Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote
which in that day was little short of marvellous. Four editions were
published the first year, two at Madrid, one at Valencia, and one at
Lisbon. Byron says: "Cervantes laugh'd Spain's chivalry away!" So
popular was it, that a spurious second part, under the fictitious
authorship of Avellanada was published. Cervantes was furious, and
called him a blockhead; but Germond de Lavigue, the distinguished
Spanish scholar, rashly asserts that but for this Avellanada, he would
never have finished "Don Quixote." Even before it was printed, jealousy
evidently existed in the hearts of rival writers, for in one of Lope's
letters he refers to it, and spitefully hints that no poet could be
found to write commendatory verses on it.
He recognized the fact of universal selfishness when he makes Sancho
Panza refuse to learn the Don's love-letter and say, "Write it, your
worship, for it's sheer nonsense to trust anything to my memory."
Spain is so full of rich material for romance that from it his mature
mind seemed to inaugurate a new age in Spanish literature. After the
gloomy intolerance of Philip II., the advent of Philip III. added much
to the literary freedom of Spain, which still belonged to the "Age of
Chivalry," and to this day the true Spaniard nourishes the lofty and
romantic qualities which, combined with a tone of sentiment and gravity
and nobility of conversation, embellishes the legitimate grandee.
Sismondi de Sismondi says the style of "Don Quixote" is inimitable.
Montesquieu says: "It is written to prove all others useless." To some
it is an allegory, to some a tragedy, to some a parable, and to others a
satire. As a satirist we think him unrivalled, and this spirit found a
choice opportunity for vent when the troops of Don Carlos I. marched
upon Rome, taking Pope Clement VII. prisoner, while at the same time the
king was having prayers said in the churches of Madrid for the
deliverance of the Pope, on the plea that "he was obliged to make war
against the _temporal_ sovereign of Rome, but not upon the spiritual
head of the Church!" No wonder the king, after proving himself so good a
Catholic, should end his days in a monastery, or that he should mortify
himself by lying in a coffin, wrapped in a shroud, while funeral
services were performed over him. What, again, could have appealed more
to his sense of the ridiculous than the contest between the priests and
the authorities over the funeral obsequies of Philip II., so intolerant
a tyrant that he caused every Spaniard to breathe more freely as he
ceased so to do. He used his people as
"Broken tools, that tyrants cast away
By myriads, when they dare to pave their way
With human hearts."
We can easily believe in the greater freedom during the reign of Philip
III. "Viva el Rey."
The Count de Lemos was his near friend and protector when he brought out
the second part of "Don Quixote," and ridiculed his rival imitator. He
was a pioneer of so elevated a character as to preclude the possibility
of followers. Every one is familiar with it as a story, and the mishaps
of the gentle, noble-minded, kind-hearted old Don, as well as the
delusions, simplicity, and selfishness of the devoted squire, will never
lose their power to amuse. It may be extravagant, but it is not a
burlesque. The strong character painting, the ideas, situations, and
language, clothed in such simplicity that at times it becomes almost
solemn, give it a grandeur that no other book, considered as a romance,
possesses. The old anecdote of the king observing a student walking by
the river side and bursting into involuntary fits of laughter over a
book, exclaiming, "The man is either mad or reading 'Don Quixote,'" is
well preserved. One peculiar feature of the book is that, even now, for
some places, it would be a useful guide, many of the habits and customs
of Spain three hundred years ago being still the same. What a volume of
wit and wisdom is contained in the proverbs and aphorisms. One might
quote from it indefinitely had he not told us that "without discretion
there is no wit." His own motive in writing it we find in the last
paragraph of the book, namely, "My sole object has been to expose to the
contempt they deserved the extravagant and silly tricks of chivalry,
which this my true and genuine 'Don Quixote' has nearly accomplished,
their worldly credit being now actually tottering, and will doubtless
soon sink, never to rise again."
Now, all languages have it. There are eight translations into English
alone; but it is always impossible for the translator to render its true
spirit or to give it full justice. With all its vivacity and drollery,
its delicate satire and keen ridicule, it has a mournful tinge of
melancholy running through, and here and there peeping out, only to have
been gathered from such experience as his. He wrote with neither
bitterness nor a diseased imagination, always realizing what is due to
himself and with a full appreciation of and desire for fame. Many scenes
of real suffering appear under a dramatic guise, and here and there
creep out bits of personal history. His nature was chivalrous in the
highest degree. His sorrows were greater than his joys. Born for the
library, he prefers the camp, and abandons literature to fight the
Turks. Does he not make the Don say, "Let none presume to tell me the
pen is preferable to the sword." Again he says: "Allowing that the end
of war is peace, and that in this it exceeds the end of learning, let us
weigh the bodily labors the scholar undergoes against those the warrior
suffers, and then see which are the greatest." Then he enumerates:
"First, poverty; and having said he endures poverty, methinks nothing
more need be urged to express his misery, for he that is poor enjoys no
happiness, but labors under this poverty in all its guises, at one time
in hunger, at another in cold, another in nakedness, and sometimes in
all of them together." Later on he makes him say: "It gives me some
concern to think that powder and lead may suddenly cut short my career
of glory."
