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Of all the models of prose-fiction which the Tudor translations had given to English literature, the first to be copied was that of Cervantes's Don Quixote, rendered into English by Thomas Shelton in 1612. Swift must have had the rambling method of Cervantes well in mind when he wrote his Gulliver; and Smollett confessedly took it as his pattern and set out to imitate.
Cervantes's book makes fun of such tales as these. His hero attacks a terrible company of giants standing on a plain all ready to destroy him; but the giants prove to be windmills, and their sails give him many a heavy blow before his fight with them is over. Another time, he finds the giants in his very bedroom; and the courageous knight cuts off their heads as fast as he can swing his sword.
Pickwick shook his head, and for a moment looked very indignant, but smiling again directly, added that no doubt I was acquainted with Cervantes's introduction to the second part of Don Quixote, and that it fully expressed his sentiments on the subject. 'But now, said Mr. Pickwick, 'don't you wonder how I found you out?
Doubtless this gentleman has thrust his dictum concerning the value of Cervantes's work down the throats of many people who would have liked to contradict him. If his example were followed by critics universally, it would doubtless be hard to find in Britain a man pretending to culture who durst assert that he did not care for "Don Quixote."
Claudius thought so too, and he showed it in every action, though unconsciously enough, for it was a knowledge natural and not acquired, an instinctive determination to honour where honour was due. Call it Quixotism if need be. There is nothing ridiculous in the word, for there breathes no truer knight or gentler soul than Cervantes's hero in all the pages of history or romance.
The apartment gave token in its furniture of a very peculiar combination of literary and military taste. There were foils, long and short swords, pistols, hand pikes, flags, military boots and spurs; but there were also Shakspeare, Milton, the illustrated edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and a voluminous history of Spain, with various other prose and poetic volumes, in different languages.
But of all its ringing of bells, and swinging of censers, and droning of psalms, and putting on and off of goodly raiment, the only show that consecrates it for the world's pilgrimage is that humble procession that came on the 9th day of October, in the year of Grace 1547, to baptize Roderick Cervantes's youngest child. There could not be an humbler christening.
It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible; he had vowed he would be the dunce of Cervantes's school rather than top-boy in the academy of A Bad Un to Beat and Millicent's Marriage.
It is not pleasant for the world to be continually reminded of its meannesses. We do not want to see Cervantes's days of poverty and struggle eternized in statues. We know that he always looked back with fondness on his campaigning days, and even in his decrepit age he called himself a soldier.
In 1610, the Count of Lemos, who had in his grand and distant way patronized the poet, was appointed Viceroy of Naples, and took with him to his kingdom a brilliant following of Spanish wits and scholars. He refused the petition of the greatest of them all, however, and to soften the blow gave him a small pension, which he continued during the rest of Cervantes's life.
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