Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Some who merely neglected the author till found by fame, were soon ready to do him disservice by passing censure on the execution of the great work, and even searching for subjects of blame in his past career. Lope de Vega, as we have seen, had put it out of his power to turn his dramatic talents to account. Further, he did not act in a kind manner towards him in private, though outwardly friendly. But Lope's friends and admirers so deeply resented an honest and judicious criticism on the works of the prolific dramatist by Cervantes, that they ceased not during the remaining dozen years of his life to do him every unfriendly act in their power. One was so full of malice and so unprincipled, that towards the end of Cervantes' life he wrote a second part of the Adventures of Don Quixote, distinguished by coarseness, dullness, and inability to make the personages of the first part of the story act and speak in character. The impudent and talentless writer called himself Don Avellaneda of some town in La Mancha, but one of De Vega's admirers was supposed to be the real culprit. Suspicions fell on several, but the greater number centered in Pere Luis de Aliaga, a favorite of the Duke of Lerma, and the confessor of Philip III. He was call, meagre, and dark-complexioned, and had got the sobriquet of _Sancho Panza_, by antithesis.

The wretched attack, for it was no better, was published in 1614, two years before the death of Cervantes, Though suffering from illness, and overshadowed by the expectation of approaching death, the appearance of the impudent and worthless production acted on him as the bugle on the nerves of the old battle-steed. In the order of Providence good is extracted from mere human evil, and to the false Avellaneda the world is indirectly indebted for the second part of Don Quixote, the wedding of Gamacho, the wise though unsuccessful government of Barataria by Sancho, the disenchantment of Dulcinea, and all the delightful adventures and conferences that had place at the ducal chateau, province unknown.

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But between the publishing of the first part of Don Quixote in 1605, and the second in 1614, how had the great heart and head been occupied? Probably with little pleasure to himself. On his return from the wars of Portugal in 1584, he had the pleasure and profit of seeing several of his plays acted, some expressly written to direct public spirit towards a crusade on the Algerines. [Footnote 17] Of these he thus speaks in the prologue to his dramatic works, published 1613:

[Footnote 17: Between the days of Lope de Rueda and those of
Cervantes' debut, Naharra of Toledo had made considerable
improvement in the mechanics of the art. The sack was rejected,
and chests and trunks held the properties. The musicians came from
behind their blanket, and faced their customers. He rejected the
beards except in the case of disguisements, and invented or
adopted thunder, lightning, clouds, challenges, and fights. He
himself was a capital personator of cowardly bullies.]

"In all the playhouses of Madrid were acted some plays of my
composing, such as the Humors of Algiers, the Destruction of
Numantia, and the Naval Battle, wherein I took the liberty of
reducing plays to three acts which before consisted of five. I
showed, or, to speak better, I was the first that represented the
imaginations and secret thoughts of the soul, exhibiting moral
characters to public view to the entire satisfaction of the
audience. I composed at that time thirty plays at least, all of
which were acted without anybody's interrupting the players by
flinging cucumbers or any other trash at them. They ran their race
without any hissing, cat-calling, or any other disorder. But
happening to be taken up with other things, I laid aside
play-writing, and then came on that prodigy of nature, that
marvellous man, the great Lope de Vega, who raised himself to be
supreme monarch of the stage. He subdued all the players, and made
them obedient to his will. He filled the world with theatrical
pieces, finely and happily devised, and full of good sense, and so
numerous that they take up above ten thousand sheets of paper all of
his own writing, and, which is a most wonderful thing to relate, he
saw them all acted or at least had the satisfaction to hear they
were all acted."

Good-hearted, generous Cervantes, who could so dwell on that success in a rival which condemned himself to the wretched life of an inland revenue officer, to the hatred of non-payers of tax, to prosecutions, and to the discomforts of an Andaluçian or Manchegan dungeon, and separation from his niece, sister, daughter, and wife, whom, in absence of data to the contrary, we take to be amiable and affectionate women.

When the court returned to Madrid he and his family followed it, but we find no employment given by him to the printing presses of that city from 1604 to 1613, when he got published the collection of plays and interludes before mentioned. In the same year he published his twelve Exemplary Novels, [Footnote 18] dedicating them to his patron, Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, count of Lemos. This nobleman, in conjunction with Archbishop Sandoval, and the actor, Pedro de Morales, had succeeded (let us hope) in cheering the poet's latter years. In the preface he gives a portrait of himself in his sixty-sixth year, distinguished by his own charming style, always redolent of resignation, good-will, and good-nature. He pretends that a friend was to have got his portrait engraved to serve as frontispiece, but, owing to his negligence, he himself is obliged to supply one in pen and ink:

[Footnote 18: The Lady Cornelia, Rinconete and Cortadillo, Doctor
Glass-case, the Deceitful Marriage, the Dialogue of the Dogs
Scipio and Berganza, the Little Gipsy Girl, the Generous Lover,
the Spanish-English Lady, the Force of Blood, the Jealous
Estremaduran, the Illustrious Scullery-Maid, and the Two Damsels.]

"My friend might have written under the portrait--This person whom
you see here, with an oval visage, chestnut hair, smooth open
forehead, lively eyes, a hooked but well-proportioned nose, a
silvery beard that, twenty years ago, was golden, large moustaches,
a small mouth, teeth not much to speak of, for he has but six, all
in bad condition and worse placed, no two of them corresponding to
each other; a figure between the two extremes, neither tall nor
short, a vivid complexion, rather fair than dark, somewhat stooped
in the shoulders, and not very light-footed: this I say is the
author of Galatea, Don Quixote de la Mancha, . . . commonly called
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He was for many years a soldier, and
for five years and a half in captivity, where he learned to have
patience in adversity. He lost his left hand by a musket-shot in the
battle of Lepanto, and ugly as this wound may appear, he regards it
as beautiful, having received it {28} on the most memorable and
sublime occasion which passed times have ever scene, or future times
can hope to equal, fighting under the victorious banners of the son
of that thunderbolt of war, Charles V. of blessed memory. Should the
friend of whom I complain have no more to say of me than this, I
would myself have composed a couple of dozen of eulogiums, and
communicated them to him in secret," etc.

THE CLOSING SCENE.

Cervantes' Voyage to Parnassus, in which he complains to Apollo for not being furnished even with a stool in that poets' elysium, was published in 1614, the second part of Don Quixote in 1615, and that was the last book whose proofs he had the pleasure to correct. He was employed on his Troubles of Persiles and Sigismunda, [Footnote 19] and wrote its preface, and the dedication to his patron the Count of Lemos, while suffering under his final complaint, the dropsy, and having only a few day to live. From the preface to the Persiles he appears to have received extreme unction before the last word of it was written. From the forgiving, and patient, and tranquil spirit of his writing, even when annoyed by much unkindness and injustice on the part of the Madrid coteries, from the spirit of religion and morality that pervades his writings, and the care he appears to have taken to meet his summons as a sincere Christian, we may reasonably hope that his sorrows and troubles for time and eternity ended on 23d April, 1616 the day on which a kindred spirit breathed his last at Stratford-on-Avon.

[Footnote 19: It was published by his widow, Dona Catalina, la 1617.]

And indeed in our meditations on the characteristics of the author and man in Cervantes, we have always mentally associated him with Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott. We find in all the same versatility of genius, the same grasp and breadth of intellect, the same gifts of genial humor and the same largeness of sympathy. The life of Cervantes will be always an interesting and edifying study in connexion with the literature and the great events of his time. We find him conscientiously doing his duty in every phase of his diversified existence, and effecting all the good in his power. When he feels the need of filling a very disagreeable office in order to afford necessary support to his family, he bends the stubborn pride of the hidalgo to his irksome duties--and it is not easy for us to realize the rigidity of that quality which he inherited by birth, and which became a second nature in every gentleman of his nation. In advanced years he still vigorously exerts his faculties, and endures privations and disappointments in a resigned and patient spirit; and when complaints are wrung from him they are neither bitter nor ill-natured. Even his harmless vanity has something amiable and cordial about it. When he has just reached his sixtieth year he effects a salutary revolution in the corrupt literary taste of his countrymen and countrywomen, and save a few coarse expressions separable from the literature of his day, a deathbed examination would have found few passages in his numerous writings which it would be desirous to find omitted. He closed an anxious and industrious life by a Christian death.

NOTE.

Towards the end of Cervantes' life he belonged to the third order of Trinitarian monks, and was buried in their church with his face uncovered. These brothers having quitted their convent in 1633, the site of the interment could not be discovered when a search was afterwards made. The house he occupied in Madrid being pulled down about twenty years since, his bust has been placed in a niche in front of the new building.

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SILENT GRIEF.

You bid me raise my voice,
And pray
For tears; but yet this choice
Resteth not with me. Too much grief
Taketh the tears and words that give relief
Away:
Though I weep not, silent and apart,
Weeps and prays my heart

You like not this dead, calm,
Cold face.
So still, unmoved, I am.
You think that dark despair begins
To brood upon me for my many sins'
Disgrace:
Not so; within, silent and apart,
Hopes and trusts my heart.

Down underneath the waves
Concealed
Lie in unfathomed graves
A thousand wrecks, storm never yet--
That did the upper surface madly fret--
Revealed.
Wreck'd loves lie deep; tears, with all their art,
Ne'er could show my heart.

Complaint I utter not.
I know
That He who cast my lot,
In silence also bore His cross.
Nor counted lack of words or tears a loss
In woe.
Alone with Him, silent and apart,
Weeps and prays my heart.

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Original.

THE GODFREY FAMILY; OR, QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.