The world can only be grateful that "his career of glory" did not end in
the military advancement he had the right to expect. Had he been a
general, his Rozinante might still have been wandering without a name,
and Sancho Panza have died a common laborer. Again he says: "Would to
God I could find a place to serve as a private tomb for this wearisome
burden of life which I bear so much against my inclination." Surviving
almost unheard-of grievances only to emerge from them with greater
power; depicting in his works true outlines of his own adventures,
sometimes by a proverb, often by a romance, he never loses one jot of
his pride, giving golden advice to Sancho when a governor, and finishing
with the expression, "So may'st thou escape the PITY of the world." In
May, 1605, he was called upon as a witness in a case of a man who was
mortally wounded and dragged at night into his apartment, which almost
accidentally gives us his household, consisting of his wife; his natural
daughter Isabel, twenty years of age, unmarried; his sister, a widow,
above fifty years; her unmarried daughter, aged twenty-eight; his
half-sister, a religieuse; and a maid-servant. His "Espanola Inglesa"
appeared in 1611. His moral tales, the pioneers in Spanish literature,
are a combination without special plan of serious and comic, romance and
anecdote, evidently giving, under the guise of fiction, poetically
colored bits of his own experience in Italy and Africa. In his story of
"La Gitanilla" (the gipsy girl) may be found the argument of Weber's
opera of "Preciosa." "Parnassus" was written two years before his death,
after which he wrote eight comedies and a sequel to his twelve moral
tales. In his story of "Rinconete y Cortadilla" he evidently derives the
names from _rincon_ (a corner) and _cortar_ (to cut). His last work was
"Persiles and Sigismunda," the preface of which is a near presentiment
of his closing labors. He says: "Farewell, gayety; farewell, humor;
farewell, my pleasant friends. I must now die, and I desire nothing
more than to soon see you again happy in another world." His industry
was wonderful. We can but have a grateful feeling towards the Count de
Lemos for adding to his physical comfort for the last few years, and
feel a regret that the Count, who had lingered in Naples, could not have
arrived in time to see him once more when he so ardently desired it. In
a dedication to the Count of his final romance, written only four days
before his death, he very touchingly says: "I could have wished not to
have been obliged to make so close a personal application of the old
verses commencing 'With the foot already in the stirrup,' for with very
little alteration I may truly say that with my foot in the stirrup,
feeling this moment the pains of dissolution, I address this letter to
you. Yesterday I received extreme unction. To-day I have resumed my pen.
Time is short, my pains increase, my hopes diminish, yet I do wish my
life might be prolonged till I could see you again in Spain." His wish
was not to be gratified; the Count, unaware of the near danger of his
friend, only returned to find himself overwhelmed with grief at his
loss.
After sixty-nine years of varied fortunes and many struggles, Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra breathed his last, unsoothed by the hands he had
loved, for even this privilege seems to have been denied to him. At the
near end of his life he had joined the kindly third order of the
Franciscan friars, and the brethren cared for him at the last. His
remarkable clearness of intellect never failed him, and on April 23,
1616, the very day that Shakspeare died at Stratford, Cervantes died at
Madrid. Unlike the great English contemporary, whose undisturbed bones
have lain quietly under peril of his malediction, the bones of the great
Spanish poet were irrevocably lost when the old Convent of the Trinity,
in the Calle del Humilladero, was destroyed. Ungrateful Spain! the spot
had never been marked with a common tombstone.
The old house[2] in the Calle de Francos, where he died, was so
dilapidated that, in 1835, it was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and a
marble bust of Cervantes was placed over the entrance by the sculptor,
Antonio Sola.
The "Madrid Epoca," under the heading of "The Prison of Cervantes,"
calls attention to the alarming state of decay of the house in
Argamasilla del Alba, in the cellar of which, as an extemporized
dungeon, tradition asserts that Cervantes was imprisoned, and where he
penned at least a portion of his work. It was in this cellar that, a few
years since, the Madrid publishing house of Rivadeneyra erected a press
and printed their edition _de luxe_ of "Don Quijote." The house was,
some years since, purchased by the late Infante Don Sebastian, with a
view to a complete and careful restoration; but political changes and
his death prevented a realization of his project. The "Epoca" now calls
public attention to the state of decay of the house, with a view to an
immediate restoration.
In the Plaza de las Cortes, the city of Madrid has placed a beautiful
bronze statue of Cervantes upon a square pedestal of granite. Upon the
sides are bas-reliefs representing subjects taken from "Don Quijote de
la Mancha."
The present time honors his memory; and for all time he will live in the
hearts of all true lovers of genius.
REQUIESCAT IN PACE.
EMMA THOMPSON.
WIT AND WISDOM
OF
DON QUIXOTE.
Down in a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to
recollect, there lived, not long ago, one of those gentlemen who usually
keep a lance upon a rack, an old buckler, a lean horse, and a coursing
grayhound. Soup, composed of somewhat more mutton than beef, the