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 Cornell University Library 
 PQ 6337.M63 
 
 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 
 
 3 1924 027 663 545 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027663545 
 
Wigud dc Cervantes S^dvedrd 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 Bon Quixote 
 
 COMPLIMENTS OF 
 
 6eorge Barriers Sons 
 

LIFE -OF CERVANTES 
 
 Miguel de Cervantes-Saavedra, the author of Don Quixote, 
 was born at Alcala de Henares, the ancient Complutum, a small 
 town in the province of New Castile, in 1547. The day of his 
 birth is not known, but as he was baptized on the 9th of Oc- 
 tober, it is conjectured from his Christian name that he was 
 born on Saint Michaelmas day preceding. The place of his 
 nativity also remained in doubt until the year 1748, when 
 Don Juan de Yriarte found in the Royal Library of Madrid a 
 manuscript entitled La Verdadera Patria de Miguel de Cer- 
 vantes, written by the learned Benedictine Martin Sarmiento. 
 Till then seven cities, Madrid, Seville, Lucena, Toledo, Es- 
 quivias, Alcazar de San Juan, and Consuegra, had contended 
 for the honor of being his birthplace, although in the Topog- 
 raphy of Algiers, by Father Hsedo, published in 161 2, men- 
 tion was made of Cervantes as a native of Alcala de Henares, 
 and the genealogist Mendez de Silva, in his tract on Nliho 
 Alfonso, published in 1648, had also spoken of him as a noble 
 Castilian gentleman of the same town. All doubts on the 
 subject, their long ignorance as to which is one of the many 
 proofs of the carelessness with which the Spaniards have treas- 
 ured what belongs to the memory of their illustrious country- 
 men, were finally resolved by the discovery of the petition for 
 an inquiry into his conduct at. Algiers addressed by Cervantes 
 to the government in 1580. The family of Cervantes, which 
 
xxxviii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 had for some generations attached to their patronymic the 
 name of Saavedra, was of respectable if not noble origin. 
 The patriotic zeal of some later biographers has even claimed 
 for it affinity to the royal blood of Castile.' The cradle of 
 the race was Galicia, from which province the ancestors 
 of Cervantes emigrated at an early date. Members of the 
 family accompanied Ferdinand III on his expedition against 
 the Moorish kingdom of Seville and obtained a share of the 
 conquered territory. The grandfather of Miguel was Juan 
 de Cervantes, a knight of some distinction, who held the 
 office of corregidor of Osuna at the beginning of the six- 
 teenth century. His son Rodrigo married in 1540 Leonora 
 de Cortinas, a lady of Esquivias, of birth equal to his own 
 but, it is presumed, of no greater fortune. There were four 
 children of the marriage, two sons, Rodrigo and Miguel, and 
 two daughters. Although ranking themselves with the hidal- 
 gos, the parents must have been, at the birth of their younger 
 son, in humble circumstances. The biographers have been 
 able to glean but few details of the early life of our hero, 
 and for these they are indebted almost entirely to the chance 
 allusions in Cervantes's own writings. He studied grammar 
 and the humanities .under a master of some repute, Lopez de 
 Hoyos, and, according to a doubtful tradition, spent two years 
 at the University of Salamanca, residing in the Calle de Moros. 
 That he received a fair education according to the standard 
 of the age, and had an extensive though not exact knowledge 
 of classical and general literature, his works bear witness. 
 
 When a boy, he describes himself as having attended the 
 representations of the first regular company of Spanish actors 
 under Lope de Rueda, the founder of the dramatic art in 
 Spain. Upon the occasion of the magnificent obsequies held 
 in honor of Isabel de Valois, the wife of Philip II, in 1568, 
 the most advanced scholars of Lopez de Hoyos competed 
 in the literary exercises, in Latin and in Spanish, which 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xxxix 
 
 formed part of the funeral ceremony ; and chief among the 
 victors was Miguel de Cervantes, who is mentioned by his 
 master in the most affectionate and laudatory terms as his 
 "dear and beloved pupil." These compositions, among 
 which were sonnets, letrillas, and redondillas, have perished, 
 together with many of the early poetical essays of their author, 
 probably with no loss to the world or to his reputation. In 
 his Journey to Parnassus, Cervantes speaks of these effusions 
 of his youthful muse with characteristic modesty and candor, 
 averring that " from his tenderest years he had loved the sweet 
 art of poesy," and had composed endless ballads and sonnets, 
 good and bad, but confessing, with a touching humility, that 
 Heaven had not granted him the poet's grace. Among the 
 last works belonging to this period, of which their author 
 speaks with more complacency, was Filena, a pastoral poem, 
 esteemed sufficiently good by his contemporaries to earn for 
 the author a place among the multitude of those who wrote 
 themselves po'ets in that fruitful harvest-time of Spanish liter- 
 ature. 
 
 In 1568 there came to Madrid — charged with a message of 
 condolence from the pope to Philip II, on the death of his 
 son Don Carlos, and with sundry complaints respecting de- 
 fault of allegiance to Rome — the Cardinal Acquaviva, who, 
 though only in his twenty-fifth year, had already earned a 
 name for culture and a good disposition to letters. With him 
 Cervantes took service as a camarero, or page, — an employ- 
 ment held to be no humiliation in that age, even to young 
 men of noble birth, — returning in the suite of his patron to 
 Rome by way of Valencia, Barcelona, and the south of France. 
 Apparently, the post was not to the taste of one in whom the 
 sight of Italy — then for the greater part a fief of Spain — ■ 
 awakened more of warlike than of poetic ambition. 
 
 In the beginning of 1570 the cardinal's page exchanged his 
 livery for the soldier's uniform, enlisting in the company of 
 
xl LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 the famous Captain Don Diego de Urbina of the regiment of 
 Don Miguel de Moncada. It was the period when the mili- 
 tary glory of Spain was at the highest, and the profession of i 
 arms the surest road to advancement. The first campaign 
 of Cervantes was made at sea, his regiment being engaged in 
 the expedition which, in the summer of 1570, under the orders 
 of the Papal general, Marco Antonio Colonna, made an inef- 
 fectual attempt to relieve the Island of Cyprus, then hotly 
 besieged by the Turks. The capture of Nicosia by the Mahom- 
 etans, and the fall of the island, which spread consternation 
 throughout Christendom, gave rise to the memorable Holy 
 League against Selim II. Through the exhortations of the 
 pope, Pius V, Spain and Venice were induced to lay aside 
 for a time their old dissensions and to unite with Rome in an 
 attempt to bridle the Ottomans, then in the flush and vigor of 
 their genius. The pact between these Christian powers was 
 formally ratified on the 25th of May, 15 71, the confederates 
 binding themselves to "make perpetual war" not only against 
 the Turks, but against the Moors of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. 
 The armament provided — the expenses of which were dis- 
 tributed among the three states in the proportion of three- 
 sixths to Spain, two-sixths to Venice, and one-sixth to Rome — 
 was to consist of 200 galleys of war, with 100 store-ships, 
 50,000 infantry, 4500 light-horse, and a sufficient supply 
 of artillery and ammunition. The generalissimo whom the 
 unanimous voice of the allies called to the command of this 
 fleet — the most formidable which had ever been assembled in 
 the Mediterranean — was Don Juan of Austria, the natural son 
 of Charles V, then in his twenty-fourth year, — a youth not 
 more recommended by his near connection with the Spanish 
 king than by his brilliant talents, amiable character, and great 
 popularity. The mutual jealousies and fears of the allied 
 princes, and the hesitation of Philip 11 to intrust so important 
 a command to his half-brother, the object of his secret envy 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xli 
 
 and distrust, caused many delays in the assembling of the 
 Christian forces, and gave the Turks ample time for prepara- 
 tion. The armada, after rendezvousing at Messina, put to 
 sea finally in quest of the enemy on the 15 th of September. 
 The company in which Cervantes still served as a private sol- 
 dier was embarked in the galley La Marquesa, commanded 
 by Francisco San Pietro. After relieving and provisioning 
 Corfu, Don Juan came up with the Turkish fleet on the 7th of 
 October, drawn up in order of battle in the Gulf of Lepanto. 
 The Christians advanced in three divisions, their right com- 
 manded by the Genoese admiral, Juan Andrea Doria, the 
 centre under Don Juan himself, and the left under Agostino 
 Barbarigo, the Venetian Proveditore ; the Marquess de Santa 
 Cruz, with his squadron, being in reserve. The Marquesa 
 was on the left wing, having on board Miguel de Cervantes, 
 who lay in his cabin ill of a fever. 
 
 On coming into action, his ship being in the van of the 
 squadron, Cervantes' s captain and comrades besought him to 
 remain quietly in his bed, but he, according to the sworn 
 testimony of ear-witnesses, asked them what they would think 
 of him if he did not do his duty, and declared his resolve to 
 die fighting for God and his king, rather than remain under 
 shelter and take care of his health. His entreaties to be 
 allowed to share in the fighting having been granted, Cer- 
 vantes was stationed with twelve soldiers under his command 
 in what was reckoned the post of greatest danger, namely, 
 in the boat which hung by the galley side, most exposed to 
 the enemy's fire. Here he performed his part in that glori- 
 ous day's work so valiantly as to attract the notice of his 
 commanders, even of Don Juan himself. The vessel immedi- 
 ately opposed to the Marquesa was the galley of the Captain 
 Pasha of Alexandria, who commanded on the Turkish right, 
 bearing the royal standard of Egypt. After a stubborn resist- 
 ance, and the slaughter of five hundred of her crew, she was 
 
xlii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 compelled to surrender, her fate involving the flight or cap- 
 ture of the entire squadron, and contributing materially to 
 the final defeat of the Turks. On their right wing the Chris- 
 tians were less successful, — Marco Antonio Colonna having 
 to encounter the celebrated renegade, Uluch Ali, a sea-captain 
 of great skill and experience, to whose good conduct and abil- 
 ities Cervantes himself, with characteristic generosity, bears 
 witness. The issue was highly honorable to the allied arms. 
 
