[80] Many lives of Cervantes have been written, of which four need to be mentioned. 1. That of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, first prefixed to the edition of Don Quixote in the original published in London in 1738, (4 tom., 4to), under the auspices of Lord Carteret, and afterwards to several other editions; a work of learning, and the first proper attempt to collect materials for a life of Cervantes, but ill arranged and ill written, and of little value now, except for some of its incidental discussions. 2. The Life of Cervantes, with the Analysis of his Don Quixote, by Vicente de los Rios, prefixed to the sumptuous edition of Don Quixote by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 tom., fol.), and often printed since;—better written than the preceding, and containing some new facts, but with criticisms full of pedantry and of extravagant eulogy. 3. Noticias para la Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, by J. Ant. Pellicer, first printed in his “Ensayo de una Biblioteca de Traductores,” 1778, but much enlarged afterwards, and prefixed to his edition of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1797-1798, 5 tom., 8vo);—poorly digested, and containing a great deal of extraneous, though sometimes curious, matter; but more complete than any life that had preceded it. 4. Vida de Miguel de Cervantes, etc., por D. Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, published by the Spanish Academy (Madrid, 1819, 8vo);—the best of all, and indeed one of the most judicious and best-arranged biographical works that have been published in any country. Navarrete has used in it, with great effect, many new documents; and especially the large collection of papers found in the archives of the Indies at Seville, in 1808, which comprehend the voluminous Informacion sent by Cervantes himself, in 1590, to Philip II., when asking for an office in one of the American colonies;—a mass of well-authenticated certificates and depositions, setting forth the trials and sufferings of the author of Don Quixote, from the time he entered the service of his country, in 1571; through his captivity in Algiers; and, in fact, till he reached the Azores in 1582. This thorough and careful life is skilfully abridged by L. Viardot, in his French translation of Don Quixote, (Paris, 1836, 2 tom., 8vo), and forms the substance of the “Life and Writings of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” by Thomas Roscoe, London, 1839, 18mo.

In the notice which follows in the text, I have relied for my facts on the work of Navarrete, whenever no other authority is referred to; but in the literary criticisms Navarrete can hardly afford aid, for he hardly indulges himself in them at all.

[81] The date of the baptism of Cervantes is Oct. 9, 1547; and as it is the practice in the Catholic Church to perform this rite soon after birth, we may assume, with sufficient probability, that Cervantes was born on that very day, or the day preceding.

[82] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 29.

[83] “En las riberas del famoso Henares.” (Galatea, Madrid, 1784, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 66.) Elsewhere, he speaks of “nuestro Henares”; the “famoso Compluto” (p. 121); and “nuestro fresco Henares,” p. 108.

[84] Comedias, Madrid, 1749, 4to, Tom. I., Prólogo.

[85] Galatea, Tom. I. p. x., Prólogo; and in the well-known fourth chapter of the “Viage al Parnaso,” (Madrid, 1784, 8vo, p. 53), he says:—

[86] “Como soy aficionado á leer aunque sean los papeles rotos de las calles, llevado desta mi natural inclinacion, tomé un cartapacio,” etc., he says, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 9, ed. Clemencin, Madrid, 1833, 4to, Tom. I. p. 198), when giving an account of his taking up the waste paper at the silk-mercer’s, which, as he pretends, turned out to be the Life of Don Quixote in Arabic.

[87] The verses of Cervantes on this occasion may be found partly in Rios, “Pruebas de la Vida de Cervantes,” ed. Academia, Nos. 2-5, and partly in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 262, 263. They are poor, and the only circumstance that makes it worth while to refer to them is, that Hoyos, who was a professor of elegant literature, calls Cervantes repeatedly “caro discípulo,” and “amado discípulo”; and says that the Elegy is written “en nombre de todo el estudio.” These, with other miscellaneous poems of Cervantes, are collected for the first time in the first volume of the “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” by Aribau (Madrid, 1846, 8vo, pp. 612-620); and prove the pleasant relations in which Cervantes stood with some of the principal poets of his day, such as Padilla, Maldonado, Barros, Yague de Salas, Hernando de Herrera, etc.

[88] “No hay mejores soldados, que los que se trasplantan de la tierra de los estudios en los campos de la guerra; ninguno salió de estudiante para soldado, que no lo fuese por estremo,” etc. Persiles y Sigismunda, Lib. III. c. 10, Madrid, 1802, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 128.

