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Title: The Life of Cervantes
Author: Calvert, Albert Frederick
Language: English
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THE LIFE OF CERVANTES.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
“IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN.”
“THE ALHAMBRA.”
“THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA.”
“THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.”
“MY FOURTH TOUR IN AUSTRALIA.”
“BACON AND SHAKESPEARE.”
“THE POLITICAL VALUE OF OUR COLONIES.”
[Illustration: signature: _Miguel Cerbantes Saavedra_]
THE LIFE OF
CERVANTES.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT.
WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS AND
REPRODUCTIONS FROM EARLY
EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE.
THE TERCENTENARY EDITION.
JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD,
LONDON AND NEW YORK, MDCCCCV.
_E. Goodman and Son, Phœnix Printing Works, Taunton._
PREFACE.
Three hundred years ago this month the First Part of _El Ingenioso
Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha_ was published in Madrid, and the world
was made the richer by a book which will last until “the silver chord be
loosed or the golden bowl be broken”; until the earth relapses into its
original silence and language is no more spoken or read. It is somewhat
late to weave new laurels for the brow of Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra--the last word on _Don Quixote_ has been spoken. The great
contemporary of Shakespeare has long since come into his own among the
world’s heroes; no country has forborne to do him honour; no literature
is complete that does not contain a translation of his book.
But while the career of Cervantes forms as eventful and varied a history
as that of the Knight-errant of La Mancha himself--_Don Quixote_ might
even be read as the sequel of its author’s life--the number of
biographies of the Spanish writer in the English tongue is curiously
limited. It is ten years since Mr. Henry Edward Watts--whose recent
demise will be regretted by all Cervantists in this country--issued his
new and revised edition of the _Life and Works of Cervantes_, and the
scholarly and deeply-interesting _Life_ by Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly,
Cervantes’ most brilliant and discriminating biographer, is already a
rare and almost unobtainable work.
Several hundred works of biography, commentary, and criticism of
Cervantes’ life and writings have been published in various languages,
yet I am not without hope that this modest contribution may find an
unoccupied niche in the broad gallery of Cervantist literature. I have
no new data to offer, but I have put forward my conclusions, where they
traverse the judgment of other authors, with all reserve; and on points
of fact I have accepted the verdict of the majority of my authorities.
Wherever I have quoted, and I have had much resource to Mr.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly and others, I have acknowledged my indebtedness; and I
have endeavoured to keep always in view my object to present a concise,
accurate, and readable life of Cervantes.
I confess that I have less diffidence in submitting for the approval of
my readers the illustrations which grace this little book. The
reproductions of the title pages of various of Cervantes’ books, and the
original illustrations to _Don Quixote_, will recommend themselves to
lovers of letters and of Cervantes; and, in default of an authentic
likeness of our author, I offer a choice of all the best-known attempts
to repair the omission.
A. F. C.
“ROYSTON,” HAMPSTEAD, N.W.,
JANUARY, 1905.
CONTENTS.
PAGES
THE LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES 1 TO 87
THE PROVERBS OF CERVANTES 89 TO 97
CHRONOLOGICAL REPERTOIRE OF DOCUMENTS RELATING
TO THE LIFE OF CERVANTES 99 TO 110
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DON QUIXOTE--
SPANISH EDITIONS 111 TO 125
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 125 TO 133
LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF CERVANTES, ARRANGED
CHRONOLOGICALLY 135 TO 138
SYNOPSIS OF THE EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE 139
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FACING PAGE
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, PHOTOGRAVURE _Frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF THE FIGURE IN PACHECO’S PICTURE AT
SEVILLE, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT CERVANTES 4
CERVANTES 8, 12
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, MODELLED BY ROSENDO NOBAS,
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF DON LEOPOLD RIUS 16
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 20
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, PHOTOGRAVURE 24
STATUE OF CERVANTES, AT MADRID 28
FACSIMILE. LETTER FROM CERVANTES TO THE ARCHBISHOP
OF TOLEDO 32
TITLE PAGE. GALATEA. FIRST PART. MADRID, 1585 34
TITLE PAGE. GALATEA, FIRST PART. 1590 36
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. MADRID, 1605 38
TITLE PAGE. EXEMPLARY NOVELS. MADRID, 1613 40
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. PARIS, 1614 42
TITLE PAGE. VIAGE DEL PARNASO. MADRID, 1614 44
TITLE PAGE. EIGHT COMEDIES, ETC. MADRID, 1615 46
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, SECOND PART. MADRID, 1615 48
TITLE PAGE. PERSILES Y SIGISMUNDA. MADRID, 1617 50
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, SECOND PART. PARIS, 1618 52
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE. BRUSSELS, 1662 54
TITLE PAGE. DON QUIXOTE, FIRST PART. LONDON, 1612 56
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA (OLDEST PLATE). PARIS,
1622. _First Edition_ 60
FIGHT BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND THE BISCAYAN. PARIS,
1713. _Fifth Edition_ 62
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING ON THE GOLDEN AGE. LONDON,
1738. _Seventh Edition_ 66
DON QUIXOTE TILTING AGAINST THE ARMY OF ALIFANFARON.
EL HAYA, 1746. _Ninth Edition_ 70
SANCHO PANZA TOSSED IN THE BLANKET. BOSTON, 1837.
_Thirty-Eighth Edition_ 72
ADVENTURE WITH THE LIONS. PARIS, 1844. _Fortieth Edition_ 74
DON QUIXOTE ABSORBED IN THE READING OF BOOKS ON
KNIGHT ERRANTRY. PARIS, 1845. _Forty-First Edition_ 76
SANCHO’S DILIGENCE IN ENCHANTING DULCINEA. LONDON,
1858. _Forty-Seventh Edition_ 78
DON QUIXOTE BECOMING AWARE OF THE CURDS IN HIS
HELMET. COPENHAGEN, 1865-1869. _Fifty-Fourth
Edition_ 80
WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE.
MADRID, 1868. _Fifty-Eighth Edition_ 82
DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO ON THE ROAD TO TOBOSO.
PARIS, 1868. _Fifty-Ninth Edition_ 84
DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE. PARIS, 1858. _Sixtieth Edition_ 86
THE LIFE OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra occupies an isolated and unique position
among the great ones of Spanish history. As Columbus stands for the
genius of discovery, Cervantes, in the mind of the civilised world, is
analogous with Spanish literature. Mendoza and Lope de Vega, Tirso de
Molina or Calderon are but shadows beside the reality of Cervantes as a
living force in letters. The record of Spain’s military glory is gemmed
with a cluster of such names as those of the Cid and the Duke of Parma,
of Boabdil, and Spinola; its sea fame rests upon the records of a long
roll of mighty admirals. In art, Velasquez shares precedence with
Murillo, and Ribera and Goya are worthy of a place in the same gallery;
and while in song there is no national composer to associate Spain with
the music of Europe, in the literary firmament the star of Cervantes
rises in single splendour, and obscures all lesser luminaries.
Viewed in another and more personal light, Cervantes is still found to
be “without like or similar;” in himself, as in his work, he retains
his peculiar solitariness. He may not rank equal with Shakespeare and
Homer, Dante and Milton, Balzac and Molière, among the giants of
literature; but as soldier and author he has a double claim upon the
admiration and regard of posterity. Edmund Spencer and Walter Raleigh
sustained the dual rôle with distinction; but the one is now only known
for his poetry, and the other lives only by virtue of his military
exploits. If Cervantes had not written _Don Quixote_, his literary worth
would never have been recognised; but his name would yet have been
preserved to us as “the man of Lepanto” and the captive of Algiers. That
he survived his wounds and captivity, his poverty and persecution, to
publish in his fifty-ninth year a work which Dr. Johnson esteemed the
greatest book in the world after the Iliad, is not less remarkable than
the fact that his whole career, with all his varied and unrelieved
vicissitudes, was necessary for its composition.
Under Philip II., Spain was at the zenith of her glory, and her
hardly-won and short-lived supremacy was already on the wane. At a time
when Spain was a nest of singing birds, the youthful Cervantes won his
spurs as a poet--Navarrete regards him as among “the most celebrated
poets of the nation”--and in an era when valour was the profession of
the nation, he was esteemed one of the most valorous soldiers of his
day. Subsequently he became “probably the first man of genius since the
revival of learning who made an attempt to earn a livelihood by his
pen,” and his enterprise was rewarded with penury and imprisonment. The
character of the man, whom we have learnt to revere as an unappreciated
genius, an unhonoured soldier, and an unrecognised martyr for the
Christian faith, has been finely summed up for us by his Spanish
biographer, Aribau, in the following vivid passage: “Fearless in peril,
strong in adversity, modest in triumph, careless and generous in his own
concerns, delighting in conferring favours, indulgent to the well-meant
efforts of mediocrity, endowed with a sound and very clear judgment, of
an imagination without example in its fecundity--he passed through the
world as a stranger whose language was not understood. His
contemporaries knew him not, but regarded him with indifference.
Posterity has given him but tardy compensation. It has recognised him as
a man who went before his age, who divined the tastes and tendencies of
another society; and, making himself popular with his inexhaustible
graces, announced the dawn of a civilisation which broke long
afterwards.”
Miguel de Cervantes came of a good, if not noble family, which traced
its origin back to the tenth century. Poverty, as he himself has said,
may cloud, but cannot wholly obscure nobility; and although his parents
appear to have possessed an indifferent share of this world’s goods,
they ranked among the hidalgos of Alcala de Henares, in New Castile,
where Miguel was born, in 1547. To-day Alcala is a dull, featureless
little town, decaying by the sleepy waters of the Henares, memorable
only by reason of the mighty names which are associated with its
history. Here Charles V. entertained his royal prisoner Francis I.; here
Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, in 1510, founded its university; and, in
1517, superintended the printing of the Complutensian Bible, which was
produced at a cost of 80,000 ducats; and here the body of the great
Cardinal Statesman lies beneath a princely monument in the Colégio
Mayor.
From 1616 until 1748 the identity of Cervantes’ birthplace was lost. The
place of Don Quixote’s nativity, it will be remembered, was obscured by
his inventor, in order that “all the towns and villages of La Mancha
might contend among themselves for the honour of giving him birth and
adopting him for their own, as the Seven Cities of Greece contended for
Homer,” and for over 130 years he was himself the subject of a similar
uncertainty. Until 1748, when the discovery of his baptismal registrar
in the Parish Church of Saint Mary the Creator, at Alcala de Henares,
made an end of the mystery that had existed on the point, seven cities
of Spain contended fiercely for the honour of claiming Cervantes for
their own. But the pretentions of Madrid, Seville, Toledo, Lucena,
Esquívias, Alcazar de San Juan and Consuegra were disposed of by this
documentary evidence, and speculation was shifted from Cervantes’
birthplace to his place of education; indeed the little that is known of
the author’s
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE FIGURE IN PACHECO’S PICTURE AT SEVILLE,
SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT CERVANTES.]
early days leaves ample scope for conjecture. Tradition says that he
spent two years at the University of Salamanca, and the house in which
he is supposed to have resided, in the Calle de Moros, is still regarded
as one of the lions of this once famous seat of learning. The city is
now without learning, society, or commerce--a ruin of its former
greatness. Yet in the fourteenth century its university boasted 10,000
students, and in Cervantes’ youth some 5,000 students resorted thither.
But the University of Alcala was also at that time a famous centre of
learning, and it is unlikely that Cervantes, having regard to the
financial status of his family, would go further afield for his
collegiate course. Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, who does not believe that he
was a student of any university, regards the assumption that he was sent
to the distant University of Salamanca, as something like mockery.
All that we can ascertain, concerning his student life, is that he
learnt grammar and the humanities under Lopez de Hoyos, a man of culture
and a teacher of some distinction in his age and generation. In 1568,
upon the death of Isabel de Valois, the third wife of Philip II.,
Cervantes, among Hoyos’ pupils, won much commendation for some verses
written in commemoration of the national bereavement, and we find his
master alluding to the youthful poet as his “dear and beloved pupil,”
and eulogising the “elegant style,” “rhetorical colours,” and “delicate
conceits” of his literary exercises. These compositions, together with
many other early poetical effusions of the author, are to be found in
some Spanish editions of Cervantes’ works, but the general reader will
be content to take them as read. Their author, in his reference to these
immature effusions in his _Journey around Parnassus_, admits that “from
his tenderest years he had loved the sweet art of poesy,” he volunteers
the information that he had produced an endless variety of ballads and
sonnets of varying degrees of merit, and modestly confesses that “Heaven
had not granted him the poet’s grace.”
Cervantes was still a stripling when he first evinced that interest in
the acted drama, which he never entirely lost. Lope de Rueda, who did so
much to produce order out of chaos in the drama of Spain, was at that
time an actor-manager at the head of his own company of strolling
players. It was this gold-beater of Seville, “admirable in Pastoral
Poetry,” distinguished alike “for his acting and for his intelligence,”
who brought comedies “out of their swaddling clothes and gave them
habitation, and attired them decently and handsomely.” Cervantes must
have attended the performances of the Rueda Company when they were in
the neighbourhood of Segovia, in 1558; and in the preface to his volume
of Comedies and Farces, published a year before his death, he gives us
some interesting particulars of the theatrical impedimenta in use at
that time. The performances were given in the morning and afternoon in
the public square, and the only decoration of the theatre was “an old
blanket drawn aside by two ropes, which made what they call the
green-room; behind which were the musicians, singing some old ballad
without a guitar.” The properties consisted of “four benches arranged in
a square, with five or six planks on top of them, raised but four
handsbreadth from the ground;” while the whole apparatus of a manager of
plays, was contained in a sack, and consisted of “four white sheep-skin
dresses, trimmed with gilt leather, and four beards, wigs, and crooks,
more or less.”
In 1568, an event occurred which altered the trend of Cervantes’ life,
and carried him for a period of twelve years from his native land. In
that year, the young and cultured Cardinal Acquaviva came to the Court
of Philip II. on a ceremonial mission from the Pope. Though received
with scant courtesy by the King, the learned envoy was warmly welcomed
by the men of letters of Madrid. By one of these, it is suggested by
Cardinal Espinosa to whom Cervantes had dedicated some of his verses,
the poet was presented to Acquaviva; and when the Papal legate brought
his visit to an end, Cervantes returned with him to Rome in the capacity
of _camarero_, or page. Mr. Kelly treats at some length, if with scant
credulity, the vague legend, that in his early youth Cervantes held some
minor post at Court; and while he attaches no importance to the
traditions that he left Spain to escape the consequences of having
wounded a courtier in a duel, or of having had some love passages with
a lady about the Court, he takes it for granted that he “fled to Italy
in half-voluntary, half-compulsory exile.” Whether that was so or not,
he only remained for little more than a year in the service of his
ecclesiastical patron, and in the beginning of 1570 he entered the
Spanish Army as a private soldier in the company of the famous captain,
Don Diego de Urbina.
While it is generally recognised that Cervantes, the author and
philosopher, was in advance of his age, Cervantes, the man, was, it
would appear, the natural product of his generation and his environment.
In the university city of Alcala, “in that fruitful harvest-time of
Spanish literature,” he cultivated the muses; in Italy--which, at that
period, was dominated by Spain--surrounded, as he was, on all sides by
the indomitable Spanish infantry, who “made the earth tremble with their
firelocks,” the spirit of Cervantes was fired with military ardour.
Christendom, too, was at perpetual war with the Turks, and to a youth of
Cervantes’ chivalrous temperament the prospects offered by a career
which united the services of both Church and King would prove
irresistible. He was present, in 1570, at the ineffectual attempt to
relieve the Island of Cyprus, a failure which led up to the formation of
the Holy League of Spain, Venice, and Rome against Selim II., and found
its crowning glory in the Battle of Lepanto.
The troops went into Winter quarters on their return from Cyprus, and
Cervantes trod the streets
[Illustration: CERVANTES.]
of Naples for more than a year, while the allied fleets were being
mobilised. On September 15th, Don Juan of Austria found himself in
command of the squadron of 208 galleys, 7 galleons, and 24 sailing
ships, which sailed from Messina with a complement of 26,000 soldiers to
give battle to the Turkish fleet. The enemy were discovered within the
Gulf of Lepanto, where, on October 7th, was fought one of the greatest
sea-actions of all times. The Turkish ships, though more numerous than
those of the allies, were smaller in design, inferior in their
armaments, and less skilfully navigated, while the wind, veering
suddenly at the crisis of the struggle, gave the advantage to the united
fleet. Though the result was not the beginning of the end of Moslem
supremacy, the victory of the Holy League was complete and emphatic. The
power of the Turk was arrested, and all Christendom rang with the glory
of the achievement.
The story of the Battle of Lepanto does not call for special description
in these pages; its personal and peculiar interest for us lies in the
fact that the two names that are associated with the victory in the most
notable prominence are those of Don Juan of Austria, the generalissimo
of the forces, and Miguel de Cervantes, the private soldier on the
_Marquesa_--the one for his skill and generalship, the other for his
personal heroism. Of Cervantes’ share in the battle, we have ample and
detailed evidence. On the morning of the action he was, according to
Martin Fernández de Navarrete, stricken with fever, and ordered to
remain in the safety of his cabin. But on the representations of the
young soldier, who protested that he would rather die fighting for God
and his King than tend his health in security, his captain gave him a
command of twelve men, and stationed him in a boat on the fighting side
of the galley. Opposed to the _Marquesa_ was the flagship of the Turkish
right squadron, commanded by the Captain-Pasha of Alexandria, and
floating the royal standard of Egypt. The duel between the two galleys
was fought with the utmost gallantry on both sides, but the Turk was
captured after the loss of 500 of her crew, and her surrender involved
the rout of the entire right squadron.
