Chapter I: Introduction: To the Galatea (1)

Simple as the bibliography of the _Galatea_ really is, a habit of conjecture has succeeded in complicating it. Though the earliest known edition of the book is unanimously admitted to have appeared at Alcalá de Henares in 1585, it is often alleged that the _princeps_ was actually issued at Madrid during the previous year. This is a mistaken idea arising, probably, out of a slip made by Gregorio Mayáns y Siscar, the first Spaniard[1] who attempted to write a formal biography of Cervantes. In his thirteenth paragraph Mayáns[2] remarked by the way that the _Galatea_ was published in 1584; but he laid no stress upon the date, and dismissed the matter in a single sentence. The error (if it were really an error, and not a mere misprint) was natural and pardonable enough in one who lived before bibliography had developed into an exact study. Unfortunately, it was reproduced by others. It is found, for instance, in a biographical essay on Cervantes which precedes the first edition of _Don Quixote_ issued by the Royal Spanish Academy;[3] and the essayist, Vicente de los Ríos, adds the detail that the _Galatea_ came out at Madrid. It was unlucky that this statement should be put forward where it is. The Academy's responsibility for the texts issued in its name is chiefly financial: for the rest, it habitually appoints the most competent representatives available, and it naturally gives each delegate a free hand. But foreigners, unacquainted with the procedure, have imagined that Ríos must be taken as expressing the deliberate and unanimous opinion of the entire Academy. This is a complete misapprehension. On the face of it, it is absurd to suppose that any corporation, as a whole, is irrevocably committed to every view expressed by individual members. Even were it otherwise, it would not affect the case. An error would be none the less an error if a learned society sanctioned it. But, as a matter of fact, like all those concerned in editing texts or in writing essays for the Academy, Ríos spoke for himself alone. He was followed by Pellicer[4] who, though he gives 1584 as the date of the _princeps_, is less categorical as to the place of publication. Some twenty-two years after Pellicer's time, Fernández de Navarrete[5] accepted his predecessors' view as regards the date, and to this acceptance, more than to anything else, the common mistake is due. Relying on Navarrete's unequalled authority, Ticknor[6] repeated the mis-statement which has since passed into general circulation. Further enquiry has destroyed the theory that the _Galatea_ first appeared at Madrid in 1584. However, as most English writers[7] on this question have given currency to the old, erroneous notion, it becomes necessary to set forth the circumstances of the case. But, before entering upon details, it should be observed (1) that no copy of the supposititious 1584 edition has ever been seen by any one; (2) that there is not even an indirect proof of its existence; and (3) that, so far as the evidence goes, no edition of the _Galatea_ was published at Madrid before 1736: that is to say, until more than a century after Cervantes's death.

We do not know precisely when the _Galatea_ was written. M. Dumaine,[8] indeed, declares positively that the poems in the volume--he must surely mean some of them, not all--were addressed to a lady during the author's stay in Italy. If this were so, these verses would date (at latest) from September, 1575, when Cervantes left Italy for the last time. Sr. D. José María Asensio y Toledo[9] holds that the _Galatea_ was begun in Portugal soon after the writer's return from Algiers in 1580. Of these views one may conceivably be true; one must necessarily be false; and it is more than possible that both are wrong. As no data are forthcoming to support either opinion, we may profitably set aside these speculations and proceed to examine the particulars disclosed in the preliminaries of the _Galatea_. The _Aprobación_ was signed by Lucas Gracián[10] Dantisco at Madrid on February 1, 1584, and, as some time must have passed between the submission of the manuscript to the censor and the issue of his license, it seems certain that the text of the _Galatea_ was finished before the end of 1583. In its present form, the dedication, as will be seen presently, cannot have been written till about the end of the following summer. Meanwhile, on February 22, 1584, the _Privilegio_ was granted at Madrid in the King's name by Antonio de Erasso. It was not till a year later--the very end of February 1585--that the _Fe de erratas_ was passed at Alcalá de Henares by the Licenciado Vares de Castro, official corrector to the University of that city. The _Tasa_, which bears the name of Miguel Ondarza Zabala, was despatched at Madrid on March 13, 1585.

To those who have had no occasion to study such matters as these, the space of time which elapsed between the concession of the _Privilegio_ and the despatch of the _Tasa_ might seem considerable; and it is not surprising that this circumstance should be the basis of erroneous deductions on their part. Apparently for no other reason than the length of this interval, it has been concluded that, between February 22, 1584, and March 13, 1585, there was printed at Madrid an edition of the _Galatea_, every copy of which has--_ex hypothesi_--vanished. This assumption is gratuitous.

It is true that the first editions of certain very popular Spanish books--such as the _Celestina_,[11] _Amadís de Gaula_,[12] _Lazarillo de Tormes_,[13] _Guzmán de Alfarache_,[14] and _Don Quixote_[15]--tend to become exceedingly rare and are, perhaps, occasionally thumbed out of existence altogether. But the _Galatea_, like all pastoral novels, appealed to a comparatively restricted class of readers, and was in no danger of wide popularity. No doubt the _princeps_ of the _Galatea_ is exceptionally rare,[16]--rarer than the _princeps_ of _Don Quixote_; but rarity, taken by itself, is no proof that a work was popular, and, in the present instance, the rarity may be due to the fact that the _Galatea_ was issued in a more or less limited edition. This is what we should expect in the case of a first book published in a provincial town by an author who had still to make his reputation; but, in the absence of direct testimony, the question cannot be decided. What can be proved by any one at all acquainted with Spanish bibliography is that there was no unexampled delay in publishing the _Galatea_. Similar instances abound; but, for our present purpose, it will suffice to mention two which are--or should be--familiar to all who are specially interested in Cervantes and in his writings. As we have just seen, the _Tasa_ of the _Galatea_ is dated thirteen months after the _Aprobación_. An exact parallel to this is afforded by Cervantes's own _Novelas exemplares_: Fray Juan Bautista signed the _Aprobación_ on July 9, 1612, and Hernando de Vallejo signed the _Tasa_ on August 12, 1613.[17] Here the interval is precisely thirteen months. A still more striking instance of dilatoriness is revealed in the preliminaries to another work which has been consulted--or, at least, quoted as though it were familiar to them--by almost all writers on Cervantes from 1761 onwards: namely, Diego de Haedo's _Topographia e Historia general de Argel_, published at Valladolid in 1612. Haedo obtained the _Aprobación_ on October 6, 1604, but the licence was not given till February 8, 1610. In this instance, then, the legal formalities were spread out over five years and, at the final stage, there was a further pause of three years; in all, a delay of eight years.[18] There is no ground for assuming that the official procedure in these matters was more expeditions in 1585 than it was a quarter of a century later and, consequently, in the case of the _Galatea_, the interval of time between the issue of the _Aprobación_ and the despatch of the _Tasa_ cannot be regarded as calling for any far-fetched explanation.