 The victory at Lepanto, though barren of results, and spoiled 
 by the contentions among the Christian leaders, broke the 
 spell of Turkish invincibility at sea, and is to be reckoned 
 among the most glorious feats of arms ever performed by 
 Spain when at the zenith of her greatness. In this battle, to 
 the remembrance of which he ever fondly clung, which he 
 loved to speak of as the proudest event of his life, Cervantes 
 was severely wounded — receiving two gunshot wounds in the 
 chest and one in the left hand, which was maimed and ren- 
 dered useless "for the greater glory of the right," as its owner 
 said, holding this defect ever after to be his greatest ornament. 
 Lepanto was to Spain what Salamis was to Athens. All Europe 
 rang with the fame of "the man sent from God whose name 
 was John," according to the fervent exclamation of the grate- 
 ful pope when he heard the news of the victory ; and the ex- 
 ploits of Doria, Colonna, and Santa Cruz were on all men's 
 tongues. But while generals and admirals are now forgotten, 
 it is a striking evidence of the power of genius to overridc 
 even the traditions of patriotism and of warlike glory, that 
 of all the memories which survive of this once renowned 
 day, that which remains green and flourishing is of the pri- 
 vate soldier who fought in the Marquesa, of him whom his 
 countrymen love to designate as El Manco de Lepanto. It 
 would be absurd to attribute to the single arm of Miguel de 
 Cervantes any appreciable share in the event of that day ; but 
 making all allowances for the partiality of his biographers, 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xliii 
 
 there can be no reason to doubt that Cervantes did earn a 
 very extraordinary amount of renown for his behavior in the 
 battle. As a private soldier he was not debarred, according 
 to the fashion of the times, from receiving from his superiors 
 those marks of consideration due to men of good birth and 
 breeding ; yet the extraordinary favors bestowed on him by 
 Don Juan and the other leaders, the letters of credit which 
 they gave him on his return to Spain, the numerous references 
 to him by his contemporaries, and the influence he afterwards 
 exercised among his fellow-captives at Algiers, are sufficient to 
 prove that at this early period of his life Cervantes had attained 
 to much distinction over and above what he had won as a man 
 of letters. 
 
 After the battle of Lepanto, the lateness of the season com- 
 pelled Don Juan to return to Sicily, leaving the Turks leisure 
 to recover from their losses and to rfecruit their strength. The 
 wounded were tended at Messina, among whom Cervantes 
 was visited in the hospital by Don Juan in person, receiving 
 upon his recovery a special increase of pay to the amount of 
 three crowns a month. From the company of Moncada our 
 soldier was now transferred to that of Don Ponce de Leon, in 
 the Tercio de Figueroa, the most distinguished of all the Span- 
 ish regiments of that period — of that famous infantry which 
 sustained the Spanish dominion over half Europe, making, 
 in the words of the chronicler, "the earth tremble with their 
 muskets. ' ' 
 
 The further enterprises of the League at sea were checked by 
 the growing dissensions between Spain and Venice, and also 
 by the quarrel now on foot between the former nation and 
 its old rival, France. The jealousies between the confederate 
 princes extended to their commanders, and it was in vain 
 that Don Juan urged upon his allies the necessity of striking 
 another blow at the Turk before he had time to repair his 
 shattered forces. It was not until the 9th of August, 1572, 
 
xliv LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 that the Christian fleet again set sail for the scene of its great 
 exploit of the year previous. In this second campaign, through 
 the supineness of the leaders, perhaps from some incapacity of 
 the generalissimo, scarcely fitted by age or force of character 
 to control so vast and incongruous a host, but chiefly from 
 the superior skill and vigilance of the Turkish commander-in- 
 chief, a post now held by Uluch Ali, the armada did nothing 
 more than make a feeble demonstration against the enemy's 
 fleet, which was found at anchor in Navarino Bay. Cervantes, 
 who has given a minute account of this inglorious affair in his 
 story of the captive in Don Quixote, served in this expedition 
 in the squadron commanded by Antonio Colonna. Returning 
 to Messina to winter, the armada was next year dispersed in 
 consequence of the dissolution of the Holy League, the Vene- 
 tians having concluded a separate peace with the Turks. 
 
 In 1573, Cervantes took part in the expedition of Don Juan 
 against Tunis and in the capture of the Goletta — his wounds 
 being still unhealed, as we learn from his letter to Mateo 
 Vasquez. That winter he was in garrison in Sardinia, and 
 in the next spring in Lombardy, being ordered to Messina in 
 August, 1574, and thence to Naples. On the 15 th of June, 
 1575, he obtained leave of the viceroy, the Duke de Sesa, to 
 visit Spain, and thus ended the first portion of his military 
 career, with small profit but with much honor. 
 
 During his five years' active service by land and sea, how- 
 ever, Cervantes had acquired that knowledge of men and life 
 which was so useful to him in after-years. He had visited the 
 most famous cities of Italy, and had stored his mind with im- 
 pressions of her art and literary culture, traces of which are 
 to be found in all his writings, even to the extent of making 
 him liable to the charge of introducing Italian idioms into his 
 style. Of his intercourse with Italian men of letters there is 
 no evidence, though his works furnish abundant testimony of 
 his familiarity with the best models of Italian literature. That 
 
House of Cervantes, Toledo. 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xlv 
 
 he had won the respect and esteem of his commanders as a 
 good soldier is proved by the highly flattering letters which 
 he received from Don Juan, recommending him to the king for 
 promotion as a man of singular merit and of great services ; 
 also from the viceroy of Naples, speaking of him as a worthy 
 but unfortunate soldier who, " by his noble virtue and temper, 
 had secured the good will of his comrades and officers." Fur- 
 nished with these letters, which in the event were to prove to 
 him so fatal a possession, Cervantes, with his brother Rodrigo, 
 embarked at Naples in the galley El Sol. 
 
 On the 26th of September, when off the coast of Minorca, 
 his vessel fell in with a squadron of Algerine cruisers under 
 the command of the dreaded pirate captain, Arnaut Mami. 
 Attacked by three of the enemy's ships, the Spanish galley, 
 after an obstinate resistance, in which Cervantes bore a con- 
 spicuous part, was forced to surrender to overwhelming odds, 
 and was brought in a prize to Algiers. On the division of the 
 prisoners, Cervantes fell to the lot of Deli Mami, a Greek ren- 
 egade, noted for his ferocity and greed among the Algerines. 
 The letters of Don Juan and the viceroy of Naples found on 
 this Spanish soldier served but to mislead his captors as to his 
 true rank, and therefore to stimulate their cupidity and to 
 aggravate his sufferings. Being supposed to be able to pur- 
 chase his liberty at a high price, Cervantes was guarded with 
 special care, and that he might be induced the more quickly 
 to ransom himself, he was loaded with chains and treated with 
 extraordinary rigor. 
 
 According to the testimony of Father Hsdo, in whose curi- 
 ous and important work on the Topography of Algiers, pub- 
 lished in 1 61 2, we have the most valuable authority for this 
 period of Cervantes's life, and who was an eye-witness of the 
 cruelties practised in this pirates' den upon the Christian slaves, 
 the captivity of Cervantes was one of the hardest ever known 
 in Algiers. It was borne with a courage and constancy whicH, 
 
xlvi LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 had there been nothing else to make his name memorable, 
 must have sufificed to rank Cervantes among the heroes of his 
 age and country. No episode more romantic is contained in 
 the books of chivalry. No adventures more strange were 
 encountered by any knight-errant. Not Amadis nor Esplan- 
 dian, nor any of those whose fabled deeds had kindled his 
 youthful imagination, displayed a loftier spirit of honor or 
 more worthily discharged his knightly devoir than did Miguel 
 de Cervantes when in duress at Algiers. A slave in the power 
 of the bitter enemy of his creed and nation, cut oif in the 
 heyday of his fame from the path of ambition which For- 
 tune seemed to have opened to him, no lot could be more 
 cruel than that which in the prime of his manhood and genius 
 fell to our hero. yNor is there any chapter of his life more 
 honorable than the record of the singular daring, fortitude, 
 patience, and cheerfulness with which he bore his fate during 
 this miserable period of five years. With no other support than 
 his own indomitable spirit, forgotten by those whom he had 
 served, unable to receive any help from his friends, subjected 
 to every kind of hardship which the tyranny or caprice of his 
 masters might order, pursued by an unrelenting evil destiny 
 which seemed in this, as in every other passage of his career, 
 to mock at his efforts to live- that high heroic life which he 
 had conceived to himself, this poor maimed soldier was looked 
 up to by that wretched colony of Christian captives, including 
 among them many men of higher birth and rank, as their chief 
 counsellor, comforter, and guide.^ In the formal information 
 laid before the commissary of the Spanish government at 
 Algiers, Father Juan Gil, of the order of the Redemptorists, 
 very particular testimony is borne by Cervantes' s fellow- 
 captives to his character and conduct, as one who bore him- 
 self always as a faithful Christian, who cheered those who were 
 despondent, who shared with the poor the little which he 
 possessed, who helped the sick in their necessities, who risked 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xlvii 
 
 every danger in the cause of the faith, behaving himself always 
 like a true soldier of the king and a noble gentleman, — all 
 which good record is confirmed by the honest father himself 
 of his own personal knowledge. 
 