That Cervantes’ share in this encounter was of material service in
contributing to its successful issue, is evidenced by the fact that in
an army of 26,000 soldiers and sailors he won the most distinguished
measure of individual renown. That he held the post of greatest danger,
that he was the first to board the galley, and bore himself with
intrepid gallantry, we know on the sworn testimony of Mateo de
Santisteban and others of his comrades. The evidence is supported by the
unusual interest and concern that Don Juan evinced in him, raising his
pay by five or six _escudos_, and visiting him in the Hospital of
Messina. For Cervantes had not come through the battle unscathed. In his
breast he received two arquebus wounds, while his left hand was injured
by a ball, which rendered it useless for the remainder of his life. In
Sola’s bronze statue of Cervantes, at Barcelona, “El manco de Lepanto,”
as his countrymen have proudly styled him, is represented with his
maimed hand hidden beneath his cloak; although, during his lifetime, he
carried with pride the wounds received in “the most memorable of all
occasions past, present, or to come”--“wounds that show like stars,
lighting us on to heaven and to fame”--and declared that his useless
left hand was crippled “for the greater glory of the right.”
Between 1571 and 1575 Cervantes lived the strenuous life of a private
soldier, taking part in two campaigns, fighting with enthusiasm,
enduring wounds and hardships with stoical fortitude, and acquiring that
knowledge of men and things which he was afterwards to employ to such
good purpose. His injuries were tended at Messina, but he returned to
his duties before they were properly healed; and two years later, when
he went to Tunis in the army of Don Juan, he writes to Mateo Vasquez
that his wounds were “yet dripping with blood.” After his discharge from
the hospital, he was transferred to the _tercio de Figueroa_, commanded
by Don Manuel Ponce de Leon; and, as a _soldado aventajado_, or select
soldier, in the most famous infantry regiment of Spain, he was on the
high road to promotion and a distinguished career. In the story of “The
Captive,” in _Don Quixote_ (Part I., Chapter xxxix.), Cervantes has left
us a graphic account of the ineffective and inglorious second campaign
of the allies in the Levant, which was followed by the dissolution of
the Holy League. Cervantes repaired with his regiment to Naples, and,
after the Tunis expedition, he was for some time in garrison in the
Island of Sardinia, before being sent to Genoa by the order of Don Juan.
The inadequacy of the Spanish garrison left for the protection of Tunis,
and the growing boldness and activity of the combined Moors and Turks,
called for prompt measures; and, in 1574, Don Juan held himself in
readiness with a fleet to restore Spanish prestige in Africa. But the
delays, caused by the procrastination of Philip, proved fatal. Before
the squadron received the supplies and materials required for the
expedition, the allies, after a desperate military and naval engagement,
captured the Goletta, and obtained possession of Tunis. With this last
prospect of active service dispelled, Cervantes, weary of inaction,
disgusted with the unchivalrous termination of the Crusade which had
commenced so gloriously at Lepanto, and eager for the sight of his
native land, obtained leave to return to Spain. The high opinion in
which he was held by “men of state and of might” with whom he had come
in contact, is shown by the fact that this private soldier received from
the Commander-in-Chief, Don Juan, a letter to the King, strongly
recommending him as “a man of valour, of merit, and of many signal
services,” while the Viceroy of Sicily, the Duke of Sessa, provided him
with letters to Philip, and to his Council, in
[Illustration: CERVANTES.]
which he speaks of him as “a soldier as deserving as he was unfortunate;
who, by his noble virtue and gentle disposition, had won the esteem of
his comrades and his chiefs.” In August, 1575, he set sail for Naples on
board the galley _El Sol_, but five years more were to elapse before he
was again to tread the shores of Spain.
In the following month, _El Sol_ was attacked within sight of the
Spanish coast by a squadron of Algerine pirates. In the unequal contest
which followed, Cervantes is reported to have borne himself with
characteristic gallantry, but such an encounter could have but one
issue, and the captured Spaniards were divided up among the Moors as
spoils of victory. Cervantes became the prize of a Captain, named Delí
Mamí, a renegade Greek, who had earned the distinction of being one of
the most ferocious of that notoriously savage and revengeful race of
corsairs. For the following five years Cervantes endured a tyranny of
serfdom as rigorous and unrelaxing as ever slave suffered in the mines
of Spain. He was already known as _el manco de Lepanto_; he was now to
earn, if not to wear, the title of _el manco de Argel_.
It is not our purpose here to give a detailed description of the
sufferings he bore with knightly fortitude and undaunted spirit for
those long five years. The particulars are preserved to us in official
documents, but a brief summary must find a place in our sketch.
According to the testimony of Father Haedo, in whose _Topography of
Algiers_, published in 1612, we have the most valuable authority for
this period of Cervantes’ life, and who was an eye-witness to the
cruelties practised upon the Christian slaves, the captivity of
Cervantes was one of the hardest ever known in Algiers. Mr. Watts has
given us an eloquent account of our hero in this bondage. It was borne,
he says, with a courage and constancy which, had there been nothing else
to make his name memorable, must have sufficed to rank Cervantes among
the heroes of his age and country. No episode more romantic is contained
in the books of chivalry. No adventures more strange were encountered by
any knight-errant. Not Amadis nor Esplandian, nor any of those whose
fabled deeds had kindled his youthful imagination, displayed a loftier
spirit of honour, or more worthily discharged his knightly devoir, than
did Miguel de Cervantes when in duress in Algiers. A slave in the power
of the bitter enemy of his creed and nation, cut off in the heyday of
his fame from the path of ambition which fortune seemed to have opened
to him; no lot could be more cruel than that which, in the fulness of
his manhood and genius, fell to his share.
Nor is there any chapter of his life more honourable than that record of
the singular daring, fortitude, patience and cheerfulness with which he
bore his fate during this miserable period. With no other support than
his own indomitable spirit, forgotten by those whom he had served,
unable to receive any help from his friends, subjected to every kind of
hardship which the tyranny or caprice of his masters might order,
pursued by an unrelenting evil destiny, which seemed in this, as in
every other passage of his career, to mock at his efforts to live that
high heroic life which he had conceived to himself; this poor maimed
soldier was looked up to by that wretched colony of Christian captives
(including among them many men of higher birth and rank) as their chief
counsellor, comforter, and guide. In his formal information, laid before
the commissary of the Spanish Government at Algiers, Father Juan Gil, of
the Order of the Redemptorists, very particular testimony is borne by
Cervantes’ fellow-captives to his character and conduct, as one who bore
himself always as a faithful Christian, who cheered those who were
despondent, who shared with the poor the little that he possessed, who
helped the sick in their necessities, who risked every danger in the
cause of the faith, behaving himself always like a true soldier of the
King and a noble gentleman--all of which good record is confirmed by the
honest Father himself of his own personal knowledge.
The daring escapes that Cervantes planned, the intrepid courage with
which he set himself to invent new schemes when the old ones miscarried;
the indomitable cheerfulness he always maintained, and especially the
spell he exercised over his master, the brutal Hassan Pasha of evil
memory, are sufficient to mark him as a man of extraordinary resource,
magnetism, and force of character. Delí Mamí, misled by the letters
which were found upon the person of his captive, regarded Cervantes as a
man of position and substance, and the treatment meted out to him was
the more severe, in order that his family would the more speedily effect
his release. These Algerine pirates lived upon the ransoms which they
extorted from the friends of their captives; and at the time of
Cervantes’ bondage, no fewer than 25,000 Christians, including many men
of rank and fortune, were waiting the arrival of the price of their
freedom, and frequently enlivening the monotony of their servitude by
attempting to escape. Cervantes earned a peculiar celebrity among this
army of captives by the ingenuity and persistence of the plans he put
into practice in order to achieve the ambition of every bondman. But
while his courage became proverbial, and his craft amazed both his
captors and his fellow-prisoners, his ill-luck ever intervened to
frustrate his best-laid plans.
A further reference may be permitted here to the influence which
Cervantes exercised upon his barbarous gaoler, Hassan Pasha, who had
purchased him from Delí Mamí for the sum of 500 gold crowns. The author
of _Don Quixote_ has told us (Part I., Chapter xi.) of “the unheard-of
and unseen cruelties which my master practised on the Christians. Every
day he hanged a slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and
this upon so
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES, MODELLED BY ROSENDO NOBAS, UNDER
THE DIRECTION OF DON LEOPOLD RIUS.]
little occasion, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own
he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his
nature.” This “homicide of all human kind,” as Cervantes stigmatises him
in another place, was so inexplicably dominated by fear and respect of
his slave that he was wont to declare that, “if he had this maimed
Spaniard in safe keeping, he would reckon as secure his Christians, his
ships, and his city.” But the most difficult feat of his
governorship--Hassan Pasha was at this period Viceroy and virtual King
of Algeria--was to retain his intrepid prisoner in custody. Twice the
hangman’s rope was drawn upon his neck, and twice his head was, at the
last moment, taken from the noose. On one occasion he was ordered 2,000
blows with a stick by “the most cruel tyrant of all those who have been
kings of Algiers,” but the rod never descended upon his body. Yet it is
known that he did not volunteer one word on his own behalf, or urge a
single plea in extenuation of his designs. When the viceroy’s soldiers
captured a little band of Christians, on the eve of their embarkation on
a frigate sent to their relief, it was Miguel de Cervantes who went
forward alone to meet the captors, declaring that he alone was the
instigator of the whole plot, and that none of his companions had any
part or blame in the business. He repeated his statement in the presence
of Hassan Pasha, and although “threatened with torture and instant
death, with the spectacle of many of his companions hanged or mutilated
before his eyes, Cervantes refused to implicate any one in his schemes
of flight.”
In 1577, Cervantes, recognising the unpreparedness of the Algerians, the
weakness of the city’s fortifications, and the numerical superiority of
the Christian population to support from within a systematic scheme to
capture the city, made an ineffectual appeal to the king to come to the
rescue of his captive subjects. The petition, if ever it came to Philip,
fell upon deaf ears; and the arch-plotter, disappointed but undeterred,
sent a secret message to Don Martin de Cordova, the Governor of Oran,
praying him to provide men to assist in a general escape. The
miscarriage of this adventure, through the capture and death of the
messenger, brought Cervantes once more within an ace of the rod and the
halter, but the irrepressible schemer was presently surprised in
hatching still another device to obtain his liberty, and had to seek
refuge with a friend from the rage of the viceroy. A proclamation,
threatening instant death to anyone sheltering the fugitive, was
published in Algiers, and rather than expose his concealer to this
danger, Cervantes voluntarily presented himself before Hassan Pasha, who
vainly endeavoured, by threats of torture and death, to extort from him
the names of his accomplices.
Loaded with chains, and guarded with unceasing vigilance, he was now
kept for five months in the closest confinement, but the viceroy still
refrained from visiting the defiance of his prisoner with stripes or
personal indignity. As Cervantes has recorded, in his modest reference
to this period of captivity in _Don Quixote_: “The only one who held his
own with him (Hassan Pasha) was a Spanish soldier, called De Saavedra,
to whom, though he did things which will dwell in the memory of those
people for many years, and all for the recovery of his freedom, his
master never gave him a blow, nor bade anyone to do so, nor even spoke
to him an ill word, though for the least of the many things he did we
all feared he would be impaled, as he himself feared more than once.”
This story is confirmed by Father Haedo, who says that while the
captivity of Cervantes was “one of the worst ever known in Algiers,” he
was never beaten, or hurt, or abused in his person; and the worthy
Benedictine monk, in his _Topografia e Historia General de Argel_
(1612), further declares that “had his (Cervantes’) fortune corresponded
to his intrepidity, his industry, and his projects, this day Algiers
would belong to the Christians; for to no other end did his intents
aspire.”
While we must deplore the wounds which Cervantes received in the wars,
and sorrow over the duress he suffered in Algiers, it must be always
remembered with pride that it was to his personal valour, and nobility
in adversity, that we owe the full and particular account that we have
of these years of his career. As he gained the commendation of Don Juan
in action, he won in adversity “great fame, praise, honour, and glory
among the Christians” in Algiers. And that the record of his unswerving
loyalty to creed and country, his “mingled genius and greatness,” and
his magnanimous refusal to inculpate anyone in his many attempts to
escape, should not be lost, a base Dominican, one Blanco de Paz,
circulated such calumnies against Cervantes that he demanded the charges
should be investigated before Father Juan Gil. Cervantes had, at this
time, been ransomed by the efforts of his family and the generosity of
the local merchants, who supplemented the 600 ducats his mother and
sister had managed to raise by a contribution of a further 400 ducats,
with which Hassan Pasha was satisfied. The inquiry lasted for twelve
days, and ended in the complete acquittal of Cervantes, who was declared
to be deserving, for his conduct in captivity, of all the praises which
he had received. The abstract of these proceedings, signed by Father
Juan Gil, are still reserved in the archives of Simancas, and from these
we obtain the materials for the biographical account of Cervantes’
career during his Algerine captivity. “Had there survived no other
record than this of the life of Cervantes,” Mr. Watts justly remarks,
“had he not written a line of the books which have made him famous, the
proofs we have here of his greatness of soul, constancy, and
cheerfulness under the severest of trials which a man could endure,
would be sufficient to ensure him lasting fame. The enthusiasm, the
alacrity, and
[Illustration: MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA.]
the unanimity with which all the witnesses--including the captives of
the highest rank and character in Algiers--give their testimony in
favour of their beloved comrade, are quite remarkable, and without
precedent. They speak of him in terms such as no knight of romance ever
deserved; of his courage in danger; his resolution under suffering; his
patience in trouble; his daring and fertility of resource in action. He
seems to have won the hearts of all the captives, both laymen and
clerics, by his good humour, unselfish devotion, and kindliness of
heart.” His liberation was effected on the 19th September, 1580; the
inquiry held by Father Gil was concluded on the 22nd October; and in the
last days of the same year he landed in Spain, and learned from
experience the truth of his confident declaration: “There is not a
satisfaction on earth equal to that of recovered liberty.”
Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, whose study of Cervantes’ life and character is
instinct with a wholesome sanity and a freedom from all sentimental
adulation, does not fail to detect the extravagant sanguineness which
inspired many of these attempts at escape. To him, “the whole story of
this captivity reads like a page from some wild impossible romance;” but
while his judicious biographer can smile at Cervantes’ “sublime
self-confidence,” and regard his _affairé_ with the unknown Portuguese
lady without hysteria, and is not even convinced that Christendom was
saved on the great day of Lepanto, by the single arm of our hero, he is
not lacking in sincere appreciation of the many virtues of the author of
_Don Quixote_. Cervantes was not a great poet, or a great dramatist, or
a great man of business; viewed in the light of the age in which he
lived, and Mr. Kelly never fails to bear this fundamental condition in
mind, he was an honourable, right-living man, who made no pretentions to
being an ascetic or a saint. Mr. Kelly can detect the minor blemishes of
a nature which had the defects of its own virtues; he realises that his
frequent and fruitless dashes for liberty, which only intensified the
severity of his captivity, were inspired by a reckless, uncalculating
optimism; but he is not blind to the sympathetic, generous spirit which
not even malignant oppression could imbitter, or to the buoyant
temperament which the sternest fates could not deaden.
“To say that when Cervantes left his home of servitude,” Mr. Kelly
writes, “he was in every respect the same man as when he entered it,
would be to say that he was deaf to the voice of wisdom, and blind to
the disillusioning teaching of experience. He had had borne in on him
‘the sense that every struggle brings defeat,’ and had realised the
width and depth of the vast abyss which yawns between the easy project
and the painful, nebulous, far-off achievement. Something of the
invincible confidence, the early ardour, the unquestioning trustfulness
of youth had passed with the passing years, and melted into the grey,
sombre ether of the past; but nothing misanthropic mingled with his
splendid scorn, his magnificent disdain for the base and the ignoble;
nothing of the cruel, fierce indignation of Swift gleamed from those
quiet, searching eyes, which watched the absurdities of his fellow-men
with a humorous, whimsical, indulgent smile. In the squalid prison life
his strenuous courage, his iron constancy and self-sacrificing devotion
had drawn every heart towards him with one exception--that of the
scandalous, shameless friar, Blanco de Paz.”
After seven years of intermittant activity, and yet another five of
terrible captivity, in the service of Spain, we find Cervantes, at the
age of thirty-three, the “captain of his fate,” but attached to no
regiment; the “master of his soul,” but master of nothing else. He
carried his honourable wounds and the traces of his duress with pride,
but so far as worldly advancement went, they did not serve him. He might
well have cried, in the spirit and words of W. E. Henley:
“Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed;”
but the king, for whom he had shed his blood, was unmindful of him; his
patron, Don Juan of Austria, was dead, and he had perforce to commence
the business of life over again, without a friend and with a financial
liability in the matter of his ransom, which was to take him four years
to pay off. But he would appear to have been without regrets or
repinings--he had regained his liberty, and we know in what measure he
prized it. He must have been re-living the emotions he experienced on
his return to his native land, when he made Don Quixote declare to his
faithful squire: “Liberty ... is one of the most valuable blessings that
heaven has bestowed upon mankind. Not all the treasures concealed in the
bowels of the earth, nor those in the bosom of the sea can be compared
with it. For liberty a man may--nay, ought--to hazard even his life, as
well as for honour, accounting captivity the greatest misery he can
endure.”
