orts, and even
the care of his estate; nay, he grew so strangely besotted with these
amusements that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of
that kind, by which means he collected as many of them as were to be
had; but, among them all, none pleased him like the works of the
famous Feliciano de Sylva; for the clearness of his prose and those
intricate expressions with which it is interlaced, seemed to him so
many pearls of eloquence, especially when he came to read the
challenges, and the amorous addresses, many of them in this
extraordinary style: "The reason of your unreasonable usage of my
reason does so enfeeble my reason that I have reason to expostulate
with your beauty." And this: "The sublime heavens, which with your
divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, and fix you the deserver
of the desert that is deserved by your grandeur." These, and such like
expressions, strangely puzzled the poor gentleman's understanding,
while he was breaking his brain to unravel their meaning, which
Aristotle himself could never have found, though he should have been
raised from the dead for that very purpose.

He did not so well like those dreadful wounds which Don Belianis gave
and received; for he considered that all the art of surgery could
never secure his face and body from being strangely disfigured with
scars. However, he highly commended the author for concluding his book
with a promise to finish that unfinishable adventure; and many times
he had a desire to put pen to paper, and faithfully and literally
finish it himself; which he had certainly done, and doubtless with
good success, had not his thoughts been wholly engrossed in much more
important designs.

He would often dispute with the curate of the parish, a man of
learning, that had taken his degrees at Giguenza, who was the better
knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis de Gaul; but Master Nicholas,
the barber of the same town, would say, that none of them could
compare with the Knight of the Sun; and that if any one came near him,
it was certainly Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis de Gaul; for he was
a man of a most commodious temper, neither was he so finical nor such
a puling, whining lover as his brother; and as for courage, he was not
a jot behind him.

In fine, he gave himself up so wholly to the reading of romances, that
at nights he would pore on until it was day, and by day he would read
on until it was night; and thus by sleeping littl