[142] The “Confusa” was evidently his favorite among these earlier pieces. In the Viage he says of it,—

and in the “Adjunta” he says, “De la que mas me precio fué y es, de una llamada La Confusa, la qual, con paz sea dicho, de quantas comedias de capa y espada hasta hoy se han representado, bien puede tener lugar señalado por buena entre las mejores.” This boast, it should be remembered, was made in 1614, when Cervantes had printed the First Part of the Don Quixote, and when Lope and his school were at the height of their glory. It is probable, however, that we, at the present day should be more curious to see the “Batalla Naval,” which, from its name, contained, I think, his personal experiences at the fight of Lepanto, as the “Trato de Argel” contained those at Algiers.

[143] After alluding to his earlier efforts on the stage, Cervantes goes on in the Prólogo to his new plays: “Tuve otras cosas en que ocuparme; dexé la pluma y las comedias, y entró luego el monstruo de naturaleza, el gran Lope de Vega, y alzóse con la monarquía cómica; avasalló y puso debaxo de su jurisdiccion á todos los Farsantes, llenó el mundo de Comedias propias, felices y bien razonadas; y tantas que passan de diez mil pliegos los que tiene escritos, y todas (que es una de las mayores cosas que puede decirse) las ha visto representar, ú oido decir (por lo menos) que se han representado; y si algunos, (que hay muchos) han querido entrar á la parte y gloria de sus trabajos, todos juntos no llegan en lo que han escrito á la mitad de lo que él solo,” etc.

[144] This play, which Cervantes calls “Los Baños de Argel,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. I. p. 125), opens with the landing of a Moorish corsair on the coast of Valencia; gives an account of the sufferings of the captives taken in this descent, as well as the sufferings of others afterward; and ends with a Moorish wedding and a Christian martyrdom. He says of it himself,—

The verbal resemblances between the play and the story of the Captive are chiefly in the first jornada of the play, as compared with Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40.

[145] The part we should least willingly suppose to be true—that of a droll, roistering soldier, who gets a shameful subsistence by begging for souls in Purgatory, and spending on his own gluttony the alms he receives—is particularly vouched for by Cervantes. “Esto de pedir para las ánimas es cuento verdadero, que yo lo ví.” How so indecent an exhibition on the stage could be permitted is the wonder. Once, for instance, when in great personal danger, he prays thus, as if he had read the “Clouds” of Aristophanes:—

At the end he says his principal intent has been—

The Spanish doctrine of the play—all for love and glory—is well expressed in the two following lines from the second jornada:—

[146]

[147] The Church prayers on the stage, in this play and especially in Jornada II., and the sort of legal contract used to transfer the merits of the healthy saint to the dying sinner, are among the revolting exhibitions of the Spanish drama which at first seem inexplicable, but which anyone who reads far in it easily understands. Cervantes, in many parts of this strange play, avers the truth of what he thus represents, saying, “Todo esto fué verdad”; “Todo esto fué así”; “Así se cuenta en su historia,” etc.

[148] He uses the words as convertible. Tom. I. pp. 21, 22; Tom. II. p. 25, etc.

[149] In the “Baños de Argel,” where he is sometimes indecorous enough, as when, (Tom. I. p. 151), giving the Moors the reason why his old general, Don John of Austria, does not come to subdue Algiers, he says:—

[150] See the early part of the “Prólogo del que hace imprimir.” I am not certain that Blas de Nasarre was perfectly fair in all this; for he printed, in 1732, an edition of Avellaneda’s continuation of Don Quixote, in the Preface to which he says that he thinks the character of Avellaneda’s Sancho is more natural than that of Cervantes’s Sancho; that the Second Part of Cervantes’s Don Quixote is taken from Avellaneda’s; and that, in its essential merits, the work of Avellaneda is equal to that of Cervantes. “No se puede disputar,” he says, “la gloria de la invencion de Cervantes, aunque no es inferior la de la imitacion de Avellaneda”; to which he adds afterwards, “Es cierto que es necesario mayor esfuerzo de ingenio para añadir á las primeras invenciones, que para hacerlas.” (See Avellaneda, Don Quixote, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 34.) Now, the Juicio, or Preface, from which these opinions are taken, and which is really the work of Nasarre, is announced by him, not as his own, but as the work of an anonymous friend, precisely as if he were not willing to avow such opinions under his own name. (Pellicer’s Vida de Cervantes, ed. Don Quixote, I. p. clxvi.) In this way a disingenuous look is given to what would otherwise have been only an absurdity; and what, taken in connection with this reprint of Cervantes’s poor dramas and the Preface to them, seems like a willingness to let down the reputation of a genius that Nasarre could not comprehend.

