Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/364

352 CERVANTES that it does, penury, rags, almost beggary, misery of every kind except shame. Throughout all these trials what is known of Cervantes proves him at least to have re tained undimmed his cheerfulness of spirit, his rare sweet ness of disposition and faith in humanity, "as one in suffering all that suffers nothing." In 1588 he is found Commis- at Seville filling the humble place of a commissary under eary at Don Antonio de Guevara, the Provee dor- General of the v. le. Indian fleets. In this capacity he had to assist in the victualling of the Invincible Armada, and documents pre served in the archives of Seville prove his activity in the purchase of grain, oil, and wine among the villages of Andalusia, gleaning, besides naval stores, much of that knowledge of life and character of which he afterwards made such admirable use. In 1590 he petitioned the king for employment in the Indies, minutely recapitulating his past services, and naming four offices then vacant as those he was qualified to fill the accountantship of New Gra nada, that of the galleys of Carthagena, the government of the province of Socomusco, in Guatemala, and the corre- gidorship of the city of La Paz. The petition was coldly received and bore no fruit, for which perhaps the ingrati tude of the Government was not wholly to blame. The habits of unthrift and restlessness which he had acquired as a soldier, together with such weaknesses as were the natural defects of his virtues of extreme good nature and easiness of disposition, must have unfitted him to some extent for the sober pursuits of civil life ; and Cervantes himself seems to hint, in a passage in Don Quixote, as well as in his Journey to Parnassus, at some imprudence which contributed to spoil his advancement. He continued for some years to hold his poor place of commissary, residing chiefly at Seville. At a poetical competition held at Sara- gossa in honour of the canonization of San Jacinto, in 1595, he was adjudged the first prize three silver spoons. The next year, on the occasion of the sacking of Seville by the English under Essex, he wrote a sonnet, ridiculing with fine irony the behaviour of the Duke of Medina-Celi, who, having a large force at his command for the defence of the city, only appeared on the scene when the English had departed. Owing to the treachery and failure of an agent, through whom he had remitted to Madrid a sum of money, collected on account of the Government, Cervantes about this time became involved in a pecuniary difficulty, which continued to be a .source of annoyance to him for some years, in addition to his other troubles. Being unable to repay the money at the king s mandate, he was cast into prison, but having succeeded in scraping together enough to reduce his debt to a few hundred reals, he was released after a few days detention. Neither on this occasion, nor on two subsequent ones when he fell under the cognizance of the law, was there left any stain. upon his honour, nor any fault alleged beyond that of carelessness or undue trustful ness. On the death of Philip II., in 1598, his obsequies were celebrated at Seville with such extravagant pomp and grandeur of decoration as to awake the ridicule of Cervantes, who, never a lover of the defunct monarch, gave vent to his feelings in a sonnet which is one of the happiest of his lighter effusions in this which was his true vein in poetry. At this period the author, in spite of his poverty and mean condition, seems to have enjoyed the society and friend ship of his countrymen most famous in literature and art, among others of the celebrated poet Fernando de Herrera and the artists Pacheco and Jaureguy, by both of whom his portrait was painted. He wrote and circulated in manu script some of those novels which many years later he completed and published ; but like the poor poet whom he has described, half of his divine thoughts and imagina tions were taken up in the study of the means of daily bread for himself and his family. The four years succeeding 1598 are wholly a blank in the life of Cervantes. Tradition assigns to this period the visit to La Mancha where occurred that new trouble of which Don Quixote is supposed to be the vengeance. The story is, that Cervantes had a commission from the prior of St John to collect his tithes in the district of Arga- masilla, and that while he wa3 employed in this ungrateful function the villagers set upon him, and after maltreating him threw him into prison, his place of imprisonment being a house still standing called La Casa de Medrano. Here, according to a general consensus of opinion, was conceived, if not written, the first part of Don Quixote, conformably to what the author says in the prologue of this " child of his wit" being "born in a gaol." In 1603 Cervantes is found living at Valladolid, among At Valla- the herd of starving soldiers and needy writers expectant of cloUt l preferment which then filled the Court. The favours of Philip III., good naturad and well-disposed to literature, were dispensed by the Duke de Lerma, then at the height of his power, whose haughty, cold, and selfish nature was little likely to see merit in Cervantes. Once more disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Cervantes was reduced to the utmost straits of poverty, eking out a living by business agencies and humble literary employment, such as writing petitions and correcting manuscripts, aided by such small gains as the ladies of his household were able to earn by the labours of the needle. By the beginning of 1604 he had completed the work which was destined to give him, if not bread, immortality. The First Part of Don Quixote, begun, ac cording to internal evidence, before the death of Philip II., was now ready for the press. The date is the same which the majority of Shakespearian critics have assigned to the first appearance of the second and perfect Hamlet ; nor is this the only coincidence between the lives of these two great contemporaries. A patron being in that age as ne cessary to an author as a publisher, Cervantes with some difficulty found one in the Duke de Bejar, a nobleman of high rank and honour, ambitious of the name of a Maecenas. The tradition which tells how the duke s scruples at con necting his name with a book of so novel a character and equivocal a purpose were surmounted is probably well founded. Instigated, it is said, by his confessor, who scented heresy, or at least a dangerous humour, in this book with a strange name, the Duke de Bejar withdrew the promise of patronage he had given and would not accept Cervantes s dedication. The author, however, begged hard for permission to read a chapter of his story before the duke, and pleased him so well that his objections were overcome. The licence for publication was obtained on Publication the 26th September 1604, and in the beginning of the of the first next year the first part of Don Quixote was printed at ar ^ of , Ij r Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta, and published by Francisco de Robles, to whom Cervantes had sold the copyright for ten years. The theory that the book was received coldly at first, so that Cervantes was induced to write a tract called El Buscapie, in order to attract the attention of tho public to Don Quixote and to stimulate their curiosity by hinting that the characters and incidents were not wholly imaginary, must be rejected as unsupported by a tittle of evidence and wholly opposed to the facts. There is no proof that any such tract as El Buscapie ever existed until Don Adolf o de Castro published in 1848 what all compe tent Spanish critics have pronounced to be a clumsy and impudent forgery. There could be no reason for such a publication by Cervantes, seeing that Don Quixote was received by the great mass of the public with marked and singular applause. Although certain great literary per sonages, and some of Cervantes s own friends, from suspicion that they were included in the satire or from jealousy of his

success, professed to sneer at the book because of its vulgar