Chapter X

CERVANTES.--HIS FAMILY.--EDUCATION.--FIRST VERSES.--LIFE IN ITALY.--A SOLDIER IN THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO.--A CAPTIVE IN ALGIERS.--RETURNS HOME.--SERVICE IN PORTUGAL.--LIFE IN MADRID.--HIS GALATEA, AND ITS CHARACTER.--HIS MARRIAGE.--WRITES FOR THE STAGE.--HIS LIFE IN ALGIERS.--HIS NUMANCIA.--POETICAL TENDENCIES OF HIS DRAMA.

The family of Cervantes was originally Galician, and, at the time of his birth, not only numbered five hundred years of nobility and public service, but was spread throughout Spain, and had been extended to Mexico and other parts of America.[80] The Castilian branch, which, in the fifteenth century, became connected by marriage with the Saavedras, seems, early in the sixteenth, to have fallen off in its fortunes; and we know that the parents of Miguel, who has given to the race a splendor which has saved its old nobility from oblivion, were poor inhabitants of Alcalá de Henares, a small, but nourishing city, about twenty miles from Madrid. There he was born, the youngest of four children, on one of the early days of October, 1547.[81]

[80] Many lives of Cervantes have been written, of which four
need to be mentioned. 1. That of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, first
prefixed to the edition of Don Quixote in the original published
in London in 1738, (4 tom., 4to), under the auspices of Lord
Carteret, and afterwards to several other editions; a work of
learning, and the first proper attempt to collect materials for
a life of Cervantes, but ill arranged and ill written, and of
little value now, except for some of its incidental discussions.
2. The Life of Cervantes, with the Analysis of his Don Quixote,
by Vicente de los Rios, prefixed to the sumptuous edition of Don
Quixote by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 tom., fol.),
and often printed since;--better written than the preceding,
and containing some new facts, but with criticisms full of
pedantry and of extravagant eulogy. 3. Noticias para la Vida de
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, by J. Ant. Pellicer, first printed
in his “Ensayo de una Biblioteca de Traductores,” 1778, but
much enlarged afterwards, and prefixed to his edition of Don
Quixote (Madrid, 1797-1798, 5 tom., 8vo);--poorly digested, and
containing a great deal of extraneous, though sometimes curious,
matter; but more complete than any life that had preceded it.
4. Vida de Miguel de Cervantes, etc., por D. Martin Fernandez
de Navarrete, published by the Spanish Academy (Madrid, 1819,
8vo);--the best of all, and indeed one of the most judicious and
best-arranged biographical works that have been published in any
country. Navarrete has used in it, with great effect, many new
documents; and especially the large collection of papers found in
the archives of the Indies at Seville, in 1808, which comprehend
the voluminous _Informacion_ sent by Cervantes himself, in
1590, to Philip II., when asking for an office in one of the
American colonies;--a mass of well-authenticated certificates
and depositions, setting forth the trials and sufferings of the
author of Don Quixote, from the time he entered the service of
his country, in 1571; through his captivity in Algiers; and,
in fact, till he reached the Azores in 1582. This thorough and
careful life is skilfully abridged by L. Viardot, in his French
translation of Don Quixote, (Paris, 1836, 2 tom., 8vo), and forms
the substance of the “Life and Writings of Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra,” by Thomas Roscoe, London, 1839, 18mo.

In the notice which follows in the text, I have relied for my
facts on the work of Navarrete, whenever no other authority is
referred to; but in the literary criticisms Navarrete can hardly
afford aid, for he hardly indulges himself in them at all.

[81] The date of the baptism of Cervantes is Oct. 9, 1547; and as
it is the practice in the Catholic Church to perform this rite
soon after birth, we may assume, with sufficient probability,
that Cervantes was born on that very day, or the day preceding.

No doubt, he received his early education in the place of his nativity, then in the flush of its prosperity and fame from the success of the University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before. At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts of his works; as in his Don Quixote, where he alludes to the burial and enchantments of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of Zulema,[82] just as he had probably heard them in some nursery story; and in his prose pastoral, “Galatea,” where he arranges the scene of some of its most graceful adventures “on the banks,” as he fondly calls it, “of the famous Henares.”[83] But concerning his youth we know only what he incidentally tells us himself;--that he took great pleasure in attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;[84] that he wrote verses when very young;[85] and that he always read every thing within his reach, even, as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he picked up in the public streets.[86]

[82] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 29.

[83] “En las riberas del famoso Henares.” (Galatea, Madrid, 1784,
8vo, Tom. I. p. 66.) Elsewhere, he speaks of “_nuestro_ Henares”;
the “_famoso_ Compluto” (p. 121); and “_nuestro_ fresco Henares,”
p. 108.

[84] Comedias, Madrid, 1749, 4to, Tom. I., Prólogo.

[85] Galatea, Tom. I. p. x., Prólogo; and in the well-known
fourth chapter of the “Viage al Parnaso,” (Madrid, 1784, 8vo, p.
53), he says:--

Desde mis tiernos años amé el arte
Dulce de la agradable poesía,
Y en ella procuré siempre agradarte.