 The captivity of Cervantes in Algiers lasted five years, 
 during which period he never ceased to plot schemes of de- 
 liverance, which, however daringly conceived and skilfully 
 planned, were doomed to be always foiled by accident or by 
 treachery. On such occasions he was invariably the first to 
 come forward to shield his associates and to take the whole 
 blame upon himself, rendering himself liable to the barbarous 
 punishments then inflicted by the Algerines upon such of their 
 slaves as sought to escape from their chains. Twice was Cer- " 
 vantes brought into the king's presence, with a rope round 
 his neck, to be hanged. Once he was ordered two thousand 
 blows with a stick, the penalty being remitted at the last 
 moment only through the prayers of the other captives. The ^ 
 king or viceroy of Algiers at this time was Hassan Pasha, 
 a Venetian renegade, whose name was a terror throughout 
 Christendom. Cervantes himself in Don Quixote calls him 
 "the worst of the apostate race," and "the homicide of human 
 kind." Hsedo pronounces him " the most cruel tyraiit of all ly 
 those who have been kings in Algiers." Over this monster, 
 who had purchased Cervantes from Deli Mami for fifteen hun- 
 dred crowns, our hero seems to hive exercised an extraordi- 
 nary influence. Though repeatedly menaced with death in 
 the most horrible forms, and condemned to witness the torture 
 and mutilation of his companions, Cervantes never actually 
 suffered any ill treatment in person, beyond being fettered, 
 nor was ever abused by an ill word, as he himself has borne 
 testimony in Don Quixote. For this exceptional immunity it 
 is not easy to account, even on the theory that his master took 
 him for a person of greater consequence than he really was, 
 and we must attribute it to the extraordinary influence acquired 
 
xlviii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 by Cervantes over the other captives, and to the respect en- 
 gendered by his magnanimity and daring. Hassan Pasha, 
 according to Haedo, was wont to say that "could he keep 
 hold of that maimed Spaniard he would regard as secure his 
 
 ~^ Christians, his ships, and his whole city." Hassan Pasha's 
 fears were not wholly unwarranted, although the object of them 
 was but a simple soldier, for Cervantes had conceived the 
 design of a general rising of the captives in Algiers and the 
 
 "^seizure of the city. "And assuredly," says Haedo, "the plan 
 would have succeeded, and Algiers would have been Chris- 
 tian, if his fortune had corresponded to his courage, his zeal, 
 or the greatness of the undertaking." From the dungeons of 
 Hassan Pasha, Cervantes wrote to Mateo Vasquez, the secre- 
 tary of Philip n, suggesting the enterprise as one befitting the 
 arms of his royal master; nor was it so desperate as might ap- 
 pear, seeing that the number of Christian captives in that day 
 
 ^ was nearly twenty-five thousand. Philip, however, was then 
 too much occupied in the conquest of the Christian kingdom 
 
 ..of Portugal to bestow any attention on the daring project of 
 Cervantes. 
 
 In the meantime, while the captive was wasting his heart 
 away in chains and in fruitless struggles for liberty, his friends 
 in Spain were not neglectful of his condition. His family were 
 too poor to be able of their own resources to raise the sum 
 demanded by Hassan Pasha for his ransom. At the prayer of 
 his brother Rodrigo, an official investigation was held upon the 
 conduct of Cervantes and the circumstances of his captivity, 
 and at the solicitation of the father and mother the Duke 
 de Sesa wrote a strong letter to King Philip on behalf of the 
 soldier of Lepanto, recounting his services and entreating his 
 Majesty's assistance. No other response, however, was vouch- 
 safed to this and other petitions which were addressed to the 
 court by Cervantes's mother (his father being now dead), 
 save a gracious permission to Dona Leonora, dated the 17th 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES xlix 
 
 of January, 1581, to export licensed goods from Valencia to 
 Algiers to the value of two thousand ducats. The profit in 
 this venture was only sixty ducats. The widow and her 
 daughters having raised three hundred more, a sum of five 
 hundred ducats was made up with the assistance of friends, 
 and intrusted to the hands of Father Juan Gil, the Redemp- 
 torist, who embarked for Algiers in May, 1580. Hassan 
 Pasha, however, would abate nothing of his demand, which 
 was one thousand ducats, and threatened to take Cervantes 
 with him to Constantinople, whither he was now recalled on 
 the expiration of his term of government. Cervantes was 
 actually embarked and chained to his place at the oar, when, 
 finally, through the pious zeal of the good friar Juan Gil, aided 
 by the liberality of some Christian merchants of Algiers, the 
 sum required was made up. After a little delay in Algiers 
 rendered necessary to clear himself of some false accusations 
 made against him by his old enemy, Blanco de Paz, Cervantes 
 had at last the joy of arriving, after a long captivity, safe and 
 sound in his native country, landing in Spain towards the close 
 of the year 1580.' 
 
 The captivity in Algiers is worthy of more study than it has 
 received from Cervantes' s biographers. Not only did it turn 
 the whole current of his life and influence all his subsequent 
 career, but in it, as the period of his darkest adversity, may 
 be discovered no little of the material on which his character, 
 and even his literary work, was founded. In the hard school of 
 an Algerine bagnio, amidst chains and misery, and in the con- 
 stant, sight of death in its most appalling forms, were learned 
 those lessons of humanity which, controlling his heroic spirit 
 and tempering his romantic fancy, were turned to so memora- 
 ble a use in Don Quixote. Like him of La Mancha, our knight 
 had started in his life's adventure with a mind nursed in the 
 glowing visions of chivalry, impatient of wrong-doing, eager 
 for the good, full of faith in manhood, and quick to believe 
 
1 LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 in the ideals of lionor which his imagination had conceived- 
 He found himself amidst a generation which cared for none 
 of these things, confronted by the stern realities of a common- 
 place age, tossed about and buffeted in a world in which chiv- 
 alry had become already an anachronism. There is no need 
 for us to search for the key to the parable of Don Quixote, 
 knowing the life of the author. The experience was a bitter 
 one, such as no man of letters ever had to endure ; but from 
 the long ordeal, which ended only with his life, Cervantes 
 emerged sweetened and strengthened. /The gay courage which 
 was the essential attribute of his ngirUre, the dauntless good 
 humor — 
 
 " ITiat ever with a frolic welcome took 
 The thunder and the sunshine ' ' 
 
 had to survive even greater trials than the five years' slavery 
 in Algiers. ■ 
 
 On his return to Spain, Cervantes was destined to taste of 
 miseries compared to which even the cruelty of Hassan Pasha 
 was kindness. His services, his works, his sufferings, were all 
 forgotten. His absence of five years from the scene had been 
 long enough to erase from the memories of the king and the 
 court the gallant soldier who had fought and bled at Lepanto. 
 In 1580, Philip II was marching his army into Portugal, and 
 Cervantes rejoined his old regiment of Figueroa, in which his 
 brother Rodrigo was also serving. The next year we find 
 him engaged in the expedition against the Azores, where the 
 partisans of Dom Antonio, known to history as the Prior of 
 Ocrato, the rival claimant to the Portuguese throne, were hold- 
 ing out with the assistance of England and France. On the mis- 
 carriage of this enterprise, through the dissensions between the 
 military and naval commanders, the fleet returned to Lisbon. 
 
 The next year it took the sea again under the command of 
 Don Alvaro de Bazan, Marquess de Santa Cruz, celebrated by 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES H 
 
 Cervantes in Don Quixote as " that thunderbolt of war, that 
 father of his soldiers, that fortunate and invincible captain. ' ' 
 In the victory gained by Santa Cruz over the allied squadrons 
 off Terceira, on the 25th of July, 1582, — one of the most bril- 
 liant achievements in the annals of the Spanish navy, — Cer- 
 vantes took a part, being on board the admiral's galleon, the 
 San Mateo, which bore the brunt of the fighting. It was not 
 until the year following, however, that the Azores were finally 
 reduced, Rodrigo Cervantes distinguishing himself greatly in 
 the storm of Terceira. During his service and residence in 
 Portugal, of which country and its people he ever spoke with a 
 kindliness rare among Spaniards, Cervantes had some passages 
 of love with a noble Portuguese lady, who bore him a daugh- 
 ter, Isabel, his only child, the object of her father's tenderest 
 affection and a sharer in all his troubles till his death. 
 
 Of the next few years the record is a brief one. Toward 
 the last months of 1583 we hear of Cervantes being at Mosta- 
 gan, a Spanish post on the Algerine coast, probably still with 
 his regiment, whence -he was sent with despatches to the king, 
 by whom he was ordered to return to Oran. He does not 
 seem to have been employed again in any official capacity, 
 and perhaps from this time he began to despair of that mili- 
 tary preferment to which his services had given him so just a 
 claim. Even if it were possible for one in his station to attract 
 the personal notice of the king, we could not expect that such 
 a man as Philip would recognize the merit of the future author 
 of Don Quixote, nor could the morose tyrant who grudged 
 the glory of Lepanto to his brother be particularly well dis- 
 posed to one whose chief title to remembrance was his share 
 in that victory. By the end of 1583, Cervantes appears to 
 have quitted the profession of arms and returned to literature, 
 being now in his thirty-sixth year. 
 