The author's Letter Dedicatory to Ascanio Colonna, Abbot of St. Sophia, is undated, but it contains a passage which incidentally throws light on the bibliography of the _Galatea_. Speaking of his military service under Ascanio Colonna's father, Cervantes mentions his late chief--_aquel sol de la milicia que ayer nos quitó el cielo delante de los ojos_--in terms which imply that Marco Antonio Colonna's death was a comparatively recent event. Now, we know from the official death-certificate[19] that the Viceroy of Sicily, when on his way to visit Philip II., died at Medinaceli on August 1, 1584--exactly six months after the _Aprobación_ for the _Galatea_ had been obtained. Allowing for the rate at which news travelled in the sixteenth century, it seems improbable that Cervantes can have written his dedication much before the end of August 1584. It is conceivable, no doubt, that he wrote two different dedications--one for the alleged Madrid edition of 1584, and another for the Alcalá edition of 1585. It is equally conceivable that though the Alcalá edition of the _Galatea_, in common with every subsequent work by Cervantes, has a dedication, the supposititious Madrid edition was (for some reason unknown) published without one. Manifestly, one of these alternatives must be adopted by believers in the imaginary _princeps_. But, curiously enough, the point does not appear to have occurred to them; for, up to the present time, no such hypothesis has been advanced. Assuming, as we may fairly assume, that only one dedication was written, the complete manuscript of the _Galatea_ cannot well have reached the compositors till September or October 1584. It is possible that some part of the text was set up before this date, but of this we have no proof. If the 375 leaves--750 pages--of which the book consists were struck off late in January or early in February 1585, so as to allow of the text being revised by the official corrector at Alcalá de Henares, and thence forwarded to Madrid by the beginning of March, it must be admitted that the achievement did credit to the country printer, Juan de Gracián, whose name figures on the title-page. Further, as Salvá[20] shrewdly remarks, the appearance of the Colonna escutcheon on this same title-page affords a presumption that the Alcalá edition of 1585 is the _princeps_: for it is unreasonable to suppose that a struggling provincial publisher of the sixteenth century would go to the expense of furnishing a simple reprint with a complimentary woodcut.

Each of the foregoing circumstances, considered separately, tells against the current idea that the _Galatea_ was published at Madrid in 1584, and it might have been hoped that an intelligent consideration of their cumulative effect would ensure the right conclusion: that the story is a myth. But, so Donoso Cortés[21] maintained, man has an almost invincible propensity to error, and the discussion on so plain a matter as the bibliography of the _Galatea_ lends colour to this view. The amount of confusion introduced into the debate is extraordinary. It is occasionally difficult to gather what a partisan of the alleged 1584 edition holds; his pages blaze with contradictions: his theory is half-heartedly advanced, hastily abandoned, and confidently re-stated in a bewildering fashion.[22] Again, what was originally put forward as a pious opinion is transfigured into a dogma. Just as there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of _Don Quixote_, insist that the 1608 edition of that book "must have been revised by the author,"[23] so there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of the _Galatea_, insist with equal positiveness that there "must have been an edition of 1584."[24] This emphasis is out of place in both cases; but it is interesting and instructive to note that these two opinions are practically inseparable from each other. The coincidence can scarcely be accidental, and it may prove advantageous: for, obviously, the refutation of the one thesis must tend to discredit the other. If a writer be convicted of error in a very simple matter which can be tested in a moment, it would clearly be imprudent to accept his unsupported statement concerning a far more complex matter to which no direct test can be applied. And, as it happens, we are now enabled to measure the accuracy of the assertion that the _princeps_ of the _Galatea_ was published at Madrid in 1584.

Those who take it upon themselves to lay down that there "must have been" an edition of that place and date are bound to establish the fact. They are not entitled to defy every rule of evidence, and to call on the other side to prove a negative. The burden of proof lies wholly with them. But, by a rare and happy accident, it is possible to prove a negative in the present case. In view of recent researches, the theory that the _princeps_ of the _Galatea_ was issued at Madrid in 1584 is absolutely untenable. All doubts or hesitations on this head are ended by the opportune discovery, due to that excellent scholar and fortunate investigator, Dr. Pérez Pastor, of the original contract between Cervantes and the Alcalá publisher, Blas de Robles. By this contract Blas de Robles binds himself to pay 1336 _reales_ (£29. 13s. 9d. English) for the author's entire rights.[25] This legal instrument is decisive, for it would be ridiculous--not to say impertinent--to suppose that Cervantes sold his interest twice over to two different publishers in two different cities. There can, therefore, be no further controversy as to when and where the _Galatea_ appeared. It is now placed beyond dispute that Cervantes had not found a publisher before June 1584, and that the book was issued at Alcalá de Henares in 1585--probably not before the month of April. The first intention was to entitle the volume _Los seys libros de Galatea_ but (perhaps with a view to emphasizing the promise of a sequel) it was actually published as the _Primera Parte de la Galatea, dividida en seys libros_.[26] On June 14, 1584, Cervantes received 1116 _reales_ in advance, and, by a deed of the same date, Blas de Robles undertook to pay the balance of 250 _reales_ at the end of September:[27] the very period when, as already conjectured, the printing was begun.[28]