It is intimated, in an anonymous pamphlet, called “Exámen Crítico del Tomo Primero del Antiquixote,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo), that Nasarre had sympathies with Avellaneda as an Aragonese; and the pamphlet in question being understood to be the work of J. A. Pellicer, the editor of Don Quixote, this intimation deserves notice. It may be added, that Nasarre belonged to the French school of the eighteenth century in Spain;—a school that saw little merit in the older Spanish drama.

[151] The extravagant opinion, that these plays of Cervantes were written to discredit the plays then in fashion on the stage, just as the Don Quixote was written to discredit the fashionable books of chivalry, did not pass uncontradicted at the time. The year after it was published, a pamphlet appeared, entitled “La Sinrazon impugnada y Beata de Lavapies, Coloquio Crítico apuntado al disparatado Prólogo que sirve de delantal (segun nos dice su Autor) á las Comedias de Miguel de Cervantes, compuesto por Don Joseph Carillo” (Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 25). It is a spirited little tract, chiefly devoted to a defence of Lope and of Calderon, though the point about Cervantes is not forgotten (pp. 13-15.) But in the same year a more formidable work appeared on the same side, called “Discurso Crítico sobre el Orígen, Calidad, y Estado presente de las Comedias de España, contra el Dictámen que las supone corrompidas, etc., por un Ingenio de esta Corte” (Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 285). The author was a lawyer in Madrid, D. Thomas Zavaleta, and he writes with as little philosophy and judgment as the other Spanish critics of his time; but he treats Blas de Nasarre with small ceremony.

[152] “Ensayo Histórico-apologético de la Literatura Española,” Madrid, 1789, 8vo, Tom. VI. pp. 170, etc. “Suprimiendo las que verdaderamente eran de él,” are the bold words of the critic.

[153] There can be little doubt, I think, that this was the case, if we compare the opinions expressed by the canon on the subject of the drama in the 48th chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote, 1605, and the opinions in the opening of the third jornada of the “Baños de Argel,” 1615.

[154] It has been generally conceded that the Count de Lemos and the Archbishop of Toledo favored and assisted Cervantes; the most agreeable proof of which is to be found in the Dedication of the Second Part of Don Quixote. I am afraid, however, that their favor was a little too much in the nature of alms. Indeed, it is called limosna the only time it is known to be mentioned by any contemporary of Cervantes. See Salas Barbadillo, in the Dedication of the “Estafeta del Dios Momo,” Madrid, 1627, 12mo.

[155]

[156] The only case I recollect at all parallel is that of the graceful Dedication of Addison’s works to his friend and successor in office, Secretary Craggs, which is dated June 4, 1719; thirteen days before his death. But the Dedication of Cervantes is much more genial and spirited.

[157] Bowle says, (Anotaciones á Don Quixote, Salisbury, 1781, 4to, Prólogo ix., note), that Cervantes died on the same day with Shakspeare; but this is a mistake, the calendar not having then been altered in England, and there being, therefore, a difference between that and the Spanish calendar of ten days.

[158] Nor was any monument raised to Cervantes, in Spain, until 1835, when a bronze statue of him larger than life, cast at Rome by Solá of Barcelona, was placed in the Plaza del Estamento at Madrid. (See El Artista, a journal published at Madrid, 1834, 1835, Tom. I. p. 205; Tom. II. p. 12; and Semanario Pintoresco, 1836, p. 249.) Before this I believe there was nothing that approached nearer to a monument in honor of Cervantes throughout the world than an ordinary medal of him, struck in 1818, at Paris, as one of a large series which would have been absurdly incomplete without it; and a small medallion or bust, that was placed in 1834, at the expense of an individual, over the door of the house in the Calle de los Francos, where he died. But, in saying this, I ought to add,—whether in praise or censure,—that I believe the statue of Cervantes was the first erected in Spain to honor a man of letters or science.