 About this time he wrote Galatea, a prose pastoral inter- 
 spersed with lyrics, inspired, according to the tradition, by 
 
lii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 love of the lady he was then courting, and who became his 
 wife. Dedicated to Ascanio Colonna, son of Marco Antonio 
 of that name, Cervantes' s old commander, it appears to have 
 been favorably received, and is not more unreadable than the 
 books of that class so happily ridiculed by Cervantes himself 
 in the seventy-third chapter of the second part of Don Quixote. 
 As the author himself frankly informs his readers, his " shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses are many of them only such in their 
 dress." Their names of Lauso, Tirsi, and Damon are but the 
 grotesque disguises of celebrated poets of the time and friends 
 of Cervantes — in Galatea being pictured his future wife, and 
 in Elisio himself They talk high-flown sentiment and make 
 stilted love after the manner of the school of Gil Polo in his 
 Diana Enamorada, nor is their talk more insipid than is 
 usual to the pastoral profession in fable. There is no better 
 criticism of the book than that which Cervantes himself has 
 given through the mouth of the priest in the scnitiny of Don 
 Quixote's library. "What book is that?" "The Galatea 
 of Miguel de Cervantes," said the barber. "'Tis many years 
 since he has been a great friend of mine, that Cervantes, and 
 I know that he is rather versed in sorrow than in poetry. This 
 book has some invention ; it proposes something, and it con- 
 cludes nothing ; it behooves us to wait for the second part 
 which he promises. Perhaps with his amendment he will 
 obtain that entire pardon which is now denied to him ; in 
 the meantime. Gossip, keep him a recluse in your chamber." 
 This second part never appeared, perhaps with no loss to the 
 author's reputation. Poor as the verse is in Galatea, it secured 
 for Cervantes a place among the chief poets of the age, and 
 there is evidence to show that it was held in esteem, even out 
 of Spain, before and after the appearance of Don Quixote. 
 
 On the 1 2 th of December, 1584, Cervantes added to his 
 happiness, if not to his fortune, by a marriage with Dona 
 Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozm^diano, a lady of good 
 
LIfE OF CERVANTES liji 
 
 family of Esquivias. The settlement on his wife of a hun- 
 dred ducats, supposed to be one-tenth of his estate, and the 
 inventory of his effects taken at this time, among which are 
 included "forty-five hens, some chickens, and a cock," prove 
 that the bridegroom was in but indifferent circumstances, even 
 for a poor hidalgo of the time. Of the lady the records give 
 us scarcely a glimpse, and indeed for some years after his 
 marriage the life of Cervantes is wrapt in obscurity. All that 
 is known is that he wrote poetry, and won many friends among 
 the poets by his good nature and genial humor. He wrote for 
 the stage also for a living, producing between twenty and 
 thirty plays, chiefly comedies, of which only two survive. La 
 Numancia and El Trato de Argel. 
 
 There seems to be no reason to doubt Cervantes' s own state- 
 ment that as a playwright he gained considerable applause, 
 and it has been proved that the payment he received was quite 
 as high as that given to Lope de Vega. August Schlegel has 
 assigned high rank to La Numancia as one of the most striking 
 and original of modern tragedies, and La Confusa, a comedy 
 now lost, is spoken of with much complacency by its author. 
 The gifts of Cervantes, however, were not those of the drama- 
 tist, and such fame as he had begun to win paled before the 
 rising star of that "monster of nature," Lope de Vega. Once 
 more disappointed in his hopes of a livelihood, and having 
 now to support his wife, his widowed sister, and his natural 
 daughter, Cervantes was forced to seek for bread by other 
 means than .literature. 
 
 For twenty years — the darkest period of his life — he ceased 
 to write, or at least to publish. The poor crippled soldier had 
 to drink of a cup even more bitter than loss of liberty among 
 the Moors. A veil hangs over this portion of his career, which 
 his countrymen, for their own sake no less than for his, are 
 not too eager to lift, hiding, as it is only too certain that 
 it does, penury, rags, almost beggary, misery of every kind 
 
liv LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 except shame. Throughout all these trials what is known of 
 Cervantes proves him at least to have retained undimraed his 
 cheerfulness of spirit, his rare sweetness of disposition and faith 
 in humanity, "as one in suffering all that suffers nothing." 
 
 In 1588 he is found at Seville filling the humble place of a 
 commissary under Don Antonio de Guevara, the proveidor- 
 general of the Indian fleets. In this capacity he had to assist 
 in the victualling of the Invincible Armada, and documents 
 preserved in the archives of Seville prove his activity in the 
 purchase of grain, oil, and wine among the villages of Anda- 
 lusia, — gleaning, besides naval stores, much of that knowledge 
 of life and character of which he afterwards made such admira- 
 ble use. In 1590 he petitioned the king for employment in the 
 Indies, minutely recapitulating his past services, and naming 
 four offices then vacant as those he was qualified to fill, — the 
 accountantship of New Granada, that of the galleys of Car- 
 thagena, the government of the province of Soconusco, in 
 Guatemala, and the corregidorship of the city of La Paz. The 
 petition was coldly received and bore no fruit, for which per- 
 haps the ingratitude of the government was not wholly to blame. 
 The habits of unthrift and restlessness which he had acquired 
 as a soldier, together with such weaknesses as were the natural 
 defects of his virtues of extreme good nature and easiness of 
 disposition, must have unfitted him to some extent for the sober 
 pursuits of civil life; and Cervantes himself seems to hint, in 
 a passage in Don Quixote, as well as in his yburney to Par- 
 nassus, at some imprudence which contributed to spoil his 
 advancement. He continued for some years to hold his poor 
 place of commissary, residing chiefly at Seville. 
 
 At a poetical competition held at Zaragoza in honor of the 
 canonization of San Jacinto, in 1595, he was adjudged the first 
 prize, — three silver spoons. The next year, on the occasion of 
 the sacking of Seville by the English under Essex, he wrote a 
 sonnet, ridiculing with fine irony the behavior of the Duke 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Iv 
 
 of Medina-Celi, who, having a large force at his command for 
 the defence of the city, only appeared on the scene when the 
 English had departed. Owing to the treachery and failure of 
 an agent, through whom he had remitted to Madrid a sum 
 of money, collected on account of the government, Cervantes 
 about this time became involved in a pecuniary difficulty, 
 which continued to be a source of annoyance to him for some 
 years, in addition to his other troubles. Being unable to repay 
 the money at the king's mandate, he was cast into prison, but 
 having succeeded in scraping together enough to reduce his 
 debt to a few hundred reals, he was released after a short de- 
 tention.' Neither on this occasion, nor on two subsequent 
 ones when he fell under the cognizance of the law, was there 
 left any stain upon his honor, nor any fault alleged beyoiid 
 that of carelessness or undue trustfulness. 
 
 On the death of Philip II, in 1598, his obsequies were cele- 
 brated at Seville with such extravagant pomp and grandeur of 
 decoration as to awake the ridicule of Cervantes, who, never 
 a lover of the defunct monarch, gave vent to his feelings in a 
 sonnet which is one of the happiest of his lighter effusions in 
 this which was his true vein in poetry. At this period, the 
 author, in spite of his poverty and mean condition, seems to 
 -have enjoyed the society and friendship of his countrymen 
 most famous in literature and art, among others of the cele- 
 brated poet Fernando de Herrera and the artists Pacheco, 
 master and father-in-law of Velasquez, and Jaureguy, by both 
 of whom his portrait was painted. He wrote and circulated 
 in manuscript some of those novels which many years later he 
 completed and published ; but, like the poor poet whom he has 
 described, half of his divine thoughts and imaginations were 
 taken up in the study of the means of daily bread for hiinself 
 and his family. 
 
 The four years succeeding 1598 are wholly a blank in the 
 life of Cervantes. Tradition assigns to this period the visit to 
 
Ivi LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 La Mancha where occurred that new trouble of which Don 
 Quixote is supposed to be the vengeance. The story is, that 
 Cervantes had a commission from the prior of Saint John to 
 collect his tithes in the district of Argamasilla, and that while 
 he was employed in this ungrateful function the villagers set 
 upon him, and, after maltreating him, threw him into prison, 
 his place of imprisonment being a house still standing, called 
 La Casa de Medrano. Here, according to a general consensus 
 of opinion, was conceived, if not written, the first part of Don 
 Quixote, conformably to what the author says in the prologue 
 of this "child of his wit" being "engendered in a prison." 
 
 In 1603, Cervantes is found living at Valladolid, among the 
 herd of starving soldiers and needy writers expectant of pre- 
 ferment which then filled the court. The favors of Phihp III, 
 good-natured and well disposed to literature, were dispensed 
 by the Duke de Lerma, then at the height of his power, whose 
 haughty, cold, and selfish nature was little likely to see merit 
 in Cervantes. Once more disappointed in his hopes of pre- 
 ferment, Cervantes was reduced to the utmost straits of poverty, 
 eking out a living by business agencies and humble literary 
 employment, such as writing petitions and correcting manu- 
 scripts, aided by such small gains as the ladies of his house- 
 hold were able to earn by the labors of the needle. 
 