Cervantes was in his thirty-third year when he was ransomed at Algiers on September 19, 1580, and, when he reached Portugal in 1581, he may have intended to enlist once more. It has, in fact, been generally thought that he shared in at least one of the expeditions against the Azores under the famous Marqués de Santa Cruz in 1581-83. This belief is based on the _Información_ presented by Cervantes at Madrid on June 6, 1590;[29] but in this petition to the King the claims of Rodrigo de Cervantes and Miguel de Cervantes are set forth in so confusing a fashion that it is difficult to distinguish the services of the elder brother from those of the junior. It is certain that Rodrigo served at the Azores in 1583, and we learn from Mosquera de Figueroa that he was promoted from the ranks for his distinguished gallantry in the action before Porto das Moas.[30] But it is by no means clear that Miguel de Cervantes took any part in either campaign. Such evidence as we have tells rather against the current supposition. It is ascertained that Cervantes was at Tomar on May 21, 1581, and that he was at Cartagena towards the end of June 1581, while we have documentary evidence to prove that he pawned five pieces of yellow and red taffeta to Napoléon Lomelin at Madrid in the autumn of 1583.[31] If these dates are correct (as they seem to be), it is scarcely possible that Cervantes can have sailed with Santa Cruz for the Azores.[32] The likelihood is that he had to be content with some civil employment and, if so, it was natural enough that he should turn to literature with a view to increasing his small income. A modest, clear-sighted man, he probably did not imagine that he was about to write masterpieces, or to make a fortune by his pen. He perhaps hoped to keep the wolf from the door, or, at the most, to find a rich patron, as his friend Gálvez de Montalvo had done.[33] If these were his ideas, and if, as seems likely, he thought of marrying at about this time, it is not surprising that he should write what he believed would sell. So far as we can judge, he would much rather have wielded a sword than a goose-quill, and he was far too great a humorist to vapour about "art" or an "irresistible vocation." His juvenile verses had found favour with Juan López de Hoyos, and perhaps Rufino de Chamberí had appreciated the two sonnets written in Algiers; but the spirited tercets to Mateo Vázquez had failed of their effect, and Cervantes was shrewd enough to know that versifying was not lucrative. Eighty years before it was uttered, he realized the truth of the divine Gombauld's dying exclamation: _On paie si mal des vers immortels!_ Fortunately, he had many strings to his bow. Like Lope de Vega, he was prepared to attempt anything and everything: prose or verse, the drama, picaresque tales, novels of adventure, and the rest. But, to begin with, he divided his efforts between the theatre and fiction.

In the latter province the path of a beginner was clearly marked out. Too obscure, as yet, to venture upon a line of his own, and anxious, if possible, to conciliate the general body of readers, Cervantes was practically compelled to choose between the chivalresque romance and the pastoral. Not knowing that he was born to kill the former kind, he decided in favour of the latter--and for obvious reasons. The Knight-errantries of Amadís and his comrades had been in vogue from the fourteenth--perhaps even from the thirteenth[34]--century onwards. _Amadís de Gaula_ was printed at least as early as 1508,[35] and had begotten a numerous tribe; but, when Cervantes was feeling his way in the ninth decade of the sixteenth century, popular enthusiasm for these tales of chivalry was cooling. The pastoral novel was the latest literary fashion. It would, possibly, be too much to say that the Spanish pastoral novel was a mere offshoot of the chivalresque romances; yet it is undeniable that the pastoral element is found in chivalresque stories of comparatively early date. For example, in the ninth book of _Amadís_, entitled _Amadís de Grecia_ (1530) the shepherd Darinel and the shepherdess Sylvia are among the characters; in the first two parts of _Don Florisel de Niquea_ (1532) the hero masquerades as a shepherd and pays his court to the shepherdess Sylvia; in the fourth part of _Don Florisel de Niquea_ (1551) the eclogues of Archileo and Laris are early instances of what was destined to become a tedious convention.[36] These, however, are simple foreshadowings of an independent school of fiction which was in full vigour while Cervantes was still a boy.

The Spanish chivalresque novel is thought by many sound judges to derive directly from Portugal,[37] which may, in its turn, have received the material of its knightly tales--and perhaps something more than the raw material--from Celtic France.[38] The conclusion is disputed,[39] but whatever opinion may prevail as regards the source of the books of chivalry, it seems fairly certain that the pastoral novel was introduced into Spain by a Portuguese writer whose inspiration came to him from Italy. In a general sense, Virgil is the father of the pastoral in all Latin lands: the more immediate source of the Italian pastoral is believed to be Boccaccio's _Ameto_, the model of Tasso and Guarini as also of Bembo and Sannasaro. Jacopo Sannazaro,[40] a Neapolitan courtier of Spanish descent, is the connecting link between the literatures of Italy and the Peninsula during the first part of the sixteenth century. His vogue in the latter was enhanced through the instrumentality of the renowned poet Garcilaso de la Vega,[41] the "starry paladin" of Spain. No small part of Garcilaso's work is a poetic recasting of Sannazaro's themes,[42] and we can scarcely doubt that Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ suggested the first genuine Spanish pastoral to the Portuguese, Jorge de Montemôr, so called from his birthplace. The point has been contested, for Montemôr's _Siete libros de la Diana_ are often said to have been published in 1542,[43] and the first Spanish translation of Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ (by Diego López de Ayala) does not appear to have been issued till 1547.[44] It may, however, be taken as established that Montemôr's _Diana_ was not really printed much earlier than 1558-9,[45] when it at once became the fashion.[46] The argument sets forth that in the city of León, by the banks of the Ezla, dwelt the beautiful shepherdess Diana, beloved of the shepherds Sireno and Silvano; the shepherdess favours Sireno, who is suddenly called away to foreign countries, whence he returns a year later to find a change of times and hearts, Diana being wedded to the shepherd Delio: "and here beginneth the first book, and in the remainder you shall find very diverse histories of events which in sooth befell, howbeit travestied under a pastoral style." Montemôr's diverse histories, which owe something to Bernardim Ribeiro's _Saudades_ or _Hystoria de Menina e moça_[47] (a novel that begins as a chivalresque romance and ends as a pastoral tale), took Western Europe by storm. They may have been in Spenser's mind when he wrote _The Shepherd's Calendar_: they were unquestionably utilized by Sir Philip Sidney in _The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_, and it has been alleged with more or less plausibility that--possibly through Bartholomew Yong's version of Montemôr, which was finished in 1583, though not published till fifteen years later--the episode of Felismena has been transferred from the _Diana_ to the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_.

