The History of Don Quixote Vol 1 Part 3

All hail, ill.u.s.trious man! Fortune, when she Bound thee apprentice to the esquire trade, Her care and tenderness of thee displayed, Shaping thy course from misadventure free.

No longer now doth proud knight-errantry Regard with scorn the sickle and the spade; Of towering arrogance less count is made Than of plain esquire-like simplicity.

I envy thee thy Dapple, and thy name, And those alforjas thou wast wont to stuff With comforts that thy providence proclaim.

Excellent Sancho! hail to thee again!

To thee alone the Ovid of our Spain Does homage with the rustic kiss and cuff.

FROM EL DONOSO, THE MOTLEY POET,

On Sancho Panza and Rocinante

ON SANCHO

I am the esquire Sancho Pan-- Who served Don Quixote of La Man--; But from his service I retreat-, Resolved to pa.s.s my life discreet-; For Villadiego, called the Si--, Maintained that only in reti-- Was found the secret of well-be--, According to the "Celesti--:"

A book divine, except for sin-- By speech too plain, in my opin--

ON ROCINANTE

I am that Rocinante fa--, Great-grandson of great Babie--, Who, all for being lean and bon--, Had one Don Quixote for an own--; But if I matched him well in weak--, I never took short commons meek--, But kept myself in corn by steal--, A trick I learned from Lazaril--, When with a piece of straw so neat-- The blind man of his wine he cheat--.

ORLANDO FURIOSO To Don Quixote of La Mancha

SONNET

If thou art not a Peer, peer thou hast none; Among a thousand Peers thou art a peer; Nor is there room for one when thou art near, Unvanquished victor, great unconquered one!

Orlando, by Angelica undone, Am I; o'er distant seas condemned to steer, And to Fame's altars as an offering bear Valour respected by Oblivion.

I cannot be thy rival, for thy fame And prowess rise above all rivalry, Albeit both bereft of wits we go.

But, though the Scythian or the Moor to tame Was not thy lot, still thou dost rival me: Love binds us in a fellows.h.i.+p of woe.

THE KNIGHT OF PHOEBUS

To Don Quixote of La Mancha

My sword was not to be compared with thine Phoebus of Spain, marvel of courtesy, Nor with thy famous arm this hand of mine That smote from east to west as lightnings fly.

I scorned all empire, and that monarchy The rosy east held out did I resign For one glance of Claridiana's eye, The bright Aurora for whose love I pine.

A miracle of constancy my love; And banished by her ruthless cruelty, This arm had might the rage of h.e.l.l to tame.

But, Gothic Quixote, happier thou dost prove, For thou dost live in Dulcinea's name, And famous, honoured, wise, she lives in thee.

FROM SOLISDAN To Don Quixote of La Mancha

SONNET

Your fantasies, Sir Quixote, it is true, That crazy brain of yours have quite upset, But aught of base or mean hath never yet Been charged by any in reproach to you.

Your deeds are open proof in all men's view; For you went forth injustice to abate, And for your pains sore drubbings did you get From many a rascally and ruffian crew.

If the fair Dulcinea, your heart's queen, Be unrelenting in her cruelty, If still your woe be powerless to move her, In such hard case your comfort let it be That Sancho was a sorry go-between: A b.o.o.by he, hard-hearted she, and you no lover.

DIALOGUE Between Babieca and Rocinante

SONNET

B. "How comes it, Rocinante, you're so lean?"

R. "I'm underfed, with overwork I'm worn."

B. "But what becomes of all the hay and corn?"

R. "My master gives me none; he's much too mean."

B. "Come, come, you show ill-breeding, sir, I ween; 'T is like an a.s.s your master thus to scorn."

R. He is an a.s.s, will die an a.s.s, an a.s.s was born; Why, he's in love; what's what's plainer to be seen?"

B. "To be in love is folly?"--R. "No great sense."

B. "You're metaphysical."--R. "From want of food."

B. "Rail at the squire, then."--R. "Why, what's the good?

I might indeed complain of him, I grant ye, But, squire or master, where's the difference?

