romance of Guzman

de Alfarache, was a native of Seville. Throwing up a Government

appointment in early life, he crossed the sea to Mexico, where in 1609

he published a work on Spanish orthography and several treatises

in Latin. But the effort which has gained for him the title of

novelist was his Vita del Picaro Guzman de Alfarache, a work which

has been translated into every European language from the date of

its first appearance in 1599. Although written in the most correct

and approved literary style, it is yet easy and familiar in manner,

and is unrivalled in the picture it presents not only of the lowest

grades of Castilian society, but of the more exclusive orders of life

at the period in which he wrote.

"My ancestors," he says, "were originally from the Levant, but settled

in Genoa and employed themselves in the mercantile life of that city

in such a manner that they were accused of usury."

Thus the stock from which the lively adventurer came was of such

a character as to bring him at an early age into contact with the

realities of roguery. But if his relations were by no means particular

in trade, they concealed their ignominious conduct under the cloak of

hypocrisy and social correctness. They never failed to be present at

Mass, and the finger of reproach could not be pointed against their

family life. Before Guzman was born his father learned that one of

his correspondents at Seville had become bankrupt, and setting out

for Spain in order to investigate his affairs on the spot, he was

captured by an Algerine pirate, adopted the religion of Mohammed,

and married a Moorish lady. His agent at Seville, having heard of

what had happened to his principal creditor, adjusted his affairs

without him, and was soon in a better condition than ever. But the

elder de Alfarache succeeded in making his escape, and, coming to

Seville, demanded a reckoning from his rascally business confrère,

from whom he succeeded in extorting a considerable sum. He set himself

up in business at Seville, and bought an estate, which he named St

Juan de Alfarache. Here he lived right royally, and, having married

the wealthy widow of an old knight, he found himself in a fortunate

position. Soon after this his son Guzman was born. But de Alfarache

was unfortunately prone to the distractions of company, splendour,

and show, and having dissipated most of his means, ere long became

himself bankrupt, and shortly afterward paid the debt of nature.

His widow and the little Guzman were only indifferently provided for,

and when the boy had entered his fourteenth year he resolved to seek

his fortune, and set out for Genoa, in the hope that his father's

relations would extend their assistance to him. Soon he arrived at a

miserable tavern, where he asked for something to eat, and was given

an omelet, which, he says, might more properly have been called an "egg

poultice," but which he attacked "as hogs do acorns." Leaving the inn,

he soon felt very ill, and in a condition bordering upon collapse he

encountered a muleteer, to whom he described the unsavoury meal he

had just eaten, and who laughed heartily at his story. The kindly

fellow told him to jump on one of his mules, and soon they were

trotting nimbly eastward. Shortly after this they met two friars,

and arrived at an inn, where they were given another indifferent

meal, which the host extolled so much that the simple boy was fain

to swallow the mess without making any great ado. But to his horror

he later discovered that it had been made from the flesh of a young

mule. On being challenged with this the innkeeper drew a long sword,

whereupon the muleteer seized a pitchfork, and murder would have been

done had not the town police separated the parties. The dishonest

landlord was taken to prison, but although he confessed to passing

off the mule for veal he would not admit that he had stolen Guzman's

cloak, which had gone amissing, and the boy had perforce to leave

the place minus this article of apparel.

Riding on their way, Guzman and the muleteer were soon overtaken

on the road by two persons on mules, who examined them with the

greatest attention, and then quite suddenly threw themselves upon the

unfortunate lad, asserting that he had stolen some jewels of value. The

muleteer interfered, but only to receive a rough handling, and the

strangers tied the comrades to their mules with cords. At this juncture

the party was joined once more by the friars, who amused themselves by

telling tales, the morals of which hinged upon the mutability of human

affairs; but these are much too long and too slightly connected with

the thread of our story to be repeated here. The party then arrived at

the gates of Cazalla, and the officers of the law, finding that they

had made a mistake in arresting Guzman, gave him his liberty. He put up

at the best inn that the place afforded, and on the following morning

took the direct road to Madrid on foot. At an inn on the outskirts of

the capital he met with a beneficent priest, who shared his meal with

him, but in the morning the landlord attempted to overcharge him, and

was about to take his coat in payment of his bill when the muleteer,

who had rejoined him, interfered, and gave it as his opinion that

Guzman had run away from home. The villainous landlord, seeing in

this some hope of enriching himself, offered to take the lad into his

service as a kind of stable-boy, his duty being to hand out straw and

oats to the muleteers who put up at the place. Here the young Guzman

was initiated into habits of dishonesty and sharp practice, for when

a cavalier or person of consequence visited the inn he usually doled

out a mere handful of provender to his horses or mules, while charging

him the usual sum for it. The place was, indeed, a regular sink of

iniquity, and for Guzman life became so miserable that, relying upon

the little money he had saved, and selling his coat and waistcoat, he

absconded, and joined a passing company of beggars. These people lived

right royally on what they begged and what they poached. They were

inveterate gamblers, and in the evening Guzman found every opportunity

of picking up tricks with playing-cards. Soon after, however, he took

employment as scullion to a cook in the service of a nobleman.