History tells us that even in the comparatively brief period of
Cervantes’ captivity the decline of the mighty Empire of Spain had
commenced. The inherent meanness of Philip’s spirit, his religious
intolerance, his incompetence as both statesman and soldier, and the
dominant power of the priests, had sapped the nation’s energy, and
crushed national ambition. The character of the king set the seal on the
country’s destiny. He abhorred letters, and was jealous of intellectual
eminence; he was feeble and timorous in his foreign policy, and starved
the soldiers upon whom the burden of maintaining the Empire rested; his
one love and ambition was for the Church, which was sapping the life
blood of the nation. Of the 50,000,000 people who constituted the
population of his dominions, no fewer than a million persons were in the
service of the Church. There were archbishops by the score, bishops by
the
[Illustration]
hundred, and lesser ecclesiastes by the hundreds of thousands. The Holy
Office alone offered a sure road to advancement and position, and many
there were that walked therein.
But Cervantes, undashed by ingratitude and undaunted by hardship,
retained his loyalty, and relinquished not a tittle of his chivalrous
conceptions and aspirations. He was still desperately sincere in the
convictions, which never left him, that “there is nothing in the world
more commendable than to serve God in the first place, and the King in
the next, especially in the profession of arms, which, if it does not
procure a man so much riches as learning, may at least entitle him to
more honour.” As the profession of arms had won him no honour, so he was
to learn by experience that learning would deny him riches; but the
knowledge that he had deserved the one, and had been instrumental in the
accumulation, if not in the participation, of the other, may have
afforded him some slight comfort. That he revelled in the desperate
chances, as well as in the prospect of winning honour, which the
soldiers’ life had to give, may be gathered from the exhortation which
he makes _Don Quixote_ give to the young soldier: “I would not have you
be uneasy with thoughts of what misfortunes may befall you; the worst
can be but to die, and if it be a good, honourable death your fortune is
made, and you are certainly happy.... For suppose you should be cut off
at the very first engagement by a canon ball, or the springing of a
mine, what matters it? it is but dying, and there is an end of the
business.”
We may be sure that some such reflections filled the mind of Miguel de
Cervantes when he rejoined his old regiment, now known, from its
exploits in the Low Countries, as the _tercio de Flandes_, and marched
under his old commander, Lope de Figueroa, to the subjugation of
Portugal. He was serving God in the first place, and his King in the
next, believing that at the worst he would find fortune and happiness in
“a good, honourable death.” His lifetime rival and disparager, “that
prodigy of Nature,” Lope de Vega, has told us that he carried a musket
in the same campaign; but it is unlikely that he was animated by the
same honourable philosophy.
The conquest of Portugal was a simple undertaking, the land forces of
Don Antonio making but a feeble show of resistance; but with the aid of
France, the illegitimate son of Luis, the brother of Joam III., made a
more formidable opponent on the seas. His fleet, which had its base in
the Azores, was joined by some sixty French ships, under Philippo
Strozzi, and six English privateers, and this flotilla gave battle to
the Spanish squadron, commanded by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, off
Terceira, in the Summer of 1582. Cervantes was serving on the flagship
_San Mateo_, which was opposed to three of the enemy’s vessels, and
again our hero failed to obtain advancement, or achieve a good,
honourable death. The engagement ended in a signal victory for the
Spaniards, but it benefited Cervantes not at all, and he left his
regiment (probably in the late Autumn of 1582) as poor and unfavoured as
he had rejoined it. Many years afterwards, in May, 1590, in his petition
addressed to Philip II., praying for one of the offices then vacant in
America, as a compensation for his sufferings, and in acknowledgment of
his services on behalf of the King, he recapitulates his engagements at
Lepanto and Tunis, alludes to his period of captivity, and refers to his
campaign “in the Kingdom of Portugal and in the Terceiras with the
Marquess of Santa Cruz.”
This Portuguese campaign is interesting, so far as Cervantes is
concerned, as recording the only instance of a liason that is known in
his career. Most of his biographers have either glossed over the fact,
or declined to believe it, but it is a matter that calls for neither
apology nor incredulity. We know that he entertained a very favourable
opinion of the Portuguese, and was loud in his appreciation of the
beauty and amiability of the Portuguese ladies. The identity of the
fair, frail one who won his good will is wrapped in mystery; but the
memory of this _affaire_ must have been with him when he wrote, nearly a
quarter of a century later, “the passion of love is to be vanquished by
flight alone, and that we must not pretend to grapple with so powerful
an adversary since, though the force be human, Divine succours are
necessary to subdue it.” The fruit of this amour was a daughter, called
Doña Isabel de Saavedra, who became his life companion, and who, after
his death, entered the convent of the barefooted Trinitarian nuns at
Madrid.
All sorts of conjectures as to the identity of the lady have been made;
but, as Mr. Kelly, with his characteristic common-sense declares,
“nothing whatever is known of her; nothing at this day is likely to be
discovered about her; and the whole question might be passed over were
it not for the _curiosos impertinentes_, the literary ghouls who
manifest their interest in high literature by leaving _Don Quixote_
unread, and striving to discover the name of Cervantes’ mistress.”
But Mr. Kelly, in this part, as in one or two other instances in his
scholarly _Life of Cervantes_, is inclined to claim less for his hero
than he is entitled to. He says here that, “so far as Cervantes himself
is concerned in this matter, his biographer must be content to admit
that his subject was no saint, but an impetuous man of genius, with
quite as full a share of frailty as though he had been a peer.” Yet a
study of the career of Cervantes discloses him, if not a saint, at least
a man of less frailty than the majority of the world’s great ones; and
to suppose him habitually frail because one indiscretion can be
attributed to him, seems scarcely generous. Again, in dealing with that
period of Cervantes’ life in Valladolid, after the publication of _Don
Quixote_, Mr. Kelly says, “He probably had a little money at this time,
and, though it would seem that he spent some of it in very undesirable
ways, it may be hoped that
[Illustration: STATUE OF CERVANTES AT MADRID.]
the woman of the family no longer needed to take in the sewing from the
Marques de Villafranca”; and, in another place, he refers to the
“supererogatory folly” which misled him in Valladolid. He bases this
supposition on the evidence on a MS., entitled, _Memorias de
Valladolid_, now in the British Museum, in which the name of Cervantes
is put into the mouth of a woman in a gambling house. As the author was
not the only bearer of the name of Cervantes in Spain in that day, and
as none of his candid friends refer to his vices or immoralities, either
in prose or verse, one might, I think, regard this piece of evidence
with more than usual suspicion. Mr. Watts dismisses the charge as
unworthy of any credence, and most Cervantists will, doubtless, treat
the imputation in the same fashion.
Between his retirement from the Army and the publication of the first,
and only published part, of the _Galatea_, Cervantes, on the evidence of
his petition to the King, conveyed letters and advices from Mostagan, a
Spanish possession on the Coast of Barbary, to Philip, and was sent by
His Majesty to Oran, where he was employed in affairs of the fleet,
under the orders of Antonio de Guevara. But the nature and duration of
his employment are matters of conjecture, and we must turn to 1584 for
the next authentic details of his career. In that year our author
married a wife, and published the _Galatea_.
The _Galatea_, which was not translated into English until 1867, has
enjoyed less vogue in this country than in France, where Florian’s
translation is still in demand. In Spain, at least half-a-dozen editions
were called for during the lifetime of the author, and so great was the
esteem in which it was held at the time, that gentlemen from France,
affected to letters, had their _Galatea_ by heart. Cervantes’ _Eclogue_,
or, as we should style it, pastoral romance, was not a literary
experiment, being an exercise in the manner of Montemayor’s _Diana_, and
having its inspiration in the fashion of the period. This “firstfruits
of his poor wit,” as the author calls it in his preface, is concerned
with shepherds and shepherdesses, their loves, their longings, and their
lassitudes. The fable is artificial, the language is stilted, the
passion false, and the whole, to modern eyes and ears, is tedious, and
not a little ridiculous. That it appealed to the current fancy in poetry
and fiction is its excuse; that it was at least equal in merit, if not
superior, to any contemporary effort of the same class, is its only
substantial merit. Some personal interest the pastoral has in the
introduction of real persons under romantic names. Cervantes’ own love
story is rehearsed in the prologue, the poet masquerades as Elicio, and
his wife as Galatea, while Tirsi, Timbrio, Damon, and Erasteso are all
friends of the author. Twenty years later Cervantes made merry over this
class of literature, when in _Don Quixote_ he makes the Knight,
returning vanquished from the Tourney at Barcelona, propose to Sancho
Panza that they shall turn shepherds and lead a rural life. He decides
to call himself Quixotis, to re-name his Squire, Pansino and Teresa
Panza is to be celebrated in the annal of arcady by the style of
Teresania. The objects and employment of the shepherds were to consist
of poetry and protestation. “For my part,” the Don declared, “I will
complain of absence, thou” (his Squire) “shall celebrate thy own loyalty
and constancy, the Shepherd Larrascon shall expostulate on his
shepherdess’s disdain, and the Pastor Curiambio choose what subject he
likes best; and so all will be managed to our hearts’ content”--even as
it was managed by Cervantes in the _Galatea_.
Yet, artificial and uninspiriting as the pastoral appears to-day, it was
acclaimed with unstinted praise, both at home and abroad, and caused the
author to be classed by Gálvez de Montalvo and by Pedro de Padilla among
the most famous poets of Castile. It brought him friends; it gave him
enemies; but it was powerless to advance his worldly fortune--the money
derived from the sale of the various editions of the book found their
way into other pockets.
Of the _Galatea_, Cervantes has left us his own critical estimate in
Chapter iv., Part I., of _Don Quixote_. The curate and the barber are
overhauling the Don’s library--“those unconscionable books of
disventures,” the tales of chivalry over which he would pore for
eight-and-forty hours together--and of the hundred large volumes, and a
good number of small ones, only some half-dozen escape the bonfire that
has been built of them in the back yard. The _Galatea_ was one of the
exempt. “That Cervantes has been my intimate acquaintance these many
years,” cried the curate, “and I know he has been more conversant with
misfortunes than with poetry. His book, indeed, has I don’t know what,
that looks like a good design; he aims at something, but concludes
nothing; therefore, we must stay for the second part, which he has
promised us; perhaps he may make us amends, and obtain a full pardon,
which is denied him for the present....”
The _Galatea_, the second part of which was never written, is not lost
to us, though it is little read; but of the rest of the survivors of the
curate’s conflagration, and which Cervantes praises through the lips of
his character--_Amadis de Gaul_, _Palmerin of England_, _Ten Books of
the Fortunes of Love_, by Anthony de Lofraco; _The Shepherd of Filida_,
together with the _Araucana_, of Don Alonso de Ercilla; the _Austirada_,
of Jean Ruffo, a magistrate of Cordova; and the _Monserrato_, of
Christopher de Virves, a Valentian poet--they are now only known because
they are mentioned in _Don Quixote_. Yet of the last three works
Cervantes makes the curate declare: “These are the best heroic poems we
have in Spanish, and may vie with the most celebrated in Italy. Reserve
them as the most valuable performances which Spain has to boast of in
poetry.”
Into the profession of letters Cervantes carried a
[Illustration: LETTER ADDRESSED BY CERVANTES TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF
TOLEDO, DATED MARCH 26TH, 1616.]
principle and a philosophy as commendable and ennobling as the ambition
that had sustained him in the profession of arms. “It is laudable,” he
declared, “for a poet to employ his pen in a virtuous cause,” and he
preached nothing that he did not practise consistently. “Let him direct
the shafts of satire against vice,” he continued, “in all its various
forms, but not level them at individuals; like some who, rather than not
indulge their mischievous wit will hazard a disgraceful banishment to
the Isles of Pontus. If the poet be correct in his morals, his verse
will partake of the same purity; the pen is the tongue of the mind, and
what his conceptions are, such will be his productions.”
And so, with these high ideals in his mind, and but few pieces in his
wallet, he married on 12th December, 1584, with Dona Catalina de
Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, a young lady of good family, and in
worldly substance the superior of her husband. The tenth of his fortune,
which Cervantes settled upon his wife, amounted to 100 ducats, while an
inventory of the bride’s effects include several plantations of young
vines in the district of Esquívias, a small town of New Castile; six
bushels of meal and one of wheat at eight reals, or 1s. 8d.; some
articles of household furniture; two linen and three cotton sheets, a
cushion and two pillows stuffed with wool; one good blanket, and one
worn; tables, chairs, pots, and pans; a brasier, a grater, several jars,
sacred images, in alabaster and silver gilt; a crucifix, two little
images of the baby Jesus; four beehives, forty-five hens and pullets,
and one cock. The lady who brought these curiously varied articles into
the common stock bore Cervantes no children, survived him over ten
years, and was buried, at her request, at her husband’s side in the
convent of the Trinitarian nuns. And in these few lines, her story, so
far as we know it, is told.
For a few months Cervantes continued to live at Esquívias, and in 1585
we find him removed to Madrid, where his household consisted, in
addition to his wife and his little daughter, Isabel, his widowed
sister, Andrea, and her eight-year-old daughter, Constanza. Letters had
not then become a recognised profession, and in the domain of poetry,
amateurism was a disease. Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors--all
rhymed unceasingly. Lope de Vega, who was of the number, wrote: “In
every street 4,000 poets;” and Cervantes, in his _Voyage around
Parnassus_, refers to “the vulgar squadron of seven-month poets, 20,000
strong, whose being is a mystery.” Lope de Vega, then, as always, more
fortunate than Cervantes, a youth of twenty-three, already famous as a
poet and a libertine, was acting as the confidential secretary of the
young Duke of Alva. His dissolute life, which occasionally brought him
into conflict with the authorities was, on the whole, far more to his
advancement than was the virtuous rectitude of Cervantes, and it is
possible that the jealousy and rancour with which the
[Illustration]
younger dramatist followed his less affluent but more gifted rival was
inspired by the knowledge of his purity in his life and his works. Their
careers for awhile progressed along the same lines, but with Cervantes
always in the van. They were writing innumerable verses at the same
period; but while Lope de Vega, following the custom of the day,
lampooned his colleagues, and levelled foul and venemous sonnets at his
contemporaries, Cervantes steadily set his face against the practice. He
had laid down a rule for his own guidance, from which he never diverged.
He can jest a brother poet and banter the foibles of the writers of his
day with gentle irony and good humour, but he reserves his censure and
his sarcasm for the castigation of evil, vice and folly.
If, as seems more than probable, the relations between Cervantes and
Vega were strained, their differences could have had no origin in the
attitude of the former. It is true that in _Don Quixote_ the literary
artifices and affectations of Lope de Vega are treated with benignant
banter, and the bad taste and vulgarity which he indulged in many of his
plays came in for some severe and judicious criticism, but in the same
place other of his dramas are selected for special praise, and the
dramatist is eulogised as “that most happy genius of these kingdoms, who
has composed such an infinite number of plays with so much glory, with
so much grace, such elegant verse, such choice language, such weighty
sentiments--so rich in eloquence and loftiness of style, as that the
world is filled with his renown.”
In return for this eulogy, and many other flattering references, Lope de
Vega has mentioned Cervantes’ name exactly four times in print, and then
only in cold and restrained terms; and in a letter written to his late
patron, the Duke of Sessa, he disclosed his animus in the following item
of news: “Of poets I speak not. Many are in the bud for next year, but
there are none so bad as Cervantes, or so foolish as to praise _Don
Quixote_.” It was inevitable that a man of the disposition of Vega, whom
his friend, Alarcon, has described as “the universal envier of the
applause given to others,” should have envied the fame and genius of
Cervantes, who, as Mr. Watts has written, was “of a temper the sweetest
among men of genius, who had come through the fiery ordeal of a life of
hardship with a heart unsoured as with honour unblemished.” As poet and
novelist, Cervantes outdistanced the younger writer in public
estimation, and as the author of _Don Quixote_, he soared to a height
which has been unattained by any other Spanish novelist; in the realm of
the drama alone Lope de Vega was paramount.
It has been seen that Cervantes early acquired a taste for theatrical
representations, and at the close of the sixteenth century he doubtless
turned to this style of composition as offering the only available means
of making an income. Between 1585 and 1588 he wrote and produced between
twenty and
[Illustration]
thirty plays, and claimed, on insufficient grounds, to have introduced
several important changes in the material of stage representations. The
trick of introducing allegorical characters among the sublunary
personages, which Cervantes assumes as one of his improvements, was in
practice in the old miracle plays, and his further pretention to having
reduced the number of acts from five to three had been done long before
by Avendano. Indeed it is possible that Cervantes produced no more than
a number of respectable pieces which gained their full mead of
popularity; and we know that his rate of payment, which averaged 800
reals per play, was equal to that received by Vega at any period of his
career. But of his dramas only two have outlived their day--_La
Numancia_ and _El Trato de Argel_.