[159] At the time of his death Cervantes seems to have had the following works more or less prepared for the press, namely: “Las Semanas del Jardin,” announced as early as 1613;—the Second Part of “Galatea,” announced in 1615;—the “Bernardo,” mentioned in the Dedication of “Persiles,” just before he died;—and several plays, referred to in the Preface to those he published, and in the Appendix to the “Viage al Parnaso.” All these works are now probably lost.

[160] The first edition of Persiles y Sigismunda was printed with the following title: “Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Historia Setentrional, por M. de Cervantes Saavedra, dirigida,” etc., Madrid, 1617, 8vo, por Juan de la Cuesta; and reprints of it appeared in Valencia, Pamplona, Barcelona, and Brussels, the same year. I have a copy of the first edition; but the most agreeable one is that of Madrid, 1802, 8vo, 2 tom. There is an English translation by M. L., published 1619, which I have never seen; but from which I doubt not Fletcher borrowed the materials for that part of the Persiles which he has used, or rather abused, in his “Custom of the Country,” acted as early as 1628, but not printed till 1647; the very names of the personages being sometimes the same. See Persiles, Book I. c. 12 and 13; and compare Book II. c. 4 with the English play, Act IV. scene 3, and Book III. c. 6, etc., with Act II. scene 4, etc. Sometimes we have almost literal translations, like the following:—

“Sois Castellano?” me preguntó en su lengua Portuguesa. “No, Señora,” le respondí yo, “sino forastero, y bien lejos de esta tierra.” “Pues aunque fuerades mil veces Castellano,” replicó ella, “os librara yo, si pudiera, y os libraré si puedo; subid por cima deste lecho, y éntraos debaxo de este tapiz, y éntraos en un hueco que aquí hallareis, y no os movais, que si la justicia viniere, me tendrá respeto, y creerá lo que yo quisiere decirles.” Persiles, Lib. III. cap. 6.

In Fletcher we have it as follows:—

Other parallel passages might be cited; but it should not be forgotten, that there is one striking difference between the two; for that, whereas the Persiles is a book of great purity of thought and feeling, “The Custom of the Country” is one of the most indecent plays in the language; so indecent, indeed, that Dryden rather boldly says it is worse in this particular than all his own plays put together. Dryden’s Works, Scott’s ed., London, 1808, 8vo, Vol. XI. p. 239.

[161] In the Aprobacion, dated Sept. 9, 1616, ed. 1802, Tom. I. p. vii.

[162] This may be fairly suspected from the beginning of the 48th chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote.

[163] Once he intimates that it is a translation, but does not say from what language. (See opening of Book II.) An acute and elegant critic of our own time says, “Des naufrages, des déserts, des descentes par mer, et des ravissements, c’est donc toujours plus ou moins l’ancien roman d’Héliodore.” (Sainte Beuve, Critiques, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. IV. p 173.) These words describe more than half of the Persiles and Sigismunda. Two imitations of the Persiles, or, at any rate, two imitations of the Greek romance which was the chief model of the Persiles, soon appeared in Spain. The first is the “Historia de Hipólito y Aminta” of Francisco de Quintana, (Madrid, 1627, 4to), divided into eight books, with a good deal of poetry intermixed. The other is “Eustorgio y Clorilene, Historia Moscovica,” by Enrique Suarez de Mendoza y Figueroa, (1629), in thirteen books, with a hint of a continuation; but my copy was printed Çaragoça, 1665, 4to. Both are written in bad taste, and have no value as fictions. The latter seems to have been plainly suggested by the Persiles.