Guzman as Scullion

In this situation Guzman passed a jovial time, for there was no lack

of good cheer in the knight's establishment. Albeit the lad did his

work to admiration. But the vice of gambling seized upon him, and

every day he joined the lackeys and pages at cards, often sitting up

all night to indulge in this pastime. In this way he soon got rid

of the money he received in gratuities, and being short of funds

wherewith to gratify his passion for gaming, began to pilfer such

small articles as he could find about the house, excusing himself by

saying that he only did as others did. One day his master had given a

great carouse to some friends, and Guzman entered the room where they

had been drinking to find them fast asleep. On the table he observed

a large silver goblet, and this he purloined. The cook's wife soon

missed the article, and inquiries with regard to it were set afoot,

whereupon the cunning youngster, taking the cup to a jeweller, had

it cleaned in such a manner that it resembled a new one. Carrying

it back to the woman, who was in great fear that her master would

hear of the loss, he told her that he had found a similar goblet

at a jeweller's, which he could procure for fifty-six reales, and,

anxious to avert trouble, she at once gave him the sum to purchase

it. The money thus dishonestly won was instantly thrown in gaming,

and Guzman was no better off than before.

About this time the cook was requested to prepare a splendid dinner

for a foreign nobleman who had newly arrived at Madrid. A large sack

containing game was entrusted to the lad, and this he carried home,

but as it was late he took it up to his own garret. In the middle

of the night he was wakened by cats, who fought over one of the

hares which he had brought home. Seeing that this was not missed,

and that his brother lackeys stole the provisions right and left,

Guzman presently slipped half a dozen eggs into his pocket. But the

head cook observed him do so, and dealt him such a furious kick that

he fell, and the broken eggs gushed from his pocket, to the amusement

of all present. Guzman, however, managed to embezzle a couple of

partridges and some quails. These he took to sell to another cook,

but his master, suspecting him, followed and discovered what he was

about, and immediately dismissed him after thrashing him soundly.

After this nothing was left for the young adventurer but to return to

his old trade of running errands. He soon heard that certain troops

were about to be embarked for Genoa, and resolved to follow them and

enlist. A certain old apothecary, who had always found him honest in

his dealings, sent him to a foreign merchant with a large quantity of

silver, and this Guzman secreted in a large hole by the riverside. In

the morning he returned to the place, and, digging up the bags of

money, found that they contained two thousand five hundred reales in

silver and thirty pistoles in gold. Slinging the bags on his back,

to resemble a traveller's pack, he set off in the direction of Toledo,

making his way across the fields and carefully avoiding the high road.

Arriving within two leagues of Toledo, he entered a wood, where he

intended to rest the whole of the day, as he did not wish to approach

the city till nightfall. His plan was to betake himself to Genoa

and introduce himself to his relations, and he was thinking of the

best way to lay out his money in order to reach them and make a good

appearance before them, when he heard a noise and, turning hastily,

beheld a young man of about his own age reclining on the ground,

with his head against a tree. Guzman shared his wine with him, and

the youth informed him that he was penniless. Guzman offered to buy

some of the clothes he carried with him in a bundle, and, opening

one of his money-bags, reassured him as to his ability to pay. For

a hundred reales a handsome suit changed hands, and, taking leave of

the stranger, Guzman entered Toledo, where he at once put up at the

best inn. Next day he fitted himself out with such articles of attire

as he required, but his vanity got the better of him, and he ordered

a most magnificent suit, which cost him a long price. On Sunday he

betook himself to the cathedral, where he met a very fine lady,

who asked him to accompany her home to supper. For this occasion

Guzman ordered a magnificent feast, but the pair had hardly sat down

to partake of it when a loud knocking was heard at the door, and the

lady cried out in alarm that her brother had returned and that he had

better conceal himself. The only place in which he could do so with

advantage was inside a great inverted bath, and from this place of

concealment he had the mortification of beholding the gentleman who

entered devour the gorgeous supper which he had provided and drink

every drop of the four bottles of wine he had purchased for his own

use. Soon the gentleman, having eaten and drunk thus sumptuously,

fell sound asleep, and Guzman took the opportunity of stealing from

the house, a sadder but a wiser lad.

