love of romances of chivalry, such as were still the vogue in Spain—he found a patron. But the Duke might almost have been described as an hereditary patron of works of chivalry, and when he learned the nature and object ofDon Quixote, for which the influence of his name had been obtained, he withdrew his patronage. Cervantes prevailed upon the Duke to listen to the reading of a chapter from the book before making his decision absolute, and, according to Vicente de los Rios, who is responsible for the story, his Grace was so delighted with the humour and humanity of the history, that he reversed his verdict, and consented to accept the dedication. The king’s printer, Francisco de Robles, having secured a ten years’ copyright in the work, the privilege of publication was granted on 26th September, 1604, and the book was issued from the press of Juan de la Cuesta, at Madrid, in January, 1605.
The success of “the book of humanity,” as Sainte-Beuve has happily describedDon Quixote, was instantaneous and unprecedented, up to that date, in the world of letters. Spain rang with admiration and plaudits of this inspired story-teller and of the story, the like of which had never before been told. In an age when readers were few, the book was widely read, and in a country where the buying of books was a limited indulgence, the book sold in its thousands. Mr. Watts estimates that no fewer than 4,000 copies went into circulation in1605. Copies of six editions, published in that year, are extant—Madrid, Lisbon, and Valencia each being responsible for two editions within a few months of its first appearance. So competent an authority as Señor Gayangos is of opinion that further impressions were printed at Barcelona, Pamplona, and Zaragoza. Prior to the publication ofDon Quixote, no masterpiece of fiction had ever found so enthusiastic a public, or a sale so enormous. It became in a flash the common-place book of the nation. Cervantes tells us, through the mouth of the Bachelor Carrasco, in the Second Part, which was not published until ten years later: “I do not in the least doubt but at this day there have been published about 12,000 of it. Portugal, Barcelona, and Valencia, where they have been printed, can witness that, if there were occasion. It is said that it is also now in the press at Antwerp. And I verily believe there is scarce a language into which it is not to be translated.” In the same forty-fourth Chapter of the Second Part, the rightly proud and complacent author speaks no more than the literal truth when he says of it: “The author has made everything so plain that there is nothing in that book but what anyone may understand. Children handle it, youngsters read it, grown men understand it, and old people applaud it. In short, it is universally so thumbed, so gleaned, so studied, and so known, that if the people do but see a lean horse, they presently cry, ‘There goes Rozinante.’ But no
description of persons is so devoted to it as your pages; there is not a nobleman’s ante-chamber in which you will not find aDon Quixote. If one lays it down, another takes it up; while one is asking for it, another one snatches it; in short, this history affords the most pleasing and least prejudicial entertainment that ever was published, for there is not so much as the appearance of an immodest word in it, nor a thought that is not entirely catholic.”
Concerning the publication and popularity ofDon Quixote, many stories of varying degrees of improbability have sprung up, and are common to most of the biographies of Cervantes. But the following incident, showing that “even in his lifetime the author obtained the glory of having his work receive a royal approbation,” is culled from an anonymous “tract” published in 1853. The author does not quote any authority for the narrative, which I have not encountered elsewhere. “As Philip III.,” says this chronicler, “was standing in a balcony of his palace at Madrid, viewing the country, he observed a student on the banks of the river Manzanares reading in a book, and from time to time breaking off and beating his forehead with extraordinary tokens of pleasure and delight; upon which the king observed to those about him: ‘That scholar is either mad, or he is readingDon Quixote.’ The biographer rounds up his story with the gratifying assurance that ‘the latter proved to be the case.’”
It must not be supposed that, amid the almostuniversal applause which welcomed the appearance ofDon Quixote, some discordant notes were not heard. People of fashion, whose chief literary recreation was the reading of the very books of chivalry, which Cervantes so boldly and humourously satirised, regarded it with cold displeasure; the clergy frowned upon it, and rival authors professed to find it vulgar, unbecoming, and absurd. But its popularity increased, despite, if not even by reason of these captious criticisms, and the object of the author in writing it gave rise to more speculation and disputings than the interpretation of Ibsen has provoked in recent times. Cervantes himself declared that he compiled his romance for the purpose of “causing the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind,” and in the attainment of this object he was wholly successful. The publication of such romances suddenly ceased; the writing of them was abandoned; the creation of these lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses, and of impossible cavaliers was arrested as if by magic. And having marked the effect of the book, the public sought for some hidden intention that was supposed to work behind the author’s pages, and were content to find it in the character of the Knight of La Mancha. They concluded thatDon Quixotewas intended to satirise someone; but whom? Was it the prosaic sovereign, Charles V., who was here held up to ridicule, or the least romantic King Philip II., or that contemptuous and unlettered disburser of royal
favours, the Duke of Lerma? But the people who hazarded such wild guesses must have failed to detect the subtle delicacy and nobility of the knight’s nature, and the loving sympathy with which Cervantes dwells upon the wisdom and sterling merit of his hero. Could a man satirise an enemy with such gentleness and affection? Could a genius like Cervantes so far overshoot his bolt as to make not only the other characters in the book, but all the reading world, honour and love the figure that he purposed to hold up to ridicule?