 By the beginning of 1604, he had completed the work 
 which was destined to give him, if not bread, immortality. 
 The First Part of Don Quixote, begun, according to internal 
 evidence, before the death of Philip II, was now ready for the 
 press. The date is the same which the majority of Shake- 
 spearian critics have assigned to the first appearance of the 
 second and perfect Hamlet ; nor is this the only coincidence 
 between the lives of these two great contemporaries. A patron 
 being in that age as necessary to an author as a publisher, Cer- 
 vantes, with some difficulty, found one in the Duke de Bejar, 
 a nobleman of high rank and honor, ambitious of the name of 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ivii 
 
 a Mfecenas. The tradition which tells how the duke's scruples 
 in connecting his name with a book of so novel a character 
 and equivocal a purpose were surmounted is probably well 
 founded. Instigated, it is said, by his confessor, who scented 
 heresy, or at least a dangerous humor, in this book with a 
 strange name, the Duke de Bejar withdrew the promise of 
 patronage he had given and would not accept Cervantes' s 
 dedication. The author, however, begged hard for permission 
 to read a chapter of his story before the duke, and pleased him 
 so well that his objections were overcome. The license for 
 publication was obtained the 26th of September, 1604, and in 
 the beginning of the next year the First Part of Don Quixote 
 was printed at Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta, and published by 
 Francisco de Robles, to whom Cervantes had sold the copy- 
 right for ten years. The theory that the book was received 
 coldly at first, so that Cervantes was induced to write a tract 
 called El Buscapie, in order to attract the attention of the 
 public to Don Qui:Soote and to stimulate their curiosity by hint- 
 ing that the characters and incidents were not wholly imagi- 
 nary, must be rejected as unsupported by a tittle of evidence 
 and wholly opposed to the facts. There is no proof that any 
 such tract as El Buscapie ever existed until Don Adolfo de 
 Castro published in 1848 what all competent Spanish critics 
 have pronounced to be a clumsy and impudent forgery. There 
 could be no reason for such a publication by Cervantes, seeing 
 that Don Quixote was received by the great mass of the public 
 with marked and singular applause. 
 
 Although certain great literary personages, and some of 
 Cervantes' s own friends, from suspicion that they were in- 
 cluded in the satire or from jealousy of his success, professed 
 to sneer at the book because of its vulgar style, its unbecom- 
 ing subject, and its bizarre title, there can be no doubt of the 
 extraordinary popularity achieved by Don Quixote on its first 
 appearance. No fewer than six impressions of the first edition 
 
Iviii LIFR OF CERVANTES 
 
 of 1605 are extant, of which two were issued at Madrid, two 
 at Valencia, and two at Lisbon. There had appeared up to 
 that date no book since the invention of printing which had 
 so many readers. To that artificial age, reared in the insipid 
 extravagances of the successors of Amadis, Don Quixote was 
 as the dawn of a new revelation. The humor, equally simple 
 and deep, the easy, careless grace of the narrative, the fine 
 wisdom and tenderness, the true charity, of this book which 
 professed to be a burlesque of the romances of chivalry, were 
 qualities as rare as they were delightful in Spanish literature.. 
 Even those who missed the allegory and were insensible to the 
 satire could not but enjoy the story with its fresh and lively 
 pictures of national life and character. That which has be- 
 come, to use the phrase of Sainte-Beuve, "the book of hu- 
 manity, ' ' was no less successful in its age as a book of popular 
 recreation. The author himself was probably amazed at his 
 own success. Like his great contemporary Shakespeare, while 
 careful of his lesser works he seems to have abandoned his 
 masterpiece to the printers with scarcely a thought of his lit- 
 erary reputation. All the first editions of Don Quixote swarm 
 with blunders of the most extraordinary kind, proving that 
 Cervantes could never have revised the printing, even if he 
 had looked through his manuscript before committing it to 
 the press. He is made to forget in one chapter what he had 
 written in another. He confounds even the names of his 
 characters, calling Sancho's wife Theresa in one place and 
 Maria in another — the very blunders of which he afterwards 
 accused his enemy Avellaneda. He makes Sancho ride his ass 
 immediately after it had been stolen by Gines de Pasamonte, 
 and bewail its loss when it had been recovered. He confounds 
 time, place, and persons, and abounds in inaccuracies and 
 anachronisms, to the distraction of his readers, the perturba- 
 tion of his critics, and the serious grief of his admirers. The 
 style of this First Part of Don Quixote, in spite of occasional 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES lix 
 
 passages of beauty which are among the models of the Castilian 
 tongue, is loose, slovenly, and inartistic. Even in the second 
 edition, published in 1608, and revised by the author, a great 
 many patent blunders were suffered to stand, over which Cer- 
 vantes himself makes merry in the Second Part. 
 
 All this is unfavorable to the theory which some critics have 
 formed, that there was a purpose in the book other than what 
 appears on the surface. There is no reason to doubt Cervan- 
 tes's own declaration, several times repeated, that in writing 
 Don Quixote he had no other design than to destroy the credit 
 of those romances of chivalry whose reading was so pernicious 
 to the taste and morals of the age, and to furnish "a pastime 
 for melancholy and gloomy spirits." The idea of Byron that 
 Cervantes "laughed Spain's chivalry away " is not more absurd 
 than some recent conjectures that Don Quixote was intended 
 as a satire upon certain leading personages of the Spanish 
 court, especially upon the Duke de Lerma. The chivalry of 
 Spain was already gone before Cervantes wrote. Had it not 
 been gone, Don Quixote would not have been written, nor 
 would it have fallen to Cervantes, the most chivalrous of men, 
 to deliver its death-stroke. Not chivalry, but the foolish and 
 extravagant romances of chivalry it was which Cervantes un- 
 dertook to destroy ; and so completely was his work done that 
 none of them appeared after 1604. There was no man of that 
 age more deeply imbued, as his life bears witness, with the 
 true chivalrous spirit, nor was there any better affected, as his 
 book shows, to all the literature of chivalry. Don Quixote 
 itself is a romance of chivalry, certainly not less inspired 
 with the purest sentiment of honor, or furnishing a less ex- 
 alted model of knighthood than Amadis of Gaul or Palmerin 
 of England. Every passage of it proves how carefully and 
 sympathetically Cervantes had studied his originals. For 
 the romance of Amadis itself, as contained in the first four 
 books of Garci-Ordonez, Ceryantes always professed a high 
 
IX LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 respect. What he intended to ridicule was the continuation 
 of Amadis in all the endless series of his descendants, each 
 surpassing its predecessor in extravagance and folly. 
 
 The theory that Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in order to 
 revenge himself on the Duke de Lerma and his satellites, which 
 has been revived in these latter days, scarcely deserves serious 
 refutation. To those who are able to believe that in the 
 character of the knight of La Mancha the author intended to 
 portray his mortal enemy, the more material improbabilities 
 which surround this hypothesis will present no difficulty. In 
 one sense Don Quixote is indeed a satire ; but the follies it 
 ridicules are those common to all humanity and to every age, 
 and the satire is of that rare kind which moves not to de- 
 preciation but to love and pity of the object — to sympathy 
 rather than to contempt, and to tears as well as laughter. Don 
 Quixote and Sancho Panza are permanent types individualized. 
 They are as true for all time as for the sixteenth century — for 
 all the world as for Spain. The antithesis of the pure imagina- 
 tion without understanding and the commonplace good sense 
 without imagination which these two represent is the eternal 
 conflict which possesses the world. 
 
 The secret of the marvellous success of Don Quixote, of the 
 extraordinary popularity which makes it not only the great 
 book of Spain, but a book for all mankind, has been aptly 
 described by Coleridge to lie in the rare combination of the 
 permanent with the individual which the genius of the author 
 has been enabled to achieve. Don Quixote is not only the 
 perfect man of imagination, less the understanding, but he is a 
 living picture of the Spanish hidalgo of the time of Philip II. 
 Sancho is the ideal commonplace man of sense, less the imag- 
 ination, and also the pure Manchegan peasant. In the carrying 
 out of his happy conception, Cervantes was doubtless careless 
 of his own main purpose, so that this burlesque of romance 
 has become a real picture of life — this caricature of chivalry 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ixi 
 
 the truest chivalric model — this life of a fool the wisest of 
 books. 
 
 The fame acquired by the publication of the First Part of 
 Don Quixote does not appear to have contnlDuted materially to 
 the improvement of the author's fortunes. In 1605 he was still 
 living at Valladolid, where, with his usual ill luck, he was in- 
 volved in a painful incident which brought him once more, 
 though perfectly innocent, into collision with thp authorities. 
 A young nobleman of the court, being wounded in a street 
 brawl, was carried into the house where Cervantes lodged, to 
 be tended, and died there of his hurts. Cervantes and his 
 family, with the other inmates of the house, were cast into 
 prison, according to the rough process of Spanish law, until 
 they could be examined before the alcalde. From the deposi- 
 tions of the witnesses, which are extant, we learn that at this 
 time Cervantes's household consisted of his wife, his natural 
 daughter Isabel, over twenty years old, his widowed sister 
 Andrea, with her daughter Constanza, and one female servant; 
 and that he made his living by writing and general agency. 
 
