THE COLOSSUS OF TOLEDO.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 21

THE COLOSSUS OF TOLEDO.

.(By W.G.M.) The Cervantes Committee at Toledo has shown a certain sense of the fitness of things by its decision to commemorate Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by a huge etatue of the Knight mounted on his horse Eosinanti and one of Sancho on foot. The former statue is to be 170 ft high and the latter ie to be 95ft high. The cost of this statuary will be over £1,000,000, and seven years are to be occupied in the making of the figures. The committee has stated its belief that subscriptions will come in from America. This is highly probable. We can conceive of nothing quite so likely to appeal to New York and Chicago as this attemph to honour literature by something really gorgeous and gigantic. A railway is to be run to Rosinanti's hoofs to facilitate the conveyance of the millions of pilgrims who are expected to journey to this literary shrine. It will, of course, be necessary for America to go one better. A colossal statue in honour of the author of the latest "best seller" could easily be devised which in size would surpass the monument to Cervantes. The Latin races have a manner all their own of showing honour to literature. Italy has just completed a twelve-months' celebration in honour of the Roman poet Virgil. Perhaps the memory of Virgil's lines on the Palatine Hill has prevented the modern Romans from attempting anything gilded and colossal in the way of a etatue. The Albert Memorial is probably the nearest approach England has made to this gigantic statue at Toledo. But the Albert Memorial is not mainly a tribute to merit. Queen Victoria said that what chiefly delighted her about the memorial was that it reminded her of a salt cellar "Dear Albert had designed." One cannot for the moment think of any name in American literature that would stand above all other names as deserving of such a statue as Chicago and New York between them could devise. One doubts whether such famous names as Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan could be classed with literateurs. One cannot imagine them being addressed in the manner in which Gibbon's ducal patron addressed the historian when on being given a copy of the "Decline and Fall" he just turned a page or two and said, "Still scribbling, I see, Mr. Gibbon." Memorials to Shakespeare have been projected from time to time, and have met with a "limited measure of support. But it is probably correct to say that no statue of the poet at present in existence exceeds ten foot six inches in height, including the pedestal. It is not altogether that the Latins appreciate literature more than the Anglo Saxons, but the Anglo-Saxon appreciation is something that is tempered with the spirit of Gibbon's Duke. Literature has ne\*er been locked upon in England as being quite a respectable occupation, even for the yoi.nger sons of the nobility. Cervantes, who wrote "Don Quixote," in order that he might tilt at the windmills of human, folly, would have appreciated the attempt .of the Toledo Committee to honour Ms,memory in a due and fitting manner.