If Cervantes, in writingDon Quixote, was laughing away Spain’s chivalry, as Lord Byron erroneously declared, then he was the target of his own destructive cynicism, for the story of his career is that of a man who practised a chivalry which was already extinct in Spain, and maintained unswervingly a code of honour which had fallen into desuetude. If Montesquieu’s similarly extravagant comment that “the Spaniards have but one book—that which has made all the others ridiculous” comes nearer to the truth, it must be conceded that the romances which Cervantes exterminated were scarcely worth preserving. But the book affords also another proof that truth surpasses fiction in strangeness, since the popularity ofDon Quixote, its effect, and its immortality surprised no one so much as its author. Having disposed of his rights in the publication to Francisco de Robles—the sum he obtained for them is nowhere mentioned, but it may be surmised that it was all toosmall for his need—Cervantes proceeded about his daily task of providing bread for his family, and left this “child of his sterile, ill-cultured wit” to its fate. He remained in Valladolid while his book was being printed at Madrid, and the number of glaring and absurd errors that marred the first edition is proof positive that he did not see a single sheet. Many of these more palpable blunders were absent from the 1608 edition which was revised by the author, who was then resident in the capital.
Mr. Watts, who has evidently made a close and scholarly study of the old romances of chivalry whichDon Quixotebrought into such sudden disfavour, has endeavoured, as I think, with much plausibility, to demonstrate Cervantes’ precise attitude towards this class of literature. Having traced the romantic vein from its genesis to the time when the author ofGalateaemployed it as his model, and eulogised in high terms such examples of the genre asAmadis of GaulandPalmerin of England, Mr. Watts points out that Cervantes carefully differentiated between the romances of merit and the nautiating imitations; that he was one of the most omniverious readers of such books in that age, and the most deeply-imbued with their spirit. He specially and enthusiastically praises the good volumes among the bad in Don Quixote’s library; he praises again, through the mouth of the Canon of Toledo, the feeling of romances of chivalry, and lays down the rules on which such a history should be written. If he had
any other object in composingDon Quixotethan to “write out of the fulness of his own heart,” it was to check the perpetration of fatuous and mischievous stories which were bringing into disrepute and ridicule his old and well-loved stories of chivalry and romance. The secret of the enduring success ofDon Quixote, Mr. Watts concludes, is not to be found in its motive, but in the fact that the romance was drawn from the story of the author’s own life. “The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy—who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents as the immortal story he has written? This is the key toDon Quixote, which, unless we use, we shall not reach the heart of the mystery.”
Let us linger for awhile with Cervantes in the great square and broad streets of Valladolid. To-day, Valladolid, “the Rich,” is a fallen city. Here still stand the old Royal Palace, upon which Cervantes’ eyes must so often have rested—a ruin. The great Cathedral, an imposing mass of granite, which was begun in 1585, is still unfinished. Here stillstand the house in the Calle de Colon, in which Columbus died; and Cervantes’ own lodging at No. 14, Calle de Rastro; and the huge Plaza Major where, on October 7th, 1559, Philip II. celebrated the first memorable Auto de Fé, and which was, in Cervantes’ day, the meeting place of all the poets and soldiers, the historians and savants, who haunted the Court of His Most Religious Majesty. Here Cervantes remained while his work circulated throughout the country, and overflowed into every country in Europe.
Would you know the social conditions that prevailed in Spain in the latter half of the sixteenth century? You can obtain the information in “The Life and Achievement of Don Quixote de la Mancha.” If you would have wit and wisdom, or if you would take humanity to be your study, you have only to turn to this same work. If you seek to realise the condition under which a man bore arms, or wielded a pen, under that royal barbarian, Philip II., you must have resource to this history. Would you understand Cervantes’ own experience in arms and in letters? Turn to Chapter xxxi. of the First Part ofDon Quixote. What higher ideal ever had any man, both for the soldier and the writer? Listen to the Don in what Cervantes assures his readers is his hero’s most rational and logical humour: “Now the end and design of letters,” he says, “is to regulate distributive justice, and give to every man his due; to institute good laws, and cause
them to be strictly observed; an end most certainly generous and exalted, and worthy of high commendation; but not equal to that which is annexed to the profession of arms, the object and end of which is peace, the greatest blessing mortals can wish for in this wearisome life.”