 In May of this year there arrived at Madrid the Earl of 
 Huntingdon, with a retinue of six hundred persons, from Eng- 
 land, bearing a message of congratulation to the king on the 
 birth of his heir, afterwards Philip IV, on which occasion were 
 given a series of magnificent entertainments. On the strength 
 of an allusion in a satirical sonnet by Gongara, a narrative of 
 the festivities, published in 1605, and still extant, has been 
 attributed to Cervantes, but it bears no marks of his style, and 
 it is not probable that he would be employed on such a pur- 
 pose. There is better evidence of his hand in a letter to Don 
 Diego de Astudillo, discovered in the Bibliotheca Colombina 
 at Seville in 1845, gi'^i^g an account of a burlesque tourney 
 or poetical joust held in the suburb of San Juan de Alfarache 
 on the feast of Saint Laurence. From this it would appear 
 that Cervantes was on a visit to Seville in 1606, and on terms 
 
Ixii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 of familiar intercourse with many distinguished poets; also 
 that allusions to Don Quixote and quotations from the book 
 were familiar in the mouths of the wits of the time. Thence- 
 forward to his death, Cervantes seems to have resided at 
 Madrid, whither he had followed the court from Valladolid, 
 with but little improvement in his worldly circumstances, sup- 
 ported chiefly by a pension from the Archbishop of Toledo, 
 and casual gratuities from his other patron, the Count de 
 Lemos. 
 
 In 1608 was published the second edition of the First Part 
 of Don Quixote, with some corrections and additions by the 
 author. The next year, following the fashion of the times, he 
 entered as a lay brother into the Oratory of Cafiizares, together 
 with Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Espinal, and many other of 
 his contemporaries and friends. In 16 10 the Count de Lemos 
 was appointed Viceroy of Naples, and Cervantes seems to have 
 been indulged with some promises of being made his secre- 
 tary, but his advanced age and his dependent family were made 
 the pretext for his being passed over in favor of his rival and 
 pretended friend, Leonardo Argensola. In 1613 he gave to 
 the world his Novelas Exemplares, some of which had been 
 written many years before — a collection of tales of very various 
 character, in a style till then unknown in Spain, owing little 
 beyond their form to the Italian models. These stories, un- 
 deservedly neglected out of their native country, must be 
 reckoned as second in merit among Cervantes's writings, and 
 even superior to Don Quixote in elegancy of style. They are 
 indeed the true originals, in the modern literature of Europe, 
 of the novel, or story of real life, with plot, character, and 
 scenery, and display in a very remarkable degree not only the 
 versatility of their author's genius, but his extreme familiarity 
 with every type of Spanish society, especially of the lower 
 orders of the people. In the charming story of La Gitanella, 
 among some of the best of Cervantes's lyrics, is to be found 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ixiii 
 
 the germ of all the gipsy romances, poems, and operas which 
 have since dehghted the world, and in Rinconete y Cortadillo 
 we have a picture of a Spanish Alsatia as vivid and real as 
 anything by Defoe or Dickens. Indeed, these stories, rich in 
 incident, character, and invention, have been a mine in which 
 the novelists and dramatists of all countries have delved,— 
 Scott himself, according to Lockhart, confessing that he first 
 drew from them his idea of writing the Waverley Novels. 
 
 In his dedication of the Novelas to the Count de Lemos, 
 Cervantes speaks of being engaged on several other works, 
 among them the Second Vartof Don Quixote ; and in the pro- 
 logue, which contains some interesting details of his biography, 
 he gives this portrait of himself in his sixty-fifth year: — "Of 
 aquiline features, chestnut hair, a smooth and open forehead, 
 with cheerful eyes, a nose curved though well proportioned, 
 long moustaches, the beard of silver (which twenty years ago 
 was of gold), the mouth small, the teeth not much, for he has but 
 six, and those in bad condition and worse placed, for they have 
 no concert one with another ; the body between two extremes, 
 neither large nor small, the complexion lively, rather white 
 than brown, somewhat crooked in the shoulders, and not very 
 light of feet — this, I say, is the effigy of the author of Galatea 
 and of Don Quixote de la Mancha. ' ' Upon this description of 
 his person — to which it may be added that he stammered in 
 his speech and had lost the use of his left hand by the wound 
 received at Lepanto — has been founded that ideal portrait, 
 first designed by the English engraver Kent for Lord Carteret's 
 edition of 1753, and since then ignorantly copied and re- 
 peated in Spain and everywhere as the true image of Miguel 
 de Cervantes. 
 
 In 161 4 was published the Viaj'e del Parnaso, which, with all 
 its faults, maybe said to be the most successful of our author's 
 essays in verse. It is a burlesque poem, professedly in imita- 
 tion of one with the same title by the Italian, Cesare Caporali, 
 
Ixiv LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 but having little but the name in common with its predecessor. 
 The half-serious, half-jesting vein in which Cervantes here in- 
 dulges was unquestionably that which was most natural to his 
 genius, and in spite of the cumbrousness of the allegorical ma- 
 chinery, and the excessive laudation which, as usual, he heaps 
 on the small writers his contemporaries, the poem abounds in 
 fancy, humor, and invention. The seventh book, in which is 
 described the encounter between the armies of the good and 
 bad poets, may compare with the Battle of the Books and the 
 fifth canto of the Lutrin. Cervantes's fancy of making the 
 combatants wound one another with odes and sonnets is surely 
 happier than either Swift's, where the authors use the ordinary 
 weapons of Homeric war, or Boileau's, where the monks dis- 
 charge material volumes. Not the least interesting portion 
 of this poem is the fourth book, wherein the author speaks of 
 himself, his labors, and his misfortunes with a character- 
 istic mixture of modesty, gaiety, and simple self-confidence. 
 In the prose appendix is a spirited and humorous dialogue 
 with a messenger from Apollo concerning Cervantes's rela- 
 tions to the theatre, and the reason of his ill success as a 
 dramatist. 
 
 After thirty years' retirement from the stage, during which 
 interval the great Lope de Vega had arisen in all his glory, and 
 he and his imitators had, by their fertility and their submissive 
 devotion to the vulgar taste no less than by their genius, ob- 
 tained the complete mastery of the national drama, Cervantes 
 could hardly hope to recover for himself that position as a 
 playwright to the memory of which he seems to have always 
 clung with tenacity. Encouraged, however, by the renewal 
 of his popularity as a writer, or stimulated perhaps by his 
 necessities, he made in his old age another experiment in the 
 drama, in which it is sad to find that he abandoned all those 
 admirable principles which he had advocated through the 
 mouth of the canon in Don Quixote, surrendering himself to 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ixv 
 
 the vicious models he had himself so eloquently condemned. 
 The result was unfortunate for his reputation. A collection 
 of eight comedies and as many interludes was published in 
 1 614, with a preface in which the author reports naively of his 
 ill success in the negotiation for a sale of their copyright. He 
 would buy them, the bookseller said, were it not that he had 
 been told by a certain person of distinction that "of the 
 prose of Miguel de Cervantes much could be expected, but of 
 his poetry nothing." This opinion was probably confirmed 
 by these plays, which are so unworthy of their author that 
 when reproduced in 1749 by Bias de Nasarre, that editor 
 maintained the ingenious paradox that Cervantes had made 
 them purposely bad in order to ridicule the plays of the day, 
 just as he had written Don Quixote to ridicule the books of 
 chivalry. There is no need of any such theory to account for 
 the failure of Cervantes in the drama. His genius was un- 
 suited to the stage. The qualities in which he most excelled 
 were essentially uridramatic, nor can his persistent efforts to 
 recover his position as a playwright, even after the success of 
 Don Quixote had been assured, be explained otherwise than 
 by the fact that the stage was then almost the only road to 
 literary fortune. The First Part of Don Quixote had brought 
 him fame, but nothing more. Before the appearance of the 
 Second Part, the plan of which had been freely announced to 
 his friends for some time previously, Cervantes was destined 
 to encounter perhaps the strangest of the many crosses with 
 which his pitiless evil star teased him to the end of his troubled 
 and painful life. He had seen, while in the flush of manhood, 
 his dream of soldiership dispelled by a cruel captivity. He had 
 experienced the overthrow of all his hopes of civil preferment. 
 He had been subject to every kind of mortification in his 
 literary ambition. He had been jostled out of the arena by 
 his rivals in poetry and in the drama. When old, infirm, and 
 destitute, his genius had at last found in Don Quixote its 
 
Ixvi Llt'E OF CERVANTES 
 
 proper field of employment and something like a fitting recog- 
 nition. But even here he was not to be left undisturbed. The 
 ill fortune which never ceased to make him its mark was able 
 to send a shaft through this his strongest side, which poisoned 
 all his hardly-earned triumph and vexed him to the grave. 
 