[89] The regiment in which he served was one of the most famous in the armies of Philip II. It was the “Tercio de Flandes,” and at the head of it was Lope de Figueroa, who acts a distinguished part in two of the plays of Calderon,—“Amar despues de la Muerte,” and “El Alcalde de Zalamea.” Cervantes probably joined this favorite regiment again, when, as we shall see, he engaged in the expedition to Portugal in 1581, whither we know not only that he went that year, but that the Flanders regiment went also.

[90] All his works contain allusions to the experiences of his life, and especially to his travels. When he sees Naples in his imaginary Viage del of Parnaso, (c. 8, p. 126), he exclaims,—

[91] “Si ahora me propusieran y facilitaran un imposible,” says Cervantes, in reply to the coarse personalities of Avellaneda, “quisiera ántes haberme hallado en aquella faccion prodigiosa, que sano ahora de mis heridas, sin haberme hallado en ella.” Prólogo á Don Quixote, Parte Segunda, 1615.

[92] One of the most trustworthy and curious sources for this part of the life of Cervantes is “La Historia y Topografia de Argel,” por D. Diego de Haedo, (Valladolid, 1612, folio), in which Cervantes is often mentioned, but which seems to have been overlooked in all inquiries relating to him, till Sarmiento stumbled upon it, in 1752. It is in this work that occur the words cited in the text, and which prove how formidable Cervantes had become to the Dey,—“Decia Asan Bajá, Rey de Argel, que como él tuviese guardado al estropeado Español tenia seguros sus cristianos, sus baxeles y aun toda la ciudad.” (f. 185.) And just before this, referring to the bold project of Cervantes to take the city by an insurrection of the slaves, Haedo says, “Y si á su animo, industria, y trazas, correspondiera la ventura, hoi fuera el dia, que Argel fuera de cristianos; porque no aspiraban á menos sus intentos.” All this, it should be recollected, was published four years before Cervantes’s death. The whole book, including not only the history, but the dialogues at the end on the sufferings and martyrdom of the Christians in Algiers, is very curious, and often throws a strong light on passages of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which so often refer to the Moors and their Christian slaves on the coasts of Barbary.

[93] With true Spanish pride, Cervantes, when alluding to himself in the story of the Captive, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40), says of the Dey, “Solo libró bien con él un soldado Español llamado tal de Saavedra, al qual con haber hecho cosas que quedarán en la memoria de aquellas gentes por muchos años, y todos por alcanzar libertad, jamas le dió palo, ni se lo mandó dar, ni le dixo mala palabra, y por la menor cosa de muchas que hizo, temiamos todos que habia de ser empalado, y así lo temió él mas de una vez.”

[94] A beautiful tribute is paid by Cervantes, in his tale of the “Española Inglesa,” (Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 358, 359), to the zeal and disinterestedness of the poor priests and monks, who went, sometimes at the risk of their lives, to Algiers to redeem the Christians, and one of whom remained there, giving his person in pledge for four thousand ducats which he had borrowed to send home captives. Of Father Juan Gil, who effected the redemption of Cervantes himself from slavery, Cervantes speaks expressly, in his “Trato de Argel,” as

[95] Cervantes was evidently a person of great kindliness and generosity of disposition; but he never overcame a strong feeling of hatred against the Moors, inherited from his ancestors and exasperated by his own captivity. This feeling appears in both his plays, written at distant periods, on the subject of his life in Algiers; in the fifty-fourth chapter of the second part of Don Quixote; and elsewhere. But except this, and an occasional touch of satire against duennas,—in which Quevedo and Luis Vélez de Guevara are as sever as he is,—and a little bitterness about private chaplains that exercised a cunning influence in the houses of the great, I know nothing, in all his works, to impeach his universal good-nature. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Vol. V. p. 260, note, and p. 138, note.

[96] For a beautiful passage on Liberty, see Don Quixote, Parte II., opening of chapter 58.

[97]

an opinion which Childe Harold found in Spain when he was there, and could have found at any time for two hundred years before.

[98] The “Menina e Moça” is the graceful little fragment of a prose pastoral, by Bernardino Ribeyro, which dates from about 1500, and has always been admired, as indeed it deserves to be. It gets its name from the two words with which it begins,—“Small and young”; a quaint circumstance, showing its extreme popularity with those classes that were little in the habit of referring to books by their formal titles.

[99] “Estas primicias de mi corto ingenio.” Dedicatoria.

[100] “Muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran solo en el hábito.”