[86] “Como soy aficionado á leer aunque sean los papeles rotos
de las calles, llevado desta mi natural inclinacion, tomé un
cartapacio,” etc., he says, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 9, ed.
Clemencin, Madrid, 1833, 4to, Tom. I. p. 198), when giving an
account of his taking up the waste paper at the silk-mercer’s,
which, as he pretends, turned out to be the Life of Don Quixote
in Arabic.

It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid, and there is some probability, notwithstanding the poverty of his family, that he passed two years at the University of Salamanca. But what is certain is, that he obtained a public and decisive mark of respect, before he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers; for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos published, by authority, on the death of the unhappy Isabelle de Valois, wife of Philip the Second, a volume of verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his “dear and well-beloved disciple.” This was, no doubt, Cervantes’s first appearance in print as an author; and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied, and the circumstance, that one of his elegies was written in the name of the whole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of his teacher and the good-will of his fellow-students.[87]

[87] The verses of Cervantes on this occasion may be found partly
in Rios, “Pruebas de la Vida de Cervantes,” ed. Academia, Nos.
2-5, and partly in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 262, 263. They are poor,
and the only circumstance that makes it worth while to refer to
them is, that Hoyos, who was a professor of elegant literature,
calls Cervantes repeatedly “_caro_ discípulo,” and “_amado_
discípulo”; and says that the _Elegy_ is written “en nombre de
_todo el estudio_.” These, with other miscellaneous poems of
Cervantes, are collected for the first time in the first volume
of the “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” by Aribau (Madrid,
1846, 8vo, pp. 612-620); and prove the pleasant relations in
which Cervantes stood with some of the principal poets of his
day, such as Padilla, Maldonado, Barros, Yague de Salas, Hernando
de Herrera, etc.

The next year, 1570, we find him, without any notice of the cause, removed from all his early connections, and serving at Rome as chamberlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards a cardinal; the same person who had been sent, in 1568, on a special mission from the Pope to Philip the Second, and who, as he seems to have had a regard for literature and for men of letters, may, on his return to Italy, have taken Cervantes with him from interest in his talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and had too proud a spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that, too, at a period when the world was full of solicitations to adventure and military glory.

But whatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome and its court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice, concluded what was called a “Holy League” against the Turks, and set on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chivalrous Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancient oppressor of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom, were more than Cervantes, at the age of twenty-three, could resist; and the next thing we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it as a common soldier. For, as he says in a work written just before his death, he had always observed “that none make better soldiers than those who are transplanted from the region of letters to the fields of war, and that never scholar became soldier that was not a good and brave one.”[88] Animated with this spirit, he entered the service of his country among the troops with which Spain then filled a large part of Italy, and continued in it till he was honorably discharged in 1575.

[88] “No hay mejores soldados, que los que se trasplantan de la
tierra de los estudios en los campos de la guerra; ninguno salió
de estudiante para soldado, que no lo fuese por estremo,” etc.
Persiles y Sigismunda, Lib. III. c. 10, Madrid, 1802, 8vo, Tom.
II. p. 128.

During these four or five years he learned many of the hardest lessons of life. He was present in the sea-fight of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and, though suffering at the time under a fever, insisted on bearing his part in that great battle, which first decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe. The galley in which he served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty to his country and to Christendom he carried proud and painful proof to his grave; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm during the rest of his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the hospital at Messina, where he remained till April, 1572; and then, under Mark Antonio Colonna, went on the expedition to the Levant, to which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the “Galatea,” and which he has so well described in the story of the Captive, in Don Quixote.

The next year, 1573, he was in the affair of the Goleta at Tunis, under Don John of Austria, and afterwards, with the regiment to which he was attached,[89] returned to Sicily and Italy, many parts of which, in different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited, remaining at one time in Naples above a year.[90] This period of his life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems never to have been regarded by him with regret. On the contrary, above forty years afterwards, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he declared, that, if the alternative were again offered him, he should account his wounds a cheap exchange for the glory of having been present in that great enterprise.[91]

[89] The regiment in which he served was one of the most famous
in the armies of Philip II. It was the “Tercio de Flandes,” and
at the head of it was Lope de Figueroa, who acts a distinguished
part in two of the plays of Calderon,--“Amar despues de la
Muerte,” and “El Alcalde de Zalamea.” Cervantes probably joined
this favorite regiment again, when, as we shall see, he engaged
in the expedition to Portugal in 1581, whither we know not only
that he went that year, but that the Flanders regiment went also.

[90] All his works contain allusions to the experiences of his
life, and especially to his travels. When he sees Naples in his
imaginary Viage del of Parnaso, (c. 8, p. 126), he exclaims,--

Esta ciudad es Nápoles la ilustre,
Que yo pisé sus ruas mas de un año.

[91] “Si ahora me propusieran y facilitaran un imposible,” says
Cervantes, in reply to the coarse personalities of Avellaneda,
“quisiera ántes haberme hallado en aquella faccion prodigiosa,
que sano ahora de mis heridas, sin haberme hallado en ella.”
Prólogo á Don Quixote, Parte Segunda, 1615.

