Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (mobile ebook reader .txt) 📖

in the language. The Austriada, which appeared first at Madrid in 1584, deals with the life and achievements of Don John of Austria, but it was probably the memory of Lepanto rather than the merits of the poem that made Cervantes give it a place here. The Montserrate of the dramatist Virues (Madrid, 1588) had for its subject the repulsive Oriental legend which became popular in Spain with Garin the liermit of Monserrat for its hero, and which M. G. Lewis made the foundation of his famous romance, The Monk. ↩

The anticlimax here almost equals that famous one of Waller’s:

“Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.”

The book referred to was entitled simply the Angelica by Luis Barahona de Soto (Madrid, 1586). In his praise of this poem we have one more instance of Cervantes’ loyalty to a friend getting the better of his critical judgment. ↩

The books referred to are the Carolea of Geronimo Sempere (1560), which deals with the victories of Charles V; the León de España, by Pedro de la Vezilla, a poem on the history of the city of León; and, probably, the Carlo Famoso of Louis Zapata, for there is no book known with the title of The Deeds of the Emperor and the work of Avila is simply a prose commentary on the wars against the Protestants of Germany. ↩

Turpin (or Tilpin), Charlemagne’s chaplain, and Archbishop of Rheims: according to the Chanson de Roland, one of those slain at Roncesvalles; but also claimed as author of the Chronicle of Charlemagne, which, however, was probably not composed before the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century. He died in the year of the Roncesvalles rout, 778. ↩

Proverb 188. ↩

Proverb 165. ↩

Fristón, a magician, the reputed author of Belianis de Grecia. ↩

Proverb 171. Buscar pan de trastrigo: there is some difference of opinion as to the meaning of trastrigo, but it seems on the whole more probable that it means wheat of such superlative quality as to be unattainable; at any rate, the proverb is used in reference to seeking things that are out of reach. ↩

Proverb 124. A very old proverb, as old at least as the poem of Fernán González. ↩

Alforjas⁠—a sort of double wallet serving for saddlebags, but more frequently carried slung across the shoulder. ↩

The bota is the leathern wine-bag which is as much a part of the Spanish wayfarer’s paraphernalia as the alforjas. It cannot, of course, be properly translated “bottle.” ↩

Amadís, for instance, made his squire Gandalin governor of the Insula Firme. ↩

Mi oislo, a sort of pet-name for a wife in old Spanish among the lower orders:

“Acuerda de su oislo
Mirando en pobre casa.”

↩

These famous windmills had not been very long set up, and owed their existence to the failure of water-power in the Zancara, an affluent of the Guadiana, about thirty years before Don Quixote was written. They are scattered over the plain between Alcázar de S. Juan and Villaharta. ↩

Being a stage on the great high road from Madrid to Seville. ↩

From machucar or machacar, “to pound.” The feat referred to by Don Quixote was performed at the siege of Jerez under Alfonso X in 1264, and is the subject of a spirited ballad which Lockhart has treated with even more than his usual freedom. ↩

In the ballad it is an olive tree, but the olive does not flourish in La Mancha, so Don Quixote substitutes oak, encina, or roble, the former, the evergreen, being rather the more common in Spain. ↩

In the humurous tract The Book of All Things, and Many More, Quevedo mentions as the chief characteristic of the Biscayan dialect that it changes the first person of the verb into the second. This may be observed in the specimen given here: another example of Biscayan will be found in Cervantes’ interlude of the Viscaino Fingido. ↩

Caballero means “gentleman” as well as knight, and the peppery Biscayan assumes that Don Quixote has used the word in the former sense. ↩

Quien ha de llevar el gato al agua? (Proverb 102.) “Who will carry the cat to the water?” is a proverbial way of indicating an apparently insuperable difficulty. Between rage and ignorance the Biscayan, it will be seen, inverts the phrase. ↩

Agrajes was the cousin and companion of Amadís of Gaul. The phrase quoted above (Proverb 4) became a popular one, and is introduced as such among others of the same sort by Quevedo in the vision of the “Visita de los Chistes.” It is hard to say why it should have been fixed on Agrajes, who does not seem to use it as often as others, Amadís himself for instance. ↩

The abrupt suspension of the narrative and the reason assigned are in imitation of devices of the chivalry-romance writers. Montalvo, for instance, breaks off in the ninety-eighth chapter of Esplandián, and in the next gives an account of the discovery of the sequel, very much as Cervantes has done here and in the next chapter. ↩

Cervantes divided his first volume of Don Quixote into four parts, possibly in imitation of the four books of the Amadís of Montalvo; but the chapters