The purpose of letters has never been placed on a higher standard, and militarism is robbed of its sordidness in his definition of its aims. Cervantes was a soldier and an author by trade, let us listen to his verdict when, granting that the end of war is peace, and that in this it has the advantage of the end proposed by letters, he weighs the labours of the scholar against those of the warrior, and decides on which side the balance turns.
“I say then,” he asserts, “that the hardships of the scholar are these: in the first place poverty; not that they are all poor, but I would put the case in the strongest manner possible; and when I have mentioned that the scholar endures poverty, no more need be said to evince his misery; for he that is poor is destitute of every good thing, he has to contend with misery in all its forms, sometimes in hunger, sometimes in cold, sometimes in nakedness, and sometimes in all these together. Yet his necessity is not so great but that still he eats, though somewhat later than usual, either by partaking of the rich man’s scraps and leavings, or, which is his greatest misery, by going a sopping. Neither does he always want the fireside or chimney-corner ofsome charitable person, where, if he is not quite warmed, at least the extreme cold is abated; and, lastly, at night he sleeps under cover. I will not mention other trifles, such as want of linen, deficiency of shoes, his thin and threadbare clothes, not the surfeits to which he is liable from intemperance, when good fortune sets a plentiful table in his way. By this path, rough and difficult as I have described it, now stumbling, now falling, now rising, then falling and rising again, do scholars arrive at last to the end of their wishes; which, being attained, we have seen many who, having passed these Syrtes, these Scyllas, these Charybdisis, buoyed up, as it were, by a favourable tide, have exercised authority from a chair of state, and governed the world; their hunger converted into satiety, their pinching cold into refreshing coolness, their nakedness into embroidered raiment, and their bare mats to beds of down, with furniture of fine holland and damask, a reward justly merited by their virtues.
“But their hardships, when fairly brought together and compared, fall short of those of the warrior, as I shall presently demonstrate. Since, in speaking of the scholar, we began with his poverty and its several branches, let us see how it is with the soldier in that respect, and we shall find that such is his lot poverty itself is not poorer, for he depends on his wretched pay, which comes late, or perhaps never, or what he can plunder, with great peril both of life and conscience. Sometimes his want of clothing is
such that his slashed buff doublet serves him both for doublet and for shirt; and in the midst of Winter, being in the open field, he has nothing but the breath of his mouth to warm him, which, issuing from an empty stomach, must needs be cold, against all the rules of Nature. But come, Night, and let us see whether bed will make amends for these inconveniences. If it be not his own fault, it will never offend in point of narrowness, for he may measure out as many feet of earth as he pleases, and roll himself thereon at leisure, without fear of rumpling the sheets.
“Suppose, again, the day and hour arrived of taking the degree of his profession. I mean, suppose the day of battle come, wherein he is to put in practice the exercise of his profession, and strike to gain some new honour, then, as a mark of distinction, shall his head be dignified by a cap made of lint, to stop a hole made by a bullet, or perhaps be carried off maimed, at the expense of a leg or arm. And if this do not happen, but that merciful Heaven preserve his life and limbs, it may fall out that he shall remain as poor as before, and must run through many encounters and battles, nay, always come off victorious, to obtain some small preferment—and these miracles, too, are rare—but, I pray tell me, if ever you made it your observation, how few are those who obtain due rewards in war, in comparison of those numbers who perish? Doubtless you will answer that there is no parity between them, thatthe dead cannot be reckoned up; whereas those who live and are rewarded may be numbered with three figures.