 The story of the false Second Part of Don Quixote, pub- 
 lished under the name of Avellaneda, is one of the strangest 
 in literary history, the mystery of which, though it has occu- 
 pied many volumes, is not yet wholly unravelled. It is sufii- 
 cient here to say that after it was well known that Cervantes 
 was employed upon and had nearly completed his Second Part 
 of Don Quixote, there appeared at Tarragona, in 1614, a book 
 pretending to be a continuation of the knight's adventures, 
 by Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, a native of Tordesillas. 
 The manifest object of this impudent fabrication was to malign 
 the character of Cervantes, to destroy the credit of his book, 
 and to deprive him of the fame and profit which he expected 
 to derive from its completion. In a prefac'e, full of a curious 
 malignity, evidently arising from some cause deeper than liter- 
 ary envy, Cervantes was reproached in the grossest terms with 
 his infirmities and misfortunes, even with his wounds, — sneered 
 at as one "with more tongue than hands," — reviled as old, 
 poor, and without friends, — branded as envious and discon- 
 tented, a calumniator of great men, and an evil-speaker even of 
 the Church and the Holy Office. In the body of the book, 
 under pretence of carrying on the story, every opportunity is 
 taken to spoil it, by degrading the characters and giving a 
 coarse turn to the incidents. Don Quixote is debased into 
 a wild lunatic, who ends his days in a mad-house; Sancho is 
 turned into a dull buffoon and his humor into brutal gluttony. 
 In place of the witty and beautiful Dorothea, we have the gross 
 wench Barbara ; and the graceful episodes of the original are 
 represented by a string of dreary and vulgar adventures, with- 
 out life, color, or probability. Apart from the spirit of malice. 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES kvii 
 
 the book, in the words of Ticknor, is "so completely without 
 dignity or consistency that it is clear the writer did not possess 
 the power of comprehending the genius he at once basely 
 libelled and meanly attempted to supplant. ' ' Nothing in viler 
 taste has ever disfigured the literature of any nation, and it is 
 greatly to the scandal of Cervantes' s countrymen, nor the least 
 of the injuries they have done him, alive and dead, that they 
 have suffered such a book to be reprinted and to retain a place 
 in their national collections. The false Don Quixote, in which 
 Lesage, and even some later critics, both French and Spanish, 
 have pretended to see merits equal if not superior to those of 
 the true, is now remembered only by Cervantes' s perhaps too 
 frequent references to it in the later chapters of his own book, 
 and has little interest except in connection with the mystery of 
 his life. The identity of Avellaneda is a problem which has 
 greatly exercised the Spanish critics. The weight of opinion 
 is in favor of its being the disguise of the notorious Fray Luis 
 de Aliaga, the low-born confessor and minion of the Duke de 
 Lerma, who was high in power during the reign of Philip III. 
 Of all whose names have been suggested as the probable 
 author of the spurious Quixote, Aliaga is the only one who ful- 
 fils the required conditions. He was a Dominican, a preacher, 
 and an Aragonese. He was an intimate friend of Lope de 
 Vega, whose cause he openly espoused. He was in the con- 
 fidence of the Holy Office, and may be suspected of not being 
 well disposed to Cervantes' s patron, the Archbishop of Toledo, 
 whom he succeeded as inquisitor-general. He was known to 
 be of a rancorous and envious spirit, who had written more 
 than one pseudonymous libel, and was himself the mark of 
 frequent caricatures and lampoons. Lastly, it has been proved 
 that, before the appearance of Don Quixote, Aliaga's well- 
 known nickname was Sancho. There was much in the book 
 of Cervantes to give such a man offence, even whether such 
 offence was intended or not, — in his person, his character, his 
 
Ixviii LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 office, and his religion. That as Avellaneda he found assist- 
 ance among some of the writers of the period, rivals of Cer- 
 vantes and jealous of his fame, is very probable ; and there is 
 only too much reason for suspecting that the great Lope de 
 Vega himself was one of Aliaga's allies. Although Spanish 
 writers are slow to admit that the relations between the two 
 illustrious contemporaries were otherwise than friendly, and 
 although on the side of Cervantes there never was any other 
 than the spirit of perfect courtesy, loyalty, and magnanimity 
 which became his own noble nature, recent researches have 
 proved that by Lope de Vega these feelings were not honestly 
 reciprocated. He who was called by his own familiar friend 
 Alarcon "the universal envier of other men's meeds" is 
 known to have regarded with jealous eyes the sudden popu- 
 larity achieved by his despised competitor in Don Quixote. 
 In addition to other proofs of an indirect kind tending to 
 show that about the time of the appearance of Don Quixote 
 Lope de Vega was ill disposed towards his once intimate friend, 
 we have the direct evidence of the letter discovered by Schack 
 among the manuscripts of Count Altamira, dated August 4, 
 1604, wherein occurs this passage: 
 
 "Of poets I speak not; many are budding for the year to 
 come ; but none is so bad as Cervantes, or so stupid as to 
 praise Don Quixote. ' ' 
 
 With Don Quixote it could scarcely be expected that Lope 
 would be pleased ; and there was much in the book, especially 
 in the canon's strictures on the popular drama, to give him 
 offence. If he stooped so low for his revenge as to inspire or 
 to aid his friend Aliaga to write the false Don Quixote, his 
 triumph was but brief. 
 
 At the close of 1615, Cervantes published his own Second 
 Part, and from that moment the other was forever blotted 
 
The Windmill Adventure. 
 From the painting by Jose Moreno Carboner 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ixix 
 
 from the world's memory. This Second Part, though bearing 
 marks of haste in the concluding chapters, belies, according 
 to the judgment of the best critics, the opinion of the author 
 himself as expressed through the mouth of the priest, that 
 second parts are never good. Although written in old age, it 
 contains at least as much of the glow and warmth of imagina- 
 tion as the first, while it is even superior in invention. There 
 is more harmony in the construction, more correctness if not 
 more vigor in the style, with fewer distractions and digres- 
 sions. The author has more confidence in himself and more 
 love of his work. His hero is more consistent in his madness, 
 Sancho more pleasant in his sanity. Both master and man, 
 especially the latter, while still true to their character, have 
 developed into an ampler and richer nature. They have evi- 
 dently advanced in their creator's favor, and have more pains 
 taken with their behavior. The knight is more lovable, the 
 squire more humorous ; and the whole treatment of the story, 
 with its vivacity and variety, its easy flow of narrative, and its 
 masterly and pathetic close, is worthy of the happy genius of 
 which it is the crown and full development. 
 
 By this time the fame of Cervantes had spread through 
 many lands. Numerous editions of his Don Quixote had been 
 printed, either in the original or in translation, thus realizing 
 the author's prediction that there would be no nation or lan- 
 guage to which his book would not be carried. According to 
 the interesting story told by the Archbishop of Toledo's secre- 
 tary, Marqnez Torres, in his approbation appended to the 
 Second Part, dated February 27, 1615, foreigners of distinc- 
 tion, when they visited Madrid, made it their first business to 
 inquire after the author of Don Quixote. To a party of 
 French gentlemen, members of the suite of the ambassador, 
 the Due de Mayenne, who were anxious to learn of the con- 
 dition and mode of life of the celebrated writer, the secretary 
 of the archbishop was obliged to respond that " he who had 
 
Ixx LIFE OF CERVANTES 
 
 made all the world rich was poor and infirm, though a soldier 
 and a gentleman." The man who was the delight of his age 
 and destined to be the chief glory of his country was indeed 
 still in great misery, depending on alms for his subsistence, 
 and now in his sixty-ninth year stricken by a mortal disease. 
 In the dedication of his Second Part of Don Quixote to the 
 Count de Lemos, Cervantes speaks of his broken health and 
 approaching end, still with unabated courage and cheerfulness. 
 
 His last work, not published till after his death, was Persiles 
 and Sigismunda, a romance of love and adventure after the 
 model of Heliodorus, on which he bestowed great pains and 
 singular affection, declaring that it would be either the best 
 or the worst of his books. The dedication to the Count de 
 Lemos is written with an astonishing gaiety and spirit, though 
 it announces that the author had yesterday received extreme 
 unction, and had "one foot in the stirrups," waiting for a 
 summons. About this time must have occurred that adven- 
 ture, which is so pleasantly told in the prologue, of the meeting 
 with the student near Toledo, when our author, in a grievous 
 state from dropsy, was returning from a visit to his wife's 
 family at Esquivias, at the close of which he wrote : "And so 
 farewell, humors ; farewell, my gay friends, for I feel myself 
 dying, and have no desire but soon to see you happy in the 
 other world. ' ' On the 4th of April he entered the order of the 
 Franciscan Friars, whose habit, following the fashion of the 
 period, he had assumed three years before, and on the 23d of 
 that month he ended, in all serenity and cheerfulness, his life 
 of many troubles. In the same year, and nominally on the 
 same day, though really ten days Jater, allowance being made 
 for the difference of calendars, died William Shakespeare in 
 England. 
 
 Cervantes's body was buried humbly at the expense of his 
 religious order in the convent of the Trinitarian Nuns in the 
 Calle de Humilladero, of which community his daughter Isabel 
 
LIFE OF CERVANTES Ixxi 
 
 was a professed member. In 1633 the nuns moved to a new 
 site in the Calle de Cantarrenas, and having exhumed and 
 brought away their dead with them, the bones of Cervantes 
 were mingled with others in a common ossuary, so that 
 Spain, who had shown herself so careless of him in life, has 
 lost all trace of him in death. So closes a record as glorious 
 and as calamitous as any in literary history, of one of the 
 world's greatest benefactors, whom the world knew not — of 
 the best of all Spaniards, the very type and perfect embodi- 
 ment of the highest Castilian nature, whom his country starved 
 and who has made her immortal. 
 
 The language of eulogy has been exhausted over that work 
 of Miguel de Cervantes which for two hundred and fifty years 
 has been the delight of mankind in a degree such as no other 
 book has ever approached. There is nothing to add to the 
 tribute which the critics of all countries have joined in paying 
 to the wisest, tenderest, and deepest of humorists. 
 
GENEALOGY OF 
 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES 
 
 The descent of Miguel de Cervantes from Nunc Alfonso, 
 called £1 Gran, or The Great, — Alcaide (Governor) of To- 
 ledo, and a Rico Hombre of Castile, born 1090, and died 
 1 1 43, in battle against the Moors, has been traced by Navar- 
 rete, on the authority of Mendez de Silva and other genealo- 
 gists, according to the genealogical tree to be found on the 
 next page. 
 