Hearing that an alguazil had been inquiring very particularly

regarding him, Guzman hurriedly left Toledo, and, arriving at the

town of Almagro, joined the company of soldiers who were bound

for Genoa. Their captain, taken with his distinguished appearance,

hailed him as a brother in arms, and treated him as an equal. Guzman

had engaged the services of a page at Toledo, and this little rascal

assisted him greatly in his new sphere by spreading the report that

he was a gentleman of consequence. But our hero's purse was now sadly

depleted, although he had still about half of his ill-gotten gains

left. Instead of embarking at once the company remained at Barcelona

for three months, so that his resources soon gave out, and he was

neglected by the officers, and even avoided by the soldiers. His

captain, indeed, condoled with him, and offered him a place in his

household at the servants' table, assuring him that this was all

he could do for him, as he himself was compelled to dine out from

his utter incapacity to receive his friends at home. Guzman assured

him of his gratitude, and hinted that he might in turn be able to

assist him. The soldiers were billeted in the village, and Guzman

commenced a system of imposing a larger number of men upon each

house than was necessary, or at least threatening to do so, so that

the anxious inhabitants were only too glad to buy him off. In this

manner he completely re-established the captain's finances, and as

presents of provisions poured in from the frightened villagers the

young rascal and his chief lived well. But he now grew bolder, and,

selecting half a dozen of the most desperate men in the company,

began to rob passengers on the high road. His captain, learning of

this, however, immediately put a stop to such dangerous proceedings.

One day Guzman observed that among the few jewels the captain still

had left to him there was a very handsome gold reliquary set with

diamonds, and this he begged his superior to lend him for a few

days. The audacious stripling at once took it to a jeweller's,

to whom he offered it for two hundred crowns. But the man would

only tender him a hundred and twenty, and this Guzman refused. The

jeweller called upon him next day to renew his offer, which the lad

accepted. Guzman handed him the purse in which the reliquary was kept,

receiving the hundred and twenty crowns in exchange. But the old fellow

had scarcely left the house when the young adventurer raised a cry

of "Stop thief! Stop thief!" Some soldiers immediately arrested the

jeweller, and Guzman cried out that he had robbed him of the captain's

reliquary. The jeweller assured the arquebusiers that he had paid a

hundred and twenty crowns for the article, but this Guzman denied. The

wretched goldsmith was haled before a magistrate, and, as he had a

bad reputation for usury, was forced to disgorge the reliquary. But

although the captain was glad enough to get the money thus scurvily

gained, he feared that further association with such a rascal as de

Alfarache would ruin him. In a few days the company set sail for Genoa,

and when they had arrived there his superior intimated that they must

part, at the same time thrusting a pistole into his hand.

Tormented by Devils

The young adventurer now began to make inquiries about his relations,

and was informed that they were the most rich and powerful persons

in the republic. He inquired the way to their mansion, where he

was but ill received, all the more so as his appearance was shabby

in the extreme. But as he had taken care to make his relationship

to them public property, they could not very well repulse him. One

evening he met a venerable-looking old man, who told him that he had

known his father, and that he felt quite indignant at the behaviour

of his relations toward him, and offered him an asylum at his own

house. Without giving him anything to eat, he at once sent him to bed,

where the wretched lad lay tormented by the pangs of hunger. Before he

went to sleep the old man informed him that the room he occupied had

the reputation of being haunted by evil spirits. Famished and restless,

Guzman lay awake, when to his horror four figures in the shape of

devils entered the chamber and dragged him out of bed. Throwing him

into a blanket, they tossed him in the air with such violence that he

struck the ceiling again and again, until, exhausted by the exercise,

they placed him in bed once more and departed. In the early morning,

stiff, sore, and dejected, Guzman crawled from the mansion, but he

registered an oath never to forget the detestable manner in which his

acquaintance had treated him, and resolved to be avenged upon him at

the first opportunity.

Guzman Joins the Beggars of Rome

Leaving Genoa in this miserable plight, in which he compares himself

to one of those who escaped from the battle of Roncesvalles,

Guzman resolved to make his way to Rome. Italy, he says, is the

most charitable country in the world, and anyone who can beg can

travel within its bounds without concerning himself about his next

meal. In a few weeks he found himself in the Roman Catholic capital,

with money enough in his pocket to buy a new suit of clothes, but

he resisted the temptation to do so, and wandered about the streets

of the Imperial city seeking alms. He soon fell in with a comrade in

distress, who enlightened him regarding the manners and customs of the

beggars of Rome and who gave him such good instructions that he soon

received more money than he could spend. In a short time Guzman was

a perfect master of the trade of begging. After spending some weeks

in this kind of life he fell in with one of the master-beggars of the

city, who instructed him in the laws of begging, which he sets forth

at length in his autobiography. These laws Guzman got by heart. The

beggars lived together, and met in the evening to practise and invent

new exclamations to excite pity. In the morning there was usually a

scramble among them to see who could get nearest the holy water at

the entrance to the churches, for there it was that the greatest

harvest was reaped, and in the evening the beggars usually made

a round of the country seats in the neighbourhood of Rome, whence

they returned laden with provisions. Nearly all of the beggars were

adepts at simulating bodily malformations or loathsome diseases. On one

occasion, in the town of Gaeta, Guzman simulated a terrible disease of

the head, and the Governor, who was passing, gave him alms. Next day

he sat at the porch of a church with what appeared to be a grievous

affection of the leg, and much money was flowing in upon him, when

unhappily the Governor chanced to pass, and recognizing him, told him

that he would give him some cast-off clothing if he would follow him

home. Arrived there the Governor asked him by what singular remedy

he had contrived to cure himself of his former complaint within the

short space of one day, and without waiting for an answer sent for a

surgeon, who, on examining the leg, assured the Governor that it was

perfectly sound. The Governor then handed Guzman over to his lackeys,

who trounced him severely and thrust him forth from the town.