_La Numancia_, a play dealing with the famous siege of Numantia by the
Romans, was subsequently acted at Zaragoza, in 1808, to inspire the
besieged inhabitants to a last desperate effort, a device which
succeeded so well that the French were driven from the battlements in
the very moment of victory, and the city was saved. _El Trato de Argel_,
in which Cervantes stages episodes in his captivity in Algeria, is a
poorly-constructed, ineffective, and tedious piece of work, which gives
one furiously to think that if the plays of our author won favour, it
could only have been at a time when competition was weak or
non-existent. Matos Fragoso, a dramatist who flourished a century later,
alludes to the “famous comedies of the ingenious Cervantes,” but of
contemporary criticism we have none; and Cervantes, in his prologue to
his _Eight Comedies and Eight Interludes_, published in 1614, claims for
his plays, with characteristic reticence: “They all ran their course
without hisses, cries, or disturbances. They were all repeated without
receiving tribute of cucumbers or any other missiles.” Of the lost _La
Confusa_ (The Perplexed Lady), the dramatist speaks with particular
satisfaction as ranking “good among the best of the comedies of the
Cloak and Sword, which had been, up to that time, acted.” Well, the
Spaniards are a conservative people, and to-day one may witness in that
country, performances of stage plays that are listened to without the
disconcerting accompaniment of the hurtling cucumbers, but which in an
English theatre would be received with all manner of unfriendly
disapprobation.
As a playwright, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly refuses to take Cervantes
seriously, and he asserts that it “requires the eye of faith to see any
high form of dramatic talent in the examples which have come down to
us.” But even as Richilieu plumed himself more upon his small gift as a
poet than his genius as a statesman, and as Napoleon turned from the
planning of world conquests to revise the regulations of the Theâtre
Française, so Cervantes appears to have been observed with an ambition
to shine in the realms of theatrical art. He was, as his biographer
points out, ready at the invitation of
[Illustration]
the manager to supply “tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,
pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral ... and so contagious, so
irresistible was his sublime self-confidence, that he actually persuaded
managers into a belief in him.” And, despite the modesty of his prefaces
there is no grounds for challenging the truth of Mr. Kelly’s conclusion
that Cervantes was immensely proud of his dramatic work. “No man,” says
this writer, “was more sublimely confident of the sincerity of his own
mission; no man more certain that he deserved success. Years afterwards,
when he had found his true way, when the fame of the author of _Don
Quixote_ was gone abroad in every land, he still turned his wistful eyes
to the memory of the days when he had hoped to win immortality upon the
stage. Nor does he ever seemed to have imagined that the cause of
failure lay in himself. Even his hopeful spirit was a little staggered
by the knowledge that his plays could get no hearing. That was a fact
which no amount of self-delusion could blink; and Cervantes accounted
for it by assuming, not that his plays were poor, but that he had fallen
on evil days.”
Cervantes, according to Mr. Watts’s computation, was writing for the
stage two years before Lope de Vega made his appearance as a dramatist.
But the younger man carried everything in the theatrical world before
him from the first. He came, and saw, and conquered, and Cervantes was
swept from the arena by his triumphant onrush. “I gave up the pen and
comedies,” Cervantes admits, “and there entered presently that prodigy
of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and assumed the dramatic throne. He
subjected all the actors, and placed them under his jurisdiction. He
filled the world with comedies--suitable, felicitous, and
well-worded--and so many that those in writing exceeded 10,000 sheets,
all of which have been represented.” Cervantes scarcely overstated the
fecundity of his rival. Vega flooded the theatres of Spain with an
unending stream of plays of every description, and Montalvon records of
this prodigy that he could turn out a comedy of more than 2,400 lines,
complete with plot, dialogue, and stage directions, in twenty-four
hours. In forty years he wrote upwards of eighteen hundred three-act
comedies, besides poems, stories, and other literary exercises, of
which, outside the little circle of savants and students, not
half-a-dozen are to-day remembered even by name. Unless he was really
the author of the false second part of _Don Quixote_, it may be said
that not a line of Lope de Vega’s prodigious output is now either read
or discussed.
With the star of Lope de Vega in the ascendant Cervantes found his stage
occupation gone, and he appears to have cast about for some other
employment that would enable him to support his household. While he was
turning out plays at the rate of eight to ten a year, his income, if not
large, was at least sufficient for his modest requirements; but the
[Illustration]
possibility of being able to make a competence by his pen in any other
branch of letters impressed him so little that he removed his family to
Seville, and re-entered the king’s service in a civil capacity. The next
twenty years were to be the hardest and the leanest in his hard, lean
life, and during all this time he wrote little and published nothing.
His appointment as a commissary is signed 12th June, 1588, and by virtue
of his office he was engaged in the purchase of grain and oil for the
provisioning of the fleets and armaments of the Indies. Many receipts,
invoices, and official papers written out by Cervantes in a clear, bold
hand are in existence, though not a line of his other manuscripts has
been preserved. His official duties were uncongenial and poorly paid,
and in 1590 he addressed the memorial to the king, which amplifies and
confirms our record of his military service. In this memorial, he “prays
and beseeches humbly, so far as he can, that your Majesty should bestow
on him the favour of a place in the Indies, of the three or four which
are now vacant, one of them the accountantship of the new kingdom of
Granada, or the governorship of the province of Soconuso in Guatemala,
or treasurer of the galleys of Carthagena, or magistrate of the city of
La Paz.” If the king considered this petition seriously, and examined
the qualifications that Cervantes possessed for the discharge of
treasury or accountancy duties, and if he came to the conclusion that
such offices could be more capably filled by other and less deserving
men, the world will scarcely question his judgment. For although our
author emerged from all his misfortunes with an honourable name and an
unblemished reputation, it must be confessed that the incapacity he
betrayed in the execution of his official tasks proved him unequal to
the responsibilities of a more exalted official position. His naturally
liberal disposition, his unmethodical habits, and his quixotic
confidence in his fellow-men, were so many disabilities in the equipment
of a commissary and tax-collector under Philip II.
The good nature and bad luck which at all times militated against the
success of Cervantes, thwarted his civil aspirations; but his first
incarceration, which occurred in 1592, arose from an excess of zeal on
behalf of the Royal Treasury. He overlooked the important fact that the
clergy were exempt from taxation, and for the heinous offence of laying
an embargo on wheat belonging to a priest, he served a term of three
months in the prison of Castro del Rio, of Ecija. In 1595 he won the
prize of three silver spoons for the best set of verses written in
honour of San Jacinto on the occasion of his canonisation at Zaragoza;
and in the following year he was again thrown into prison, this time
through the defalcation of an agent, by whom he remitted a sum of 7,400
_reals_ from Seville to Madrid. As his official salary was only 3,000
_reals_ a year, such a liability must have appeared to him to be
practically indischargeable. But by the recovery of 2,600 _reals_
[Illustration]
from the estate of his defaulting agent, Cervantes obtained his liberty;
and although he was re-arrested at a later period for delay in his
repayments of the balance, his personal rectitude was in no way
impugned.
But while his days were full of petty duties and financial troubles, he
appeared to have found leisure for literary exercises, and there can be
no doubt but that during these dead years he wrote the majority of his
novels. If, however, he attempted to find a publisher for his work his
efforts were ineffectual, and his fortunes fell to such a low ebb that
he was dependant at times upon the benevolence of his friends for the
necessities of life. Two sonnets, which he wrote about this period, are
considered the best examples of his skill in this style of composition
that have come down to us. In the one he ridicules the incredible delay
of the great Duke of Medina Sidonia in coming to the relief of Cadiz
after that city had been destroyed by the English, under Lord Howard of
Effingham and the Earl of Essex, and in the other he satirises the
extravagant splendour and “profane magnificence” which was lavished on
the catafalque of Philip II. in Seville.
The exact date on which Cervantes made his home in La Mancha, and the
circumstances which governed his change of habitation, are unknown. That
he had resigned, or lost, his post of commissary is evident, since we
find him employed by the Grand Priory of San Juan, in the collection of
overdue rents in the neighbourhood of Argamasilla. The exercise of such
a calling would naturally make him unpopular with the local community;
but whether his duties would in themselves bring him under the notice of
the authorities, or whether, as it is said, he supplemented his
unwelcome office by satirising the chief citizens, it is practically
certain that he was seized and imprisoned for several weeks. In a letter
he wrote to an uncle praying for assistance in this new affliction, he
says, “Long days and troubled nights are wearing me out in this cell, or
I should say cavern”; and if the underground cellar in the _Casa de
Medrano_, which is still pointed out to visitors, was the scene of his
durance, his condition was not overstated. _Don Quixote_ was, it is
generally believed, “engendered in this prison,” but since the cell is
too dark for the exercise of penmanship, it may be presumed that the
author whiled away his solitude by moulding and rehearsing the scenes in
his mind. But it is as well to bear in mind that Mr. Kelly has cast
grave doubts upon the authenticity of this letter. The original is
unknown; Sánchez Liaño himself, who is responsible for the story, states
that he only had a copy of it; the fact that it was written from
Argamasilla is unsupported; and his biographer asserts that there is not
a jot of absolute evidence to prove that Cervantes ever suffered
imprisonment at Argamasilla at all. But though the story rests chiefly
upon tradition, it has a savour of veracity about it; and while it
neither adds to or detracts
[Illustration]
from the fame of Cervantes, it is one of those stories which the public
will not lightly relinquish.
Near by the house in the _Casa de Medrano_ stands the parish church of
Argamasilla, where, in one of the side chapels, hangs a picture,
representing a lady and gentleman kneeling devoutly before a vision of
the Virgin. The gentleman has a typical Spanish caste of countenance,
with high cheek bones and lantern jaws, a dust complexion, wandering
eyes, and large moustachios. The inscription beneath the portraits
explains that the gentleman had been cured by Our Lady of a mental
affliction, and that the young, and not uncomely, lady by his side was
his niece. The donor of the picture, whose lineaments are portrayed
therein, was one, Rodrigo Pacheco, who was the owner of the house in the
_Casa de Medrano_ at the time that Cervantes sojourned in La Mancha. It
was probably by Pacheco’s order that Cervantes was lodged in the dungeon
beneath his house. Upon these traditional particulars the good people of
Argamasilla have based their legend, which identifies Cervantes with
their city, and makes one of their leading citizens the original of _Don
Quixote_. If the legend be true, and there would appear to be no
substantial reason for doubting it, we may dismiss the idea that the
author had departed from the principles he laid down as worthy of
adoption by all writers. Supposing that he selected this individual as
the victim of his satirical bent, we may learn from the affection with
which he develops the character of the afflicted knight, how little of
rancour and uncharitableness had place in his heart. It must be conceded
that he made merry at the expense of the Manchegans and their customs,
but he did it with so glad a humour, and such gentle sarcasm, that La
Mancha to-day is proud of the fame it has achieved in his immortal
pages, and reveres the memory of their adopted townsman as piously as if
he were their patron Saint. But if, as internal evidence gives some
excuse for believing, _Don Quixote_ was commenced before the death of
Philip II., this interesting and circumstantially-proved legend becomes
no more than a literary tradition, since that monarch had died before
Cervantes quitted Seville.
The only authenticated detail that we have of Cervantes’ career between
1598 and 1602 is this incident of his imprisonment at Argamasilla. When
next we hear of him, in 1603, he is among the unrewarded soldiers and
unrecognised men of letters who crowded the outer precincts of the Court
of Philip III., at Valladolid. The king, though priest-ridden, and
lacking in force of character, was not devoid of a kindly tolerance for
learning, but the crumbs of royal favour were distributed by the
ostentatious and uncultured Duke of Lerma, who despised literature, and
had his own ends to serve by the allocation of the kingly bounty. From
Lerma, as far as his biographers can discover, Cervantes received
nothing; but in the Duke of Béjar--a nobleman, distinguished in arms and
in poesy, and in his
[Illustration]
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 of _Don 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
described _Don 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 in 1605. 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 of _Don 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
[Illustration]
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 a _Don 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 of _Don 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 reading _Don 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 almost universal applause which
welcomed the appearance of _Don 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 that _Don Quixote_ was 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
[Illustration]
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 writing _Don 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 of _Don 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 too small 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 which _Don Quixote_ brought 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 of _Galatea_ employed it as his model, and eulogised in
high terms such examples of the genre as _Amadis of Gaul_ and _Palmerin
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
[Illustration]
any other object in composing _Don Quixote_ than 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 of _Don 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 to _Don 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 still stand
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 of _Don 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
[Illustration]
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 of some 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
[Illustration]
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, that the 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 which threatens 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 those devilish 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 of _Don 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
[Illustration: 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 of _Don 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 on _Spain_, “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, the perpetual 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 upon _Don 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
[Illustration: 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 of _Don 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 of
_Don 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-natured eulogies 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 to _Novelas 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 of _Novelas Exemplares_ has 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
of _Don Quixote_ in 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, could not 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 to _Novelas
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 of _Don
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 was pointed 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
[Illustration: 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 of _Novelas 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 of _Don 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 of _Novelas Exemplares_--because “there is not one
of them from which some profitable example cannot be drawn”--were
written many years before, but there seems 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.” After _Don 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 Parnaso_ and 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.” The _Journey
Around Parnassus_ is written in imitation of a poem, now forgotten, by
the Italian author, Cesare Caporali, and it serves as a record of the
names of a 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 the
_Calle 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 a _real_ for postage on a letter which contained nothing
more valuable than an anonymous, defamatory sonnet upon the author of
_Don 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
the pieces 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 of _Don Quixote_, or even of the _Numancia_ of
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 written _Don
Quixote_ in 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
[Illustration: 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 of _Don 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 of _Don 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 years before 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 of _Don 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
[Illustration: 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 false _Don Quixote_ thus 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
[Illustration: 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 the _Biblioteca Nacional_ shall 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 wrote _La Picara Justina_; and the
great Lope de Vega himself have all been laid under the suspicion of
being the writer of the false _Don 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 his
_magnum 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 high places; 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 false _Don 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. “Till _Don Quixote_
appeared 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 kill _Don Quixote_ by 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
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE ABSORBED IN THE READING OF BOOKS ON KNIGHT
ERRANTRY.
_Paris, 1845._
_41st Edition._]
between Lope and the public;” and so, though other biographers may
canvass every contemporary writer and weigh the relative qualifications
and provocations of envious poets and resentful prelates, Mr. Kelly
refuses to look beyond Lope de Vega for the author of the false Second
Part of _Don Quixote_.
Germond de Lavigne, with a sophistry, inspired, we may suppose, by
admiration of Vega, declared that we owe a debt to Avellaneda, seeing
that but for him _Don Quixote_ would have remained a mere _torso_,
instead of a complete work. Such a piece of special pleading is, of
course, fallacious, since Cervantes had pledged himself to produce a
second part, and the book must have been nearing completion, in 1614,
when Avellaneda’s travesty was published. It is evident that he had
progressed as far as the nineteenth chapter, and was within ten chapters
of the end, when the Tarragonese bastard was put into circulation, and
Cervantes, changing his published plan of procedure, turns Don Quixote
from his purpose of entering the lists at Zaragoza and hurries him off
to Barcelona. With this counterfeit upon the market Cervantes could no
longer pursue the leisurely tenor of his way, and the injury he had
received spurred him to new flights of pungent humour. But although our
author in this Second Part of _Don Quixote_ deals with his enemy with
dignified restraint, and introduces him in person to drub him with the
jester’s bladder, rather than becudgel him with his own club, we descry
in the dedication of his last book of comedies (1615) how keenly he
felt the smart.
Avellaneda had charged him with disparaging the innumerable “stupendous
comedies” of Lope de Vega, and of persecuting the Inquisition. Cervantes
straightly denies both these imputations, declaring that he “adores
Vega’s genius, and admires his works continuous and virtuous,” and
protests that he is not likely to persecute any ecclesiastic--above all,
if he is a familiar of the Holy Office to boot. “But,” he writes in this
dedication to the Conde de Lemos, “that which I cannot help feeling is
that he charges me with being old and maimed, as though it had been in
my power to stop time from passing over me, or as though my deformity
had been produced in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion which
ages past and present have seen, or those to come can hope to see. If my
wounds do not shine in the eyes of him who looks on them, they are at
least honoured in the estimation of those who know where they were
acquired; for the soldier looks better dead in battle than alive in
flight. And so much I am of this opinion that if now I could devise and
bring about the impossible, I would rather be present again in that
wonderful action than now be whole of my wounds, without having taken
part therein.”
With this manly and characteristic protest we may, I think, close the
volume of this scandal, and press forward to the near close of
Cervantes’ career.
[Illustration: SANCHO’S DILIGENCE IN ENCHANTING DULCINEA.
_London, 1858._
_47th Edition._]
In this same dedication there is the intimation that _Don Quixote_ is
“waiting in the Second Part, booted and spurred, to do homage” to the
Conde de Lemos, and before the end of the year (1615) the completion of
the great work was published. The book was printed by Juan de la Cuesta,
who had printed the First Part, and Francisco de Robles was again
associated with Cervantes as publisher. The public received the new
volume with the same enthusiasm that they had extended to its
predecessor, and although posthumous criticism has in some instances
refused to regard it as equal in merit to the first instalment--Charles
Lamb went out of his way to refer to it as “that unfortunate Second
Part”--the general reading public of successive generations have agreed
in regarding it as the most diverting half of the novel. Cervantes
himself has declared, through the mouth of the scholar, Samson Carrasco,
that second parts are never good, but this rule found a striking
exception in the case of his own work. With increasing years the author
betrayed no sign of flagging vivacity; experience had lent him a surer
hand in the development of character; and while the Knight of La
Mancha’s adventures take on a less fantastic guise, and his reflections
increase in wisdom, the wit of Sancho Panza broadens and ripens, and the
humanity of the immortal comrades acquires a deeper note. Lamb wrote of
“that unworthy Duke,” and he condemned the Duchess as “most
comtemptible.” Many readers of Cervantes must at times have rebelled
against the ingenuity with which the Don’s ducal entertainers conspired
to make sport of their guest, and have deplored the means they employed
in accomplishing their purpose. But if Cervantes had not had resource to
these exalted conspirators we should have lost the passages between
Sancho and the Duchess, the story of the squire’s government, and the
course prescribed for the disenchantment of Dulcinea del Tobosco--surely
among the most richly humorous chapters in the whole story!--and,
finally, the death-bed scene, with the old knight-errant, disillusioned,
but resigned, dictating his will with his weeping friends around him,
and his faithful squire beseeching him “not to die this time, but even
take my counsel, and live on many years,” since “the maddest thing ever
a man can do is to die!”
Yet in the face of facts there are critics who would argue that the
Second Part was inferior to the First, both as a work of art and as a
commercial venture. It is certainly incorrect to say, as one writer
does, that “when the second part of _Don Quixote_ came before the world
it was universally felt that in nearly every respect it betrayed a great
falling off.” Nor can the following criticism, taken from the same
source, be accepted: “The fire of imagination, which had sustained him
throughout the earlier cycle of adventures, now began to burn low; there
was less wit in the speeches, less vivacity in the conversation, less
humour and pathos in the situations and incidents. He perceived that he
had a great
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE BECOMING AWARE OF THE CURDS IN HIS HELMET.
_Copenhagen, 1865-1869._
_54th Edition._]
rival to contend with, and that rival was himself. He had, properly
speaking, exhausted his originality in the first part, together with his
store of situations, his brilliancy of wit, his freshness of imagery,
his peculiar power of delineating singular characters, and placing them
in singular circumstances. There is wit in the second part, but it is
pale; comedy, but it is forced; vivacity, but it is artificial. You
discover nearly everywhere comparative poverty of invention, but a
perpetual tendency to imitate himself.”
What shall be said of _Don Quixote_ that has not been said already? or
why should we marvel because different men have read it differently? Is
it the joyfullest of books, as Carlyle calls it, or do we find it, with
Sismondi and De Amicis, the most melancholy of histories? Humour it has,
the ripest and rarest that has ever been translated into our language,
and pathos that touches the depths of the human emotion. Sir Walter
Scott speaks of Cervantes’ humour as “the very poetry of the comic,
founded on a tender sympathy with all forms of existence, though
displaying itself in sportive reflection, and issuing, not in
superficial laughter, but in still smiles, the source of which lies far
deeper”; yet others have declared that it lacks “a thread of pathos.”
Edward Fitzgerald praised it as “the most delightful of books.” Dr.
Johnson declared it to be one of the three books written by a man which
the reader wishes to be longer. From Swift to Heine, from Charles Lamb
to Sainte-Beuve, from Johnson to Schlegel, the literary giants of all
ages and all nationalities have joined in praise of _Don Quixote_.
In England and France and Germany it is still regarded as a romance,
unapproachable in its _genre_; a work of true genius, supreme,
imperishable. But in Spain it has passed from romance, in the national
mind, into the realms of reality. In La Mancha the people point to the
windmills as proof of the Don’s existence; in Argamasilla they show you
the house in which the Knight lived, and draw attention to the ruins of
a large, round window, out of which the curate and the barber consigned
Don Quixote’s library to the flames. Here is the sluggish Guadiana, in
which Sancho Panza’s daughter washed the family linen, and the parish
church which guards the veritable portrait of Rodrigo Pacheco, _alias_
Alonzo Quixano, known to fame as Don Quixote de la Mancha, and variously
styled the Knight of the Lions and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.
These good, simple Manchegans, who are too wise to mistake _Don Quixote_
for clumsy satire, and recognise the nobility, and wisdom, and virtue of
the gallant, fantastic knight-errant, who is “nobly wild--not mad,” have
not failed to detect the moral for the age, indeed for all ages, which
Mr. Austin Dobson has used as the kernel of his sonnet on the Don:
“Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest!
Yet would to-day, when courtesy grows chill
And life’s fine loyalties are turned to jest,
Some fire of thine might burn within us still!
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest,
And charge in earnest--were it but a mill!”
[Illustration: WHAT PASSED BETWEEN DON QUIXOTE AND HIS SQUIRE.
_Madrid, 1868._
_58th Edition._]
Cervantes survived the publication of _Don Quixote_ some six
months--long enough to see the false Second Part routed and extinguished
by his own all-conquering creation. Inspired to renewed activity by the
chorus of praise which greeted his latest production, we find him, in
his 69th year, arranging his plans for the output of three more
works--_The Weeks of the Garden_, the second part of the _Galatea_, and
the _Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda_, which latter was to be “either
the worst or the best of books of entertainment in our language.” The
sequel to the _Galatea_ and the projected _Weeks of the Garden_ were
probably never commenced, although he refers to them both again in the
prologue to _Persiles_, which was written on his death-bed, and
published by his widow in 1617.
Although _Persiles and Sigismunda_ has been extravagantly praised by
Valdivielso--“Of the many books written by Cervantes,” he says, “none is
more ingenious, more cultured, or more entertaining”--and although it
has gone into more editions than any of the minor works of its author,
this return to the monstrous artificial style which he had been the
means of destroying, is a paradoxical and incomprehensible variant of
his genius. In the last chapter of _Don Quixote_ he had caused the
Knight to aver: “I now declare myself an enemy to Amadis de Gaul, and
his whole generation; all stories of knight-errantry I detest.” Yet
within a few months of writing this passage he was engaged in
completing a conglomeration of adventures, experienced by a pair of
impossible lovers, under every kind of impossible condition. The Spanish
critics admire the book for the beauty and correctness of the language,
and the grace and charm of its style, but, as a work of creative art, it
lacks invention and originality; and, as a piece of fiction--a “pastime
for the melancholy and mopish soul”--it is tedious and ineffective.
But because it carries with it the biographically-conceived dedication
to the Conde de Lemos, we are grateful to Cervantes for his last
romance. In it we read of the return journey from the famous town of
Esquívias--“famous for a thousand things, one for its illustrious
families, and another for its most illustrious wines”--on which
Cervantes tells us he was overtaken by the grey student on the little
she-ass. His chance companion having addressed him as “the all famous,
the merry writer, and, indeed, the joy of the muses,” they resumed their
journey, in the course of which the infirmity of the merry writer was
touched upon. “At which,” says Cervantes, “the good student checked my
mirth in a moment: ‘This malady is the dropsy, which not all the water
of ocean, let it be ever so sweet drinking, can cure. Let your worship,
Señor Cervantes, set bounds to your drink, not forgetting to eat, for so
without other medicine you will do well.’ ‘That many have told me,’
answered I, ‘but I can no more give up drinking for pleasure than if I
had been born for nothing else. My life is slipping away, and, by the
diary my
[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO, ON THE ROAD TO TOBOSO.
_Paris, 1868._
_59th Edition._]
pulse is keeping, which at the latest will end its reckoning this coming
Sunday, I have to close my life’s account. Your worship has come to know
me in a rude moment, since there is no time for me to show my gratitude
for the goodwill you have shown me.’”
In a letter to his “very illustrious lord,” the Archbishop of Toledo,
dated 26th March, 1616, Cervantes wrote: “If for the malady which
affects me there could be any relief, the repeated marks of favour and
protection which your illustrious person bestows on me would be
sufficient to relieve me: but, indeed, it increases so greatly that I
think it will make an end of me, although not of my gratitude.” In his
valedictory dedication to the Conde de Lemos he speaks of himself as
“with one foot in the stirrup, waiting the call of death.” “Yesterday,”
he continues, “they gave me extreme unction, and to-day I am writing.
The time is short, my agonies increase; my hopes diminish.” And then
comes his brave, blithesome, parting message: “Good-bye, humours;
good-bye, pleasant fancies; good-bye, merry friends; for I perceive I am
dying, in the wish to see you happy in the other life.”
This was his last greeting to his patron, and to the world that had
learned to love him so well. His dedication is dated 19th April, and on
23rd April, 1616--nominally on the same day that Shakespeare died--the
illustrious Spaniard heard the summons of Death, and passed into the
great beyond. He was buried as a member of the Franciscan Order in the
graveyard of the Convent in the Calle del Humilladero, to which his
daughter Isabel shortly afterwards retired. No stone marked the place
where the body of Cervantes was laid, but we know that his widow, his
daughters, and the other members of his family were laid to rest in the
same hallowed ground, and that in 1635, when the Trinitarian sisters
removed themselves to the Calle de Cantaranas, the remains of the
departed members of their Order were collected into a common heap and
carried by the sisterhood to their new Convent. The manuscripts, the
pictures, even the bones of the author of _Don Quixote_ are thus lost to
the knowledge of the world. But the man lives again to-day in the
commendations of his generals, in the testimony of his brothers-in-arms,
in the evidence of his devoted fellow-captives in Algeria, and in his
own modest biographical memoranda. We recognise him in the brilliant
description of him that has been penned by the Spanish biographer,
Aribau, as the man who “passed through the world as a stranger whose
language was not understood,” announcing “the dawn of a civilisation
which broke long afterwards.”
But even as Cervantes has given us the best picture of himself, he has
given us also the best epithet that has ever been penned concerning him.
He was thinking not of himself, but of Chrysostom, when he uttered the
eulogy in which we may apostrophise the body of Cervantes: “This body
...
[Illustration: DEATH OF DON QUIXOTE.
_Paris, 1858._
_60th Edition._]
was one enlivened by a soul which Heaven had enriched with the greatest
part of its most valuable graces ... who was unrivalled in wit,
matchless in courteousness, a phœnix in friendship ... prudent and grave
without pride, modest without affectation, pleasant and complaisant
without meanness; in a word, the first in everything good, though second
to none in misfortune.”
THE PROVERBS OF CERVANTES.
It has been declared, without provoking contradiction, that Spanish
proverbs are undoubtedly wiser and wittier, as well as more numerous
than those of any other language. At least a dozen collections of these
tabloids of wisdom have been published in Spain; the largest, which was
compiled by Juan de Yriarte, containing no fewer than 24,000 proverbs.
At least half-a-dozen volumes were in existence in the time of
Cervantes; and from these sources it may be presumed he went for much of
the sage and pointed witticisms with which Sancho Panza garnishes his
conversation. Though it was not the purpose of the author of _Don
Quixote_ to select the most characteristic and representative specimens
in the language, he has brought together in his book some 300 examples
of the _refranes_ which were then in current use; and from those which
he considered worthy of quotation I have made the following selection:
“The devil lurks behind the cross.”--I. 6; II. 33, 47.
“What is good is never too abundant.”--I. 6.
“Many go for wool, and come back shorn.”--I. 7; II. 14, 43, 67.
“One swallow does not make a summer.”--I. 13.
“There is no recollection which time does not obliterate, nor grief
which death does not destroy.”--I. 15.
“There is nothing certain in this life.”--I. 15.
“What hath been, hath been.”--I. 20.
“All will come out in the washing.”--I. 20, 22; II. 36.
“Do not ask as a favour what you can obtain by force.”--I. 21.
“When one door is shut, another is opened.”--I. 21.
“Let him be wretched who thinks himself so.”--I. 21.
“No discourse that is long can be pleasing.”--I. 21.
“Man goes as God is pleased.”--I. 22.
He who sings frightens away his ills.”--I. 22.
“‘No’ contains the same number of letters as ‘Ay.’”--I. 22.
“To do good to low fellows is to throw water into the sea.”--I. 23.
“The absent feel and fear every ill.”--I. 25.
“Many think to find bacon where there are not even hooks to hang it
on.”--I. 25; II. 55, 65, 73.
“He who does not intend to pay is not troubled in making his
bargain.”--I. 28.
“The danger is generally in the delay.”--I. 29, 46; II. 41, 71.
“A bird in the hand is better than an eagle on the wing.”--I. 31;
II. 12, 71.
“We must suit our behaviour to the occasion.”--I. 31; II. 3.
“To know where the shoe pinches.”--I. 32.
“You often find a good drinker under a bad cloak.”--I. 33.
“He who gives quickly, gives twice.”--I. 34.
“There is a great distance between said and done.”--I. 46.
“Diligence is the mother of success.”--I. 46.
“Every one is the son of his own works.”--I. 47.
“Since I am a man, I may come to be Pope.”--I. 47.
“When the head aches, all the members feel it.”--II. 2.
“Honours change manners.”--II. 4.
“Everyone is as God has made him, and very often worse.”--II. 4.
“He who covers thee, discovers thee.”--II. 5.
“The virtuous maid and the broken leg must stay at home.”--II. 5,
49.
“Better a daughter ill-married than well kept.”--II. 5.
“Great deeds are reserved for great men.”--II. 5.
“He who cannot take advantage of fortune when it comes, should not
complain if it passes him by.”--II. 5.
“The counsel of a woman is not worth much, but he who does not take
it is worth nothing.”--II. 7.
“Many littles makes much.”--II. 7.
“He who shuffles the cards does not cut them.”--II. 7.
“The lamb goes (to the butcher) as soon as the sheep.”--II. 7.
“Tell me with whom you live, and I will tell you what you
are.”--II. 9.
“Truth always gets above falsehood, as oil above water.”--II. 9.
“Not with whom thou art bred, but with whom thou art fed.”--II. 10,
32, 68.
“Madness must necessarily have more followers than
discretion.”--II. 13.
“Those who seek adventures do not always find happy ones.”--II. 13.
“It is other people’s burdens that kill the ass.”--II. 13.
“If the blind lead the blind, both are in danger of falling into
the ditch.”--II. 13.
“There is no road so level as to have no rough places.”--II. 13.
“To know how many three and two make.--II. 13, 36.
“The lance never blunted the pen, nor the pen the lance.”--II. 16.
“Between a woman’s Yes and No I would not venture to stick the
point of a pin.”--II. 19.
“For God who sends the wounds, sends the cure.”--II. 19.
“Love looks through spectacles which make copper appear gold,
riches poverty, and weak eyes distil pearls.”--II. 19.
“Every sheep with his fellow.”--II. 19.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”--II. 20.
“Let him preach well who lives well.”--II. 20.
“He who does not rise with the sun, does not enjoy the day.”--II.
23.
“He who errs and repents recommends himself to God.”--II. 28.
“To talk of a rope in the house of one who has been hanged.”--II.
28.
“Where you least expect it up starts the hare.”--II. 30.
“He who lives a long life, must needs go through many evils.”--II.
32.
“Associate with good men and thou wilt be one of them.”--II. 32.
“The little birds have God for a caterer.”--II. 33.
All is not gold that glitters.”--II. 33.
“Four yards of Cuenca cloth keep one warmer than as many of fine
Segovia serge.”--II. 33.
To begin an affair is to have it half finished.”--II. 33.
“At night all cats are grey.”--II. 33.
“Nobody is born learned; and (even) bishops are made of men.”--II.
33.
“I am an old dog, and ‘tus, tus,’ will not do for me.”--II. 33, 69.
“A good name is better than great riches.”--II. 33.
“The corpse of the Pope takes no more ground than that of the
sacristan.”--II. 33.
“The fire gives light, and the flames brightness, and yet they may
both destroy us.”--II. 34.
“We make less account of that which costs us little.”--II. 34.
“A good heart overcomes evil fortune.--II. 35.
“The ass laden with gold mounts lightly up the hill.”--II. 35.
“There is nothing that costs less than civility.”--II. 36.
“There is no avenging yourself upon a rich man.”--II. 37.
“You may lose as well by a card too much as by a card too
little.”--II. 37.
“Make yourself into honey and the flies will devour you.”--II. 43,
49.
“To ‘Get out of my house!’ and ‘What do you want with my wife?’
there is no answer.”--II. 43.
“We are all equals when we are asleep.”--II. 43.
“The foolish sayings of the rich man pass for saws in
society.”--II. 43.
“As much as you have, so much you are worth.”--II. 43.
“Heaven always favours good desires.”--II. 43.
“To whom God wishes well, his house knows it.”--II. 43.
“There can be no true pleasantry without discretion.”--II. 44.
“We do not know what is good until we have lost it.”--II. 48.
“It is better for him whom God helps than for him who always rises
early.”--II. 49.
“She who desires to see, desires also to be seen.”--II. 49.
“When God sends the dawn, He sends it for all.”--II. 49.
“As long as I am warm, let them laugh (who will).”--II. 50.
“Ingratitude is the child of pride.”--II. 51.
“When you are at Rome, do as you see.”--II. 54.
“Man proposes and God disposes.”--II. 55.
“Until death, all is life.”--II. 59.
“He who falls to-day, may rise to-morrow.”--II. 65.
“Said the pot to the kettle, ‘Get away, blackface!’”--II. 67.
“What the eyes see not, breaks not the heart.”--II. 67.
“The righteous sometimes suffer for sinners.”--II. 67.
“Do away with the motive, and you do away with the sin.”--II. 67.
“He who rails is not far from forgiving.”--II. 70.
CHRONOLOGICAL REPERTOIRE OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE LIFE OF CERVANTES.
------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+------------------
DATE. | PLACE. | DOCUMENTS. | First
| | | Publisher.