“It is quite otherwise with scholars, not only those who follow the lead, but others also, who all either by hook or by crook get a livelihood; so that though the soldier’s sufferings be much greater, yet his reward is much less. To this it may be answered, that it is easier to reward two thousand scholars than thirty thousand soldiers, because the former are recompensed at the expense of the public, by giving them employment, but the latter cannot be gratified but at the cost of the master that employs them: yet this very difficulty makes good my argument. Now for a man to attain to an eminent degree of learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences, which are the consequence of those, of which I have already in part made mention. But the rising gradually to be a good soldier is purchased at the whole expense of all that is required for learning, and that in so surpassing a degree that there is no comparison betwixt them, because he is every moment in danger of his life. To what danger or distress can a scholar be reduced equal to that of a soldier, who, being besieged in some strong place, and at his post in some ravelin or bastion, perceives the enemy carrying on a mine under him, and yet must upon no account remove from thence, or shun the danger whichthreatens him? All he can do is to give notice to his commander that he may countermine, but must himself stand still, fearing and expecting when on a sudden he shall soar to the clouds without wings, and be again cast down headlong against his will. If this danger seems inconsiderable, let us see whether there be not greater when two galleys shock one another with their prows in the midst of the spacious sea. When they have thus grappled, and are clinging together, the soldier is confined to the narrow gangway, being a board not above two feet wide; and yet though he sees before him so many ministers of death threatening, as there are pieces of cannon on the other side pointing against him, and not half a pike’s length from his body; and being sensible that the first slip of his feet sends him to the bottom of Neptune’s dominions—still, for all this, inspired by honour, with an undaunted heart, he stands a mark to so much fire, and endeavours to make his way by that narrow passage into the enemy’s vessel. But what is most to be admired is, that no sooner one falls, where he shall never rise till the end of the world, than another steps into the same place; and if he also drops into the sea, which lies in wait for him like an enemy, another, and after him another, stills fills up the place, without suffering any interval of time to separate their deaths, a resolution and boldness scarce to be paralleled in any other trials of war. Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of thosedevilish instruments of artillery which is the cause that very often a cowardly, base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman; and that in the midst of that vigour and resolution which animates and inflames the bold, a chance bullet (shot perhaps by one that fled, and was frightened at the very flash which the mischievous piece gave when it went off) coming nobody knows how or from whence, in a moment puts a period to the brave designs and the life of one that deserved to have survived many years.”
I have quoted thus freely because the passage illustrates better than pages of comment, the high ideals that inspired Cervantes both in the tented field and in the long solitude of his poor study. He fought as he wrote like a Christian gentleman; and if, in his lifetime, arms did not bring him honours, nor letters riches, posterity is agreed to recognise in him one of the truest soldiers and greatest writers of all times. It was his persistent evil chance which, when he had abandoned the perilous calling of a warrior, should dog his steps with sufferings from which the writer is usually exempt. In June, 1605 within a month or two of the publication ofDon Quixote, a court gallant, Don Gaspar de Ezpeleta, was suddenly assailed by two men, wounded and left for dead in the street before Cervantes’ house. The author and his family hearing his cries carried the stricken man into their lodging, where he died in a few hours. Justice, in taking up the affair, clapped
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA.(OLDEST PLATE.)Paris, 1622.First Edition.
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA.(OLDEST PLATE.)Paris, 1622.First Edition.
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA.
(OLDEST PLATE.)
Paris, 1622.
First Edition.
Cervantes and his family in gaol, where they were detained until the result of the inquiry exonerated them from playing anything but the Samaritan’s part in the matter. This too, as Edmondo de Amicis reflects, had to fall to the lot of the poor author ofDon Quixote, so that he could be said to have experienced every kind of trial.
“We crossed the Mancha,” writes de Amicis in another reference to Cervantes in his work onSpain, “the celebrated Mancha, the immortal theatre of the adventures of Don Quixote. It is just as I imagined it. There are broad, bare plains, long tracts of sandy earth, some windmills, a few miserable villages, solitary paths, and wretched, abandoned houses. On seeing those places I experienced a feeling of melancholy which the perusal of Cervantes’ book always rouses; and I repeated to myself what I always say in reading it: ‘This man cannot make one laugh; or, if he does, under the smile, the tears are springing up.’ Don Quixote is a sad and solemn character; his mania is a lament; his life is the history of the dreams, illusions, disappointments and aberrations of us all; the struggle of reason with the imagination, of the true with the false, the ideal with the real! We all have something of Don Quixote about us; we all take windmills for giants; all are spurred upward from time to time by an impulse of enthusiasm, and driven back by a laugh of disdain; are all a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, and feel, with profound bitterness, theperpetual contrast between the greatness of our aspirations and the weakness of our powers.”
One reads the opinion of the eminent Italian author, and it but confirms the opinion that Mr. Watts is doubtless right in his belief that Don Quixote and the man of Lepanto are one and the same.