[164] From the beginning of Book III., we find that the action of Persiles and Sigismunda is laid in the time of Philip II. or Philip III., when there was a Spanish viceroy in Lisbon, and the travels of the hero and heroine in the South of Spain and Italy seem to be, in fact, Cervantes’s own recollections of the journey he made through the same countries in his youth; while Chapters 10 and 11 of Book III. show bitter traces of his Algerine captivity. His familiarity with Portugal, as seen in this work, should also be noticed. Frequently, indeed, as in almost every thing else he wrote, we meet intimations and passages from his own life.

[165] My own experience in Spain fully corroborates the suggestion of Inglis, in his very pleasant book, (Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote, London, 1837, 8vo, p. 26), that “no Spaniard is entirely ignorant of Cervantes.” At least, none I ever questioned on the subject—and their number was great in the lower conditions of society—seemed to be entirely ignorant what sort of personages were Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

[166] He felt this himself as a dreary interval in his life, for he says in his Prólogo: “Al cabo de tantos años como ha, que duermo en el silencio del olvido,” etc. In fact, from 1584 till 1605 he had printed nothing except a few short poems of little value, and seems to have been wholly occupied in painful struggles to secure a subsistence.

[167] This idea is found partly developed by Bouterwek, (Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, Göttingen, 1803, 8vo, Tom. III. pp. 335-337), and fully set forth and defended by Sismondi, with his accustomed eloquence. Littérature du Midi de l’Europe, Paris, 1813, 8vo, Tom. III. pp. 339-343.

[168] Many other interpretations have been given to the Don Quixote. One of the most absurd is that of Daniel De Foe, who declares it to be “an emblematic history of, and a just satire upon, the Duke de Medina Sidonia, a person very remarkable at that time in Spain.” (Wilson’s Life of De Foe, London, 1830, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 437, note.) The “Buscapié”—if there ever was such a publication—pretended that it set forth “some of the undertakings and gallantries of the Emperor Charles V.” See Appendix (D).

[169] In the Prólogo to the First Part, he says, “No mira á mas que á deshacer la autoridad y cabida, que en el mundo y en el vulgo tienen los libros de Caballerías”; and he ends the Second Part, ten years afterwards, with these remarkable words: “No ha sido otro mi deseo, que poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y disparatadas historias de los libros de Caballerías, que por las de mi verdadero Don Quixote van ya tropezando, y han de caer del todo sin duda alguna. Vale.” It seems really hard that a great man’s word of honor should thus be called in question by the spirit of an over-refined criticism, two centuries after his death. D. Vicente Salvá has partly, but not wholly, avoided this difficulty in an ingenious and pleasant essay on the question, “Whether the Don Quixote has yet been judged according to its merits”;—in which he maintains, that Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalry, but only to purge away their absurdities and improbabilities; and that, after all, he has given us only another romance of the same class which has ruined the fortunes of all its predecessors by being itself immensely in advance of them all. Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, Paris, 1842, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 723-740.

[170] Símbolo de la Fé, Parte II. cap. 17, near the end. Conversion de la Magdalena, 1592, Prólogo al Letor. Both are strong in their censures.

[171] “Vemos, que ya no se ocupan los hombres sino en leer libros que es affrenta nombrarlos, como son Amadis de Gaula, Tristan de Leonis, Primaleon,” etc. Argument to the Aviso de Privados, Obras de Ant. de Guevara, Valladolid, 1545, folio, f. clviii. b.

[172] The passage is too long to be conveniently cited, but it is very severe. See Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. pp. 157, 158.

[173] See ante, Vol. I. pp. 249-254. But, besides what is said there, Francisco de Portugal, who died in 1632, tells us in his “Arte de Galantería,” (Lisboa, 1670, 4to, p. 96), that Simon de Silveira (I suppose the Portuguese poet who lived about 1500; Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 722) once swore upon the Evangelists, that he believed the whole of the Amadis to be true history.

[174] Clemencin, in the Preface to his edition of Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. xi.-xvi., cites many other proofs of the passion for books of chivalry at that period in Spain; adding a reference to the “Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias,” Lib. I. Tít. 24, Ley 4, for the law of 1553, and printing at length the very curious petition of the Cortes of 1555, which I have not seen anywhere else, and which would probably have produced the law it demanded, if the abdication of the Emperor, the same year, had not prevented all action upon the matter.