The _Diana_ ends with the promise of a Second Part in which the shepherd Danteo and the shepherdess Duarda shall figure, but this Second Part was not forthcoming as Montemôr was killed in Piedmont on February 26, 1561.[48] His design was very badly executed in 1564 by his friend Alonso Pérez, a Salamancan physician, who had the assurance to boast that there was scarcely a scrap of original prose or verse in his volume, the whole (as he vaunts) being stolen and imitated from Latins and Italians. "Nor," adds this astonishing doctor, "do I deem that I am in any sort to blame therefor, since they did as much by the Greeks."[49] Another, and a far better, continuation of Montemôr's _Diana_ was issued at Valencia in this same year of 1664 by Gaspar Gil Polo--a sequel which, after proving almost as successful as Montemôr's original, was destined to be plagiarized in the most shameless fashion by Hierónimo de Texeda.[50]

That Cervantes was well acquainted with these early Spanish pastorals is proved by the discussion on the little books--contrasting with the hundred and more stately folios of the chivalresque romances--in Don Quixote's library. The niece of the Ingenious Gentleman thought that these slimmer volumes should "be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping." The Priest agrees in principle, but in practice he is more mercifully disposed:--"To begin, then, with the _Diana_ of Montemayor. I am of opinion it should not be burned, but that it should be cleared of all that about the sage Felicia and the magic water,[51] and of almost all the longer pieces of verse: let it keep, and welcome, its prose and the honour of being the first of books of the kind." And when questioned concerning the above-named sequels, the judicious Priest declares:--"As for that of the Salamancan, let it go to swell the number of the condemned in the yard, and let Gil Polo's be preserved as if it came from Apollo himself." With this jest on Gil Polo's name, the Priest passes over the next in order of the pastoral novels, Jerónimo de Arbolanche's _Las Habidas_ (1566)[52]--a very rare work which, though not on Don Quixote's shelves, was more or less vaguely known to Cervantes[53]--to pronounce judgment on _Los diez Libros de Fortuna d'Amor_, an amazingly foolish book published in 1573 by a Sardinian soldier named Antonio de lo Frasso. Cervantes was just the man to praise (if possible) the work of an old comrade-in-arms, and, in fact, he contrived (through the Priest) to express his opinion of lo Frasso's book in terms which proved misleading:--"By the orders I have received, since Apollo has been Apollo, and the Muses have been Muses, and poets have been poets, so droll and absurd a book as this has never been written, and in its way it is the best and the most singular of all of this species that have as yet appeared, and he who has not read it may be sure he has never read what is delightful. Give it here, gossip, for I make more account of having found it than if they had given me a cassock of Florence stuff." It might seem difficult to interpret this as praise, and impossible to misunderstand the Priest's delight at meeting with what had already become a bibliographical rarity; but, some hundred and thirty years later, the last words of the passage were taken seriously and led to a reprint of lo Frasso's book by Pedro de Pineda, one of the correctors of Tonson's _Don Quixote_, who had manifestly overlooked the ridicule of the Sardinian in the _Viaje del Parnaso_.[54]

These pastorals, together with the chivalresque romances, had probably been the entertainment of Cervantes's youth. It was probably another and much later essay of the same kind which induced him to try his luck in the pastoral vein: the _Pastor de Fílida_, published at Madrid in 1582 by his friend Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, who is said (on doubtful authority, as we shall see presently) to have introduced Cervantes in his text as the shepherd Tirsi--_de clarísimo ingenio_. Whether this be so, or not, Cervantes, in his usual kindly, indulgent way, places his friend's work on Don Quixote's shelves, and treats it with gracious deference:--"No Pastor that, but a highly polished courtier; let it be preserved as a precious jewel." The book has but trifling interest for us nowadays; yet we may be sure that Cervantes's admiration was whole-hearted, and the fact that the volume passed through several editions[55] vindicates him from any suspicion of excessive partiality. It was his fine habit to praise generously. Neither his temperament nor his training was critical, and he attached even more than its due importance to the verdict of the public. He frankly rejoiced in Gálvez de Montalvo's success, and it is not unreasonable to conjecture that this success helped to hasten the appearance of the _Galatea_.