[101] “Cuyas razones y argumentos mas parecen de ingenios entre libros y las aulas criados que no de aquellos que entre pagizas cabañas son crecidos.” (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This was intended, no doubt, at the same time, as a compliment to Figueroa, etc.

[102] The chief actors in the Galatea visit the tomb of Mendoza, in the sixth book, under the guidance of a wise and gentle Christian priest; and when there, Calliope strangely appears to them and pronounces a tedious poetical eulogium on a vast number of the contemporary Spanish poets, most of whom are now forgotten. The Galatea was abridged by Florian, at the end of the eighteenth century, and reproduced, with an appropriate conclusion, in a prose pastoral, which, in the days when Gessner was so popular, was frequently reprinted. In this form, it is by no means without grace.

[103] In the Dedication to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” 1616, April 19th, only four days before his death.

[104] Parte Primera, cap. 6.

[105] He alludes, I think, but twice in all his works to Esquivias; and, both times, it is to praise its wines. The first is in the “Cueva de Salamanca,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. II. p. 313), and the last is in the Prólogo to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” though in the latter he speaks, also, of its “ilustres linages.”

[106] See the end of Pellicer’s Life of Cervantes, prefixed to his edition of Don Quixote (Tom. I. p. ccv.). There seems to have been an earlier connection between the family of Cervantes and that of his bride, for the lady’s mother had been named executrix of his father’s will, who died while Cervantes himself was a slave in Algiers.

[107] At the end of the sixth book.

[108] Prólogo al Lector, prefixed to his eight plays and eight Entremeses, Madrid, 1615, 4to.

[109] Adjunta al Parnaso, first printed in 1614; and the Prólogo last cited.

[110] They are in the same volume with the “Viage al Parnaso,” Madrid, 1784, 8vo.

[111] Adjunta al Parnaso, p. 139, ed. 1784.

[112] In the “Baños de Argel,” and the “Amante Liberal.”

[113] The “Esclavos en Argel” of Lope is found in his Comedias, Tom. XXV., (Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, pp. 231-260), and shows that he borrowed very freely from the play of Cervantes, which, it should be remembered, had not then been printed, so that he must have used a manuscript. The scenes of the sale of the Christian children, (pp. 249, 250), and the scenes between the same children after one of them had become a Mohammedan, (pp. 259, 260), as they stand in Lope, are taken from the corresponding scenes in Cervantes (pp. 316-323, and 364-366, ed. 1784). Much of the story, and passages in other parts of the play, are also borrowed. The martyrdom of the Valencian priest, which is merely described by Cervantes, (pp. 298-305), is made a principal dramatic point in the third jornada of Lope’s play, where the execution occurs, in the most revolting form, on the stage (p. 263).

[114] Cervantes, no doubt, valued himself upon these immaterial agencies; and after his time, they became common on the Spanish stage. Calderon, in his “Gran Príncipe de Fez,” (Comedias, Madrid, 1760, 4to, Tom. III. p. 389), thus explains two, whom he introduces, in words that may be applied to those of Cervantes:—

[115]

[116]

is the jest with which he ends his other play on the same subject, printed thirty years after the representation of this one.

[117] Cervantes makes Scipio say of the siege, on his arrival,—

The true length of the contest with Numantia was, however, fourteen years, and the length of the last siege fourteen months.

[118] It is well to read, with the “Numancia” of Cervantes, the account of Florus, (Epit. II. 18), and especially that in Mariana, (Lib. III. c. 6-10), the latter being the proud Spanish version of it.

[119]

It should be added, that these two octaves occur at the end of a somewhat tedious soliloquy of nine or ten others, all of which are really octave stanzas, though not printed as such.

[120]

[121]

Jorn. III., Sc. 1.

There is, in this scene, a tone of gentle, broken-hearted self-devotion on the part of Lira, awakening a fierce despair in her lover, that seems to me very true to nature. The last words of Lira, in the passage translated, have, I think, much beauty in the original.

[122] A. W. von Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, Heidelberg, 1811, Tom. II. Abt. ii. p. 345.

[123] “Volvíme á Sevilla,” says Berganza, in the “Coloquio de los Perros,” “que es amparo de pobres y refugio de desdichados.” Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 362.

