Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 14.djvu/16

I would very fain have presented it unto thee pure and naked, without the ornament of a preface, or the rabblement and catalogue of the wonted sonnets, epigrams, poems, elegies, etc., which are wont to be put at the, beginning of books. For I dare say unto thee that, although it cost me some pains to compose it, yet in no respect did it equalise that which I took to make this preface which thou dost now read. I took, oftentimes, my pen in my hand to write it, and as often set it down again, as not knowing what I should write; and being once in a muse, with my paper before me, my pen in mine ear, mine elbow on the table, and mine hand on my cheek, imagining what I might write, there entered a friend of mine unexpectedly, who was a very discreet and pleasantly-witted man, who, seeing me so pensative, demanded of me the reason of my musing; and, not concealing it from him, said that I bethought myself on my preface I was to make to Don Quixote's history, which did so much trouble me as I neither meant to make any at all, nor publish the history of the acts of so noble a knight. Tor how can I choose,' quoth I, 'but be much confounded at that which the old legislator (the vulgar) will say, when it sees that, after the end of so many years as are spent since I first slept in the bosom of oblivion, I come out loaden with my grey hairs, and bring with me a book as dry as a kex, void of invention, barren of good phrase, poor of conceits, and altogether empty both of learning and eloquence; without quotations on the margents, or annotations in the end of the book, wherewith I see other books are still adorned, be they never so idle, fabulous, and profane; so full of sentences of Aristotle and Plato, and the other crew of the philosophers, as admires the readers, and makes them believe that these authors are very learned and eloquent? And after, when they cite Plutarch or Cicero, what can they say, but that they are the sayings of St. Thomas, or other doctors of the Church; observing herein so ingenious a method as in one line they will paint you an enamoured gull, and in the other will lay you down a little seeming devout sermon, so that it is a great pleasure and delight to read or hear it? All which things must be wanting in my book, for neither have I anything to cite on the margent, or note in the end, and much less do I know what authors I follow, to put them at the beginning, as the custom is, by the letter of the ABC, beginning with Aristotle, and ending in Xenophon, or in Zoilus or Zeuxis, although the one was a railer and the other a painter. So likewise shall my book want sonnets at the beginning, at least such sonnets whose authors be dukes, marquises, earls, bishops, ladies, or famous poets; although, if I would demand them of two or three artificers of mine acquaintance, I know they would make me some