When he was discharged, in 1575, he took with him letters from the Duke of Sessa and Don John, commending him earnestly to the king, and embarked for Spain. But on the 26th of September he was captured and carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served successively three cruel masters,--a Greek and a Venetian, both renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; the first two tormenting him with that peculiar hatred against Christians which naturally belonged to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined themselves to the enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for his slave, and treating him with great severity, because he had fled from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain liberty for himself and his fellow-captives.

Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and strengthened by it. On one occasion he attempted to escape by land to Oran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea-shore, where, at the constant risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily wants, while waiting for rescue by sea; but at last, after he had joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole punishment of the conspiracy on himself. Once he sent for help to break forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted; and once he had matured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen,--a scheme of which, when it was defeated by treachery, he again announced himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in Algiers, which was, perhaps, not unlikely to succeed, as their number was full twenty-five thousand, and which was certainly so alarming to the Dey, that he declared, that, “if he could but keep that lame Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves, and his galleys safe.”[92] On each of these occasions, severe, but not degrading,[93] punishments were inflicted upon him. Four times he expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire; and the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomplices.

[92] One of the most trustworthy and curious sources for this
part of the life of Cervantes is “La Historia y Topografia de
Argel,” por D. Diego de Haedo, (Valladolid, 1612, folio), in
which Cervantes is often mentioned, but which seems to have been
overlooked in all inquiries relating to him, till Sarmiento
stumbled upon it, in 1752. It is in this work that occur the
words cited in the text, and which prove how formidable Cervantes
had become to the Dey,--“Decia Asan Bajá, Rey de Argel, que como
él tuviese guardado al estropeado Español tenia seguros sus
cristianos, sus baxeles y aun toda la ciudad.” (f. 185.) And just
before this, referring to the bold project of Cervantes to take
the city by an insurrection of the slaves, Haedo says, “Y si á
su animo, industria, y trazas, correspondiera la ventura, hoi
fuera el dia, que Argel fuera de cristianos; porque no aspiraban
á menos sus intentos.” All this, it should be recollected, was
published four years before Cervantes’s death. The whole book,
including not only the history, but the dialogues at the end on
the sufferings and martyrdom of the Christians in Algiers, is
very curious, and often throws a strong light on passages of
Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
which so often refer to the Moors and their Christian slaves on
the coasts of Barbary.

[93] With true Spanish pride, Cervantes, when alluding to himself
in the story of the Captive, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40), says
of the Dey, “Solo libró bien con él un soldado Español llamado
tal de Saavedra, al qual con haber hecho cosas que quedarán en la
memoria de aquellas gentes por muchos años, y todos por alcanzar
libertad, _jamas le dió palo_, ni se lo mandó dar, ni le dixo
mala palabra, y por la menor cosa de muchas que hizo, temiamos
todos que habia de ser empalado, y _así lo temió él mas de una
vez_.”

At last, the moment of release came. His elder brother, who was captured with him, had been ransomed three years before; and now his widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son’s freedom, all the pittance that remained to her in the world, including the dowry of her daughters. But even this was not enough; and the remainder of the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his liberty was made up partly by small borrowings, and partly by the contributions of religious charity.[94] In this way he was ransomed on the 19th of September, 1580, just at the moment when he had embarked with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue would have been all but hopeless. A short time afterwards he left Algiers, where we have abundant proof, that, by his disinterestedness, his courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained the affection and respect of the multitude of Christian captives with which that city of anathemas was then crowded.[95]

[94] A beautiful tribute is paid by Cervantes, in his tale of
the “Española Inglesa,” (Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. I. pp.
358, 359), to the zeal and disinterestedness of the poor priests
and monks, who went, sometimes at the risk of their lives, to
Algiers to redeem the Christians, and one of whom remained there,
giving his person in pledge for four thousand ducats which he had
borrowed to send home captives. Of Father Juan Gil, who effected
the redemption of Cervantes himself from slavery, Cervantes
speaks expressly, in his “Trato de Argel,” as

Un frayle Trinitario, Christianísimo,
Amigo de hacer bien y conocido,
Porque ha estado otra vez en esta tierra
Rescatando Christianos; y dió exemplo
De una gran Christiandad y gran prudencia;--
Su nombre es Fray Juan Gil.

Jornada V.

A friar of the blessed Trinity,
A truly Christian man, known as the friend
of all good charities, who once before
Came to Algiers to ransom Christian slaves,
And gave example in himself, and proof
Of a most wise and Christian faithfulness.
His name is Friar Juan Gil.

[95] Cervantes was evidently a person of great kindliness and
generosity of disposition; but he never overcame a strong feeling
of hatred against the Moors, inherited from his ancestors and
exasperated by his own captivity. This feeling appears in both
his plays, written at distant periods, on the subject of his life
in Algiers; in the fifty-fourth chapter of the second part of Don
Quixote; and elsewhere. But except this, and an occasional touch
of satire against duennas,--in which Quevedo and Luis Vélez de
Guevara are as sever as he is,--and a little bitterness about
private chaplains that exercised a cunning influence in the
houses of the great, I know nothing, in all his works, to impeach
his universal good-nature. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Vol.
V. p. 260, note, and p. 138, note.