From the depositions made at this inquiry into the murder of Ezpeleta, which have been preserved, we learn that the family, which was at this time dependent upon Cervantes, consisted of his wife, his natural daughter Isabel, aged twenty; his widowed sister, Andrea, aged sixty-one; a cousin, Dona Magdalena de Sotomayor, a lady of forty; and their servant, Maria. The household followed the Court to Madrid in 1606, where Cervantes found two eminent, if not by any means prodigal, patrons in Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and the Conde de Lemos, nephew and son-in-law of the Duke de Lerma. But if the Inquisitor-General, who ranked after the Pope as the most powerful Prelate in Christendom, was not lavish in his disbursements of patrimony, his patronage saved the author from molestation at the hands of the Inquisition, and it was not until the death of Archbishop Sandoval that the Holy Office cast a censorial eye uponDon Quixote, and expunged certain passages which did not meet with its approval.
For the next seven years Cervantes appears to have published nothing, and it may be assumed that
FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN.Paris, 1713.5th Edition.
FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN.Paris, 1713.5th Edition.
FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN.
Paris, 1713.
5th Edition.
he eked out a precarious existence by undertaking clerical work, and on the occasional alms doled out to him by his patrons. We know, from the evidence given at the inquiry before the Alcade at Valladolid, that he “wrote and transacted business,” and that his slender means were augmented by the sale of needlework made by the women of his household. His fame, as the author ofDon Quixote, would give him entrance to the intellectual circle of Madrid, and there seems no reason to doubt the statement of his biographer, Navarrete, that he joined the Literary Society, known as the Selvages, which included the most eminent men of letters of Madrid in its membership. We learn that in 1609 he forearmed himself against his burial by becoming a lay brother of the Oratory of the Knights of Grace—a prudent precaution that was customary among men of letters of the time—where he had, as colleagues, Lope de Vega, and his good friend, Francisco de Quevedo, one of the few contemporary writers who never disclosed envy or pretended contempt for the author ofDon Quixote.
Of some of Cervantes’ other friends at this time it is not possible to speak in the same terms. Lope de Vega was always jealous of his genius and his comparatively limited meed of popularity; Luis de Leon, whom, Cervantes said, “I revere, adore, and follow,” and Fernando de Herrera were dead; Luis de Góngora disliked him, and the brothers Lupercio and Bartolomé Argénsola returned his good-naturedeulogies with envy and evil works, and by their intriguing they prevented the Conde de Lemos from redeeming the promise of employment he had made Cervantes when that nobleman was appointed Viceroy of Naples. Cervantes also had friends among the painters of the period, and was warmly attached to the two then celebrated artists, Juan de Jaureguy and Francisco Pacheco. Our author tells us, in his prologue toNovelas Exemplares, that Jaureguy had painted his picture, and he also figured among the 170 portraits of eminent contemporaries, which Pacheco made in black and red chalk. This collection, which was presented by the painter to Olivares, the generous art patron and celebrated minister of Philip IV., was broken up after his death, and is now reduced to fifty-six portraits, but that of Cervantes is not among the survivors. Nor has any other pictured memorial of him been preserved. His good-humoured plaint that his publishers should have reproduced an engraving of Jaureguy’s picture on the first leaf ofNovelas Exemplareshas since been echoed in all sincerity. Two hundred years after his death it suddenly dawned upon Spain that no portrait of this, one of her greatest sons, was in existence, or if such a work existed it has not yet been found.
Lord Carteret, who brought out his handsomely-printed and bound edition ofDon Quixotein 1738, was arrested in his efforts on the eve of publication by the discovery that the engraving of Cervantes, which he desired to make his frontispiece, couldnot be reproduced for want of an original likeness from which to make a copy. The British Ambassador, at Madrid, instituted an energetic search in Spain, but he could find no trace of the pictures which it was known had been painted, and Lord Carteret commissioned William Kent to execute the necessary portrait. Kent followed faithfully the details which the author had revealed of his features and outward appearance in the preface toNovelas Exemplares; and in order to fend himself from any charge of deception he labelled it, “Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes by Himself.” William Kent’s imaginary portrait—a three-quarter length painting of a man in the prime of life of the stately and ultra-Spanish type of countenance, splendidly attired in ruffs and frills to resemble an exquisite of the period, has been used as the basis of all subsequent portraits of Cervantes. It is fanciful, somewhat ridiculous—since Cervantes never boasted purple and fine linen for his adornment—incorrect,—for the man of Lepanto’s maimed hand is represented as amputated—and generally misleading. But the conventional portrait and fanciful invention of Kent—the hooked nose, large moustache, round eyes and baby mouth—appealed to the Spanish imagination; and when, in 1780, the Spanish Academy published their own first classical edition ofDon Quixote, a variant of Kent’s portrait graced the work. They declared, in the first place, that their discovery was from the brush of Alonso del Arco, but when it waspointed out that the deaf and dumb painter was not born until nine years after the death of the author, they declared it a copy of an original painted by one of Cervantes’ contemporaries. When the strong family resemblance between the Alonso de Arco portrait and that of William Kent was insisted upon, the Spanish Academy decided that the English picture was a copy of their discovered prize, and with that explanation they professed themselves entirely contented.