 Cervantes's kinship vrith the royal house of Spain is made 
 out by Mendez de Silva through a daughter of Nuno Alfonso, 
 El Gran, who married the Count Pedro Gutierrez de Toledo. 
 The thirteenth in direct succession from her was Dona Mari- 
 ana de C6rdoba, who married Don Fadrique Enriquez, Ad- 
 miral of Castile, the great-grandson of Alfonso XII. Their 
 daughter, Doiia Juana Enriquez de Cordoba, was the second 
 wife of Juan II, King of Aragon and Navarre. Their son 
 was King Ferdinand of Aragon, who married Isabella (the 
 Catholic) of Castile, and made the kingdoms of Spain into 
 one. Their grandson was Charles V, the father of Philip II 
 and of Don Juan of Austria. 
 Ixxii 
 
GENEALOGY Ixxiii 
 
 DESCENT OF MIGUEL DE CERVANTES 
 
 NuNo Alfonso 
 
 (married Teresa Barroso). 
 
 I ■ 
 
 Alfonso Munio 
 
 (the first called Cervatos). 
 I 
 
 GoNZALO DE Cervantes 
 
 (the first called Cervantes). 
 
 Juan Alfonso 
 
 (Commander in the Order of Calatrava). 
 
 Alonso Gomez 
 Diego Gomez 
 
 (the first who settled in Andalusia). 
 I 
 
 GoNZALO Gomez 
 
 (a Veinticuatro of Seville). 
 
 RODRIGO 
 
 (called El Sordo (the Deaf); his brother Diego was the founder of the 
 
 branch in La Mancha). 
 
 Juan 
 
 (a Veinticuatro of Seville). 
 
 DiEGO 
 (a Commander in the Order of Santiago). 
 
 Juan 
 (Corregidor of Osuna, 1531-1558). 
 
 RODRIGO 
 
 \ 
 
 I I I I 
 
 Andrea Rodrigo Luisa MIGUEL 
 
 (Three times (Served in various (Became a (The author of 
 
 married. campaigns, and Carmelite nun Don Quixote"). 
 
 A widow in died in Flanders, in 1565). 
 
 1576). date unknown ). 
 
Ixxiv NOTES 
 
 NOTES 
 
 NOTE TO PREFACE. 
 
 ' According to the Ortografia Castellana, which may be taken to be a 
 sufficient authority in the matter, x should be retained in all words of pure 
 Latin origin, while / should be used in words from the Arabic. But this 
 rule is disregarded by modern Spanish writers, who use x and/ indiscrimi- 
 nately. Thus we have ejemplo and ejercito, instead of exemplo and exer- 
 cito, — which are clearly solecisms, and in violation of the rule. So late as 
 in 1623, Minsheu, in the appendix to his Spanish and English Dictionary, 
 directs his readers that the Spanish^ " is pronounced as in French /awsw," 
 and x like the French ch, — ojo like osho, anijloxo like Jlosho. 
 
 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ' Motteux was a busy, bustling man, a sort of jack-of-all-trades, who 
 was an auctioneer, and kept a miscellaneous store at the sign of the " Two 
 Fans," near the old India House, where he retailed, according to his letter 
 in the Spectator (January 30, 1712), Teas, Muslins, Arrack, Picture's, and 
 Silks of the newest modes ; besides odes, prologues, and translations. He 
 avers that " the foreign goods I sell seem no less acceptable than the foreign 
 books. I translated Rabelais and Don Quixote. ^^ Motteux made a misera- 
 ble end, being found murdered in a brothel near Temple Bar in February, 
 1718. 
 
 ^ Motteux's version has been many times reprinted, even to our day, with 
 a few trifling corrections and alterations. Lockhart made it the medium 
 of giving to the world his translation of the Spanish Ballads, a translation 
 quite as loose and as unlike the original as that to which it was tacked. 
 Lockhart, though a man of fine taste and of fastidious judgment, had very 
 little Spanish. 
 
 'Sir John Hawkins, in his Life of Doctor Johnson, tells a curious story 
 about Jarvis and his translation. " The fact is Jervas labored at it for many 
 years, but could make but little progress, for being a painter by profession, 
 he had not been accustomed to write, and had no style. Mr. Tonson, the 
 bookseller, seeing this, suggested the thought of employing Mr. Broughton, 
 the reader at the Temple Church, the author and editor of sundry publi- 
 cations, who, as I have been informed by a friend of Tonson, sat himself 
 
NOTES Ixxv 
 
 down to study the Spanish language, and in a few months acquired, as was 
 pretended, sufficient knowledge thereof to give to the world a translation 
 of Dan Quixote in the spirit of the original, and to which is prefixed the 
 name of Jarvis." 
 
 * Attached to the early editions of Jarvis is A Supplement to the Trans- 
 lator's Preface, dealing with the principles and practice of " the ancient 
 chivalry," said to be " communicated by a learned writer, well known in 
 the literary world." This was Bishop Warburton, of whose dogmatism, 
 arrogance, and hollow, pompous pedantry this essay is a very choice 
 specimen. 
 
 ^Germania is the classic slang of Spain, more prevalent in Cervantes's 
 time in Andalusia than in any other province. It is defined by Don Sebas- 
 tian Covarmbias, in his valuable Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana (pub- 
 lished shortly after the date of Don Quixote^, as el lenguaje de la rufian- 
 esca, — "the language of the rufifianry," — the idiom of the Lazarillos and 
 the Cortadillos, in which Cervantes, as his books show, was a proficient. 
 Germdnia has its dictionary and its grammar, and must not be confounded 
 with Romany, which is a jargon based on Hindustani. 
 
 * Ss tan clara que no hay cosa que dificultar en ella. 
 
 ' Tolondron means "a giddy-pate," "a harebrained fellow." The book 
 was published in London in 1786, and is an angry, spluttering perform- 
 ance, full of venom and bad language. The respectable Bowie is called 
 many foul names, such as " Ourang-outang," "Monsieur Cerberus," 
 "Doctor Coglione,'' and is generally addressed as "Jack." There is a 
 tradition that Baretti, who was a most malignant creature, believed that 
 Bowie had written a paragraph to his discredit, in the matter of his trial 
 for murder, in the Monthly Review. Poor Bowie's end is said to have 
 been hastened by the ill success of his book. 
 
 * There is a tradition (how well founded I do not know, though Hartz- 
 enbusch seems to hint that it is true) that Clemencin had got hold of 
 certain manuscripts of one Don Ramon Cabrera (not to be confounded 
 with the Carlist leader), the author of an Etymological Dictionary, and 
 used them as his own in the composition of his commentary. 
 
 ' His chief enemy, and the most redoubtable champion on the Cer- 
 vantist side, is Juan Calderon, the author of an admirable little book, 
 entitled Cervantes Vindicado (Madrid, 1854). Calderon, of whom I can 
 learn nothing but that he was a refugee in England and had turned Prot- 
 estant, is one of the best of all the later critics of Don Quixote, who 
 " gives it back " to Clemencin in a rare good style. 
 
Ixxvi NOTES 
 
 '" Towards the end of his sixth volume, Clemencin seems to be visited 
 with some glimmering sense of remorse for having been too hard on Cer- 
 vantes, and tries to make up for his past freedoms with Don Quixote by 
 some uncouth gambollings of delight over that good though ungrammatical 
 work. In this he shares the common lot of those who have had to do with 
 Cervantes, whose critics, commentators, and translators cannot help loving 
 the man even when they ill-treat his book. 
 
 NOTES TO LIKE OF CERVANTES. 
 
 * See the Cervantes genealogical tree, taken from Mendez de Silva, 
 page Ixxiii. Don Juan of Austria, the natural son of Charles V, can, in fact, 
 be made out to be a cousin of Miguel de Cervantes who fought under him at 
 Lepanto. Charles V was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, Ferdinand 
 being seventeenth in descent from Ximena Muiiez, who was sister to the 
 first bearer of the name of Cervantes. Full details of the genealogy of Cer- 
 vantes are to be found in the pages of Navarrete (232-246), derived from 
 Juan de Mena, who wrote the Chronicle of Juan II, and Rodrigo Mendez 
 de Silva, the author of many genealogical treatises, who flourished some 
 two generations after Cervantes. The work of Juan de Mena is in manu- 
 script in the Royal Library at Madrid. The family had numerous branches, 
 spreading all over Spain and the New World, which have produced cardi- 
 nals, generals, presidents of republics, and other high personages in Cas- 
 tile, Andalusia, and Cat&lonia, as well as in Mexico and Central and 
 South America, down to our own times. 
 
 ' Cervantes made frequent mention and great use of his Algerian ex- 
 periences in all his works. The story of the Captive in Don Quixote is 
 evidently a real passage in the life of one of his fellow-prisoners, in which 
 allusion is made to himself and to some of his own adventures. In all 
 his works Cervantes shows what, for that age, was an unusual familiarity 
 with the Moors, the Mahometan faith and customs, and the language and 
 idioms of the East, having probably acquired a competent knowledge of 
 colloquial Arabic, as well as of the Lingua Franca, -a mixed language 
 then commonly spoken throughout the Levant and the courts of Barbary, — 
 making use of his knowledge occasionally in Don Quixote, in which words 
 of Eastern origin and Eastern ideas are of frequent occurrence. 
 
 'Cervantes seems to have been imprisoned twice in connection with 
 this affair before he finally left Andalusia. 
 
/ 
 
 J