One morning our rascally hero had posted himself at the gate of a

certain Cardinal celebrated for his compassionate disposition, who,

on passing and hearing his plaint, told his domestics to convey

the seeming sufferer to a chamber in his mansion and attend to his

wants. Guzman had once more simulated a terrible disease of the leg,

and the Cardinal, observing this, sent for two of the most celebrated

surgeons in Rome. Their preparations were of such a nature that Guzman

feared they were about to amputate his leg, so when they consulted

together in an adjoining room he went to the door to listen to what

they were saying. One of them gave it as his opinion that the disorder

was merely a bogus one, but the other as warmly maintained that it

was genuine. At length they agreed to lay their deliberations before

the Cardinal, and were about to do so when Guzman, entering the room

where they consulted, admitted his fraud, and proposed that they should

combine in deceiving the Cardinal. To this the surgeons agreed, and

when his Eminence appeared they made the most alarming and touching

report regarding Guzman's sham disorder. The Cardinal, who was a man

of lofty character and unsuspicious nature, begged them to take as

much time as they thought proper in effecting a cure, and to neglect

nothing that might contribute to the patient's recovery. So anxious

were the surgeons to pile up their fees that they compelled Guzman

to keep his bed for three months, which appeared three ages to him,

so keen was his desire to return to the gaming which had become second

nature to him. At the end of this time they presented their bill to the

Cardinal, telling him that a complete cure had been effected, and so

pleased was the churchman at having assisted in so remarkable a case,

and so keen his appreciation of Guzman's native wit, that he ended

by taking the youthful charlatan into his service as one of his pages.

Guzman was, however, not very well satisfied with his new life, which

in great measure consisted in waiting in ante-chambers and serving at

table. The discipline was rigorous, and all that he could purloin was

a few candle-ends. But he found that a large quantity of very fine

preserved fruit was kept in a certain chest, and to this he applied

himself. The Cardinal discovered the peculation, yet failed to trace

it to its source; but when Guzman was rifling the chest on a second

occasion his Eminence entered and caught him in the act. He received

a thorough castigation at the hands of the major-domo, which put an

end to his knaveries for some considerable time.

Guzman Cheats a Banker

But Guzman played so many tricks in the Cardinal's palace that at

length this excellent prelate had to dispense with his services. He

then entered the service of the Spanish Ambassador, who was a friend

of the Cardinal's, and who knew all about our hero's capacities. After

some considerable time spent in the service of this dignitary, Guzman

resolved to leave Rome for a tour through Italy. Shortly before this he

had encountered a Spaniard called Sayavedra, with whom he became very

friendly. Provided with about three hundred pistoles and some jewels,

which he had purloined from the ambassador, Guzman set out on his

travels. But Sayavedra had taken a wax impression of Guzman's keys,

and pilfered his luggage before he left, so that if it had not been

for the generosity of the ambassador he could not have left Rome. At

Siena, however, Guzman fell in with Sayavedra once more, who entreated

him to pardon his perfidy, and offered to become his servant. Guzman,

who was sorry for his miserable condition, agreed to the proposal, and

the pair, going to Florence, began to concert measures for improving

their position. It was bruited abroad that Guzman was a nephew of

the Spanish Ambassador, and he even had the insolence to present

himself at Court, where he was received by the Grand Duke in that

capacity. Here he met a charming widow of great wealth, with whom he

fell violently in love. But her relatives, making inquiries about him,

discovered that he had once begged in the streets of Rome, and he was

forced to leave the city. At Bologna he gained a good deal of money

at play, and on arriving at Milan he and Sayavedra took apartments

in that city and cast about for some means of putting their newly

acquired funds to use. Here they soon fell in with a rascally friend

employed as clerk in a banker's house, and concerted with him as to

how they should relieve his master of his surplus wealth. Guzman

called upon the banker and told him he wished to deposit with him

about twelve thousand francs in gold. He was well received, and the

financier entered his name and other particulars in his daybook. On

his way home he bought a gilt casket, which he filled with pieces of

lead, and, giving this to Sayavedra, along with a bag of real money,

enjoined that he should get into conversation with the landlord of

the inn where they were staying, and tell him that he was taking the

cash to the banker's house--which of course he was not to do. The

banker's clerk got false keys made to fit his master's coffer, and,

when the latter was at Mass on Sunday, he opened it and placed therein

the gilt casket, which, instead of lead, now contained ten quadruples,

thirty Roman crowns, and a written account of its contents. He then

counterfeited his master's handwriting, and completed the entry in

the daybook which he had begun, making it appear that not only the

casket, but all the money in the coffer, had been credited to Guzman.