What is probably an equally unauthentic portrait of Cervantes, but one based upon a more ingenious and plausible theory, was unearthed by the energies of Don José Maria Asensio of Seville, who, in an anonymous manuscript, happened upon a note to the effect that in one of six pictures, painted by Pacheco for a convent at Seville, there was a portrait of Cervantes. Armed with this clue, Señor Asensio went to the Provincial Museum of Seville, and made a careful inspection of the pictures which were painted to commemorate the effective labours of the Redemptorist brethren in releasing captives from Algiers. In one of these, entitled “St. Peter of Nola, in one of the Passages of his Life,” the saint is represented as superintending the launching of a boat. Among the half-dozen figures in the foreground, which are declared to be all portraits, is a man under middle age, with a striking head set upon a strong neck and shoulders, and with the defect of the left hand seemingly disguised by obscure
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE.London, 1738.7th Edition.
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE.London, 1738.7th Edition.
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE.
London, 1738.
7th Edition.
painting. The fine eyes are set beneath a broad forehead, the nose is prominent and well defined, while the weakness in the chin and jaw are not uncharacteristic of the general character of Cervantes. These features are, moreover, in keeping with the description which the author has given us of himself in the prologue ofNovelas Exemplares, already referred to, and which, of course, was followed by William Kent. Thus he presents himself to his readers: “He, whom you see here, of aquiline feature, with chestnut hair, a smooth, unruffled forehead, with sparkling eyes, and a nose arched though well proportioned; a beard of silver, which, not twenty years since, was of gold; great moustaches, a small mouth, the teeth of no account, for he has but six of them, and they in bad condition and worse arranged, for they do not hold correspondence one with another; the body between two extremes, neither great nor little; the complexion bright, rather white than brown, somewhat heavy in the shoulders. This, I say, is the aspect of the author ofDon Quixote of La Mancha.” With this detailed description we must be content; and if it is not a portrait, it is sufficient to afford us material for recreating a picture of Cervantes according to our individual tastes.
It is generally agreed that the novels which Cervantes published in 1613, under the title ofNovelas Exemplares—because “there is not one of them from which some profitable example cannot be drawn”—were written many years before, but thereseems equally as good reason for supposing that they were the results of his last seven years residence in Madrid. In variety of subject and manner, in the extraordinary knowledge of life that they reveal, in the mature art with which they are told, they exhibit the hand of the experienced craftsman, and warrant the eulogy of the author, who wrote of them that “had they not been turned out of the workshop of his wit, he might presume to place them by the side of the best ever designed.” AfterDon Quixote, they are reckoned in Spain amongst the best stories of their kind in the language; but they have achieved little popularity out of the Peninsula. Yet they have not been without their fervent admirers in this country, and amongst them Sir Walter Scott must be acknowledged the chief, since Lockhart declares that it was these stories of Cervantes that inspired the author of the Waverley novels to his first essay in fiction.
In the following year, 1614, Cervantes published two volumes of his writings,Viaja del Parnasoand a collection of plays. The poem, though based on an ingenious idea, and containing some of the best verse which the poet has given us, justifies the contemporary verdict upon his compositions, which was, as Cervantes himself tells us, that “of his prose much was to be expected, but of his verse nothing.” TheJourney Around Parnassusis written in imitation of a poem, now forgotten, by the Italian author, Cesare Caporali, and it serves as a record of the names ofa string of Spanish minor poets whom Cervantes praises with more credit to his heart than his discrimination. His own generation allowed the book to fall still-born from the press, and its one interest to modern Cervantists lies in the autobiographical details which are to be found in the prose prefix. We read here that he is residing in theCalle de las Huertas, in a house “over against the mansion where the Prince of Morocco used to live;” we are introduced to the beruffled, exquisite, and would-be poet (by the correction of whose verses Cervantes doubtless derived part of his slender income); we learn that his niece paid arealfor postage on a letter which contained nothing more valuable than an anonymous, defamatory sonnet upon the author ofDon Quixote; and, finally, we are told that the writer has in hand a dozen comedies and farces in equal proportions, which, having been rejected of theatre-managers, he proposes to present to the world in book form.