[124] This extraordinary mass of documents is preserved in the Archivos de las Indias, which are admirably arranged in the old and beautiful Exchange built by Herrera in Seville, when Seville was the great entrepôt between Spain and her colonies. The papers referred to may be found in Estante II. Cajon 5, Legajo 1, and were discovered by the venerable Cean Bermudez in 1808. The most important of them are published entire, and the rest are well abridged, in the Life of Cervantes by Navarrete (pp. 311-388). Cervantes petitioned in them for one of four offices:—the Auditorship of New Granada; that of the galleys of Carthagena; the Governorship of the Province of Soconusco; or the place of Corregidor of the city of Paz.

[125] “Viéndose pues tan falto de dineros y aun no con muchos amigos, se acogió al remedio á que otros muchos perdidos en aquella ciudad [Sevilla] se acogen; que es, el pasarse á las Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España, iglesia de los alzados, salvo conducto de los homicidas, pala y cubierta de los jugadores, añagaza general de mugeres libres, engaño comun de muchos y remedio particular de pocos.” El Zeloso Estremeño, Novelas, Tom. II. p. 1.

[126] These verses may be found in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 444, 445.

[127] Pellicer, Vida, ed. Don Quixote, (Madrid, 1797, 8vo, Tom. I. p. lxxxv.), gives the sonnet.

[128] Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. IX. p. 193. In the “Viage al Parnaso,” c. 4, he calls it “Honra principal de mis escritos.” But he was mistaken, or he jested,—I rather think the last. For an account of the indecent uproar Cervantes ridiculed, and needful to explain this sonnet, see Semanario Pintoresco, Madrid, 1842, p. 177.

[129] “Se engendró en una cárcel.” Avellaneda says the same thing in his Preface, but says it contemptuously: “Pero disculpan los yerros de su Primera Parte en esta materia, el haberse escrito entre los de una cárcel,” etc. A base insinuation seems implied in the use of the relative article los.

[130] Pellicer’s Life, pp. cxvi.-cxxxi.

[131] One of the witnesses in the preceding criminal inquiry says that Cervantes was visited by different persons, “por ser hombre que escribe y trata negocios.”

[132] Laurel de Apolo, Silva 8, where he is praised only as a poet.

[133] Most of the materials for forming a judgment on this point in Cervantes’s character are to be found in Navarrete, (Vida, pp. 457-475), who maintains that Cervantes and Lope were sincere friends, and in Huerta, (Leccion Crítica, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, pp. 33-47), who maintains that Cervantes was an envious rival of Lope. As I cannot adopt either of these results, and think the last particularly unjust, I will venture to add one or two considerations.

Lope was fifteen years younger than Cervantes, and was forty-three years old when the First Part of the Don Quixote was published; but from that time till the death of Cervantes, a period of eleven years, he does not, that I am aware, once allude to him. The five passages in the immense mass of Lope’s works, in which alone, so far as I know, he speaks of Cervantes are,—1. In the “Dorothea,” 1598, twice slightly and without praise. 2. In the Preface to his own Tales, 1621, still more slightly, and even, I think, coldly. 3. In the “Laurel de Apolo,” 1630, where there is a somewhat stiff eulogy of him, fourteen years after his death. 4. In his play, “El Premio del Bien Hablar,” printed in Madrid, 1635, where Cervantes is barely mentioned (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XXI. f. 162). And 5. In “Amar sin Saber á Quien,” (Comedias, Madrid, Tom. XXII., 1635), where (Jornada primera) Leonarda, one of the principal ladies, says to her maid, who had just cited a ballad of Audalla and Xarifa to her,—

to which Inez replies, interrupting her mistress,—

All this looks very reserved; but when we add to it, that there were numberless occasions on which Lope could have gracefully noticed the merit to which he could never have been insensible,—especially when he makes so free a use of Cervantes’s “Trato de Argel” in his own “Esclavos de Argel,” absolutely introducing him by name on the stage, and giving him a prominent part in the action, (Comedias, Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, Tom. XXV. pp. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of those kindly or respectful feelings which it was easy and common to show to friends on the Spanish stage, and which Calderon, for instance, so frequently shows to Cervantes, (e. g. Casa con Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.),—we can hardly doubt that Lope willingly overlooked and neglected Cervantes, at least from the time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605, till after its author’s death, in 1616.

On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the “Canto de Calíope” in the “Galatea,” 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all contemporary doubt or rivalship, was at the head of Spanish literature; and, among other proofs of such elevated and generous feelings, prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Lope’s “Dragontea.” But at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully, there is a dignified reserve and caution in some parts of his remarks about Lope that show he was not impelled by any warm, personal regard; a caution which is so obvious, that Avellaneda, in the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it into envy.