[175] Allusions to the fanaticism of the lower classes on the subject of books of chivalry are happily introduced into Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 32, and in other places. It extended, too, to those better bred and informed. Francisco de Portugal, in the “Arte de Galantería,” cited in a preceding note, and written before 1632, tells the following anecdote: “A knight came home one day from the chase and found his wife and daughters and their women crying. Surprised and grieved, he asked them if any child or relation were dead. ‘No,’ they answered, suffocated with tears. ‘Why, then, do you weep so?’ he rejoined, still more amazed. ‘Sir,’ they replied, ‘Amadis is dead.’ They had read so far.” p. 96.

[176] Cervantes himself, as his Don Quixote amply proves, must, at some period of his life, have been a devoted reader of the romances of chivalry. How minute and exact his knowledge of them was may be seen, among other passages, from one at the end of the twentieth chapter of Part First, where, speaking of Gasabal, the esquire of Galaor, he observes that his name is mentioned but once in the history of Amadis of Gaul;—a fact which the indefatigable Mr. Bowle took the pains to verify, when reading that huge romance. See his “Letter to Dr. Percy, on a New and Classical Edition of Don Quixote.” London, 1777, 4to, p. 25.

[177] Clemencin, in his Preface, notes “D. Policisne de Boecia,” printed in 1602, as the last book of chivalry that was written in Spain, and adds, that, after 1605, “no se publicó de nuevo libro alguno de caballerías, y dejaron de reimprimirse los anteriores.” (p. xxi.) To this remark of Clemencin, however, there are exceptions. For instance, the “Genealogía de la Toledana Discreta, Primera Parte,” por Eugenio Martinez, a tale of chivalry in octave stanzas, was reprinted in 1608; and “El Caballero del Febo,” and “Claridiano,” his son, are extant in editions of 1617. The period of the passion for such books in Spain can be readily seen in the Bibliographical Catalogue, and notices of them by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, London, 1827, Tom. IV. pp. 29-74. It was eminently the sixteenth century.

[178] See Appendix (E).

[179] Cervantes reproaches Avellaneda with being an Aragonese, because he sometimes omits the article where a Castilian would insert it. (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 59.) The rest of the discussion about him is found in Pellicer, Vida, pp. clvi.-clxv.; in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 144-151; in Clemencin’s Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 59, notes; and in Adolfo de Castro’s Conde Duque de Olivares, Cadiz, 1846, 8vo, pp. 11, etc. This Avellaneda, whoever he was, called his book “Segundo Tomo del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha,” etc., (Tarragona, 1614, 12mo), and printed it so that it matches very well with the Valencian edition, 1605, of the First Part of the genuine Don Quixote;—both of which I have. There are editions of it, Madrid, 1732 and 1805; and a translation by Le Sage, 1704, in which,—after his manner of translating,—he alters and enlarges the original work with little ceremony or good faith. The edition of 1805, in 2 vols. 12mo, is expurgated.

[180] Avellaneda, c. 26.

[181] “Tiene mas lengua que manos,” says Avellaneda, coarsely.

[182] Chapter 8;—just as he makes Don Quixote fancy a poor peasant in his melon-garden to be Orlando Furioso (c. 6);—a little village to be Rome (c. 7);—and its decent priest alternately Lirgando and the Archbishop Turpin. Perhaps the most obvious comparison, and the fairest that can be made, between the two Don Quixotes is in the story of the goats, told by Sancho, in the twentieth chapter of the First Part in Cervantes, and the story of the geese, by Sancho, in Avellaneda’s twenty-first chapter, because the latter professes to improve upon the former. The failure to do so, however, is obvious enough.

[183] The whole story of Barbara, beginning with Chapter 22, and going nearly through the remainder of the work, is miserably coarse and dull.

[184] In 1824, a curious attempt was made, probably by some ingenious German, to add two chapters more to Don Quixote, as if they had been suppressed when the Second Part was published. But they were not thought worth printing by the Spanish Academy. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI. p. 296.

[185] Parte II. c. 59.

[186] See Appendix (E).

[187] At the end of Cap. 36.

