[5] That learned Benedictine wrote an essay entitled Noticias de la Verdadera patria de Cervantes; y conjectura sobre la insula Barataria. (Observations relative to the native place of Cervantes, and conjectures respecting the Island of Barataria). It has never been printed, and is very scarce, but the writer of this memoir has recently had the opportunity of perusing an old MS. copy.

[6] There is some reason to conjecture that this lady was a relative of Isabel de Urbina, the first wife of Lope de Vega. It is pleasing to indulge the belief that such was really the fact, and that the two most eminent writers Spain has produced were allied by family ties, as well as by kindred genius.

[7]

Viaje del Parnaso.—Cap. IV.

[8] In El Licenciado Vidriera, and in La Tía fingida.

[9] “Relacion de la muerte y exequias de la Reyna Doña Isabel de Valois,”—(Published in Madrid in 1569). It is worthy of notice that the first poetic essays of Cervantes were dedicated to the memory of a princess, whose marriage with Phillip II., after having been the affianced bride of his son, forms a romantic episode in history, and is the subject of Schiller’s tragedy of Don Carlos.

[10] “No había mejores soldados, que los que se transplantaban de la tierra de los estudios en los campos de la guerra, y ninguno salió de estudiante para soldado, que no lo fuese por estremo; porque quando se avienen y se juntan las fuerzas con el ingenio, y el ingenio con las fuerzas, hacen un compuesto milagroso en quien Marte se alegre.”

[11] At the period here alluded to, the rank of a private soldier was far from being considered degrading. Young men of birth and fortune, on entering the army, frequently served for some time as private soldiers, before they attained a rank which invested them with any authority or importance.

[12] Cervantes does not here overrate the importance of the Battle of Lepanto, the consequences of which were for a time very fatal to the Turks, and threatened to shake to its foundation the throne of Selim II. When Pope Pius V. heard of the victory, he held up his hands and exclaimed in Ecstasy,—“There was a man sent from God, and his name was John,”—alluding to Don John of Austria.

[13]

Viaje del Parnaso, Cap. I.

[14] Piso sus rúas más de un año.

[15] Prólogo to the Novelas Exemplares.

[16] It has been commonly conjectured that Cervantes narrated his own adventures in the history of the “Captive,” in Don Quixote. With that story he has doubtless interwoven some of the incidents of his own life, for example, the particulars relating to the Battle of Lepanto. As to Captain Viedma’s captivity in Algiers and his elopement with the Moorish lady Zorayda, if those events are really founded on fact, the hero of them was probably one of the Spaniards who suffered captivity in company with Cervantes.

[17] In the year 1581, there was published in Grenada, a Narrative of the captivity of 185 Christians in Algiers, by the Fathers Juan Gil, and Antonio la Bella. This work is very scarce, but a copy exists in the Real Biblioteca at Madrid. The narrative contains a list of captives ransomed; and in this list appears the following entry: “Miguel de Cervantes, aged thirty, a native of Alcalá de Henares.” This fact was unknown, until the latter part of the last century, when the narrative above-mentioned happened to be perused by Don Juan de Yriate, Librarian to the King of Spain, who announced the fact, and therefore to him is assigned the honour of having been the discoverer of the birth place of Cervantes.

[18] In the story of the “Captive,” in Don Quixote, there is one passage in which Cervantes alludes, in a direct manner, to himself. It occurs in the description given by Captain Viedma of the imprisonment of himself and his companions in the Bagnios of Algiers, and is as follows:—“One Spanish soldier only, whose name was something or other (un tal) de Saavedra, Aga Hassan treated with greater consideration than the rest. This soldier did things which will remain in the memory of the Algerines for many years to come; all for the sake of recovering his liberty, and that of his companions. For the least of many things that he did, we all feared that he would be empaled alive—and he feared it himself oftener than once.”

[19] Lope de Vega, in his Cautivos de Argel, alludes to the plays acted by the captives in Algiers, and the old Spanish romances which were sung in those plays.

[20] This sister, who was older than Miguel, was at this time married to Sanctes Ambrosio or Ambrosi, a native of Florence.

[21] It will be recollected that he was originally the slave of Dali-Mami; but was forfeited to Aga Hassan, after his capture in the cave.

[22] The discrepancy observable in the statements of the mother and son, relative to the age, might be merely the effect of lapse of memory; or possibly the mother may have reckoned as completed the year which was only commenced, whilst the son may have counted his age by the number of years he had actually completed. This latter supposition would at least account for the difference of one year in the reckoning.

[23] Uno de los mayores contentos, que en esta vida se puede tener, cual es, llegar despues de luengo cautiverio, salvo y sano à su patria: porque no hay en la tierra contento que se iguale à alcanzar la libertad perdida.

[24] Don Antonio, a natural son of the Infante Don Luis, was one of the claimants of the Crown of Portugal, after the death of Cardinal Henry.

[25]

[26] Tomando ya la espada, ya la pluma. Lope de Vega’s Laurel de Apolo.

[27] Bouterwek’s “History of Spanish Literature.”

[28] A shepherd of the banks of the Tagus.

[29] A shepherdess, born on the margin of that river.

[30] Pellicer is of opinion that Cervantes intended the Galatea as an homage to the lady of his affections; a sort of literary courtship, not uncommon among the writers of that age. “Catalina, the name of the lady in question,” he observes, “might by a slight change, and the transposition of the letters, be converted into Galatea. In like manner,” he adds, “the fictitious names given to the shepherds in the romance, bear some resemblance to the real ones of the persons to whom they are supposed to apply; viz.—Meliso for Mendoza (the celebrated Don Diego de Mendoza), Lauso for Luis (Luis Barabona de Soto being the individual referred to).”

[31] Literally Comedies of the cloak and the sword. Their subjects were taken from the sphere of Spanish fashionable life, and they were pictures of the manners of the age. They were performed in the prevailing costume of the time, to which circumstance they owe their specific classification as plays of the cloak and sword.

[32] These observations occur in the Adjunta or Appendix to the Viaje del Parnaso, in an imaginary conversation between Cervantes and one Don Pancrasio de Roncesvalles, who describes himself to be a poet “by the grace of Apollo.” Don Pancrasio enquires whether Cervantes has written any plays; to which question our author returns the following answer—“Si, muchas, i a no ser mias me parecieran dignas de alabanza, como lo fueron los tratos de Argel, la Numancia, la gran Turquesea, la Batalla naval, la Gerusalem, la Amaranta, el Bosque amoroso, la Unica i la Vizarra Arsinda, i otras muchas de que no me acuerdo. Mas la que yo más estimo i de la que más me precio, fué, i es de una llamado la Confusa, la qual, con paz sea dicho, de quantas comedias de capa i espada hasta hoi se han representado, bien puede tener lugar señalado por buena entre las mejoras.”

[33] Bouterwek’s History of Spanish Literature.

[34] Canto de Caliope.

[35] Se acogía al remedio à que otros muchos perdidos en aquella ciudad (Sevilla) se acogen, que es el al pasarse a las Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España.

[36] Some accounts state that whilst in La Mancha, Cervantes got involved in a street quarrel in the town of Argamasilla, and that in consequence of that affair he once more became the inmate of a jail. This, coupled with a hint, though a very vague one, thrown out by Cervantes himself, in the preface to the second part of Don Quixote has given rise to the conjecture that the first part was written in a prison.

[37] According to some accounts it was not published till 1605. But 1604 is the date recorded by Don Antonio de Pellicer.

[38] “Salió a la luz del mundo con general aplauso de las gentes.”—Don Quixote, part II.

[39] Everyone who has read Don Quixote in Spanish must be sensible of the peculiar charm of the diction of Cervantes. On this subject, the critic above quoted observes, “It is the style of the old romances of chivalry improved and applied in a totally original way; and only in the dialogue passages is each person found to speak as he might be expected really to do, in his own character.” The speech of the shepherdess Marcella is, by the same high authority, pronounced to be, “in the true prose style of Cicero, and altogether a composition which has seldom been equalled in any modern language.”

[40] Mayans y Siscar and Pellicer quote this anecdote on the authority of Baltasar Porreño, who wrote a work entitled Sayings and Doings (Dichos y Hechos) of Philip III. As the incident, recorded in the anecdote, is stated to have taken place in Madrid, it must have occurred after the year 1606, when the Court removed from Valladolid to the capital.

[41] Cervantes was at this time fifty-seven. The deposition vaguely says, más de cincuenta años (more than fifty years).

[42] The fac-simile engraved with the portrait which illustrates this volume, is from the signature affixed to this document.

[43] Yo soy el primero que he novelado en la lengua castellana; las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas todas son traducidas de lenguas extrangeras; y estas son mias propias, no imitadas ni hurtadas: mi ingenio las engendró, y las parió mi pluma, y van creciendo en los brazos de la estampa.—Viaje del Parnaso.

[44] Eight Plays and Interludes.

[45] Biographical and Critical Miscellanies, by W. H. Prescott, Esq.

[46] With one foot already in the stirrup, and in the anguish of death, noble Señor I write to you.

[47] It must, however, be borne in mind that the Gregorian Calendar had not at that period been introduced in England.