But though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of freedom,[96] still it should be remembered that he returned after an absence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon as he left it. His father was dead. His family, poor before, had been reduced to a still more bitter poverty by his own ransom and that of his brother. He was unfriended and unknown, and must have suffered naturally and deeply from a sort of grief and disappointment which he had felt neither as a soldier nor as a slave. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his country,--joining his brother, probably in the same regiment to which he had formerly belonged, and which was now sent to maintain the Spanish authority in the newly acquired kingdom of Portugal. How long he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1581, as well as in the more important one of the year following, to reduce the Azores, which still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period, therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda,” as well as in other parts of his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the Second.[97]

[96] For a beautiful passage on Liberty, see Don Quixote, Parte
II., opening of chapter 58.

[97]
“Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
’Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low”;--

an opinion which Childe Harold found in Spain when he was there,
and could have found at any time for two hundred years before.

It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the first direction of his more serious efforts as an author, which, soon after his return to Spain, ended in the pastoral romance of “Galatea.” For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal from the days of the “Menina e Moça”[98] down to our own times; and had already been introduced into Spanish literature by George of Montemayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, whose “Diana Enamorada” and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books with Cervantes.

[98] The “Menina e Moça” is the graceful little fragment of a
prose pastoral, by Bernardino Ribeyro, which dates from about
1500, and has always been admired, as indeed it deserves to be.
It gets its name from the two words with which it begins,--“Small
and young”; a quaint circumstance, showing its extreme popularity
with those classes that were little in the habit of referring to
books by their formal titles.

But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February, 1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it “An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101]

[99] “Estas primicias de mi corto ingenio.” Dedicatoria.

[100] “Muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran solo en
el hábito.”

[101] “Cuyas razones y argumentos mas parecen de ingenios
entre libros y las aulas criados que no de aquellos que entre
pagizas cabañas son crecidos.” (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This
was intended, no doubt, at the same time, as a compliment to
Figueroa, etc.

Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an affectation which can never be successful; and which, in this particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it is disfigured, and from the poor poetry profusely scattered through it, is more than usually unfortunate. Yet there are traces both of Cervantes’s experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third books, are interesting; others, like Timbrio’s capture by the Moors, in the fifth book, remind us of his own adventures and sufferings; while yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book, is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. In all, we have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never, perhaps, with what is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology, almost inevitable in such a work, are its most obvious defects; though nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately deceased shepherd.[102]

[102] The chief actors in the Galatea visit the tomb of Mendoza,
in the sixth book, under the guidance of a wise and gentle
Christian priest; and when there, Calliope strangely appears
to them and pronounces a tedious poetical eulogium on a vast
number of the contemporary Spanish poets, most of whom are now
forgotten. The Galatea was abridged by Florian, at the end of
the eighteenth century, and reproduced, with an appropriate
conclusion, in a prose pastoral, which, in the days when Gessner
was so popular, was frequently reprinted. In this form, it is by
no means without grace.

But when speaking thus slightingly of the Galatea, we ought to remember, that, though it extends to two volumes, it is unfinished, and that passages which now seem out of proportion or unintelligible might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second part, which Cervantes had perhaps written, and which he continued to talk of publishing till a few days before his death,[103] had ever appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we are bound to bear in mind his own touching words, when he represents it as found by the barber and curate in Don Quixote’s library.[104] “‘But what book is the next one?’ said the curate. ‘The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,’ replied the barber. ‘This Cervantes,’ said the curate, ‘has been a great friend of mine these many years; and I know that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not without happiness in the invention; it proposes something, but finishes nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises; for perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him; and in the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.’”

[103] In the Dedication to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” 1616, April
19th, only four days before his death.

[104] Parte Primera, cap. 6.

If the story be true, that he wrote the Galatea to win the favor of his lady, his success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first part, he was married, December 12th, 1584, to a lady of a good family in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.[105] The pecuniary arrangements consequent on the marriage, which have been published,[106] show that both parties were poor; and the Galatea intimates that Cervantes had a formidable Portuguese rival, who was, at one time, nearly successful in winning his bride.[107] But whether the course of his love ran smooth before marriage or not, his wedded life, for above thirty years, seems to have been happy, and his widow, at her death, desired to be buried by his side.

[105] He alludes, I think, but twice in all his works to
Esquivias; and, both times, it is to praise its wines. The first
is in the “Cueva de Salamanca,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. II. p.
313), and the last is in the Prólogo to “Persiles y Sigismunda,”
though in the latter he speaks, also, of its “ilustres linages.”

[106] See the end of Pellicer’s Life of Cervantes, prefixed to
his edition of Don Quixote (Tom. I. p. ccv.). There seems to have
been an earlier connection between the family of Cervantes and
that of his bride, for the lady’s mother had been named executrix
of his father’s will, who died while Cervantes himself was a
slave in Algiers.

[107] At the end of the sixth book.

In order to support his family, he probably lived much at Madrid, where, we know, he was familiar with several contemporary poets, such as Juan Rufo, Pedro de Padilla, and others, whom, with his inherent good-nature, he praises constantly in his later works, and often unreasonably. From the same motive, too, and perhaps partly in consequence of these intimacies, he now undertook to gain some portion of his subsistence by authorship, turning away from the life of adventure to which he had earlier been attracted.

His first efforts in this way were for the stage, which naturally presented strong attractions to one who was early fond of dramatic representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, however, in the time of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already noticed, that he had witnessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de Rueda and Naharro,[108] which must have been before he went to Italy, and when, from his description of its dresses and apparatus, we plainly see that the theatre was not so well understood and managed as it is now by strolling companies and in puppet-shows. From this humble condition, which the efforts made by Bermudez and Argensola, Virues, La Cueva, and their contemporaries, had not much ameliorated, Cervantes undertook to raise it; and he succeeded so far, that, thirty years afterwards, he thought his success of sufficient consequence frankly to boast of it.[109]

[108] Prólogo al Lector, prefixed to his eight plays and eight
Entremeses, Madrid, 1615, 4to.

[109] Adjunta al Parnaso, first printed in 1614; and the Prólogo
last cited.

But it is curious to see the methods he deemed it expedient to adopt for such a purpose. He reduced, he says, the number of acts from five to three; but this is a slight matter, and, though he does not seem to be aware of the fact, it had been done long before by Avendaño. He claims to have introduced phantasms of the imagination, or allegorical personages, like War, Disease, and Famine; but, besides that Juan de la Cueva had already done this, it was, at best, nothing more in either of them than reviving the forms of the old religious shows. And finally, though this is not one of the grounds on which he himself places his dramatic merits, he seems to have endeavoured in his plays, as in his other works, to turn his personal travels and sufferings to account, and thus, unconsciously, became an imitator of some of those who were among the earliest inventors of such representations in modern Europe.

But, with a genius like that of Cervantes, even changes or attempts as crude as these were not without results. He wrote, as he tells us with characteristic carelessness, twenty or thirty pieces, which were received with applause;--a number greater than can be with certainty attributed to any preceding Spanish author, and a success before quite unknown. None of these pieces were printed at the time, but he has given us the names of nine of them, two of which were discovered in 1782, and printed, for the first time, in 1784.[110] The rest, it is to be feared, are irrecoverably lost, and among them is “La Confusa,” which, long after Lope de Vega had given its final character to the proper national drama, Cervantes fondly declared was still one of the very best of the class to which it belonged;[111] a judgment which the present age might perhaps confirm, if the proportions and finish of the drama he preferred were equal to the strength and originality of the two that have been rescued.

[110] They are in the same volume with the “Viage al Parnaso,”
Madrid, 1784, 8vo.

[111] Adjunta al Parnaso, p. 139, ed. 1784.

The first of these is “El Trato de Argel,” or, as he elsewhere calls it, “Los Tratos de Argel,” which may be translated Life, or Manners, in Algiers. It is a drama slight in its plot, and so imperfect in its dialogue, that, in these respects, it is little better than some of the old eclogues on which the earlier theatre was founded. His purpose, indeed, seems to have been simply to set before a Spanish audience such a picture of the sufferings of the Christian captives at Algiers as his own experience would justify, and such as might well awaken sympathy in a country which had furnished a deplorable number of the victims. He, therefore, is little careful to construct a regular plot, if, after all, he were aware that such a plot was important; but, instead of it, he gives us a stiff and unnatural love-story, which he thought good enough to be used again, both in one of his later plays and in one of his tales;[112] and then trusts the main success of the piece to its episodical sketches.

[112] In the “Baños de Argel,” and the “Amante Liberal.”

Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are jeered at as slaves and Christians by the Moors, and in which they give an account of the martyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was subsequently used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas. Next, we have the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt, taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of a drawing from life. And, in different places, we have two or three painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de Vega thought worth borrowing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls it, to the monarchy of the scene.[113] The whole play is divided into five _jornadas_ or acts, and written in octaves, _redondillas_, _terza rima_, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish poetry; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered, as prominent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon.

[113] The “Esclavos en Argel” of Lope is found in his Comedias,
Tom. XXV., (Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, pp. 231-260), and shows that
he borrowed very freely from the play of Cervantes, which, it
should be remembered, had not then been printed, so that he must
have used a manuscript. The scenes of the sale of the Christian
children, (pp. 249, 250), and the scenes between the same
children after one of them had become a Mohammedan, (pp. 259,
260), as they stand in Lope, are taken from the corresponding
scenes in Cervantes (pp. 316-323, and 364-366, ed. 1784). Much
of the story, and passages in other parts of the play, are also
borrowed. The martyrdom of the Valencian priest, which is merely
described by Cervantes, (pp. 298-305), is made a principal
dramatic point in the third _jornada_ of Lope’s play, where the
execution occurs, in the most revolting form, on the stage (p.
263).

Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are poetical. Aurelio, the hero,--who is a Christian captive, affianced to another captive named Sylvia,--is loved by Zara, a Moorish lady, whose confidante, Fatima, makes a wild incantation in order to obtain means to secure the gratification of her mistress’s love; the result of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Necessity and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her upon the stage, and--invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the spectators--tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions of the fair unbeliever.[114] When they are gone, he thus expresses, in soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of having nearly yielded:--

[114] Cervantes, no doubt, valued himself upon these immaterial
agencies; and after his time, they became common on the Spanish
stage. Calderon, in his “Gran Príncipe de Fez,” (Comedias,
Madrid, 1760, 4to, Tom. III. p. 389), thus explains two, whom he
introduces, in words that may be applied to those of Cervantes:--

Representando los dos
De su buen Genio y mal Genio
Exteriormente la lid,
Que arde interior en su pecho.