------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+------------------
1547, | Alcala de | Baptismal certificate of Miguel |
October 9 | Henares | de Cervantes | Montiano
| | |
1569 | Madrid | “Stanzas on the death of H.M.” |
| | (Account of ... funeral of | Juan Lopez
| | Queen Isabella of Valois) | de Hoyos
| | |
1572, | Sicily | Delivery of three escudos to | Navarrete
April 29 | | Cervantes, in the Third |
| | Figueroa |
| | |
1573 and | Naples | Deliveries to Cervantes, soldier |
1574 | | in the company of Ponce de |
| | Léon | Navarrete
| | |
1576, | Madrid | Amplification of the information |
Nov. 9 | | relating to the captivity of |
| | Rodrigo and Miguel de |
| | Cervantes, requested by their |
| | father (No. 12) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1576, | Madrid | Royal letters patent granting to |
Dec. 6 | | Dona Leonor sixty escudos to | Spanish
| | assist in ransoming her son | Academy
| | |
1577 | Algiers | Letter, in triplets, from Cervantes |
| | to Mateo Vazquez | Moran
| | |
1578, | Madrid | Inquiry requested by Rodrigo |
March 17 | | de Cervantes, concerning the |
| | services of his son Miguel | Navarrete
| | |
1578, | Madrid | Undertaking of Rodrigo de |
June 9 | | Cervantes, Dona Leonor de |
| | Cortinas and Dona Magdalena |
| | P. de S., their daughter, to |
| | pay to Hernandode Torres all |
| | that the ransom of Miguel de |
| | Cervantes might cost above |
| | the 200 ducats that Dona |
| | Andrea de Cervantes had |
| | undertaken, and 1,077 reals |
| | which the authorisers had |
| | already paid (No. 15) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1578, | Madrid | Certification by the Duke of Sesa |
July 25 | | of the services of Cervantes | Navarrete
| | |
1579, | Madrid | Memorial of Dona Leonor to the |
March 29 | | Council of Cruzada, relating | Spanish
| | to her son’s ransom | Academy
| | |
1579, | Madrid | Receipt for 300 ducats handed |
July 31 | | by Dona Leonor and Dona |
| | Andrea to Fr. Juan Gil and |
| | Fr. Anton de la Bella to aid |
| | in the ransom of Cervantes | Pellicer
| | |
1579, | Madrid | Royal letters patent postponing |
August 19 | | the permission given to Dona | Review
| | Leonor to take out goods | Archives
| | |
1580, | Madrid | Royal letters patent allowing |
Jan. 17 | | Dona Leonor to take goods |
| | from Valencia to Algiers to |
| | assist the rescue of her son |
| | Miguel |
| | |
1580, | Algiers | Certificate of ransom of Miguel |
Sept. 19 | | de Cervantes, native of Alcala |
| | de Henares ... son of |
| | Rodrigo de Cervantes and |
| | Dona Leonor de Cortinas, and |
| | a resident of Madrid | Flores
| | |
1580, | Algiers | Judicial inquiry in Algiers before |
Oct. 10 | | Fr. Juan Gil, with witnesses |
| | testifying to the noble and |
| | heroic behaviour of Cervantes |
| | during his captivity | Navarrete
| | |
1580, | Madrid | Inquiry into the captivity of |
Dec. 1 | | Miguel de Cervantes, requested |
| | by his father, Rodrigo |
| | de Cervantes | Perez Pastor
| | |
1580, | Madrid | Inquiry into the captivity of |
Dec. 18 | | Cervantes, at his own request, |
| | autograph | Perez Pastor
| | |
1580, | Madrid | Declaration of Cervantes given |
Dec. 19 | | at the judicial inquiry into |
| | the captivity of Rodrigo de |
| | Chabes | Perez Pastor
| | |
1581, | Algiers | Attestation of the steps taken |
March 5 | | for the ransom of the captives | Perez Pastor
| | |
1581, | Fomar | Delivery of 100 escudos to |
May 21 | | Cervantes by Philip II. for |
| | his military services | Moran
| | |
1582 | Paris | Mention of the ransom of 186 |
| | captives, among them | Spanish
| | Cervantes | Academy
| | |
1584, | | Letters of Sanctoyo to Mateo |
April | | Vazquiez, recommending the
| | Lic. Cervantes | Gayangos
| | |
1584, | Esquívias | Certificate of marriage of |
Dec. 12 | | Cervantes with Dona Catalina | Vicente de
| | de Palacios | los Rios
| | |
1585, | Esquívias | Certificate of baptism of Isabella |
March 30 | | Chiticalla | Foronda
| | |
1585, | Madrid | Arrangement of Rodrigo de |
Sept. 10 | | Cervantes and his sister, Dona |
| | Magdalena de Cervantes, with |
| | Napoleon Lomelin, in regard |
| | to some taffeta stuff pledged |
| | by M. de Cervantes, her |
| | brother (No. 25) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1585, | Madrid | Receipt of Miguel de Cervantes |
Dec. 30 | | to Diego de Alburquerque and |
| | Miguel Angel Lombrias (No. 26) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1586, | Esquívias | Deed of settlement granted by |
August 9 | | Cervantes to his wife | Pellicer
| | |
1586, | Esquívias | Power of attorney granted to |
August 9 | | Cervantes by his mother-in-law | Foronda
| | |
1587 | Seville | Receipt from paymaster, which |
| | shows that Cervantes was |
| | collecting wheat commissioned |
| | by Valdivia | Moran
| | |
1588, | Seville | First commission conferred on |
Jan. 22 | | Cervantes by Antonio de |
| | Guevara | Moran
| | |
1588, | Seville | Power of attorney authorised |
Feb. 24 | | by Cervantes to Francisco de |
| | Silva to petition for the |
| | absolution of the excommunication |
| | of Ecija | Asensio
| | |
1588, | Seville | Security authorised by J. |
June 12 | | Cabeza de Vaca in favour |
| | of Cervantes, commissary of |
| | Guevara | Navarrete
| | |
1588, | Seville | Second commission conferred by |
June 15 | | Guevara on Cervantes | Moran
| | |
1588, | Seville | Various accounts of Cervantes, |
June and | | and payments made to him |
December | | for his collecting in Ecija, |
| | Marchena, &c. | Navarrete
| | |
1588, | Seville | Commission warrant issued by |
July 9 | | Guevara in favour of Cervantes |
| | for collecting in Ecija | Mainez
| | |
1588, | Seville | Commission given by Guevara |
Sept. 5 | | to Cervantes to take oil from |
| | Marchena | Moran
| | |
1588, | Seville | Fresh commissions from |
Oct. 17 | | Guevara to Cervantes, to take |
and 20 | | corn and 2,500 arrobas more |
| | of oil from Ecija | Moran
| | |
1589, | Seville | Sworn account given by Cervantes |
Feb. 6 | | of the expenses for |
| | grinding in Ecija | Guardia
| | |
1589, | Seville | Liquidation of accounts presented |
April 2 | | by Cervantes, and |
| | signed receipt | Navarrete
| | |
1589, | Seville | Power of attorney authorised |
June 26 | | by Cervantes in favour of |
| | M. Sta. Maria for suits and |
| | payments | Asensio
| | |
1589, | Seville | Close of account of Cervantes |
June 26 | | with Tomas Gutierrez | Asensio
| | |
1590, | Carmona | Petition of Cervantes to the |
Feb. 12 | | Council of Carmona for permission |
| | to take away oil | P. Fita
| | |
1590, | Seville | Commission conferred by |
March 23 | | Miguel de Oviedo on Cervantes |
| | for collections in |
| | Carmona | Moran
| | |
1590, | Seville | Receipt |
March 27 | | authorised by Cervantes |
| | to Diego de Zufre | Asensio
| | |
1590, | Madrid | Memorial presented by Cervantes |
May 21 | | to the King, enumerating |
| | services rendered, and |
| | asking for a post in the Indies. |
| | The decree respecting this |
| | memorial, given on June 6, |
| | says: “Let him look for |
| | something in which the |
| | favour may be made.” | Navarrete
| | |
1590, | Seville | Sworn account, presented by |
August 27 | | Cervantes, of the wheat, &c., |
| | he received in 1587-88-89, by |
| | commission from Valdivia and |
| | Guevara | Moran
| | |
1591, | Seville | Sworn accounts, presented by |
April 2 & | | Cervantes, of the oil collected |
Oct. 20 | | by order of Guevara | Moran
| | |
1591, | Estepa | Decree of the Council of Estepa, |
Oct. 15 | | agreeing to hand to Cervantes |
| | wheat and barley for his | Asensio to
| | collections | Apraiz
| | |
1592, | Pto. Sta. | Letter of Isunza to the King, |
Jan. 7 | Maria | assuring him that Cervantes |
| | was a man of honour, and |
| | worthy of confidence | Apraiz
| | |
| | |
1592, | Estepa | Session of the Council of Estepa |
Jan. 9 | | to hand wheat to Benito, | Asensio to
| | assistant to Cervantes | Apraiz
| | |
1592, | Seville | Power of attorney from Cervantes |
June 27 | | to the Ruy Saez for | Asensio to
| | receiving wages from Isunza | Apraiz
| | |
1592, | Seville | Receipt authorised by Cervantes |
July 14 | | to Ruy Saez. | Asensio
| | |
| | |
1592, | Seville | Security of Cervantes, by J. |
August 5 | | Fortuni | Asensio
| | |
1592, | Seville | Document in which Cervantes |
August 5 | | acquired the wheat and barley |
| | previously in the hands of |
| | Salvador Foro, removed from |
| | Feba in 1591 by his assistant, |
| | Benito | Asensio
| | |
1592, | Seville | Certificate of Cervantes _re_ |
August 8 | | same | Apraiz
| | |
1592, | Seville | Contract with Osorio for composing |
Sept. 19 | | six comedies | Asensio
| | |
1592, | Ecija | Francisco Mascoso, Mayor of |
Sept. 19 | | Ecija, Judge of Commissaries, |
| | commands Cervantes to |
| | restore 300 fanegas of wheat, |
| | which he was supposed to |
| | have sold without being ordered |
| | to do so | Moran
| | |
1592, | Madrid | Memorial of Cervantes to prevent |
Dec. 1 | | Isunza from being |
| | molested, Fora having asked |
| | for the seizure of his goods | Moran
| | |
1593, | Seville | The Auditors order Cervantes |
Jan. 4 | | to give an account of what |
| | Benito had collected | Moran
| | |
1593, | Seville | Sworn statement of oil collected | Moran
Jan. 17 | | |
1593, | Seville | Commission conferred by Oviedo, |
July 7 | | the Purveyor, on Cervantes, |
| | which he executed in |
| | Seville, Llerena, Villagarcia, |
| | and other places |
| | |
1593, | Seville | Receipt authorised by Cervantes |
July 8 | | to Andrés Cerio | Asensio
| | |
1593, | Seville | Power of Attorney authorised |
July 12 | | by Cervantes in favour of |
| | Juan de Salinas | Asensio
| | |
1593, | Seville | Another commission conferred |
August 19 | | by Oviedo on Cervantes | Moran
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Appearance of Cervantes presenting |
July 1 | | Francisco de Gasco |
| | as security for his commission |
| | of storehouses and excise in |
| | the kingdom of Granada | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Security authorised by Gasco | Navarrete
August 1 | | |
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Cervantes asks that Gasco’s |
August 20 | | security be taken as sufficient | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Undertaking authorised by Cervantes | Navarrete
August 21 | | and his wife that their |
| | persons and effects shall be |
| | responsible for his payments |
| | of excise |
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Royal letters patent commissioning |
August 23 | | Cervantes to collect |
| | the thirds and excise | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Baza | Execution put in by Cervantes |
Sept. 9 | | in Baza | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Malaga | Letter of Cervantes to the King |
Nov. 17 | | giving an account of receipts in |
| | Baza, Guadix, &c., and asking for |
| | twenty days’ extension in which |
| | to collect the remainder |
| | autograph | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Madrid | Royal decree in reply to a letter |
Nov. 29 | | of Cervantes on 8th Oct., in |
| | which he gave his reasons for not |
| | collecting excise at Almunecar, |
| | Motril, and Solobrena | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Ronda | Attestation by the notary, |
Dec. 9 | | Sebastian de Montalban, of |
| | payments received by Cervantes | Navarrete
| | |
1594, | Seville | Receipt authorised by Cervantes to |
Dec. 15 | | J. Leclercque | Navarrete
| | |
1595, | Madrid | Royal decree to the judge at |
August 7 | | Olmedillas de Sevilla for him to |
| | take goods in lieu of payment by |
| | the bankrupt Simon Freire of the |
| | 7,400 reals which Cervantes had |
| | handed him | Navarrete
| | |
1597, | Madrid | Royal decree, addressed to Seville, |
Sept. 6 | | ordering Cervantes to give |
| | securities for his appearance in |
| | Madrid within twenty days | Navarrete
| | |
1597, | Madrid | Royal decree to Judge Vallejo, of |
Dec. 1 | | Seville, ordering that “on |
| | Cervantes giving legal securities |
| | ... he be set free from the |
| | prison where he lies,” in order |
| | to go to court and submit |
| | accounts of what he owed | Navarrete
| | |
1598, | Madrid | Anastro is charged by the Auditors |
March 31 | | to give information of |
| | monies received by Cervantes |
| | in 1591 and ’92, when he was |
| | Isunza’s commissary | Navarrete
| | |
1598, | Seville | Sworn statement of collections |
April 28 | | in Feba, Foro being in charge | Navarrete
| | |
1599, | Madrid | Guardianship of Isabel de |
August 9 | | Saavedra given to Bartolomé |
| | de Forres (No. 36) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1599, | | Contract of Isabel de Saavedra |
August 11 | | to serve in the house of Dona |
| | Magdalena de Sotomayor |
| | (No. 37) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1600, | Seville | Document of which Cervantes |
May 2 | | was a witness | Asensio
| | |
1601, | Valladolid | Statement made by auditors of |
Sept. 13 | | accounts relating to the receipt |
| | of the 7,400 reals which |
| | Cervantes had handed to |
| | Simon Freire | Navarrete
| | |
1603, | Valladolid | Statement of auditors regarding |
Jan. 24 | | the sum owing by Cervantes | Navarrete
| | |
1603, | Valladolid | Receipt written (?) by Cervantes, |
Feb. 8 | | signed by his sister, Dona |
| | Andrea, for import of work |
| | she had done for the Marquis |
| | of Villafranca | Navarrete
| | |
1604, | Madrid | Settlement of the book of the |
May 26 | | Hermandad de Impresores, |
| | Printers’ Brotherhood, which |
| | shows that on that date two |
| | “Quixotes” had been received | Perez Pastor
| | |
1605, | Valladolid | Power of attorney from Cervantes |
April 2 | | to Francisco de Robles |
| | and two residents of Lisbon |
| | that they may take action |
| | “against any persons in |
| | Lisbon who may have printed, |
| | or desire to print Quixote.” | Perez Pastor
| | |
1605, | | Proceedings in Valladolid in |
June 27 | | connection with the death of |
| | Don Caspar de Ezpeleta | Pellicer
| | |
1607, | Madrid | Inventory of effects of Francisco |
Nov. 23 | | de Robles, in which is |
| | included a slip relating to a |
| | loan of 450 reals to Miguel |
| | de Cervantes (No. 40) | Perez Pastor
| | |
| | |
1608, | Madrid | Marriage contract between |
August 28 | | Isabel de Cervantes and Luis | Archives
| | de Molina | Review
| | |
1608, | Madrid | Action against Cervantes and |
Nov. 6 | | Gasco to extort accounts | Navarrete
| | |
1608, | Madrid | Receipt for part of the dowry of |
Dec. 8 | | Isabel de Cervantes, authorised |
| | by Luis de Molina |
| | (No. 42) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1609, | Madrid | Nuptial benediction of Isabel |
March 1 | | de Cervantes (No. 43) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1609, | Madrid | Reception of Cervantes as “a |
April 17 | | slave of the Holy Sacrament” |
| | in the brotherhood of that |
| | name | Navarrete
| | |
1609, | Madrid | Dona Andrea de Cervantes and |
June 8 | | Dona Catalina de Salazar |
| | take the veil in the Third |
| | Order of S. Francisco | Pellicer
| | |
1609, | Madrid | Death certificate of Dona |
October 9 | | Andreadde Cervantes in the |
| | parish of S. Sebastian, Madrid | Pellicer
| | |
1610, | Madrid | Dona Catalina takes the vow in |
June 16 | | the Third Order of S. Francisco | Pellicer
| | |
1610, | Madrid | Will of Dona Catalina de |
June 16 | | Salazar Vozmediano, wife of |
| | Cervantes (No. 44) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1611, | Madrid | Death certificate of Dona Magdalena |
Jan. 28 | | de Jésus, sister of | Francisco
| | Cervantes, in the parish of | Asenjo
| | S. Sebastian | Barbieri
| | |
1611, | Madrid | Receipt authorised by Luis de |
Nov. 29 | | Molina for 36,753 reals received |
| | from Cervantes and |
| | J. de Urbina as part of the |
| | dowry of his wife, Isabel de |
| | Saavedra (No. 45) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1613, | Madrid | Rights of the “Original |
Sept. 9 | | Novels” ceded by the author |
| | to Francisco de Robles |
| | (No. 47) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1613, | Madrid | Power of attorney from Francisco |
Sept. 28 | | de Robles to Geraldo ... |
| | to take action against any |
| | who in Zaragoza had printed, |
| | or desired to print, the |
| | “Original Novels” (No. 48) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1615, | Madrid | Annotation in the Printers’ |
Nov. 1 | | Brotherhood book of two |
| | copies of chapters(?) of the |
| | “Comedies of Cervantes,” |
| | received from Alonso Martin |
| | (No. 52) | Perez Pastor
| | |
1616, | Madrid | Letter of Cervantes to the Archbishop |
March 26 | | of Toledo, Autograph | La Barrera
| | |
1616, | Madrid | Vow of Cervantes in the Third |
April 2 | | Order of S. Francisco | Pellicer
| | |
1616, | Madrid | Death certificate of Cervantes, |
April 23 | | in the parish of S. Sebastian, |
| | Madrid | Nasarre
| | |
1617, | Madrid | Annotation in the Printers’ |
April 2 | | Brotherhood book of two |
| | copies of chapters (?) of “The |
| | Works of Persiles,” received |
| | from Juan de la Cuesta |
| | (No. 53) | Perez Pastor
| | |
------------+------------+---------------------------------------+------------------
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DON QUIXOTE.