It may seem strange that Cervantes, whose transcriptions from life are eminently distinguished for truth and force, should have been induced to experiment in the province of artificial, languid pastoralism. But if, as Taine would have it, climate makes the race, the race makes the individual, and at this period the races of Western Europe had gone (so to say) pastorally mad.[56] The pastoral novel is not to our modern taste; but, as there is no more stability in literature than in politics, its day may come again.[57] In Cervantes's time there was no escaping from the prose idyll. Prodigious tales from the Indies had stimulated the popular appetite for wonders, and the demand was supplied to satiety in the later chivalresque romances. Feliciano de Silva and his fellows could think of nothing better than the systematic exaggeration of the most marvellous episodes in _Amadís de Gaula_. The adventures became more perilous, the knights more fantastically brave, the ladies (if possible) lovelier, the wizards craftier, the giants huger, the monsters more terrific, and so forth. In this vein nothing more was to be done: the formula was exhausted. The rival and more cultured school, founded by Sannazaro, endeavoured to lead men's minds from these noisy banalities to the placid contemplation of nature, or rather of idealized antiquity, by substituting for the din of arms, the stir of cities, and the furrowing of strange oceans by the prows of vulgar traders, the still, primeval

"Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth, and oarless sea."

Unluckily no departure from Sannazaro's original pattern was thought legitimate. Sir Philip Sidney rejects every attempt at innovation with the crushing remark that "neyther Theocritus in Greek, Virgill in Latine, nor Sanazar in Italian did affect it."[58] Hence the unbroken monotony of the pastoral convention. Nothing is easier than to mock at this new Arcadia where beauteous shepherdesses vanish discreetly behind glades and brakes, where golden-mouthed shepherds exchange confidences of unrequited passion, arguing the high metaphysical doctrine of Platonic love, or chanting most melancholy madrigals at intervals which the seasoned reader can calculate to a nicety beforehand. There never was, and never could be, such an atmosphere of deliberate dilettantism in such a world as ours. Taken as a whole these late Renascence pastorals weary us, as Sidney's _Arcadia_ wearied Hazlitt, with their everlasting "alliteration, antithesis and metaphysical conceit," their "continual, uncalled-for interruptions, analysing, dissecting, disjointing, murdering everything, and reading a pragmatical, self-sufficient lecture over the dead body of nature." Briefly, while these pastoral writers of the sixteenth century persuaded themselves and their readers that they were returning to communion with hills and forests, to us it seems as though they offered little beyond unassimilated reminiscences of conventional classicism.

It would be idle to deny that the _Galatea_ has many defects of the school to which it belongs, but it must always have a singular interest as being the first serious literary experiment made by a writer of consummate genius. Cervantes had the model, the sacred model, perpetually before his eyes, and he copied it (if not with conviction) with a grim determination which speaks for itself. He, too,--the _ingenio lego_--must be interpolating his learning, and referring to Virgil, Ovid, Propertius and the rest of them, with an air of intimate familiarity. Twenty years afterwards, when he had outgrown these little affectations, and was penning the amusing passage in which he banters Lope's childish pedantry,[59] the brilliant humorist must surely have smiled as he remembered his own performances in the same kind. He does honour to the grand tradition of prolixity by putting wiredrawn conceits into the mouths of shepherds who are much more like love-sick Abelards than like Comatas or Lacon, and, when his own stock of scholastic subtleties is ended, he has no scruple in allotting to Lenio and Tirsi[60] a short summary of the arguments which had been used long before by Filone and Sofía in his favourite book, León Hebreo's _Dialoghi di Amore_.[61] Had he taken far more material than he actually took, he would have been well within his rights, according to the prevailing ideas of literary morality. Whatever illiterate admirers may say, it is certain that Cervantes followed the fashion in borrowing freely from his predecessors. No careful reader of the _Galatea_ can doubt that its author either had Sannazaro's _Arcadia_ on his table, or that he knew it almost by heart.[62] His appreciation for the _Arcadia_ was unbounded, and in the _Viaje del Parnaso_[63] the sight of Posilipo causes him to link together the names of Virgil and Sannazaro:--

Vímonos en un punto en el paraje,
Do la nutriz de Eneas piadoso
Hizo el forzoso y último pasaje.
Vimos desde allí á poco el más famoso
Monte que encierra en sí nuestro hemisfero,
Más gallardo á la vista y más hermoso.
Las cenizas de Títiro y Sincero
Están en él, y puede ser por esto
Nombrado entre los montes por primero.

In the _Galatea_, enthusiasm takes the form of conscientious imitation. It cannot be mere coincidence that Ergasto's song--_Alma beata et bella_--is echoed by Elicio as _O alma venturosa_; that such a _ritornello_ as _Ricominciate, o Muse, il vostro pianto_ reappears as _Pastores, entonad el triste canto_; that _Ponete fin, o Muse, al vostro pianto_ is rendered as _Pastores, cesad ya del triste canto_. The sixth book of the _Galatea_ is an undisguised adaptation of Sannazaro's work. In view of these resemblances, and many others indicated by Professor Scherillo,[64] the large indebtedness of Cervantes to Sannazaro cannot be denied.

Nor are León Hebreo and Sannazaro Cervantes's sole creditors. The _Canto de Calíope_, which commemorates the merits of a hundred poets and poetasters, was probably suggested by the _Canto de Turia_ in the third book of Gil Polo's _Diana enamorada_, or by the list of rhymers in Boscán's _Octava Rima_, or even by a similar catalogue interpolated in the thirty-eighth canto of Luis Zapata's unreadable epic, _Carlos famoso_.[65] It may be pleaded for Cervantes that he admired Boscán, Gil Polo, and Zapata, and that his imitation of them is natural enough. _Sea muy enhorabuena._ The same explanation cannot apply to the uncanny resemblance, which Professor Rennert[66] has pointed out, between the address to Nisida in the third book of the _Galatea_ and the letter to Cardenia in the second book of Alonso Pérez' worthless sequel to Montemôr's _Diana_. Had Cervantes remembered this small loan when writing the sixth chapter of _Don Quixote_, gratitude would probably have led him to pass a more lenient sentence on the impudent Salamancan doctor.

It was in strict accordance with the pastoral tradition that the author should introduce himself and his friends into his story. In Virgil's Fifth Eclogue, Daphnis was said to stand for Julius Cæsar, Mopsus for Æmilius Macer of Verona, Menalcas for the poet himself. Sannazaro had, it was believed, revived the fashion in Italy.[67] Ribeiro presented himself to the public as Bimnardel, Montemôr asked for sympathy under the name of Sireno, and Sir Philip Sidney masqueraded as Pyrocles. In the _Pastor de Fílida_, it is understood that Mendino is Don Enrique de Mendoza y Aragón, that Pradileo is the Conde de Prades (Luis Ramón y Folch), that Silvano is the poet Gregorio Silvestre, that Tirsi is Francisco de Figueroa (or, as some rashly say,[68] Cervantes), and that Montalvo himself appears as Siralvo. The new recruit observed the precedents and, if we are to accept the authority of Navarrete,[69] the Tirsi, Damon, Meliso, Siralvo, Lauso, Larsileo, and Artidoro of the _Galatea_ are pseudonyms for Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Láinez, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Luis Gálvez de Montalvo, Luis Barahona de Soto, Alonso de Ercilla, and Andrés Rey de Artieda respectively.[70] Lastly, commentators and biographers are mostly agreed that the characters of Elicio and Galatea stand for Cervantes and for Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano[71] whom he married some ten months after the official _Aprobación_ to his novel was signed. We know on Cervantes's own statement that many of his shepherds were shepherds in appearance only,[72] and Lope de Vega confirms the tradition;[73] but we shall do well to remember that, in attempting to identify the characters of a romance with personages in real life, conjecture plays a considerable part.[74] Some of the above identifications might easily be disputed, and, at the best, we can scarcely doubt that most of the likenesses given by Cervantes in the _Galatea_ are composite portraits.

In any case, it is difficult to take a deep interest in Cervantes's seventy-one[75] shepherds and shepherdesses. Their sensibility is too exquisite for this world. Among the swains, Lisandro, Silenio, Mireno, Grisaldo, Erastro, Damon, Telesio, Lauso, and Lenio weep most copiously. Among the nymphs, Galatea, Lidia, Rosaura, Teolinda, Maurisa, Nisida and Blanca choke with tears. Teolinda, Leonarda and Rosaura swoon; Silerio, Timbrio, Darinto, Elicio and Lenio drop down in a dead faint. In mind and body these shepherds and shepherdesses are exceptionally endowed. They can remain awake for days. They can recite, without slurring a comma, a hundred or two hundred lines of a poem heard once, years ago; and the casuistry of their amorous dialectics would do credit to Sánchez or Escobar. All this is common form. A generation later, Honoré d'Urfé replied to the few who might accuse Astrée of talking above her station:--"Reponds-leur, ma Bergere, que pour peu qu'ils ayent connoissance de toy, ils sçauront que tu n'es pas, ny celles aussi qui te suiuent, de ces Bergeres necessiteuses qui pour gagner leur vie conduisent les troupeaux aux pasturages: mais que vous n'auez toutes pris cette condition que pour viure plus doucement & sans contrainte. Que si vos conceptions & vos paroles estoient veritablement telles que celles des Bergers ordinaires, ils auroient aussi peu de plaisir de vous escouter que vous auriez beaucoup de honte à les redire."[76] The plea was held to be good. The pastoral convention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thrust out all realism as an unclean thing. The pity is that Cervantes, in his effort to conform to the rule, was compelled to stifle what was best and rarest in his genius. Yet, amid these philosophizings and artificialities, a few gleams of his peculiar, parenthetical humour flash from him unawares: as when the refined Teolinda seeks to console Lidia--_limpiándole los ojos con la manga de mi camisa_:[77] or in the description of Crisalvo's fury--_que le sacaba de juicio, aunque él tenía tan poco, que poco era menester para acabárselo_: or in Arsindo's thoughtful remark that the shepherds might possibly be missed by the flocks from which they had been absent for the last ten days. Again, there is a foreshadowing of a famous passage in _Don Quixote_ when the writer compares the shepherd's life with the courtier's. Once more, the story of Timbrio's adventures--which are anything but idyllic--is given with uncommon spirit. There are ingenuity and fancy in many of the poems, and there is interest as well as grace in the little autobiographical touches--the mention of Arnaute Mamí, the local patriotism that surges up in allusions to the river Henares on which stands the author's native town--_el gran Compluto_, as he says in his eloquent way.

Cervantes is admittedly a wonderful creator; but the pastoral of his time--a pastiche or mosaic of conventional figures--gave him no opportunity of displaying his powers as an inventor. He is also a very great prose-writer, ranging with an easy mastery from the loftiest rhetoric to the quick thrust-and-parry of humoristic colloquy. Still, as has often been remarked, his attention is apt to wander, and vigilant grammarians have detected (and chronicled) slips in his most brilliant chapters. In the matter of correctness, the _Galatea_ compares favourably with _Don Quixote_, and its style has been warmly eulogized by the majority of critics. And, on the whole, the praise is deserved. The _Galatea_ is (one fancies) the result of much deliberation--the preliminary essay of a writer no longer young indeed, but abounding in hope, in courage, and in knowledge of the best literary models which his country had produced. The First Part of _Don Quixote_ was dashed off at odds and ends of time by a man acquainted with rebuffs, poverty, disastrous failure of every kind. Purists may point to five grammatical flaws in _Don Quixote_ for one in the _Galatea_, and naturally the latter gains by this comparison. But, whatever the technical weaknesses of _Don Quixote_, that book has the supreme merit of allowing Cervantes to be himself. In the _Galatea_ he is, so far as his means allow, Virgil, Longus, Boccaccio, Petrarch, León Hebreo, Sannazaro, Montemôr--even the unhappy Pérez--every one, in fact, but himself. Hence, in the very nature of things, the smoothly filed periods of this first romance cease to be characteristic of the writer, and have even led some to charge him with being a corrupter of the language, a _culto_ before _culteranismo_ was invented.[78]