His good and evil genius bodied forth,
To show, as if it were in open fight,
The hot encounter hidden in his heart.

Aurelio, whither goest thou? Where, O where,
Now tend thine erring steps? Who guides thee on?
Is, then, thy fear of God so small, that thus,
To satisfy mad fantasy’s desires,
Thou rushest headlong? Can light and easy
Opportunity, with loose solicitation,
Thus persuade and overcome thy soul,
And yield thee up to love a prisoner?
Is this the lofty thought and firm resolve
In which thou once wast rooted, to resist
Offence and sin, although in torments sharp
Thy days should end and earthly martyrdom?
So soon hast thou offended, to the winds
Thy true and loving hopes cast forth,
And yielded up thy soul to low desire?
Away with such wild thoughts, of basest birth
And basest lineage sprung! Such witchery
Of foul, unworthy love shall by a love
All pure be broke! A Christian soul is mine,
And as a Christian’s shall my life be marked;--
Nor gifts, nor promises, nor cunning art,
Shall from the God I serve my spirit turn,
Although the path I trace lead on to death![115]

[115]
Aurelio donde vas? para dó mueves
El vagaroso paso? Quien te guia?
Con tan poco temor de Dios te atreves
A contentar tu loca fantasía? etc.

Jornada V.

The conception of this passage and of the scene preceding it is certainly not dramatic, though it is one of those on which, from the introduction of spiritual agencies, Cervantes valued himself. But neither is it without poetry. Like the rest of the piece, it is a mixture of personal feelings and fancies, struggling with an ignorance of the proper principles of the drama, and with the rude elements of the theatre in its author’s time. He calls the whole a _Comedia_; but it does not deserve the name. Like the old Mysteries, it is rather an attempt to exhibit, in living show, a series of unconnected incidents; but it has no properly constructed plot, and, as he honestly confesses afterwards, it comes to no proper conclusion.[116]

[116]
Y aquí da este trato fin,
Que _no lo tiene_ el de Argel,

is the jest with which he ends his other play on the same
subject, printed thirty years after the representation of this
one.

The other play of Cervantes, that has reached us from this period of his life, is founded on the tragical fate of Numantia, which, having resisted the Roman arms fourteen years,[117] was reduced by famine; the Roman forces consisting of eighty thousand men, and the Numantian of less than four thousand, not one of whom was found alive when the conquerors entered the city.[118] Cervantes probably chose this subject in consequence of the patriotic recollections it awakened and still continues to awaken in the minds of his countrymen; and, for the same reason, he filled his drama chiefly with the public and private horrors consequent on the self-devotion of the Numantians.

[117] Cervantes makes Scipio say of the siege, on his arrival,--

Diez y seis años son y mas pasados.

The true length of the contest with Numantia was, however,
fourteen years, and the length of the last siege fourteen months.

[118] It is well to read, with the “Numancia” of Cervantes,
the account of Florus, (Epit. II. 18), and especially that in
Mariana, (Lib. III. c. 6-10), the latter being the proud Spanish
version of it.

It is divided into four _jornadas_, and, like the Trato de Argel, is written in a great variety of measures; the ancient _redondilla_ being preferred for the more active portions. Its _dramatis personæ_ are no fewer than forty in number; and among them are Spain and the River Duero, a Dead Body, War, Sickness, Famine, and Fame; the last personage speaking the Prologue. The action opens with Scipio’s arrival. He at once reproaches the Roman army, that, in so long a time, they had not conquered so small a body of Spaniards,--as Cervantes always patriotically calls the Numantians,--and then announces that they must now be subdued by Famine. Spain enters, as a fair matron, and, aware of what awaits her devoted city, invokes the Duero in two poetical octaves,[119] which the river answers in person, accompanied by three of his tributary streams, but gives no hope to Numantia, except that the Goths, the Constable of Bourbon, and the Duke of Alva shall one day avenge its fate on the Romans. This ends the first act.

[119]
Duero gentil, que, con torcidas vueltas,
Humedeces gran parte de mi seno,
Ansí en tus aguas siempre veas envueltas
Arenas de oro qual el Tajo ameno,
Y ansí las ninfas fugitivas sueltas,
De que está el verde prado y bosque lleno,
Vengan humildes á tus aguas claras,
Y en prestarte favor no sean avaras,

Que prestes á mis ásperos lamentos
Atento oido, ó que á escucharlos vengas,
Y aunque dexes un rato tus contentos,
Suplícote que en nada te detengas:
Si tú con tus continos crecimientos
Destos fieros Romanos no te vengas,
Cerrado veo ya qualquier camino
A la salud del pueblo Numantino.

Jorn. I., Sc. 2.

It should be added, that these two octaves occur at the end of a
somewhat tedious soliloquy of nine or ten others, all of which
are really octave stanzas, though not printed as such.

The other three divisions are filled with the horrors of the siege endured by the unhappy Numantians; the anticipations of their defeat; their sacrifices and prayers to avert it; the unhallowed incantations by which a dead body is raised to predict the future; and the cruel sufferings to old and young, to the loved and the lovely, and even to the innocence of childhood, through which the stern fate of the city is accomplished. The whole ends with the voluntary immolation of those who remained alive among the starving inhabitants, and the death of a youth who holds up the keys of the gates, and then, in presence of the Roman general, throws himself headlong from one of the towers of the city; its last self-devoted victim.

In such a story there is no plot, and no proper development of any thing like a dramatic action. But the romance of real life has rarely been exhibited on the stage in such bloody extremity; and still more rarely, when thus exhibited, has there been so much of poetical effect produced by individual incidents. In a scene of the second act, Marquino, a magician, after several vain attempts to compel a spirit to reënter the body it had just left on the battle-field, in order to obtain from it a revelation of the coming fate of the city, bursts forth indignantly and says:--

Rebellious spirit! Back again, and fill
The form which, but a few short hours ago,
Thyself left tenantless.

To which the spirit, reëntering the body, replies:--

Restrain the fury of thy cruel power!
Enough, Marquino! O, enough of pain
I suffer in those regions dark, below,
Without the added torments of thy spell!
Thou art deluded, if thou deem’st indeed
That aught of earthly pleasure can repay
Such brief return to this most wretched world,
Where, when I barely seem to live again,
With urgent speed life harshly shrinks away.
Nay, rather dost thou bring a shuddering pain;
Since, on the instant, all-prevailing death
Triumphant reigns anew, subduing life and soul;
Thus yielding twice the victory to my foe,
Who now, with others of his grisly crew,
Obedient to thy will, and stung with rage,
Awaits the moment when shall be fulfilled
The knowledge thou requirest at my hand;
The knowledge of Numantia’s awful fate.[120]

[120]
_Marquino._

Alma rebelde, vuelve al aposento
Que pocas horas ha desocupaste.

_El Cuerpo._

Cese la furia del rigor violento
Tuyo. Marquino, baste, triste, baste,
La que yo paso en la region escura,
Sin que tú crezcas mas mi desventura.
Engáñaste, si piensas que recibo
Contento de volver á esta penosa,
Mísera y corta vida, que ahora vivo,
Que ya me va faltando presurosa;
Antes, me causas un dolor esquivo,
Pues otra vez la muerte rigurosa
Triunfará de mi vida y de mi alma;
Mi enemigo tendrá doblada palma,
El cual, con otros del escuro bando
De los que son sugetos á aguardarte,
Está con rabia en torno, aquí esperando
A que acabe, Marquino, de informarte
Del lamentable fin, del mal nefando,
Que de Numancia puedo asegurarte.

Jorn. II., Sc. 2.

There is nothing of so much dignity in the incantations of Marlowe’s “Faustus,” which belong to the contemporary period of the English stage; nor does even Shakspeare demand from us a sympathy so strange with the mortal head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth’s guilty question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering spirit, recalled to life only to endure a second time the pangs of dissolution.

The scenes of private and domestic affliction arising from the pressure of famine are sometimes introduced with unexpected effect, especially one between a mother and her child, and the following between Morandro, a lover, and his mistress, Lira, whom he now sees wasted by hunger and mourning over the universal desolation. She turns from him to conceal her sufferings, and he says tenderly,--

Nay, Lira, haste not, haste not thus away;
But let me feel an instant’s space the joy
Which life can give even here, amidst grim death.
Let but mine eyes an instant’s space behold
Thy beauty, and, amidst such bitter woes,
Be gladdened! O my gentle Lira!--thou,
That dwell’st for ever in such harmony
Amidst the thoughts that throng my fantasy,
That suffering grows glorious for thy sake;--
What ails thee, love? On what are bent thy thoughts,
Chief honor of mine own?

_Lira._ I think, how fast
All happiness is gliding both from thee
And me; and that, before this cruel war
Can find a close, my life must find one too.

_Morandro._ What sayst thou, love?

_Lira._ That hunger so prevails
Within me, that it soon must triumph quite,
And break my life’s thin thread. What wedded love
Canst thou expect from me in such extremity,--
Looking for death perchance in one short hour?
With famine died my brother yesterday;
With famine sank my mother; and if still
I struggle on, ’t is but my youth that bears
Me up against such rigors horrible.
But sustenance is now so many days
Withheld, that all my weakened powers
Contend in vain.

_Morandro._ O Lira! dry thy tears,
And let but mine bemoan thy bitter griefs!
For though fierce famine press thee merciless,
Of famine, while I live, thou shalt not die.
Fosse deep and wall of strength shall be o’erleaped,
And death confronted, and yet warded off!
The bread the bloody Roman eats to-day
Shall from his lips be torn and placed in thine;--
My arms shall hew a passage for thy life;--
For death is naught when I behold thee thus.
Food thou shall have, in spite of Roman power,
If but these hands are such as once they were.

_Lira._ Thou speak’st, Morandro, with a loving heart;--
But food thus bought with peril to thy life
Would lose its savor. All that thou couldst snatch
In such an onset must be small indeed,
And rather cost thy life than rescue mine.
Enjoy, then, love, thy fresh and glowing youth!
Thy life imports the city more than mine;
Thou canst defend it from this cruel foe,
Whilst I, a maiden, weak and faint at heart,
Am worthless all. So, gentle love, dismiss this thought;
I taste no food bought at such deadly price.
And though a few short, wretched days thou couldst
Protect this life, still famine, at the last,
Must end us all.