The volume of eight comedies and eight farces here referred to was published in the same year. A bookseller, being found, willing to take the risks of publishing them, Cervantes tells us in his preface that he “made the venture and sold them to the bookseller, who sent them to the Press. He paid me a reasonable sum for them; I took the money meekly, without making account of the quirks and quibbles of the players. I would they were the best in the world, or, at least, of fair worth.” But thepieces fared no better at the hands of the public than they had with the theatre-managers. Nor did they deserve a better fate, being unworthy of the author ofDon Quixote, or even of theNumanciaof his earlier days. Cervantes, rendered desperate by want, has in these pages deviated from the principles that he had laid down for his own guidance, and his object would appear to be to woo the public by pandering to their debased taste. But as he had before been compelled to give place, as a playwright, to men who possessed a greater share of dramatic sense and fitness, so now he was competing vainly with men, less gifted than himself, who had more accurately gauged the public taste, and were more dexterous in catering for it. In letters, more often than in any other branch of the arts, the man of genius who writes down to his public falls short of success. It is the second-rate writers who undertake seriously the task which the master attempts, with his tongue in his cheek and contempt for his output in his heart, who achieve their object. So Cervantes failed again as a playwright, and he failed so conspicuously that Blas de Nasarre, who republished these poor farces and more inferior comedies in 1749, claimed that the author had written them in ridicule of Lope de Vega, just as he had writtenDon Quixotein ridicule of the books of chivalry; while his always appreciative biographer, H. E. Watts, concludes that Cervantes “intended them as specimens of the drama which was in vogue in his day, rather than as
DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.El Haya, 1746.9th Edition.
DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.El Haya, 1746.9th Edition.
DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.
El Haya, 1746.
9th Edition.
models of that true art of which we know he had grasped the principles.”
Cervantes had, we must suppose, been wrenched from his artistic principles and ideals by the pinch of poverty; yet at this late period of his life, his fame as an author was spread not only throughout Spain, but in France, Italy, Germany, and Flanders. When Francisco Marquez Torres, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Toledo, was interrogated by some members of the French Embassy in Madrid, as to the age, profession, quality, and fortune of the celebrated author ofDon Quixote, Señor Torres found himself “compelled to say that he was an old man, a soldier, a gentleman, and poor.” The chaplain, who tells this story in the approbation prefixed to the Second Part ofDon Quixote, continues: “To which one of them responded in these precise words: ‘But does not Spain keep such a man rich, and supported out of the public Treasury?’ Another of these gentlemen broke in with this idea, saying, with much acuteness, ‘If it is necessity compels him to write, may God send he may never have abundance; so that, poor himself, he may make the whole world rich.’”
Cervantes, in his long and varied career, had suffered much from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but in the last months of his life he was to endure the most cruel and malignant hurt that the envy and enmity of man could inflict on an author. In the summer of 1614, just two yearsbefore his death, when Cervantes was leisurely completing the second part of the work, which was to make his name immortal, there appeared at Tarragoza a work entitled, “The Second Part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, containing his Third Sally.” This work, vulgar, lewd and malicious, purposed to be the continuation and the end of the story which Cervantes had published ten years before. The name of the author was given as Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, of Tordesillas; the book was dedicated to the “Alcade, Regidors, and Hidalgos of the noble city of Argamasilla,” &c.; the licensing for printing was in the handwriting of Doctor Francisco de Torne, of Liori, Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Tarragona, and the publication was justified by the contention of one Dr. Rafael Orthoneda, who declared that it “ought to be printed, because it seemed to him to contain nothing immodest or forbidden.”
If this publication had revealed no more than a mean and avaricious desire to profit by the popularity of the First Part ofDon Quixote, and to defraud Cervantes by forestalling him in the demand which was in waiting for the completion of the work; if the author had imitated the style and spirit of the great original with the sole thought of skimming Cervantes’ market—even so the outrage would have been almost unparalleled at that period in the history of letters. But the conspiracy, for conspiracy it was beyond doubt, was deeper, more subtle and diabolical
SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET.Boston, 1837.38th Edition.
SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET.Boston, 1837.38th Edition.
SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET.
Boston, 1837.