The charm of Cervantes's style, at its best, lies in its spontaneity, strength, variety, swiftness, and noble simplicity: it is the unrestrained expression of his most original and seductive personality. In the _Galatea_, on the other hand, Cervantes is too often an echo, a timid copyist, reproducing the accepted _clichés_ with an exasperating scrupulousness. Galatea is _discreta_, Silvia is _discreta_, Teolinda is _discreta_: Lisandro is _discreto_, Artidoro is _discreto_, Damon is _discreto_. The noun and its regulation epithet are never sundered from each other. And _verde_--the eternal adjective _verde_--haunts the distracted reader like an obsession: the _verdes árboles_, the _verde suelo_, the _verde yerba_, the _verde prado_, the _verde carga_, the _verde llano_, the _verde parra_, the _verde laurel_, the _verdes ramos_,--and even _verdes ojos_.[79] A hillock is _espeso_: a wood is _espeso_. One may choose between _verdadero y honesto amor_ and _perfeto y verdadero amor_. Beauty is _extremada_: grace or wit is _extremada_: a good voice is _extremada_. And _infinito_ sparkles on almost every second page. It is all, of course, extremely correct and in accord with a hundred thousand precedents. But, since the charm palls after incessant repetition, it would not be surprising if some should think that such undeviating fidelity to a model is not an unmixed good, that tame academic virtues may be bought too dear, and that a single chapter of that sadly incorrect book, _Don Quixote_, is worth a whole wilderness of impeccable pastorals.

Still we cannot feel so sure as we should wish to be that Cervantes was of this mind. He longed to be an Arcadian, though he had no true vocation for the business. And yet the sagacious criticism of Berganza in the _Coloquio de los perros_[80] shows that he saw the absurdity of shepherds and shepherdesses passing "their whole lives in singing and playing on the pipes, bagpipes, rebecks, and hautboys, and other outlandish instruments." The intelligent dog perceived that all such tales as the _Diana_ "are dreams well written to amuse the idle, and not truth at all, for, had they been so, there would have been some trace among my shepherds of that most happy life and of those pleasant meadows, spacious woods, sacred mountains, lovely gardens, clear streams and crystal fountains, and of those lovers' wooings as virtuous as they were eloquent, and of that swoon of the shepherd's in this spot, of the shepherdess's in that, of the bagpipe of one shepherd sounding here, and the flageolet of the other sounding there." Cervantes knew well enough that shepherds in real life were not called Lauso or Jacinto, but Domingo or Pablo; and that they spent most of their leisure, not in chanting elegies, but in catching fleas and mending their clogs. He tells us so. And that he realised the faults of his own performance is evident from the verdict pronounced on "the _Galatea_ of Miguel de Cervantes" by the Priest in _Don Quixote_:--"That Cervantes has been for many years a great friend of mine, and to my knowledge he has had more experience in reverses than in verses. His book has some good invention in it, it presents us with something but brings nothing to a conclusion: we must wait for the Second Part it promises: perhaps with amendment it may succeed in winning the full measure of indulgence that is now denied it; and in the meantime do you, Señor Gossip, keep it shut up in your own quarters."[81]

This reference, as Mr. Ormsby noted, "is Cervantes all over in its tone of playful stoicism with a certain quiet self-assertion." Cervantes had, indeed, a special tenderness for the _Galatea_ as being his eldest-born--_estas primicias de mi corto ingenio_--and this is shown by his constant desire to finish it, his persistent renewal of the promise with which the First Part closes. The history of these promises is instructive. In 1585 Cervantes[82] publicly pledged himself to bring out a continuation, if the First Part of the _Galatea_ were a success: it was to follow shortly (_con brevedad_). The work does not seem to have made a great hit; but Cervantes, the only man entitled to an opinion on this particular matter, was satisfied with its reception and, as the Priest's speech shows, in 1605 he held by his intention of publishing the promised sequel. But he dallied and tarried. _Con brevedad_ is, as posterity knows, an expression which Cervantes interprets very liberally. Twenty-eight years after the publication of the _Galatea_, he used the phrase once more in the preface to the _Novelas exemplares_: the sequel to _Don Quixote_, he promises, shall be forthcoming shortly (_con brevedad_). This announcement caught Avellaneda's eye, and drove him into a grotesque frenzy of disappointment. It seems evident that he took the words--_con brevedad_--in their literal sense, imagining that Cervantes had nearly finished the Second Part of _Don Quixote_ in 1613, and that its appearance was a question of a few months more or less. Accordingly, meanly determining to be first in the field, he hurried on with his spurious sequel, penned his abusive preface, and rushed into print. It is practically certain that this policy of sharp practice produced precisely the result which he least desired. Perhaps he hoped that Cervantes, discouraged at being thus forestalled, would abandon his own Second Part in disgust. There was never a more complete miscalculation. Stung to the quick by Avellaneda's insolence, Cervantes, in his turn, made what haste he could with the genuine continuation. Had Avellaneda but known how to wait, the chances are that Cervantes would have devoted his best energies to the composition of _Las Semanas del Jardín_ (promised in the dedication of the _Novelas exemplares_), or of _El Engaño á los ojos_ (promised in the preface to his volume of plays), or of _El famoso Bernardo_ (promised in the dedication of _Persiles y Sigismunda_). Frittering away his diminishing strength on these various works, and enlarging the design of _Don Quixote_ from time to time--perhaps introducing the Knight, the Squire, the Bachelor and the Priest as shepherds--Cervantes might only too easily have left his masterpiece unfinished, were it not for the unintentional stimulus given by Avellaneda's insults.