[188] When Don Quixote understands that Avellaneda has given an account of his being at Saragossa, he exclaims, “Por el mismo caso, no pondré los pies en Zaragoza, y así sacaré á la plaza del mundo la mentira dese historiador moderno.” Parte II. c. 59.

[189] Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 4. The style of both parts of the genuine Don Quixote is, as might be anticipated, free, fresh, and careless;—genial, like the author’s character, full of idiomatic beauties, and by no means without blemishes. Garcés, in his “Fuerza y Vigor de la Lengua Castellana,” Tom. II., Prólogo, as well as throughout that excellent work, has given it, perhaps, more uniform praise than it deserves;—while Clemencin, in his notes, is very rigorous and unpardoning to its occasional defects.

[190] The concluding passages of the work, for instance, are in this tone; and this is the tone of his criticism on Avellaneda. I do not count in the same sense the passage, in the Second Part, c. 16, in which Don Quixote is made to boast that thirty thousand copies had been printed of the First Part, and that thirty thousand thousands would follow; for this is intended as the mere rhodomontade of the hero’s folly; but I confess I think Cervantes is somewhat in earnest when he makes Sancho say to his master, “I will lay a wager, that, before long, there will not be a two-penny eating-house, a hedge tavern, or a poor inn, or barber’s shop, where the history of what we have done shall not be painted and stuck up.” Parte II. c. 71.

[191] Los Rios, in his “Análisis,” prefixed to the edition of the Academy, 1780, undertakes to defend Cervantes on the authority of the ancients, as if the Don Quixote were a poem, written in imitation of the Odyssey. Pellicer, in the fourth section of his “Discurso Preliminar” to his edition of Don Quixote, 1797, follows much the same course; besides which, at the end of the fifth volume, he gives what he gravely calls a “Geographico-historical Description of the Travels of Don Quixote,” accompanied with a map; as if some of Cervantes’s geography were not impossible, and as if half his localities were to be found anywhere but in the imaginations of his readers. On the ground of such irregularities in his geography, and on other grounds equally absurd, Nicholas Perez, a Valencian, attacked Cervantes in the “Anti-Quixote,” the first volume of which was published in 1805, but was followed by none of the five that were intended to complete it; and received an answer, quite satisfactory, but more severe than was needful, in a pamphlet, published at Madrid in 1806, 12mo, by J. A. Pellicer, without his name, entitled “Exámen Crítico del Tomo Primero de el Anti-Quixote.” And finally, Don Antonio Eximeno, in his “Apología de Miguel de Cervantes,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo), excuses or defends every thing in the Don Quixote, giving us a new chronological plan, (p. 60), with exact astronomical reckonings, (p. 129), and maintaining, among other wise positions, that Cervantes intentionally represented Don Quixote to have lived both in an earlier age and in his own time, in order that curious readers might be confounded, and, after all, only some imaginary period be assigned to his hero’s achievements (pp. 19, etc.). All this, I think, is eminently absurd; but it is the consequence of the blind admiration with which Cervantes was idolized in Spain during the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present;—itself partly a result of the coldness with which he had been overlooked by the learned of his countrymen for nearly a century previous to that period. Don Quixote, Madrid, 1819, 8vo, Prólogo de la Academia, p. [3].

[192] Conde, the learned author of the “Dominacion de los Árabes en España,” undertakes, in a pamphlet published in conjunction with J. A. Pellicer, to show that the name of this pretended Arabic author, Cid Hamete Benengeli, is a combination of Arabic words, meaning noble, satirical, and unhappy. (Carta en Castellano, etc., Madrid, 1800, 12mo, pp. 16-27.) It may be so; but it is not in character for Cervantes to seek such refinements, or to make such a display of his little learning, which does not seem to have extended beyond a knowledge of the vulgar Arabic spoken in Barbary, the Latin, the Italian, and the Portuguese. Like Shakspeare, however, Cervantes had read and remembered nearly all that had been printed in his own language, and constantly makes the most felicitous allusions to the large stores of his knowledge of this sort.

[193] Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 54.

[194] The criticism on Avellaneda begins, as we have said, Parte II. c. 59.