On the Monday Guzman called at the banker's and asked him very politely

to return the cash that had been sent to him a few days before. The

man naturally denied that any sum had been lodged with him at all,

whereupon Guzman made so great an outcry that a large crowd collected,

and the quarrel assumed such a serious aspect that a constable appeared

on the scene, accompanied by the landlord of the inn at which Guzman

was staying. Guzman asserted that if the banker's books were examined

the sum he mentioned would be found noted in them, and on the daybook

being produced this was proved to be the case. The wretched banker

admitted that part of the writing was in his own hand, and this was

sufficient to incense the crowd, with whom he had a very bad reputation

for usury and sharp practice. Guzman, too, was able to give a most

circumstantial account of the contents of the coffer, which, on being

opened, was found, to the banker's amazement, to contain the gilt

casket he spoke of and the exact sum named by him, including even

the various coinages he had enumerated and the written note of its

contents. The landlord was able to corroborate Guzman's ownership of

the casket, and as the evidence seemed conclusive the local magistrate

awarded him the money, which he divided with his confederates.

Guzman now resolved to return to Genoa for the purpose of being

revenged upon the relatives who had treated him so scurvily upon his

previous visit to that city. Disguising himself as a Spanish abbot of

consequence, he put up at the best inn of the place, and his relatives,

learning of his arrival, and of the pomp he displayed, hastened to pay

their respects to him. They failed to identify him with the ragged and

friendless urchin who had sought their assistance some years before,

and his uncle even retailed the adventure of the devils to him as if

it had been played upon an impostor. Guzman completely gained their

confidence, and as he had plenty of money to spare they readily

entrusted to his keeping a valuable collection of jewels, which he

told them a friend desired to borrow for his wedding ceremony. With

these he and Sayavedra made off to Spain, but on the way the latter

fell ill of a fever, and, rushing on the deck of the galley, threw

himself overboard and was drowned.

Guzman, reaching his native country, after a number of adventures

arrived in Madrid, where he sold his jewels to a rich merchant, who,

believing him to be a person of consequence, gave him his daughter in

marriage. The merchant relied upon Guzman's supposed wealth to further

his financial operations, Guzman relied upon his father-in-law's

equally supposititious resources, and as the extravagant young wife

relied on both, all were soon plunged into bankruptcy. The shock

was too much for the lady, and she expired, but her cunning parent

succeeded in saving sufficient from the wreck to commence business

once more.

Guzman, however, was tired of the world of finance, and decided to

invest the remainder of his ill-gotten gains in studying for the

Church. With this object in view, he betook himself to the university

of Alcalà de Henares, where he took his Bachelor of Arts degree, and

after four years' hard reading at divinity only awaited a benefice to

permit him to graduate as a full-fledged priest, when evil influences

once more began to beset him. He made the acquaintance of a lady who

had a family of daughters, with one of whom he became infatuated,

and whom he married. The pair betook themselves to Madrid, where they

embarked upon an adventurous career, after some years of which the

lady eloped, taking with her everything of value which she could lay

hands upon. By this time Guzman had presented himself to his mother,

who, so far from dissuading him from his evil courses, assisted him

in his schemes of roguery, so that shortly, going from bad to worse,

he found himself doomed to a long period of servitude in the royal

galleys. But here he was able to assist the authorities in discovering

a mutiny, for which he was rewarded with his freedom.

At this stage we take our leave of the most consummate rogue in

fiction; but if Guzman de Alfarache is perhaps the most wily scoundrel

in the records of romance, he is certainly one of the most original

and amusing. It is noticeable, however, that his career, on the whole,

was not a remunerative one, and that when he makes his farewell bow to

us he is no better off than when we first encountered him. Perhaps the

most amusing thing about his narrative is the sham propriety of tone

in which it is couched--a style which was almost slavishly copied by

Le Sage in his Gil Blas, who was not only obliged to this novel for

its general atmosphere, but for many of the incidents which occur in

his celebrated work.