How far is this view of the probabilities confirmed, or refuted, by what occurred in the case of the _Galatea_? The Second Part of that novel, like the Second Part of _Don Quixote_, had been promised _con brevedad_. Ten years passed, and still the sequel to the pastoral did not appear. Ticknor[83] records the tradition that Cervantes "wrote the _Galatea_ to win the favour of his lady," Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, and cynically adds that the new Pygmalion's "success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it." The explanation suggested is not particularly creditable to Cervantes, nor is it credible in itself. Cervantes's intention, so often expressed, was excellent, and it is simple justice to remember that, for the best part of the dozen years which immediately followed the publication of the _Galatea_, he was earning his bread as a tax-collector or tithe-proctor. This left him little time for literature. Twenty years went by, and still the promised _Galatea_ was not issued. One can well understand it. Cervantes had been discharged from the public service: he was close on sixty and seemed to have shot his bolt: his repute and fortune were at the lowest point. His own belief in the _Galatea_ might be unbounded; but it was not very likely that he would succeed in persuading my businesslike bookseller to issue the Second Part of a pastoral novel which had (more or less) failed nearly a quarter of a century earlier. He struck out a line for himself and, in a happy hour for the world, he found a publisher for _Don Quixote_. It was the daring venture of a broken man with nothing to lose, and its immense success completely changed his position. Henceforward he was an author of established reputation, and publishers were ready enough to take his prose and pay for it. As the reference in _Don Quixote_ shows, Cervantes had never, in his most hopeless moment, given up his idea of publishing his sequel to the _Galatea_. His original promise in 1585 was explicit, if conditional: and manifestly in 1605 he held that the condition had been fulfilled. In the latter year he was much less explicit as to his intention of publishing a continuation of _Don Quixote_, and, in the concluding quotation adapted from _Orlando Furioso_, he almost invited some other writer to finish the book. Probably no contemporary reader would have been surprised if the sequel to the _Galatea_ had appeared before the sequel to _Don Quixote_.[84] Still it must be acknowledged that the instant triumph of _Don Quixote_ altered the situation radically. In these circumstances, which he could not possibly have foreseen when he vaguely suggested that another hand might write the further adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes was perfectly justified in deciding to finish the later work before printing the earlier one. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for an ordinary man to make the most of his popularity and to bring out both sequels in rapid succession. But Cervantes was not an ordinary man, and few points in his history are more inexplicable than the fact that, after the amazing success of _Don Quixote_, he published practically nothing for the next eight years.

At last in 1613, the _Novelas exemplares_ were issued. The author was silent as to the continuation of the _Galatea_, but he promised that the Second Part of _Don Quixote_ should be forthcoming--_con brevedad_. We know what followed. The _Viaje del Parnaso_ was published in the winter of 1614; and, though it contains a short Letter Dedicatory and Preface,[85] which might easily have been made the vehicle of a public announcement in Cervantes's customary manner, there is no allusion to the new _Don Quixote_ or to the new _Galatea_. Next year, however, in the dedication[86] of his _Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos_, Cervantes informed the Conde de Lemos,--with whom the book was a special favourite[87]--that he was pushing on with the _Galatea_. He makes the same statement in the Prologue to the Second Part of _Don Quixote_,[88] and the assurance is repeated by him on his deathbed in the noble Letter Prefatory to _Persiles y Sigismunda_.[89] This latter is a solemn occasion, and Cervantes writes in a tone of impressive gravity which indicates that he weighed the full meaning of what he knew would be his last message. _Ayer me dieron la Extremaunción, y hoy escribo esta: el tiempo es breve, las ansias crecen, las esperanzas menguan._ And, in the Prologue, written somewhat earlier, the old man eloquent bids this merry life farewell, declares that his quips and jests are over, and appoints a final rendezvous with his comrades in the next world. At this supreme moment his indomitable spirit returns to his first love, and once more he promises--for the fifth time--the continuation of the _Galatea_.

In view of the dying man's words it is exceptionally difficult to believe that not a line of this sequel was actually written. It is equally difficult to believe that, if the _Galatea_ existed in a fragmentary state, the widow, the daughter, the son-in-law, the patron, the publisher, the personal friends, the countless admirers of the most illustrious and most popular novelist in all the Spains, should have failed to print it. We cannot even venture to guess what the facts of the case really were. From Cervantes's repeated declarations it would seem probable that he left a considerable amount of literary manuscript almost ready for the Licenser. With the exception of _Persiles y Sigismunda_, every shred of every work that he mentions as being in preparation has vanished. It would be strange if this befell an author of secondary rank: it is incomprehensible when we consider Cervantes's unique position, recognized in and out of Spain. All we know is this: that, on Cervantes's lips, _con brevedad_ might mean--in fact, did mean--more than thirty years, and that the sequel to the _Galatea_, though promised on five separate occasions, never appeared. Providence would seem to have decreed against the completion of many Spanish pastorals. Montemôr's _Diana_, the sequels to it by Pérez and Gil Polo, all remained unfinished: the _Galatea_ is unfinished, too. It is possible, but unlikely, that the world has been defrauded of a masterpiece. Yet, unsuited as was the pastoral _genre_ to the exercise of Cervantes's individual genius, we should eagerly desire to study his treatment of the old theme in the maturity of his genius and with the consciousness that his splendid reputation was at stake. He might perhaps have given us an anticipation in prose of Lope de Vega's play, _La Arcadia_,[90] a brilliant, poetic parody after Cervantes's own heart. Fate has ruled against us, and

The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must remain.[91]

The pastorals lived on for many years in Spain[92] and out of it; but _Don Quixote_, the _Novelas exemplares_, _Guzmán de Alfarache_, and the growing crowd of picaresque realistic tales had so completely supplanted them in popular favour that Cervantes himself could scarcely have worked the miracle of restoring their former vogue among his countrymen.