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Updated: June 25, 2025
Cervantes was born on October 9, 1547, and died on April 23, 1616, on the same day as Shakespeare. He is, I think, beyond all question, the greatest of humorists. Whether he intended it or not, and I am inclined to believe he did, he has typified in Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza his esquire, the two component parts of the human mind and shapers of human character the imagination and understanding.
One morning at sunrise, I crossed the ancient bridge of Alcantara, and climbed the steep hill east of the river to the ruined castle of San Cervantes, perched on a high, bold rock, which guards the river and overlooks the valley. Near as it is to the city, it stands entirely alone.
Sancho's curt comments can never fall flat, but they lose half their flavour when transferred from their native Castilian into any other medium. But if foreigners have failed to do justice to the humour of Cervantes, they are no worse than his own countrymen.
"Ain't it wonderful to be able to read and write!" They both sighed, sadly. Luis Cervantes came in with several others to find out the day of their departure. "We're leaving no later than tomorrow," said Demetrio without hesitation. Quail suggested that musicians be summoned from the neighboring hamlet and that a farewell dance be given. His idea met with enthusiasm on all sides.
Would you condemn music because of an occasional discord? Would you reject history altogether because amid a world of truth there are preserved some fables such as tempted the satire of Cervantes? Would you banish the sun from Heaven because of its spots or declare Love a monster because born of Passion?
Wine and beer were served; Demetrio and Natera drank many a toast. Luis Cervantes proposed: "The triumph of our cause, which is the sublime triumph of Justice, because our ideal to free the noble, long-suffering people of Mexico is about to be realized and because those men who have watered the earth with their blood and tears will reap the harvest which is rightfully theirs."
Such another library was not then in California; and though Gaston Villere, in leaving Harvard College, had shut Horace and Sophocles forever at the earliest instant possible under academic requirements, he knew the Greek and Latin names that he now saw as well as he knew those of Shakespeare, Dante, Moliere, and Cervantes.
Nay, what was Cervantes' own life but a romance of chivalry? See the essay of Salva's in Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, vol. ii, pp. 723-740. I know one great Spanish scholar who has never forgiven Cervantes for destroying the books of chivalries. But his anger is rather that of the bibliographer than of the critic or patriot. He has the best collection of those evil books in Europe.
Part of it is borrowed from a Spanish Novel called the Force of Blood, written originally by Cervantes. The Mayor of Queenborough, a Comedy, acted by his Majesty's servants, 1661. For the plot see the Reign of Vartigas, by Stow and Speed. Any Thing for a Quiet Life, acted at the Globe on the Bank Side.
For all that the Spaniards could do, their settlements and factories grew larger. The life attracted people, in spite of all its perils, just as tunny fishing attracted the young gallant in Cervantes. A day of hunting in the woods, a night of jollity, with songs, over a cup of drink, among adventurous companions qué cosa tan bonita! We cannot wonder that it had a fascination.
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