Conclusion

We have trodden the ways of Spanish story, sublime, mock-heroic, and

humorous. Perhaps no chapter in the world's literature is so rich

in colour, or displays such a variety of mood and sentiment. Still

the key-note is one of noble and dignified beauty, of chivalrous

distinction, of exquisite propriety, courteous, immaculate, and

unspotted by vulgarity or sordid meanness. The wine-cup of Spanish

romance is filled with the heart's blood of a nation august, knightly,

imaginative, a people who have preferred ideals to gross realities,

and the heights of national aristocracy to the deserts of false

democracy. "Poor Spain!" How often does the Anglo-Saxon utter

the phrase in complacent self-assurance? With the solace of such

a treasure-house of poetic and romantic wealth as she possesses,

Spain may well rest in assured hope of the return of the brave days

in praise of which her trovadores struck the lyre and her poets sang

in stately epic. Poor Spain! Nay, golden Spain--enchanted cavern,

glowing with the spoil of song, the rainbow treasure of legend,

and the gem-like radiance of immortal romance!

Her citizens, imperial spirits,

Rule the present from the past;

On all this world of men inherits

Their seal is set.

SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS IN ENGLISH DEALING WITH SPANISH ROMANCE

(The English translations of each romance have been carefully noted

throughout the book, so that it is unnecessary to include them here.)

History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor. Boston, 1872.

Spanish Literature, by H. Butler Clarke. London, 1893.

Spanish Literature, by J. Fitzmaurice Kelly. London, 1893.

Chapters on Spanish Literature, by J. Fitzmaurice Kelly. London, 1912.

The Spanish Pastoral Romances, by H. A. Rennert. Baltimore, 1892.

History of Fiction, by A. Dunlop. Edinburgh, 1816.

Don Quixote. Edition published by David Nutt, 1898. Skelton's early

English version (1612-20), reprinted by Henley in "Tudor Translations,"

London, 1896.

History of Spanish Literature, by Bouterwek. Bohn Library.

See further the exhaustive bibliography of chivalric literature in

vol. iv of Ormsby's Don Quixote (1885), and the bibliography of Mr

Fitzmaurice Kelly's Spanish Literature.

NOTES

[1] The moro latinado, or Spanish-speaking Moor, is a prominent figure

in later Spanish story.

[2] Bishop Odoor's will (747) shows the break-up of Hispanic Latin, and

Charles the Bald in an edict of 844 alludes to the usitato vocabulo

of the Spaniards--their "customary speech." On the Gothic period

see Père Jules Tailham, in the fourth volume of Cahier and Martin's

Nouveaux Mélanges d'Archéologie, d'Histoire, et de Littérature sur

le Moyen Age (1877).

[3] This jargon owed much more to the lingua rustica than to Gothic,

which has left its mark more deeply upon the pronunciation and syntax

of Spanish than on its vocabulary.

[4] Catalan differed slightly in a dialectic sense from Provençal. It

was divided into plá Catalá and Lemosé, the common speech and the

literary tongue.

[5] "On the whole," says Professor Saintsbury, "the ease,

accomplishment, and, within certain strict limits, variety of the

form, are more remarkable than any intensity or volume of passion or of

thought" (Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory, pp. 368-369). He

further remarks that the Provençal rule "is a rule of 'minor poetry,'

accomplished, scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority."

[6] D. 1214.

[7] It was entitled El Arte de Trobar, and is badly abridged in

Mayan's Orígenes de la Lengua Española (Madrid, 1737).

[8] On Provençal influence upon Castilian literature see Manuel Milá

y Fontanal, Trovadores en España (Barcelona, 1887); and E. Baret,

Espagne et Provence (1857), on a lesser scale.

[9] Still they found many Spanish-speaking people in that area; and

it was the Romance speech of these which finally prevailed in Spain.

[10] Madrid, 1839.

[11] In the Cancionero de Romances (Antwerp, 1555).

[12] See the article on Alfonso XI in N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana

Vetus.

[13] English translation by James York.

[14] Reigned 1407-54.

[15] Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age (Paris,

1888), and Léon Gautier, Les Épopées Française (Paris, 1878-92), are

the leading authorities upon the chansons de gestes. Accounts of these

in English can be found in Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages

(1865) and in my Dictionary of Medieval Romance (1913).

[16] See W. Wentworth Webster, in the Boletin of the Academia de

Historia for 1883.

[17] See Manuel Milá y Fontanal, Poesía heróico-popular Castellana

(Barcelona, 1874).

[18] The term, first employed by Count William of Poitiers, the

earliest troubadour, at first implied any work written in the

vernacular Romance languages. Later in Spain it was used as an

equivalent for cantar, and finally indicated a lyrico-narrative poem

in octosyllabic assonants.

[19] In German it was known from 1583, and in English from

1619. Southey's translation (London, 1803) is (happily) an abridgment,

and has been reprinted in the "Library of Old Authors" (1872). I

provide full bibliographical details when dealing with the romance

more fully.

[20] Omniana, t. ii, p. 219 (London, 1812).

[21] Don Quixote, Part I, chap. vi.

[22] English translation by Southey, 4 vols. (London, 1807).