They're both as sorry hacks as Rocinante."

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I would this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, and cleverest that could be imagined. But I could not counteract Nature's law that everything shall beget its like; and what, then, could this sterile, illtilled wit of mine beget but the story of a dry, shrivelled, whimsical offspring, full of thoughts of all sorts and such as never came into any other imagination--just what might be begotten in a prison, where every misery is lodged and every doleful sound makes its dwelling?

Tranquillity, a cheerful retreat, pleasant fields, bright skies, murmuring brooks, peace of mind, these are the things that go far to make even the most barren muses fertile, and bring into the world births that fill it with wonder and delight. Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however--for though I pa.s.s for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don Quixote"--have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine.

Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it.

My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books. For I can tell thee, though composing it cost me some labour, I found none greater than the making of this Preface thou art now reading. Many times did I take up my pen to write it, and many did I lay it down again, not knowing what to write. One of these times, as I was pondering with the paper before me, a pen in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my cheek in my hand, thinking of what I should say, there came in unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of mine, who, seeing me so deep in thought, asked the reason; to which I, making no mystery of it, answered that I was thinking of the Preface I had to make for the story of "Don Quixote," which so troubled me that I had a mind not to make any at all, nor even publish the achievements of so n.o.ble a knight.

"For, how could you expect me not to feel uneasy about what that ancient lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, after slumbering so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming out now with all my years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a rush, devoid of invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly wanting in learning and wisdom, without quotations in the margin or annotations at the end, after the fas.h.i.+on of other books I see, which, though all fables and profanity, are so full of maxims from Aristotle, and Plato, and the whole herd of philosophers, that they fill the readers with amazement and convince them that the authors are men of learning, erudition, and eloquence. And then, when they quote the Holy Scriptures!--anyone would say they are St. Thomases or other doctors of the Church, observing as they do a decorum so ingenious that in one sentence they describe a distracted lover and in the next deliver a devout little sermon that it is a pleasure and a treat to hear and read. Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have nothing to quote in the margin or to note at the end, and still less do I know what authors I follow in it, to place them at the beginning, as all do, under the letters A, B, C, beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis, though one was a slanderer and the other a painter. Also my book must do without sonnets at the beginning, at least sonnets whose authors are dukes, marquises, counts, bishops, ladies, or famous poets. Though if I were to ask two or three obliging friends, I know they would give me them, and such as the productions of those that have the highest reputation in our Spain could not equal.

"In short, my friend," I continued, "I am determined that Senor Don Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La Mancha until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason enough, what you have heard from me."

Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead and breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, "Before G.o.d, Brother, now am I disabused of an error in which I have been living all this long time I have known you, all through which I have taken you to be shrewd and sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far from that as the heaven is from the earth. It is possible that things of so little moment and so easy to set right can occupy and perplex a ripe wit like yours, fit to break through and crush far greater obstacles? By my faith, this comes, not of any want of ability, but of too much indolence and too little knowledge of life. Do you want to know if I am telling the truth?

Well, then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry."

"Say on," said I, listening to his talk; "how do you propose to make up for my diffidence, and reduce to order this chaos of perplexity I am in?"

To which he made answer, "Your first difficulty about the sonnets, epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the beginning, and which ought to be by persons of importance and rank, can be removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them, fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut off the hand you wrote it with.

"As to references in the margin to the books and authors from whom you take the aphorisms and sayings you put into your story, it is only contriving to fit in nicely any sentences or sc.r.a.ps of Latin you may happen to have by heart, or at any rate that will not give you much trouble to look up; so as, when you speak of freedom and captivity, to insert

_Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro;_

and then refer in the margin to Horace, or whoever said it; or, if you allude to the power of death, to come in with--

_Pallida mors Aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres._