ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12129, 27 February 1905, Page 8

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

fmr' DON QUIXOTE. HpFrotn "The Times." January 13th.) Hptn the January of 1605 the First Part K-Oervantcs's immortal book first saw Hie light in bad print on poor paper. Hfhis month, therefore, we commemorate Ue three hnhdredth anniversary of the HRrth of tho Ingenious Gentleman of La Btancha. The birth was something of ■K&iracle. What it meant to the world H|ay perhaps he most readily brought Kjome yoj'tlie mind by reflecting on »ho ■Usage of tho word "quixotic." Inquirers jjpurious in tho makings of words have ioatalogiK'd the adjectives derived from jthe proper names of people real or ifictitioufe. learned person here or Ihere may bo aware that we owe, for instance, the word "thrasonical to a Character in' Terence. "Pickwickian" liu'd'-'Pecksuiffian" are opithets that will sometimes rise naturally to the lips of fit modern Englishman. But in the list of:such derivatives thero is nothing at Sill! comparable with the case of Ifmjikotic." For this is no learned nor |fWsmental epithet making an illusive ?«r"Tesoteric appeal. The word denotes /qualities typical and fundamental in Ihumanity in all races and ages. Yet fihreo hundred years ago thero was no |name for them. Common language is for a word in worldwide use lifo the creative imagination of Cervantes. fvAnd tho man who christened the charliSctwr was a hitherto .unsuccessful hack l-writor (of fifty-eight. Moreover, not jlbnly did tho genius of Cervantes fix the fiype in a character that the world took Straightway to its heart with'laughter mtitl'. tears, but he baianoed so justly Quixote and Sancho, the type and antiPjfpe, that to this day tho world's allegiis divided between master and $&ah. It has nover quito decided whether to worship quixotry or to pity or Iderido it; nor been quite certain wheCervantes meant, rather to expose Lthe imbecile or canonise the saint. Heine, a later magician in laughter Pind tears, has / narrated his own alternating attitudes towards Don Quixote. was the first b 00 "- 1 he read after he ||itd really learnt to read;(and ho took tale, lie has told us, with the un||b*a&n faith- and seriousness of child* fibodfa Unlearned as yet in tho irony of or literature,' he wept bitter tears m&i/the ridicule and rebuffs of his knight. He re-read the llook'. ©very five years or> so with ever If&ying feelings.-As a youth he was, ||^;arafesses, bored by it. Later, he ffiam\ : \in, it only tjio comic -side,'''and ijaugned at the follies of the mad knight yet'again and wiser he Made friends for life with Quixote and Eancbor Afterwards he had but to pjUMaoe over his shoulder to perceive Attending him the phantom forms of ||ifi4 thin knight and the fat. squire— ffuore particularly, \be adds, when he Ihtmself hung jrreaolute at some part-Ipg'of-/the''ways..- Whai Heine felt by Iturns- itbe. world has felt by classes, fiiincho is tho wording's man, But itibatloa Lamb, for example, could not glbear-'to see.' his. high-souled Quixote Htnade'-a butt, the-sport of duennas and |£pring-men." He thought Cervantes |wa» misled by popular applause, par-. in the Second Part, tp sacrifice* a great ide* to the taste of his play to the'galleries, lijri other words. He resented the rabbletftttint always at-the heels of Roainante. ipfl^liutd,ha*4 words even for Sancho, Ifalking of -the unhallowed - aceompanipieni tit i" Sancho,!! "the debasing felr K3hip;6f the clown" There are no iSoubt cead/rs;••, who can enter into Wt&tfc feelings. Who, indeed, : -alibridl&futce 'from watching duennas and serr-Enfe-mfin practising on the infirmities of iMo-Erriuit Star : of Knighthood made pife .tender by eclrpse,' T if not thati fEUa,Who ted himself passed within the l&mbra-of edips6, arid who dovotdd IbUfaKfe to his .beloved and afflicted ISSe'rP: fatiamb might havo remembered ItjMit thoro wer)e people in; Cervantes's Sown day who felt as he did; that from Mi*: first''tho kiiight had his partisans gjH*>less than the squire, and that some pMreii-ere'who would gladly have been Upared the tale of Quixote's, drubbings. KBnt, whin he complains that people read fatho" book iby .halves, mistaking the y author's purpose, which was tears, the J must be that it .is no leas possible/th read tho book by halves the fother way, mistaking" tho author's pur- j 5 pose, which* was laughter at least as ; "mucli as tears. As r Hashtt, Lamb'&v J?brother critic, urged the balancing- of SQiiixoto find Jlesinanto by Sancho and dapple was of the essence of the do- j ! sign. A "partie quarree," Hazhtt 'called .them. . , fa, What his originating purpose was the '§ attthor himself set forth in explicit "terms. Ho wrote, he declared, to ■>■ diminish tho authority and acceptanco that books of chivalry had in the world. Not chivalry itself, mark you, but the books of chivalry. One need he no longer at tho pains to demur to Byron's hackneyed misjndgmont. As Fielding later, so Cervantes began his novel as a burlesque. Like Saul, the son of Kish, *ho went out to look for his father's a«««es, and found a kingdom. Whore genius kills, said Heine, there also genius will make alive. If Don Quixote killed the romances of chivalry, it was* not only by ridicule, but by providing readers with something better in their place. Corvante* essayed a burlesque on,the current craze for romance, and created the modern novel. For as the thing grew under his hand, he put into it not only all his knowledge and experience of men and life, but to boot his own inexhaustible lovo of romance. Through all his vicissitudes, and no hero of romance suffered more, he remained an idealist and an enthusiast. As for his experiences, just recall thenvariety and their range of opportunities for fruitful observation. First, it . has been supposed, an usher; then a faLegate's chamberlain at Rome; then a > soldier, fighting and wounded in the %! famous battle of Lepanto, his left 'hand maimed for life, "for the better honour of the right." as he was proud ifaof saying; then captured by Moorish and kept a slave for five years froy * miscreant who would parade his of a morning and impale this bang that and flog a third to IfdSilji' just- to pass tho time; then, after during which one can only IS^^'bywhat shifts he kept the wolf given some small Go-pS^^Aftyiif-'paet-that took him into the BEa|^fs)fa of ■' country . - p.aces • ; 'ibir. some irregularity which remained a cause for years, making him aothe. Courts): opportunities '"■"•fa.-; ■ ■■'.■.'rV---)-%^. , -' f; J ' "v * '•' "-,