[23] In the chapter entitled "Moorish Romances of Spain" the reader

will find specimens of the romantic fictions of that people, from

which he can judge for himself of their affinity or otherwise with

the Spanish romances.

[24] See Dozy, History of the Moors in Spain, Eng. trans., and

Recherches sur l'Histoire politique et littéraire de l'Espagne (1881);

F. J. Simonet, Introduction to his Glosario de Voces iberias y latinas

usadas entre los Muzárabes (1888); Renan, Averroës et Averroïsme

(1866). Gayangos' Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1843) is

somewhat obsolete, as is Conde's Dominación de los Arabes.

[25] "The Raid," an old Spanish poem.

[26] Ormsby (The Poem of the Cid), who wrote in 1879, seems to have had

the most elementary notions of what a cantar was, and states that the

Poema "was nearly contemporary with the first chansons de gestes." But

he is probably at least a century out in his reckoning, as the first

chansons date from about the middle of the eleventh century. Of

trovador and juglar he had evidently never heard. Yet he is anything

but superficial, and on the whole his book is the best we have in

English on the Poema. It is unlucky, too, as Saintsbury remarks, that

neither Ticknor nor Southey, who wrote so widely on ancient Spanish

literature, were acquainted with the chansons de gestes. Still more

luckless is it that so much in the way of Spanish translation was

left to Longfellow, who shockingly mangled and Bowdlerized many fine

ballads. Probably no poet was so well qualified as he to divest a

ballad of all pith and virility in the course of translation. Bad as

are his Spanish renderings, however, they are adequate when compared

with his exploits in the field of Italian translation.

[27] See his Poema del Cid (1898).

[28] See Manuel Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores españoles, vol. xvi

(1846-80).

[29] A good deal of controversy has arisen concerning the metre of the

Poema. Professor Cornu of Prague (see M. Gaston Paris, in Romania,

xxii, pp. 153, 531) has stated that the basis of it is the ballad

octosyllable, full or catalectic, arranged as hemistichs of a longer

line, but this theory presupposes that the copyists of the original

MS. must have mistaken such a simple measure, which is scarcely

credible. Professor Saintsbury (Flourishing of Romance, p. 403)

gives it as his opinion that "nobody has been able to get further in a

generalization of the metre than that the normal form is an eight and

six (better a seven and seven) 'fourteener,' trochaically cadenced,

but admitting contraction and extension with a liberality elsewhere

unparalleled." No absolute system of assonance or rhyme appears,

and we are almost forced to the conclusion that the absence of this

is in a measure due to the kind offices of Abbot Pedro.

[30] By this phrase the Cid seems to have been widely known; in fact

it appears to have served him as a sort of cognomen or nickname.

[31] The passage in the Poema del Cid which tells of the combat that

followed has perhaps a better right than any other in the epic to

the title 'Homeric' The translation which I furnish of it may not

be so exact as those of Frere or Ormsby. But although I am only too

conscious of its many shortcomings, I cannot bring myself to make use

of the pedestrian preciseness of the one or the praiseworthy version

of the other of my predecessors, both of which, in my view, fail to

render the magnificent spirit and chivalric dash of the original. All

that I can claim for my own translation is that it does not fail so

utterly as either in this regard. I have in places attempted the

restoration of lines which seemed to me omitted or coalesced with

others, and I must admit that this rendering of a great passage is

more consciously artificial than the others--a fault which I am unable

to rectify. But allowances must be made for the rendition of such a

passage, and the whole must be accepted by the reader faute de mieux.

[32] Throughout the Poema and elsewhere the Cid is constantly alluded

to as "Mio Cid" ("My lord"). I deal with the etymology of the name

farther on, but hold to the form 'the Cid' as being most familiar to

English readers.

[33] This passage is reminiscent of the saying of the famous Border

outlaw Jock Eliot, when he and his men came upon a large haystack

of which they resolved to make fodder for their horses. "Eh, man,"

exclaimed the humorous raider, "if ye had legs, wouldna' ye run!"

[34] The commencement of the passage in question is as follows

(lines 1741-50):

The heraldz laften here prikyng up and doun;

Now ryngede the tromp and clarioun:

Ther is no more to say, but est and west

In goth the speres ful sadly in arest;

Ther seen men who can juste, and who can ryde;

In goth the scharpe spore into the side,

Ther schyveren schaftes upon schuldres thykke;

He feeleth through the herte-spon the prikke.

Up sprengen speres on twenty foot on hight;

Out goon the swerdes as the silver bright.

The balance is, however, greatly in favour of Chaucer, whose lines,

if properly accented, beat the original Spanish on its own ground,

and this notwithstanding the absurd remark of Swinburne that "Chaucer

and Spenser scarcely made a good poet between them."