38th Edition.
in its inspiration and execution. Avellaneda, whoever the man was who clothed his identity beneath this sobriquet, was a person of some literary talent, but his malice outstripped his wit, and his humour is choked with lewdness. The aim and purpose of the book is deliberately divulged in the prologue, which is nothing less than a savage revilement of Cervantes. His literary defects are assailed with ungovernable fury; his age, his poverty, even the wounds, of which he was so proud, are hurled in his teeth. He is described as having “more tongue than hands;” his impediment in his speech is made matter for mockery; his state is compared with the ruined castle of San Cervantes; and his person, temperament, and condition are summarised in a venemous sentence, in which he is called “a cripple, a soldier old in years, though youthful in spirit; envious, discontented, a back-biter, a malefactor, or, at least, a jail-bird.” It is curious and characteristic of the tone of this attack that Cervantes, the gallant soldier who had won his wounds in the service of his country, but who had not allowed his buoyant spirit or kindliness of heart to be conquered by hardship, penury, and suffering, should be villified for the very things for which the world now holds him in love and esteem. Finally, having attempted to belittle his achievements, and blast his character, his assailant acknowledges that his book is a deliberate attempt to deprive Cervantes of the profit expected from his labours.
In the falseDon Quixotethus thrust upon the public the whole design of the original is studied only for the purpose of destroying it; it is written with the set and determined idea of making the name of the Knight of La Mancha stink in the nostrils of the admirers of Cervantes. Here the Don is represented as a common lunatic, who disappears from the story into an asylum for the insane. Sancho Panza is transformed into a gluttonous, vulgar, ignoramus. Dorothea, whose grace and daintiness add fragrance and wit to the original story, becomes a mere wanton. The whole story reeks of obscenity, vulgarity, and dullness, yet an eminent cleric licensed it; Le Sage professed to see in it merits equal to the true history; and the Spanish Academy has preserved the work as being worthy a place in the national collection of classics. Not a detail is wanting to detract from the enormity of the outrage, to give Cervantes the unenviable distinction of being the most basely treated man among the many unfortunates in literature; for surely, never before or since, was an author so villainously used.
Nearly three centuries have elapsed since Cervantes laid aside his pen and rested from the indignities which his generation piled upon him, but the identity of the author of the crowning indignity of his career is still to be revealed. Cervantes himself must have had a shrewd suspicion of the author of this conspiracy, but he either refrained from publishing his name, or felt too insecure in his facts, to be
ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS.Paris, 1844.40th Edition.
ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS.Paris, 1844.40th Edition.
ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS.
Paris, 1844.
40th Edition.
able to prove the charge; or, as his first biographer asserts, his assailant was so powerful as to defy accusation. The secret was kept, at the time, with a success that to us seems incomprehensible, and has created controversy and speculation which has not decreased with years. But it would appear that until the ploughshare of accident shall turn up from the fallow earth of the literary past, or until the jealous guard which is posted over the letters in theBiblioteca Nacionalshall be relaxed, speculation and conjecture are vain. Luis de Aliaga, the King’s Confessor, Alarcon the Dramatist, Bartolomé de Argénsola, Cervantes’ one-time friend; the monk Perez, who wroteLa Picara Justina; and the great Lope de Vega himself have all been laid under the suspicion of being the writer of the falseDon Quixote. The weight of circumstantial evidence bears hardest upon Vega, whose private letters have disclosed his ill-will and envy towards Cervantes; whose life and character—despite the arguments urged by his apologists—convict him, at least, of being capable of committing so foul a deed; and whose method of waging literary warfare was quite in the manner of the false Prologue. A man of his arrogant disposition would resent bitterly the criticism which Cervantes applied to his plans in the First Part of hismagnum opus, and we can believe of him that he would stop at nothing to be revenged upon his critic. A jealous, unscrupulous, intolerant man, confident of the protection of friends in highplaces; a libertine who acted as procurer for the Duke of Sessa; an officer of the Holy Inquisition; and the only real rival to Cervantes in the arena of letters—if Lope de Vega did not himself pen the falseDon Quixote, he will go down to posterity as the suspected inspirer of the basest literary atrocity that has ever been perpetrated.
On this point, as on most details affecting Cervantes, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly is emphatic in his conclusion, and he accepts the decision by Máinez, that if the hand is the hand of Avellaneda, the voice is the voice of Lope de Vega. He finds in the character of the celebrated dramatist the temperamental fitness for such a task, and he locates the incentive in his unsupportable jealousy. “TillDon Quixoteappeared no rival had ever dared to come within the shadow of his throne, and its lasting success was torment to his soul. It was too plain that the world had gone stark mad, captivated by the book of the poverty-stricken, maimed wanderer who, after a life of squalid failure, had had the assurance to produce a masterpiece. It was no longer possible to killDon Quixoteby the cheap sneer that no one was such an ass as to praise it. Lope had played that card, and no longer cherished any such delusion.... But it was still possible to injure; still possible to defame; still possible to rob the old man of a few doubloons; still possible to deride him, to wound his pride, to forestall his market by writing a continuation of the accursed volume which had dared to thrust itself