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

of observing lifo at close and | nt many points? ihroughout vicissitudes he was an assiduous and : prolific writer. Even as a captive slave in Africa he wrote plays for his fellow ! captives in tho intervals of his plottings to escape. Han-somed by a lucky accident and restored to his _ country, ho set to work to write everything, from sonnets to plays and pastorals. He always plumed himself us a playwright, and to the end his own favourite among his works was the pastoral "Galatea, ' of which ho was for ever promising and projecting a continuation. To the creation of his masterpiece ho thus brought, at the age of fifty-eight, at once an unequalled experience and a trained pen. He brought something still more; he brought himself and independence. In his previous multifarious writings he wrote in tho mode, he followed models. -In "Don Quixote," liegun as a burlesque nnd—so legend says—in a prison cell. Cervantes gave his genius free play. He drew on himself for form and matter, on his innato love of romance, and his intimate knowledge of life. Tho result was that he not only produced a masterpiece, but created a new kind in literature. ft was not any easier on that account to bring the masterpiece to the birth. It appears to have been shown about in manuscript, and professional opinion was against it. Tho comment of tho i great Lope do Vega himself is notorious. No poet was so bad as Cervantes—so he wrote some months before its publication—"and nono was so silly as |to praise Don Quixote." ' Happily ono |of Cervantes'-- habitual pieces of bad ' luck brought good luck in its train. Discovered in his obscurity and haled to Yalladolid to answer in person once more some charge in connection with those luckless accounts that had cost him his dismissal nearly ten years before, the unhappy author wa*. happy enough to find a publisher on tho way. Once before tho public, tho book carried all before it. Its miccoss was never a moment in doubt—even by the most modern tests, for it ran into live editions in about as many months. Cervantes bagged his people, with both barrels. He caught them on the one side ■ by.their love of romance*, and on tlie other by the wit/ and wisdom of his satire on romance;-the book held them both by' its imagination and by its humanity. ' Thero'is no work, said HazJitt, which combines so much whimsical invention with such an air of truth. The people recognised themselves in the duennas, and serving-men; they recog--1 nised themselves in Sancho; they recognised ono side of themselves' even in Quixote. They enjoyed what they had got, and they clamoured for more. "Let Quixote encounter," they cried, j "and let Sancho talk, and,., be the rest 1 what it will, wo sball be content." Thus incited by his public, encouraged by his success, his , purpose spurred finally by a spurious sequel, Cervantes produoed yet even so not until nearly a decade later, his Second Part. Lamb, as we have seen, deplored it; yet.it is reckoned by Spanish scholars in some respects more perfect than the first. Sancho, it is true, survived to detect his master's infirmity. But Quixote's is the master spirit ip the end. The gradual ascendancy, said Hazlitt, obtained by Don Quixote over Sancho was as finely managed as it was characteristic. > "Credulity ami a love of the marvellous are as natural to ignorance as selfishness and cunning. Sancho by degrees becomes a kind of lay brother .of the order; acquires aitaste for adventure in His own way, and is made all but an entire convert by the discovery of the hundred crowns in one of his most comfortless journeys. Towards 'the end his regret at being forced to give up the pursuit of knight-errantry almost equals his master's, and he seizes, the proposal of Don Quixote for them to turn "shepherds with the greatest avidity, .still applying it in his own fashion* for while the Don is ingeniously torturing the names of his humble acquaintances into classical terminations, and contriving scenes of gallantry and song, Sancho exclaims, Oh, what delicate wooden spoons shall I carve, what orumbs and cream shall I devour \"'( The popularity of the book at home was but the prelude to a rapid and permanent popularity abroad. It was quickly translated into French and English, so "that it has been said that the author of "Hamlet" may have read "Don Quixote" in SheHon's racy English. "Don Quixote" became a classic in all countries.' To create characters thai live, said Alphonse Dandet, with something more than a side glance at his friend Flaubert, was the business of the novelist rather than to write fine prose. Foreigners may fail to appreciate fine prose in an unfamiliar tongue, but they can all understand the characters that live. Dandet called his own Tartarin tl Quixote of Southern France. For such characters as Quixote not only live, they beget children. Hamlet and Quixote, perhaps the two' most deathless bachelors in literature, have both begotten large families. - If Werther and Rene and Obermann are of the kin of Hamlet, so are Hudibras and Sir Roger de Coverley and Uncle Toby and Dr. Syntax and Colonel Newoome and Mr Pickwick of tlie kin of Quixote. England, in England's way, is commemorating the tercentenary by a dinner. It is at leajit no belated recognition. From the first as a great Cervsntist whom we have lately lost was glad to remind us. England was forward to welcome "Don Quixote and constant, in treating it worthily as a classic. When one casts one's eyes back from the present day with its international celebration to the obscure and harried life of the author three years ago, and reflects on all that Don Quixote has meant to the world in the interval, one may well exclaim with .Schopenhauer, who was not an expansive person nor often rhetorical—What was the Escurial by the side of the cell or garret wherein Cervantes composed "Don Quixote"? i