_Morandro._ In vain thou strivest, love,
To hinder me the way my will alike
And destiny invite and draw me on.
Pray rather, therefore, to the gods above,
That they return me home, laden with spoils,
Thy sufferings and mine to mitigate.

_Lira._ Morandro, gentle friend, O, go not forth!
For here, before me, gleams a hostile sword,
Red with thy blood! O, venture, venture not
Such fierce extremity, light of my life!
For if the sally be with dangers thick,
More dread is the return.[121]

[121]
_Morandro._

No vayas tan de corrida,
Lira, déxame gozar
Del bien que me puede dar
En la muerte alegre vida:
Dexa, que miren mis ojos
Un rato tu hermosura,
Pues tanto mi desventura
Se entretiene en mis enojos.
O dulce Lira, que suenas
Contino en mi fantasía
Con tan suave harmonía
Que vuelve en gloria mis penas!
Que tienes? Que estás pensando,
Gloria de mi pensamiento?

_Lira._

Pienso como mi contento
Y el tuyo se va acabando,
Y no será su homicida
El cerco de nuestra tierra,
Que primero que la guerra
Se me acabará la vida.

_Morandro._

Que dices, bien de mi alma?

_Lira._

Que me tiene tal la hambre,
Que de mi vital estambre
Llevará presto la palma.
Que tálamo has de esperar
De quien está en tal extremo,
Que te aseguro que temo
Antes de una hora espirar?
Mi hermano ayer espiró
De la hambre fatigado,
Y mi madre ya ha acabado,
Que la hambre la acabó.
Y si la hambre y su fuerza
No ha rendido mi salud,
Es porque la juventud
Contra su rigor se esfuerza.
Pero como ha tantos dias
Que no le hago defensa,
No pueden contra su ofensa
Las débiles fuerzas mias.

_Morandro._

Enjuga, Lira, los ojos,
Dexa que los tristes mios
Se vuelvan corrientes rios
Nacidos de tus enojos;
Y aunque la hambre ofendida
Te tenga tan sin compas,
De hambre no morirás
Mientras yo tuviere vida.
Yo me ofrezco de saltar
El foso y el muro fuerte,
Y entrar por la misma muerte
Para la tuya escusar.
El pan que el Romano toca,
Sin que el temor me destruya,
Lo quitaré de la suya
Para ponerlo en tu boca.
Con mi brazo haré carrera
A tu vida y á mi muerte,
Porque mas me mata el verte,
Señora, de esa manera.
Yo te traeré de comer
A pesar de los Romanos,
Si ya son estas mis manos
Las mismas que solian ser.

_Lira._

Hablas como enamorado,
Morandro, pero no es justo,
Que ya tome gusto el gusto
Con tu peligro comprado.
Poco podrá sustentarme
Qualquier robo que harás,
Aunque mas cierto hallarás
El perderte que ganarme.
Goza de tu mocedad
En fresca edad y crecida,
Que mas importa tu vida
Que la mia, á la ciudad.
Tu podrás bien defendella,
De la enemiga asechanza,
Que no la flaca pujanza
Desta tan triste doncella.
Ansí que, mi dulce amor,
Despide ese pensamiento,
Que yo no quiero sustento
Ganado con tu sudor.
Que aunque puedes alargar
Mi muerte por algun dia,
Esta hambre que porfia
En fin nos ha de acabar.

_Morandro._

En vano trabajas, Lira,
De impidirme este camino,
Do mi voluntad y signo
Allá me convida y tira.
Tú rogarás entre tanto
A los Dioses, que me vuelvan
Con despojos que resuelvan
Tu miseria y mi quebranto.

_Lira._

Morandro, mi dulce amigo,
No vayas, que se me antoja,
Que de tu sangre veo roxa
La espada del enemigo.
No hagas esta jornada,
Morandro, bien de mi vida,
Que si es mala la salida,
Es muy peor la tornada.

Jorn. III., Sc. 1.

There is, in this scene, a tone of gentle, broken-hearted
self-devotion on the part of Lira, awakening a fierce despair in
her lover, that seems to me very true to nature. The last words
of Lira, in the passage translated, have, I think, much beauty in
the original.

He persists, and, accompanied by a faithful friend, penetrates into the Roman camp and obtains bread. In the contest he is wounded; but still, forcing his way back to the city, by the mere energy of despair, he gives to Lira the food he has won, wet with his own blood, and then falls dead at her feet.

A very high authority in dramatic criticism speaks of the Numancia as if it were not merely one of the more distinguished efforts of the early Spanish theatre, but one of the more striking exhibitions of modern poetry.[122] It is not probable that this opinion will prevail. Yet the whole piece has the merit of originality, and, in several of its parts, succeeds in awakening strong emotions; so that, notwithstanding the want of dramatic skill and adaptation, it may still be cited as a proof of its author’s poetical talent, and, in the actual condition of the Spanish stage when he wrote, as a bold effort to raise it.

[122] A. W. von Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und
Literatur, Heidelberg, 1811, Tom. II. Abt. ii. p. 345.