It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion, that the relations between the two great Spanish authors of this period were such as might be expected, where one was, to an extraordinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about the whole matter is the generous justice Cervantes never fails to render to Lope’s merits.

[134] He explains in his Preface the meaning he wishes to give the word exemplares, saying, “Heles dado nombre de exemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se puede sacar algun exemplo provechoso.” The word exemplo, from the time of the Archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel, has had the meaning of instruction or instructive story.

[135] The “Curioso Impertinente,” first printed in 1605, in the First Part of Don Quixote, was separately printed in Paris in 1608,—five years before the collected Novelas appeared in Madrid,—by Cæsar Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at the French court, who caused several other Spanish books to be printed in Paris, where the Castilian was in much favor from the intermarriages between the crowns of France and Spain.

[136] This story has been dramatized more than once in Spain, and freely used elsewhere. See note on the “Gitanilla” of Solís, post, Chap. 25.

[137] It is an admirable hit, when Rinconete, first becoming acquainted with one of the rogues, asks him, “Es vuesa merced por ventura ladron?” and the rogue replies, “Sí, para servir á Dios y á la buena gente.” (Novelas, Tom. I. p. 235.) And, again, the scene (pp. 242-247) where Rinconete and Cortadillo are received among the robbers, and that (pp. 254, 255) where two of the shameless women of the gang are very anxious to provide candles to set up as devout offerings before their patron saints, are hardly less happy, and are perfectly true to the characters represented. Indeed, it is plain from this tale, and from several of the Entremeses of Cervantes, that he was familiar with the life of the rogues of his time. Fermin Caballero, in a pleasant tract on the Geographical Knowledge of Cervantes, (Pericia Geográfica de Cervantes, Madrid, 1840, 12mo), notes the aptness with which Cervantes alludes to the different localities in the great cities of Spain, which constituted the rendezvous and lurking-places of its vagabond population. (p. 75.) Among these Seville was preëminent. Guevara, when he describes a community like that of Monipodio, places it, as Cervantes does, in Seville. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco IX.

[138] Coarse as it is, however, the “Tia Fingida” was found, with “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” and several other tales and miscellanies, in a manuscript collection of stories and trifles made 1606-10, for the amusement of the Archbishop of Seville, D. Fernando Niño de Guevara; and long afterwards carefully preserved by the Jesuits of St. Hermenegild. A castigated copy of it was printed by Arrieta in his “Espíritu de Miguel de Cervantes” (Madrid, 1814, 12mo); but the Prussian ambassador in Spain, if I mistake not, soon afterwards obtained possession of an unaltered copy and sent it to Berlin, where it was published by the famous Greek scholar, F. A. Wolf, first in one of the periodicals of Berlin, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet. (See his Vorbericht to the “Tia Fingida, Novela inédita de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” Berlin, 1818, 8vo.) It has since been printed in Spain with the other tales of Cervantes.

Some of the tales of Cervantes were translated into English as early as 1640; but not into French, I think, till 1768, and not well into that language till Viardot published his translation (Paris, 1838, 2 tom., 8vo). Even he, however, did not venture on the obscure puns and jests of the “Licenciado Vidriera,” a fiction of which Moreto made some use in his play of the same name, representing the Licentiate, however, as a feigned madman and not as a real one, and showing little of the humor of the original conception. (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tom. V. 1653.) Under the name of “Léocadie,” there is a poor abridgment of the “Fuerza de la Sangre,” by Florian. The old English translation by Mabbe (London, 1640, folio) is said by Godwin to be “perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose translation in the English language.” (Lives of E. and J. Phillips, London, 1815, 4to, p. 246.) The praise is excessive, but the translation is certainly very well done. It, however, extends only to six of the tales.

[139] The first edition is in small duodecimo, (Madrid, 1614), 80 leaves; better printed, I think, than any other of his works that were published under his own care. Little but the opening is imitated from Cesare Caporali’s “Viaggio in Parnaso,” which is only about one fifth as long as the poem of Cervantes.

[140] Among them he speaks of many ballads that he had written:—

All these are lost, except such as may be found scattered through his longer works, and some which have been suspected to be his in the Romancero General. Clemencin, notes to his ed. of Don Quixote, Tom. III. pp. 156, 214. Coleccion de Poesías de Don Ramon Fernandez, Madrid, 1796, 8vo, Tom. XVI. p. 175. Mayans, Vida de Cervantes, No. 164.

[141] Apollo tells him, (Viage, ed. 1784, p. 55),—