Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra [romantic novels to read .TXT] 📗

may be extravagant, but it is not a burlesque. The strong character painting, the ideas, situations, and language, clothed in such simplicity that at times it becomes almost solemn, give it a grandeur that no other book, considered as a romance, possesses. The old anecdote of the king observing a student walking by the river side and bursting into involuntary fits of laughter over a book, exclaiming, "The man is either mad or reading 'Don Quixote,'" is well preserved. One peculiar feature of the book is that, even now, for some places, it would be a useful guide, many xl of the habits and customs of Spain three hundred years ago being still the same. What a volume of wit and wisdom is contained in the proverbs and aphorisms. One might quote from it indefinitely had he not told us that "without discretion there is no wit." His own motive in writing it we find in the last paragraph of the book, namely, "My sole object has been to expose to the contempt they deserved the extravagant and silly tricks of chivalry, which this my true and genuine 'Don Quixote' has nearly accomplished, their worldly credit being now actually tottering, and will doubtless soon sink, never to rise again."

Now, all languages have it. There are eight translations into English alone; but it is always impossible for the translator to render its true spirit or to give it full justice. With all its vivacity and drollery, its delicate satire and keen ridicule, it has a mournful tinge of melancholy running through, and here and there peeping out, only to have been gathered from such experience as his. He wrote with neither bitterness nor a diseased imagination, always realizing what is due to himself and with a full appreciation of and desire for fame. Many scenes of real suffering appear under a dramatic guise, and here and there creep out bits of personal history. His nature was chivalrous in the highest degree. His sorrows were greater than his joys. Born for the library, he prefers the camp, and xli abandons literature to fight the Turks. Does he not make the Don say, "Let none presume to tell me the pen is preferable to the sword." Again he says: "Allowing that the end of war is peace, and that in this it exceeds the end of learning, let us weigh the bodily labors the scholar undergoes against those the warrior suffers, and then see which are the greatest." Then he enumerates: "First, poverty; and having said he endures poverty, methinks nothing more need be urged to express his misery, for he that is poor enjoys no happiness, but labors under this poverty in all its guises, at one time in hunger, at another in cold, another in nakedness, and sometimes in all of them together." Later on he makes him say: "It gives me some concern to think that powder and lead may suddenly cut short my career of glory."

The world can only be grateful that "his career of glory" did not end in the military advancement he had the right to expect. Had he been a general, his Rozinante might still have been wandering without a name, and Sancho Panza have died a common laborer. Again he says: "Would to God I could find a place to serve as a private tomb for this wearisome burden of life which I bear so much against my inclination." Surviving almost unheard-of grievances only to emerge from them with greater power; depicting in his works true outlines of his own adventures, sometimes by a xlii proverb, often by a romance, he never loses one jot of his pride, giving golden advice to Sancho when a governor, and finishing with the expression, "So may'st thou escape the PITY of the world." In May, 1605, he was called upon as a witness in a case of a man who was mortally wounded and dragged at night into his apartment, which almost accidentally gives us his household, consisting of his wife; his natural daughter Isabel, twenty years of age, unmarried; his sister, a widow, above fifty years; her unmarried daughter, aged twenty-eight; his half-sister, a religieuse; and a maid-servant. His "Española Inglesa" appeared in 1611. His moral tales, the pioneers in Spanish literature, are a combination without special plan of serious and comic, romance and anecdote, evidently giving, under the guise of fiction, poetically colored bits of his own experience in Italy and Africa. In his story of "La Gitanilla" (the gipsy girl) may be found the argument of Weber's opera of "Preciosa." "Parnassus" was written two years before his death, after which he wrote eight comedies and a sequel to his twelve moral tales. In his story of "Rinconete ý Cortadilla" he evidently derives the names from rincon (a corner) and cortar (to cut). His last work was "Persiles and Sigismunda," the preface of which is a near presentiment of his closing labors. He says: "Farewell, gayety; farewell, humor; farewell, my pleasant friends. I must now die, and I desire xliii nothing more than to soon see you again happy in another world." His industry was wonderful. We can but have a grateful feeling towards the Count de Lemos for adding to his physical comfort for the last few years, and feel a regret that the Count, who had lingered in Naples, could not have arrived in time to see him once more when he so ardently desired it. In a dedication to the Count of his final romance, written only four days before his death, he very touchingly says: "I could have wished not to have been obliged to make so close a personal application of the old verses commencing 'With the foot already in the stirrup,' for with very little alteration I may truly say that with my foot in the stirrup, feeling this moment the pains of dissolution, I address this letter to you. Yesterday I received extreme unction. To-day I have resumed my pen. Time is short, my pains increase, my hopes diminish, yet I do wish my life might be prolonged till I could see you again in Spain." His wish was not to be gratified; the Count, unaware of the near danger of his friend, only returned to find himself overwhelmed with grief at his loss.

After sixty-nine years of varied fortunes and many struggles, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra breathed his last, unsoothed by the hands he had loved, for even this privilege seems to have been denied to him. At the near end of his life he had joined the kindly third order xliv of the Franciscan friars, and the brethren cared for him at the last. His remarkable clearness of intellect never failed him, and on April 23, 1616, the very day that Shakspeare died at Stratford, Cervantes died at Madrid. Unlike the great English contemporary, whose undisturbed bones have lain quietly under peril of his malediction, the bones of the great Spanish poet were irrevocably lost when the old Convent of the Trinity, in the Calle del Humilladero, was destroyed. Ungrateful Spain! the spot had never been marked with a common tombstone.

The old house2 in the Calle de Francos, where he died, was so dilapidated that, in 1835, it was destroyed. It was rebuilt, and a marble bust of Cervantes was placed over the entrance by the sculptor, Antonio Sola.

The "Madrid Epoca," under the heading of "The Prison of Cervantes," calls attention to the alarming state of decay of the house in Argamasilla del Alba, in the cellar of which, as an extemporized dungeon, tradition asserts that Cervantes was imprisoned, and where he penned at least a portion of his work. It was in this cellar that, a few years since, the Madrid publishing house of Rivadeneyra erected a press and xlv printed their edition de luxe of "Don Quijote." The house was, some years since, purchased by the late Infante Don Sebastian, with a view to a complete and careful restoration; but political changes and his death prevented a realization of his project. The "Epoca" now calls public attention to the state of decay of the house, with a view to an immediate restoration.

In the Plaza de las Cortes, the city of Madrid has placed a beautiful bronze statue of Cervantes upon a square pedestal of granite. Upon the sides are bas-reliefs representing subjects taken from "Don Quijote de la Mancha."

The present time honors his memory; and for all time he will live in the hearts of all true lovers of genius.