Like a child in swaddling clothes.
He will redeem Adam thy father
With his flesh and blood likewise,
When the time is come,
And thy mother and all good people.
He is the oil of mercy
Which was promised to thy father.
Through his death truly
Shall all the world be saved.

[Signature: William Sharp & Ernest Rhys]

CERVANTES

(1547-1616)

BY GEORGE SANTAYANA

Cervantes is known to the world as the author of 'Don Quixote' and
although his other works are numerous and creditable, and his pathetic
life is carefully recorded, yet it is as the author of 'Don Quixote'
alone that he deserves to be generally known or considered. Had his
wit not come by chance on the idea of the Ingenious Hidalgo, Cervantes
would never have attained his universal renown, even if his other
works and the interest of his career should have sufficed to give him
a place in the literary history of his country. Here, then, where our
task is to present in miniature only what has the greatest and most
universal value, we may treat our author as playwrights are advised to
treat their heroes, saying of him only what is necessary to the
understanding of the single action with which we are concerned. This
single action is the writing of 'Don Quixote': and what we shall try
to understand is what there was in the life and environment of
Cervantes that enabled him to compose that great book, and that
remained imbedded in its characters, its episodes, and its moral.

There was in vogue in the Spain of the sixteenth century a species of
romance called books of chivalry. They were developments of the
legends dealing with King Arthur and the Knights of the Table Round,
and their numerous descendants and emulators. These stories had
appealed in the first place to what we should still think of as the
spirit of chivalry: they were full of tourneys and single combats,
desperate adventures and romantic loves. The setting was in the same
vague and wonderful region as the Coast of Bohemia, where to the known
mountains, seas, and cities that have poetic names, was added a
prodigious number of caverns, castles, islands, and forests of the
romancer's invention. With time and popularity this kind of story had
naturally intensified its characteristics until it had reached the
greatest extravagance and absurdity, and combi