EDITIONS IN SPANISH.
FIRST PART.
1. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1605.
4to. [Registered in the “Colegio de la Madre de Dios ...
Universidad de Alcala,” ... 1st December, 1604. “Por Juan de la
Cuesta.”]
2. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Lisbon, 1605.
4to. (Registered 26th February, 1605.)
3. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Lisbon, MDCV.
8vo. (Licensed 27th March, 1605.)
4. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1605.
4to. (With privilege.)
5. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Valencia, 1605.
8vo. (18th July.)
6. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Valencia, 1605.
8vo.
7. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Brussels, 1607.
8vo.
8. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1608.
4to.
9. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1610.
8vo.
10. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Brucelas, 1611.
8vo.
11. Primera parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Brucelas, 1617. 8vo.
SECOND PART.
12. Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1615. 4to.
13. Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Brucelas, 1616. 8vo.
14. Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Valencia, 1616. 8vo.
15. Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Lisbon, 1617. 4to.
COMPLETE WORK.
16. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Barcelona, 1617.
Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Barcelona, 1617. Two vols. 8vo.
17. Primera y Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1637. 4to.
Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1636. 4to.
18. Primera y Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1647. 4to.
19. Parte Primera y Segunda del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1655. 4to.
20. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Bruselas, 1662. Two vols. 8vo.
21. Parte Primera y Segunda del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1662. 4to.
22. Parte Primera y Segunda del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1668. Including Parte Segunda de el Ingenioso
Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1662. 4to.
23. Parte Primera y Segunda de Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1668. 4to.
24. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Bruselas, 1671. Two vols. 8vo.
25. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote. Amberes
1673. Two vols. 8vo.
26. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Parte Primera. Madrid, 1674. Two vols. 4to.
Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote. Madrid,
MDCLXXIV. Two vols. 4to.
27. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Amberes, MDCXCVII. Two vols. 8vo.
28. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Barcelona, 1704. 4to.
29. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1706. Two vols. 4to.
30. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1714. Two vols. 4to.
31. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Amberes, MDCCXIX. Two vols. 8vo.
32. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote. Madrid,
1723. Two vols. 4to.
33. Vida i Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote. Sevilla. Two
vols. 4to. Dedication dated 1723. Madrid, licensed 1731. Confusion
unexplained.
34. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1730. Two vols. 4to.
35. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1735. Two vols. 4to.
36. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Leon de Francia, MDCCXXXVI. Two vols. 8vo.
37. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Londres, MDCCXXXVIII. Four vols. Large 4to.
38. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid. Two vols. 4to.
39. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Haia. Four vols. 8vo.
40. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1750. Two vols. 4to.
41. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, MDCCL. Two vols. 4to.
42. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, MDCCLI. Two vols. 4to.
43. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Barcelona. Four vols. 8vo. The date of this edition is in
confusion. Apparently, it was expected to be issued in 1750, and
was delayed until 1755.
44. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Amsterdam and Lipsia, MDCCLV. Four vols. 8vo.
45. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Tarragona, 1757. Four vols. 8vo.
46. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Barcelona, 1762. Four vols. 8vo.
47. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1764. Two vols. 4to.
48. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1765. Four vols. 8vo.
49. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Amberes, MDCCLXX. Four vols. 8vo.
50. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, MDCCLXXI. Four vols. 8vo.
51. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, MDCCLXXVII. Four vols. 8vo.
52. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quijote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1777. Four vols. 8vo.
53. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid,
MDCCLXXX. Four vols. 4to.
54. Historia del Famoso Cavallero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Londres, MDCCLXXXI. Three vols. 4to.
55. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid,
MDCCLXXXII. Four vols. 8vo.
56. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote. Madrid,
MDCCLXXXII. Four vols. 8vo.
57. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote. Madrid, MDCCLXXXVII. Six
vols. 8vo.
58. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid,
MDCCXCVII. Six vols. 16mo.
59. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid,
MDCCLXXXXVII. Five vols. 8vo.
60. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid,
MDCCLXXXXVIII. Nine vols. 12mo.
61. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Leipsique, 1800.
Six vols. 12mo.
62. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Historia de Don Quixote de la Mancha.
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1804. Six
vols. 8vo.
[This edition has three title pages, and is perhaps part of an
edition intended to comprise the whole of the works of Cervantes.]
63. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Berlin, 1804-05.
Six vols. 8vo.
64. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Burdeos, 1804.
Four vols. 8vo.
65. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Madrid, 1808. Four vols. 8vo.
66. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. London, 1808.
Four vols. 12mo.
67. Historia del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Barcelona, 1808. Six vols. Obl. 12mo.
68. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Leon, 1810. Four
vols. 8vo.
69. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote. London, 1814. Four vols.
12mo.
70. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Paris and
Londres, 1814. Seven vols. 12mo.
71. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Burdeos, 1815.
Four vols. 8vo.
72. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Leipsique,
MDCCCXVIII. Six vols. 16mo.
73. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1819.
Five vols. 8vo.
74. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1825.
Four vols. 12mo.
75. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1825. Six
vols. 16mo.
76. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1826.
Two vols. 8vo.
77. Obras Escogidas de Miguel de Cervantes. Paris, 1826. 16mo. El
Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha.
[Six volumes are occupied by _Quijote_ of the ten which form the
collection.]
78. Obras Escogidas de Cervantes.--El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote
de la Mancha. Paris, 1827. 16mo. [Reprint of the foregoing on much
finer paper.]
79. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1827.
32mo. Miniature edition.
80. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1827. Six
vols. 12mo.
81. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. To which is
added:
Obras Escogidas de Miguel de Cervantes. Madrid, 1829. Four vols.
8vo.
82. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1829. Four vols. 8vo.
83. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1831.
Four vols. 16mo.
84. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Zaragoza, 1831. Two vols.
8vo.
85. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Berlin, 1831.
Six vols. 16mo.
86. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1832.
Four vols. 12mo.
87. El Ingenioso Hidalgo, &c. Paris, 1832. Seven vols. 16mo.
88. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona, 1832.
Six vols. 32mo.
89. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1832. Two
vols. 32mo.
90. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona, 1832.
Six vols. 8vo.
91. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Mexico, 1833. Five vols. 8vo.
92. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1833.
Six vols. 4to.
93. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Paris, 1835. 8vo.
94. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Leipzig, 1836. 8vo.
95. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Boston, 1836.
Two vols. 8vo.
96. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Zaragoza, 1837. Two vols.
8vo.
97. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Second Edition. Boston, 1837.
Two vols. 8vo.
98. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris,
MDCCCXXXVIII. Four vols. 16mo.
99. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
MDCCCXXXIX. Two vols. 4to.
100. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Second edition.
Barcelona, MDCCCXL. Two vols. 4to.
101. Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote
... Madrid, 1840. Four vols. 12mo.
102. Don Quijote de la Mancha. With Life of the Author. Paris,
1840. 8vo.
103. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Barcelona,
1841. Three vols. 12mo.
104. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Boston, 1842.
Two vols. 8vo.
105. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Mexico,
MDCCCXLII. Two vols. 4to.
106. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1844.
4to.
107. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Madrid, 1844. Four vols.
12mo.
108. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. New edition. Madrid, 1844.
Two vols. 8vo.
109. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1844.
12mo.
110. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona, 1845. Six
vols. 16mo.
111. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona,
1845-46. Three vols. 8vo.
112. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1845.
8vo.
113. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Madrid, 1845. Two vols.
8vo.
114. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles. First vol.
Works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Madrid, 1846. 4to.
115. El Injenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1847.
4to.
116. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona, 1848. Two
vols. 4to.
117. Obras de Cervantes.... Madrid, 1849. 4to. [Second edition of
Vol. I. of the Bibl. de Autores Españoles, published in 1846.]
118. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1851.
4to.
119. Biblioteca Universal.--El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la
Mancha. Madrid, 1851. Fol.
120. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles.--Obras de Cervantes. Madrid,
1851. 4to.
121. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote.... Mexico, 1852-53. Two
vols. 8vo.
122. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1853.
Four vols. 4to.
123. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Nueva-York
(Appleton), 1854. 12mo.
124. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote.... Sevilla, 1854. Two vols.
4to.
125. Obras de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. First vol.: Don
Quijote. Paris, 1855. 8vo.
126. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1855. Two vols. 4to.
127. El Quijote. Abbreviated text. Madrid, 1856. 8vo.
128. Don Quijote de La Mancha ... Nueva-York (Appleton), 1857. 8vo.
129. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1857. Two vols. 8vo.
130. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1859.
Two vols. 8vo. (Exact copy of preceding.)
131. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1859. Two vols. Large folio.
132. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Paris (1860?). 12mo.
133. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Nueva-York
(Appleton), 1860. 8vo.
134. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Leipzig, 1860.
Two vols. 8vo.
135. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1861.
8vo.
135_a_. El Quijote. Second edition of abbreviated text. Madrid,
1861. 8vo. See No. 127.
136. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1862.
Two vols. 8vo.
137. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1862.
Two vols. Folio.
138. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Argamasilla de
Alba, 1863. Four vols. 16mo. Printed in the house which had been
the prison of Cervantes. This edition, edited by Hartzenbusch, is
of the utmost value in comparing variations of the text from the
editions published in the lifetime of Cervantes.
139. Obras Completas de Cervantes ... El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don
Quijote de la Mancha ... Argamasilla de Alba, 1863. Four vols. 4to.
Edited by Hartzenbusch. Printed in the house where Cervantes was
imprisoned.
140. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona and
Madrid, 1863. 4to.
140_a_. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Valparaiso, 1863. 8vo.
141. Obras de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Third Edition. Madrid,
1864. 4to. This is a reprint of the edition of 1849. See No. 117.
142. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Nueva-York (Appleton), 1864.
8vo.
143. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1864.
4to.
144. Biblioteca Ilustrada ... El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de
la Mancha. Madrid, 1864. 4to.
145. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1865.
4to. Fourth edition of preceding.
146. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
MDCCCLXV. Folio. Issued by the Literary Society “La Maravilla.”
147. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Leipzig, 1866.
Two vols. 8vo.
148. El Quijote de los Niños ... Abreviado. Madrid, 1867. 8vo.
149. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1868.
Two vols. 4to.
150. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Boston (De
Vries), New York (Lockwood), 1868. Two vols. 12mo.
151. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Mexico, 1868-69. Two vols.
8vo.
152. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1869. Two vols. 8vo.
153. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Glasgow (Ogle),
1871. 8vo.
154. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. London (Cassell), 1871. 8vo.
(Stereotype edition of the preceding.)
155. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Valencia, 1872.
Two vols. 8vo.
156. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Nueva-York (Appleton), 1872.
8vo.
157. El Quijote de los Niños, Abreviado. &c. Fifth edition. Madrid,
1873. 8vo. Reprint of No. 148.
158. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Paris, 1873. 8vo.
159. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... London (Chatto and
Windus), 1874. 8vo. (Copy of Glasgow edition, 1871.)
160. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Leipzig, 1874. Two vols.
8vo. (Reprint of 1866 edition.)
161. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Paris, 1875. 4to.
(Reprint of 1861 edition.)
162. Biblioteca Ilustrada. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote.
Madrid, 1875. 4to. (Though called _fifth_ edition, this is a
reprint of 1865 edition.) See No. 145.
163. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1875.
8vo.
164. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Illustrated
with a map and magnificent engravings. Madrid, 1875. Two vols.
Folio.
165. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona, 1876. Two
vols. Folio.
166. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Cadiz, 1877.
Five vols. Typographical reproduction of the first editions of
First and Second Parts, 1605-1615, with Life of Cervantes,
Appendices, Notes, &c.
167. El Ingenioso Hidalgo ... First Part. Madrid, 1877. 16mo. Forms
part of _Biblioteca de la Infancia_. Part II. appeared in 1879, and
other parts in 1884.
168. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Paris, 1878. 8vo.
169. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha ... Barcelona,
MDCCCLXXIX. Two vols. 4to.
170. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... New York (Appleton),
1879. 12mo. Reprinted from American edition of 1860.
171. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Paris, 1879.
12mo.
172. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1879. Two vols. Folio. Second edition of that published in 1876.
173. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Sevilla, 1879.
16mo.
174. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona. Two
vols. Folio. Monumental edition.
175. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote.... Madrid, 1879. 4to.
_Sixth_ edition. See No. 162.
176. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Published for
the first time at Alcalá de Henares (birthplace of Cervantes).
Alcalá de Henares, 1879. Four vols. 8vo.
177. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
MDCCCLXXX. Folio.
178. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1880. Two vols. Folio. (Reprint of No. 172.)
179. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1880.
Two vols. 16mo.
180. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
MDCCCLXXX. Two vols. Folio. Magnificent edition. Superb chromos
(46).
181. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1881. (Reprint of No. 178.)
182. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1881. 8vo.
183. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1881. Two vols. 8vo.
184. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Leipzig, 1882. Two vols.
8vo. (Reprint from edition of 1874.)
185. El Ingenioso Hidalgo, &c. (Re-issue of No. 181.)
186. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Paris, 1882. 12mo.
(Reprint of No. 171.)
187. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona, 1883. Two
vols. 8vo. (Reprint of No. 187.)
188. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... Barcelona, 1884. Two
vols. 8vo. (Reprint of No. 175.)
189. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Valencia, 1884.
4to. (Professing to be the text of first edition of 1605, &c., but
with the text mutilated.)
190. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Sevilla, 1884.
(Madrid, printed 1879.) Two vols. 16mo.
191. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Zaragoza, 1885.
Four vols. 32mo. (Microscopic type.)
191_a_. Don Quijote. Nueva-York (Appleton), 1885. 4to.
191_b_. El Quijote ... Madrid, 1885. 8vo ... abreviado.
192. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1886.
Four vols. 16mo. (Appeared as a feuilleton.)
193. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote ... 1887. 4to. (Re-issue of
No. 175.)
194. El Quijote de la juventud. Paris, 1887. 8vo. (Extracts for
children.)
195. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1887.
Two vols. 8vo.
196. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Barcelona,
1888. Two vols. 8vo. Similar, but with many additions, to the
octavo editions published at Barcelona in 1881, 1883, 1884.
197. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha. Madrid, 1887.
Two vols. Folio.
197_a_. Don Quijote ... Sevilla, 1889. Two vols.
198. Facsimile of the First Edition of Don Quijote. Both parts. The
first complete book produced by photo-typography, with notes by
Hartzenbusch. Barcelona, 1871-1873. The production of these volumes
in facsimile was justly regarded as a most notable achievement.
199. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote. Barcelona, 1892-93. Two
vols. 4to.
200. Don Quijote. Valencia, 1892. Two vols. 8vo.
201. Don Quijote. Madrid, 1893. 4to.
202. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Madrid, 1894. Eight vols.
8vo.
203. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Barcelona, 1894. 8vo.
204. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Barcelona, 1892-95. Six
vols. 4to.
205. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Barcelona, 1894-95. Folio.
206. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Barcelona, 1895. 4to.
207. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote. Leipzig, 1887-94. Four vols.
8vo.
208. Vida y Hechos del Ingenioso Caballero Don Quixote.... Without
date or place; considered to be a pirated edition of that issued at
Madrid in 1730. 4to.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF DON QUIXOTE.
1. The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don
Quixote of the Mancha. Printed by William Standsby, for Ed. Blount
and W. Barrett. 1612. 4to. Translated by Thomas Shelton. The first
translation of the First Part of “Quixote.”
1_a_. The History of Don Quichote. _The first part._ Printed for
Ed. Blounte. Translated by Thomas Shelton. London, 1612. 4to.
The Second Part of the History of the Valorous and Witty
Knight-Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha. London, 1620. 4to.
2. The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight-Errant, Don Quixote
of the Mancha. London, 1652. Second edition of Shelton.
3. The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight-Errant, Don
Quixote, of the Mancha. London, 1675. 4to.
4. The History of the most Renowned Don Quixote of Mancha: And his
Trusty Squire Sancho Pancha. Translated by J. Philips. London,
1687. 4to.
5. The Delightful Hystory of Don Quixot, the most Renowned Baron of
Mancha ... Lond., 1689. 12mo. Translated by Philips.
6. The much-esteemed History of Don Quixote De la Mancha. London,
1699. 12mo. (An abbreviation.)
7. The History of the most Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la
Mancha. London, 1700. Two vols. 8vo. Partly translated by Capt.
John Stevens.
8. The History of the Ever-renowned Knight Don Quixote. London
(1700?). Two vols. 4to. First edition of the translation of Peter
Motteux.
9. The History of the Renown’d Don Quixote De la Mancha. Translated
by Several Hands. London, 1700. Four vols. 12mo.