[35] See the work of Rivadeneyra, Biblioteca de Autores españoles,

vol. xl (1846-48), where the romance is prefaced in a brilliant

and scholarly manner by Gayangos. Its origins are ably discussed by

Eugène Baret, Études sur la Redaction Espagnole de l'Amadis de Gaule

(1853); T. Braga, Historia das Novellas Portuguezas de Cavalleria

(1873); and L. Braunfels, Kritischer Versuch über den Roman Amadis

von Gallien (1876).

[36] Anstruther, in Fife? The Spaniards would know the place through

their intercourse with the Flemings, who traded considerably with

it. A Spanish vessel put into Anstruther during the flight of the

Armada round the coasts of Scotland.

[37] I think I can see in this giant Albadan the giant Albiona, one of

the two monsters, sons of Neptune, who, according to Pomponius Mela,

attacked Hercules in Liguria. The name Albion was once given to the

whole of Britain, and later, as Alba and Albany, to Scotland, whose

people were known as Albannach. This is said to mean 'the White,'

in allusion to the cliffs of Dover! It is much more probable that it

signified 'the place or region of the god Alba,' 'the country of the

white god.' All the Scottish gods were giants, like the Fomorians

of Ireland.

[38] Strange that a sword and a ring should so often be the test

of identity in such tales! So it was, as regards the first of these

tokens at least, with Theseus, Arthur, and many another hero. On this

head see Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (1894-96).

[39] Urganda, as Southey remarks, is a true fairy, resembling Morgan

le Fay in her attributes, but, as Scott says, she has no connexion

with the more classic nymphidæ. But is not this dea phantastica

identical with Morgan, and her name merely a Hispanic rendering of

the Celtic fairy's?

[40] Scott girds fiercely against Southey's interpolation of

Anthony Munday's translation of these verses in his Amadis, and with

justice. The above translation is only slightly more tolerable, but

it is at least sense. Poor Tony was bitten by the absurdities of

euphuism, and his lines are mere nonsense. But there is even less

excuse for a modern translation to backslide into the style of the

eighteenth century.

[41] She had previously visited Scotland and embarked there "for Great

Britain," and while on this voyage was driven on the Poor Rock, which

would seem to have been 'somewhere' in the Mediterranean! Strange

that geography should have been so shaky at such a period and among

a people who had done so much for discovery and navigation.

[42] 'Cildadan' I take to be Cuchullin (pron. Coohoolin, or Coolin),

the hero of the well-known Irish epic.

[43] It was Munday's translation of these verses from the French which

chiefly aroused the scorn of Scott, and it is in dread of the memory

of that scorn that I offer these lines, which partake much more of

the nature of an adaptation than a translation, the original Spanish

being much too stiff and artificial for rendition in English.

[44] I take this incident to be a reminiscence of the Minotaur

story. Indeed the Firm Island appears to me, both from its geographical

proximities and its whole phenomena, as a borrowing of Cretan or

Minoan story. The "old covered way" from which the bull emerges is

surely the Labyrinth. Is the wise old ape Dædalus?

[45] It is scarcely necessary to indicate to the reader that the

name Nasciano is borrowed from that of Nasciens, the hermit king of

Grail romance.

[46] Forbear.

[47] William Stewart Rose, Amadis de Gaul: A Poem in Three Books

(London, 1803).

[48] For a brief account of this Toledan poet, who translated Ovid's

Metamorphoses, see Antonio, Bib. Nov., t. ii, p. 44.

[49] Unless the Anseis de Carthage be excepted--a romance which

attributes the downfall of Spain to a son of Charlemagne, who acts

as does Don Roderick. The Anseis is in French.

[50] As enshrined in the Crónica Sarrazyna, of Pedro de Carrel, which

founds on the Crónica General, the Chronicle of the Moor Rasis, and

the Crónica Trayana, the ballads relating to Roderic are all later

than this compilation.

[51] Besides the collection of romances alluded to, which may be said

to represent the standard sources of the subject, collections were

published at Antwerp and Saragossa, in the middle of the sixteenth

century, by Martin Nucio and Esteban de Nájera respectively. The reader

may also consult the Primavera y Flor de Romance, by Wolf and Hofman,

in the reprint published by Señor Menéndez y Pelayo, the collection

of Depping (two vols., Leipzig, 1844), and the English translations

of Lockhart and Bowring.

[52] If Scott wrote this verse himself (as Lockhart admits), he

wrote others.

[53] I take these two quatrains from two different versions.

[54] The witch-cult in Europe seems to me to have a connexion with

the horse. Occasionally witches proceed to the sabbat on flying

horses. One of the tests of a witch was to look in her eyes for the

reflection of a horse. In Scotland even to-day a 'Horseman's Society'

exists which has a semi-occult initiation and strange rites.

[55] The reader who wishes to follow this phase of the subject further

should consult Miss M. A. Murray's recent articles in Man.

[56] T. i, p. 543.

End of Project Gutenberg's Legends & Romances of Spain, by Lewis Spence