[195] Parte I. c. 46.

[196] “Llegaba ya la noche,” he says in c. 42 of Parte I., when all that had occurred from the middle of c. 37 had happened after they were set down to supper.

[197] Cervantes calls Sancho’s wife by three or four different names (Parte I. c. 7 and 52, and Parte II. c. 5 and 59); and Avellaneda having, in some degree, imitated him, Cervantes makes himself very merry at the confusion; not noticing that the mistake was really his own.

[198] The facts referred to are these. Gines de Passamonte, in the 23d chapter of Part First, (ed. 1605, f. 108), steals Sancho’s ass. But hardly three leaves farther on, in the same edition, we find Sancho riding again, as usual, on the poor beast, which reappears yet six other times out of all reason. In the edition of 1608, Cervantes corrected two of these careless mistakes on leaves 109 and 112; but left the five others just as they stood before; and in Chapters 3 and 27 of the Second Part, (ed. 1615), jests about the whole matter, but shows no disposition to attempt further corrections.

[199] Having expressed so strong an opinion of Cervantes’s merits, I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of citing the words of the modest and wise Sir William Temple, who, when speaking of works of satire, and rebuking Rabelais for his indecency and profaneness, says: “The matchless writer of Don Quixote is much more to be admired for having made up so excellent a composition of satire or ridicule without those ingredients; and seems to be the best and highest strain that ever has or will be reached by that vein.” Works, London, 1814, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 436. See Appendix (E).

[200] There is a life of Lope de Vega, which was first published in a single volume, by the third Lord Holland, in 1806, and again, with the addition of a life of Guillen de Castro, in two volumes, 8vo, London, 1817. It is a pleasant book, and contains a good notice of both its subjects, and judicious criticisms on their works; but it is quite as interesting for the glimpses it gives of the fine accomplishments and generous spirit of its author, who spent some time in Spain when he was about thirty years old, and never afterwards ceased to take an interest in its affairs and literature. He was much connected with Jovellanos, Blanco White, and other distinguished Spaniards; not a few of whom, in the days of disaster that fell on their country during the French invasion, and the subsequent misgovernment of Ferdinand VII., enjoyed the princely hospitality of Holland House, where the benignant and frank kindliness of its noble master shed a charm and a grace over what was most intellectual and elevated in European society that could be given by nothing else.

Lope’s own account of his origin and birth, in a poetical epistle to a Peruvian lady, who addressed him in verse, under the name of “Amarylis,” is curious. The correspondence is found in the first volume of his Obras Sueltas, (Madrid, 1776-1779, 21 tom. 4to), Epístolas XV. and XVI.; and was first printed by Lope, if I mistake not, in 1624. It is now referred to for the following important lines:—

And then he goes on with a pleasant account of his making verses as soon as he could speak; of his early passion for Raymond Lulli, the metaphysical doctor then so much in fashion; of his subsequent studies, his family, etc. Lope loved to refer to his origin in the mountains. He speaks of it in his “Laurel de Apolo,” (Silva VIII.), and in two or three of his plays he makes his heroes boast that they came from that part of Spain to which he traced his own birth. Thus, in “La Venganza Venturosa,” (Comedias, 4to, Madrid, Tom. X., 1620, f. 33. b), Feliciano, a high-spirited old knight, says,—

And again, in the opening of the “Premio del Bien Hablar,” (4to, Madrid, Tom. XXI, 1635, f. 159), where he seems to describe his own case and character:—

The valley of Carriedo is said to be very beautiful, and Miñano, in his “Diccionario Geográfico,” (Madrid, 8vo, Tom. II., 1826, p. 40), describes La Vega as occupying a fine position on the banks of the Sandoñana.

[201] “Before he knew how to write, he loved verses so much,” says Montalvan, his friend and executor, “that he shared his breakfast with the older boys, in order to get them to take down for him what he dictated.” Fama Póstuma, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 28.

[202] In the “Laurel de Apolo” he says he found rough copies of verses among his father’s papers, that seemed to him better than his own.

[203] See Dedication of the “Hermosa Ester” in Comedias, Madrid, 4to, Tom. XV., 1621.