10. The History of the most Ingenious Knight Don Quixote ... now
revised by Capt. John Stevens. London, 1706. Two vols. 8vo.
11. The History of the Renown’d Don Quichote. Translated by Peter
Motteux. London, 1712. Four vols. 12mo.
12. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote. Translated by Peter
Motteux. London, 1719. Four vols. 12mo.
13. The much-esteemed History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Two
parts. London, 1721. 12mo. (An abbreviation.)
14. The most admirable and delightful History ... of Don Quixote de
la Mancha. London, 1721. 12mo. (An abbreviation.)
15. The ... Knight ... Don Quixote. London, 1721. 12mo. Catalogue
of British Museum.
16. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote ... Translated by
Motteux. London, 1725. Four vols. 12mo.
17. The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight-Errant Don Quixote
of the Mancha. Translated by Shelton. London, 1731. Four vols.
12mo.
18. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote. Translated by P.
Motteux. London, 1733. Four vols. 12mo.
19. Don Quixote ... Translated by Shelton. London, 1740. Four vols.
12mo.
20. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Translated by Charles Jarvis, Esq. London, 1742. Two vols. 4to.
21. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Translated by P. Motteux. London, 1743. Four vols. 12mo.
22. Don Quixote ... Translated by Jarvis. London, 1747. Four vols.
12mo.
22_a_. The Life of ... Don Quixote. Translated by C. Jarvis.
Dublin, 1747. Four vols. 12mo.
23. Don Quixote ... Translated by Motteux. Glasgow, 1747 or 1757.
Four vols. 12mo.
24. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote ... Translated by C.
Jarvis. London, 1749. Two vols. 8vo.
25. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote ... Translated by the
late P. Motteux. London, 1749. Four vols. 24mo.
26. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote.
Translated by T. Smollet, M.D. London, 1755. Two vols. 4to.
27. Don Quixote ... Translated by Jarvis. London, 1756. Two vols.
4to.
28. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1761. Two vols. 12mo.
29. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. Dublin, 1765. Four vols. 12mo.
30. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1756. Two vols. 4to.
31. Don Quixote ... Revised by Ozell. Edinburgh, 1766. Four vols.
12mo.
32. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1766. Four vols. 12mo.
33. The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Translated by George Kelly, Esq. London, 1769. Four vols. 12mo.
34. The History ... of the Renowned Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1770. Four vols. 12mo.
35. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux. Revised
by Ozell. Glasgow, 1771. Four vols. 12mo.
36. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by C. H. Wilmot,
Esq. London (1774?). Two vols. 4to.
37. The Principal Adventures of Don Quixote. (A reproduction of the
drawings of Coypel. Engraved in 1746.) London, 1775. Folio.
38. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1776. Four vols.
12mo.
39. The Life of ... Don Quixote. London, 1778. 8vo. (Abridged.)
40. The much-esteemed History of ... Don Quixote. Glasgow, 1784.
12mo.
41. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet. London,
1782. Four vols. 12mo.
42. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1786. Four vols. 12mo.
43. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1792. Four vols. 12mo.
44. The History of Don Quixote. London, 1792. 8vo.
45. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet. London,
1793. Four vols. 12mo.
46. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet. London,
1794. 8vo.
47. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet. London,
1795. 8vo.
48. Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet. Dublin, 1796. Four vols.
8vo.
49. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Dr. Smollet. London (1797?). Five vols. 12mo.
49_a_. History ... of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet.
London, 1799. Four vols. 8vo.
50. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Dr. Smollet.
London (1801?). Four vols. 12mo.
51. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1801. Four vols. 8vo.
52. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux.
Edinburgh, 1803. Four vols. 12mo.
53. The Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet.
Glasgow, 1803. Four vols. 12mo.
54. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Smollet.
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, 1803. Four vols. 12mo.
55. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1809. Four vols. 16mo.
56. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1809. Two vols. 4to.
57. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1810. Four vols. 8vo.
58. The Life and Exploits of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1811. Four vols. 12mo.
59. The History of Don Quixote. Edinburgh, 1815. Four vols. 12mo.
60. The History and Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. New York, 1814. Four vols. 12mo.
61. The History and Adventures of ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1818. Two vols. 24mo.
62. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Edited by Miss Mary Smirke (from
translations of Shelton, Motteux, Jarvis, and Smollet?) London,
1818. Four vols. 8vo.
63. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translation of Jarvis. London, 1819.
Four vols. 8vo.
64. The Life and Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha. London,
1820. Four vols. 8vo.
65. Don Quixote Abridged. London, 1820. 8vo.
66. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated
by Jarvis. London, 1821. Four vols. 12mo.
67. Don Quixote. London, 1821. Three vols. 8vo.
68. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, N.D. Four vols. 18mo.
69. The History of ... Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux.
Edinburgh and London, 1822. Five vols. 8vo.
70. Don Quixote ... Translated by Jarvis. London, 1824. Two vols.
12mo.
70_a_. Don Quixote ... Translated by C. Jarvis. London, 1825. Four
vols. 12mo. Reprint.
71. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
Exeter, 1828. Four vols. 16mo.
72. Don Quixote Abridged. London, 1831. 8vo.
73. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1831. Two vols. 12mo.
74. The History and Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by
Smollet. London, 1833. Three vols. 8vo.
74_a_. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote, 24 plates.
Cruickshank. London, 1833. Two vols. Small 8vo.
74_b_. Don Quixote ... London, 1834. 16mo. 15 Plates. Cruickshank.
75. Don Quixote. London, 1836. 4to. (Forming part of a publication
called “Works of Fiction.”)
76. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1837.
Three vols. 4to.
77. Don Quixote ... Translated by Jarvis. London, 1838. Three vols.
8vo.
78. The History of Don Quixote. Abridged from Smollet. Halifax,
1839. 16mo.
79. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis.
London, 1840. Four vols. 12mo.
80. Don Quixote de la Mancha. London, 1842. 8vo.
81. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1842.
Two vols. 4to.
81_a_. The Life and Exploits of Don Quixote Abridged. Pesth, 1846.
8vo. [English edition printed in Hungary, with a transliteration
for teaching English.]
82. Don Quixote. London, 1847. 8vo.
83. The History of Don Quixote. London and Boston, 1848. 8vo.
84. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1852. Two vols. 8vo.
85. Don Quixote. London, 1853. 8vo.
86. Don Quixote. New York, 1855. 12mo.
87. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1856. 8vo.
88. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London and New
York, 1858. 8vo.
89. Don Quixote. London, 1859. 4to.
90. Don Quixote. New York, 1860. 8vo.
91. The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote. Translated
by Motteux. Boston, 1865. Four vols. 8vo.
92. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London and New
York, 1866. 8vo.
93. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1866.
8vo.
94. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1869.
8vo.
95. The History of Don Quixote. London, 1864, Reprinted 1867, 1870,
1872, and 1876, 1878. 4to.
96. The Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London,
1870. 8vo.
97. The History of Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux. Boston,
1870. Four vols. 8vo.
98. The Story of the Don ... for our Young Folks. London, 1870.
8vo.
99. Adventures of Don Quixote. Edinburgh, 1870. 8vo.
100. The Adventures of Don Quixote. London, 1870. 4to.
101. The History of Don Quixote. London, 1870. 16mo.
102. The Story of Don Quixote and his Squire. London, 1871. 8vo.
103. The Wonderful Adventures of Don Quixote. Abridged by Sir
Marvellous Crackjoke. London (1872). 4to.
104. The History of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. New York,
1875. 12mo. (Abbreviated.)
105. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. Philadelphia, 1875. 12mo.
106. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. Philadelphia,
1876. 8vo.
107. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. New York,
1874-76. Two vols. 4to.
108. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. New York,
1877. Two vols. 4to.
109. Adventures of Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux. London
(1877?). 8vo.
110. Don Quixote. London, 1877. 8vo.
111. The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote....
Translated by Motteux. Edinburgh, 1879. Four vols. 8vo.
112. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1879. 8vo. Ibid.,
1880. Ibid., 1881. Excelsior series.
113. The Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote.... A new translation from
the Original of 1605 and 1615, by Alex. James Duffield. London,
1881. Three vols. 8vo. Dedicated to W. E. Gladstone.
114. The History of Don Quixote. Translated by Motteux. London,
1880-81. Four vols. 8vo.
115. The Achievements of ... Don Quixote de la Mancha. Translated
by Motteux. London, 1882. 8vo.
116. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1882. 4to.
117. The Adventures of Don Quixote for Young Readers. London, 1883.
4to.
118. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. Introduction by Henry
Morley. London, 1885. 8vo.
119. The George Cruickshank Edition ... Don Quixote. Translated by
Jarvis. London and New York, 1885. 8vo.
120. The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote.... A translation by John
Ormsby. London, 1885. 8vo.
121. The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote. Translated, with Notes
by H. E. Watts. London (Quaritch), 1888. Five vols. 4to.
122. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1890. Two vols.
8vo.
123. Don Quixote. Translated by Jarvis. London, 1892. 8vo.
124. The History of the Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La
Mancha. Translated by Motteux. London, 1892. Three vols. 8vo.
125. Don Quixote. Translated by H. E. Watts. London, 1895. Three
vols. 4to. Reprint of No. 121.
126. Don Quixote. Translated by John Ormsby. Edited by James
Fitzmaurice-Kelly. London, 1904. Four vols.
LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF
CERVANTES,
ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY.
1. Biblioteca Hisp., by Nicholas Antonius. Rome, 1676. Two vols.
Folio.
2. Anotaciones a la Historia de Don Quijote, by Dr. Bowles.
Salisbury, 1781. 4to.
3. Don Quijote (editions of), by Don Juan Pellicer. Madrid, 1797.
Five vols. 8vo. First vol. Bibl.
4. Allgemeines Bücher, by Hensius. Leipzig, 1812. Has a catalogue
of the works of Cervantes.
5. Manuel du Libraire, by Brunet. Paris, 1810, 1820, 1834, &c.
Three vols. 8vo.
6. Vida de Cervantes, by Navarrete. Madrid, 1819. 8vo. Has a
Bibliography. The standard work to date.
7. Manuel du Bibliophile, by G. Peignot. Dijon, 1823. Two vols.
4to. Vol. 2 has the Bibliography.
8. Catalogue of Books. Vincent Salva. London, 1826-29. 8vo, Copious
lists of the various editions of the works of Cervantes.
9. History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor. New York,
London, 1849-50.
10. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles. Vol. XXXIII. Madrid, 1854.
11. Bibliographers’ Manual, by W. T. Lowndes. London, 1858. English
editions of works of Cervantes.
12. Vida de Cervantes, by Don Jerónimo Morán. Madrid, 1863. With
Bibliography of works of Cervantes.
13. Siete Cartas Sobre Cervantes y el Quixote ... by M. Droap.
Cadiz, 1868. 4to.
14. La Revista de España. Vol. IX. Observaciones ... de Ingenioso
Hidalgo Don Quijote.... An erudite article on the earliest
editions.
15. Catálogo de Varias Obras ... referring to Cervantes. Sevilla,
1872. Folio. Concerning authors who have written upon the life and
works of Cervantes.
16. Boletín de la Reproducción Foto-Tipográfica de la Primera
Edicion de Don Quixote. With list of existing editions of Don
Quixote. Nos. 5 and 6, 1872.
17. Catalogo ... by Don Pedro Salva. Valencia, 1872. Two vols. 4to.
Spanish editions of the works of Cervantes.
18. Diccionario General ... by Don Dionisio Hidalgo. Madrid, 1872.
4to. (List of Spanish editions and translations of Don Quixote, in
Vol. V.)
19. Crónica de los Cervantistas. Cadiz, 1872. Bibl. of works of
Cervantes, with Notes.
20. Quaritch’s General Catalogue. London, 1872. 8vo. List of works
of Cervantes in various languages.
21. Brief hand-list of the Cervantes Collection presented to the
Birmingham Free Library, by W. Bragge, Esq., F.S.A. (This important
collection had 143 editions of Quixote in many languages,
sixty-four of the minor works, and sixty-nine works referring
directly to Cervantes. Unfortunately, the fire, occurring in 1879,
destroyed the greater portion of this inestimable collection.)
22. Dictionnaire Universal du XIXe. Siècle, by Larousse. Paris,
1866-78. Spanish editions, and translations of the works of
Cervantes.
23. Die Cervantes-Literatur in Deutschland, by Edmund Dorer.
Zürich, 1877-1879. 8vo. In this, the author aims at a complete
Bibliography of Cervantes.
24. Catalogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Library, bequeathed by
G. Ticknor to the Boston Public Library. Boston, 1879. 4to. An
important collection of the works of Cervantes.
25. Catálogo de la Biblioteca Cervántica de Leopoldo Rios.
Barcelona, 1888. 4to. Amongst the works of Cervantes in this
extraordinary and interesting collection are 172 editions of
_Quijote_ in Spanish, 123 in French, 71 in English, 39 in German,
13 in Italian, 9 in Dutch, 6 in Russian, 5 in Portuguese, 1 in
Catalan, 3 in Hungarian, 3 in Danish, 2 in Bohemian, 2 in Swedish,
2 in Greek, 1 in Polish, 1 in Servian, 1 in Croatian, 1 in Turkish,
and 1 in Finnish; total, 456 editions represented. In addition to
these, there are some 200 editions of his minor works, and 378
editions of works containing references to Cervantes. Since the
date of this catalogue, the number has been greatly augmented.
26. Catálogo de la Biblioteca Cervantina de Don José Maria Asensio
de Sevilla. Valencia, 1883. 4to. This collection of Don Asensio is
remarkable for the number and beauty of the rare editions of Don
Quixote, of which he possessed, in 1883, no less than 143 in
Spanish and other languages.
27. Nota de Algunos Libros, Articulos y Folletos Sobra la Vida y
las Obras de ... Cervantes. Sevilla, 1885. 8vo. One hundred copies
privately printed.
28. Bibliography of the Works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, by
Jas. Fitzmaurice-Kelly. London, 1892. (Occupies part of “The Life
of Cervantes.”)
29. Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de M. Ricardo Heredia, Comte de
Benahavis. Paris, 1891-94. 4to. (The library contains the
collection of the Biblioteca de Salvá, augmented by the Comte de
Benahavis.)
30. La Ilustración Artistica á Cervantes. Barcelona, 1895. Folio.
First part: Critical Biography. Second part: Bibliography. Third
part: Iconography. The second and third parts relating to the
un-illustrated and illustrated editions of the immortal _Don_.
31. Bibliografica Critica de las Obras de Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra, by Don Leopoldo Rius. Madrid, 1895, 1899. Two vols. Royal
8vo. This work is the first to contain a discerning criticism of
all editions of the productions of the foremost genius of Spanish
literature. The labour required to effect so excellent a result
must have been prodigious, occupying many years, and Don Leopoldo
Rius can only reap his reward in the thanks of the whole world.
COLECCIONES CERVÁNTICAS.
32. Biblioteca Cervántica de Don Isidro Bonsoms, of Barcelona.
Formed for the acquisition of works of, and relating to, Cervantes.
Amongst the inestimable treasures are no less than 520 editions of
_Quijote_ in Spanish and other languages; 210 examples of the minor
works; whilst 500 works refer to Cervantes and his productions. Don
Isidro Bonsoms possesses the recently-discovered copy of the
English translation of Don Quixote, printed by William Stansby for
Ed. Blount and W. Barret, 1612, in perfect state, and of which no
other copy is known. It is described in the _Bibliografia Critica_
of Don Leopoldo Rius, Vol. I., p. 388. Madrid, 1895. See also No. 1
of the present list of English translations of Don Quixote.
33. Biblioteca Cervántica del Rdo. D. Clemente Cortejón, of
Barcelona, contains 300 editions of _Quijote_ in divers languages,
in addition to a large and valuable collection of the minor works.
34. Biblioteca Cervántica del Excmo. Sr. Marqués de Jerez de los
Caballeros, of Sevilla. This collection is notable for the editions
of _Quijote_ it contains in Spanish and various translations,
together with a large number of the minor works of Cervantes, and
books relating to him.
SYNOPSIS OF THE EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE.
+----------+--------------------++---------+
|LANGUAGE. | CENTURIES. || Total |
| |/--------^---------\|| of |
| |XVII. |XVIII.| XIX. ||Editions.|
+----------+------+------+------++---------+
|Spanish | 27 | 33 | 152 || 212 |
|French | 22 | 37 | 99 || 158 |
|English | 10 | 45 | 78 || 133 |
|German | 5 | 10 | 36 || 51 |
|Italian | 4 | 4 | 12 || 20 |
|Russian | | 2 | 18 || 20 |
|Dutch | 5 | 3 | 8 || 16 |
|Swedish | | | 8 || 8 |
|Hungarian | | | 6 || 6 |
|Portuguese| | 1 | 4 || 5 |
|Polish | | 1 | 3 || 4 |
|Catalan | | | 3 || 3 |
|Danish | | 1 | 2 || 3 |
|Bohemian | | | 3 || 3 |
|Greek | | | 2 || 2 |
|Servian | | | 2 || 2 |
|Roumanian | | | 1 || 1 |
|Croatian | | | 1 || 1 |
|Finnish | | | 1 || 1 |
|Turkish | | | 1 || 1 |
+----------+------+------+------++---------+
| Total | 73 | 137 | 440 || 650 |
+----------+------+------+------++---------+
_Note.--This Table is compiled to 1895._
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