made an old friend.

'Don Quixote' has accordingly enjoyed a universal popularity, and has
had the singular privilege of accomplishing the object for which it
was written, which was to recall fiction from the extravagances of the
books of chivalry to the study of real life. This is the simple object
which Cervantes had and avowed. He was a literary man with literary
interests, and the idea which came to him was to ridicule the
absurdities of the prevalent literary mode. The rich vein which he
struck in the conception of Don Quixote's madness and topsy-turvy
adventures encouraged him to go on. The subject and the characters
deepened under his hands, until from a parody of a certain kind of
romances the story threatened to become a satire on human idealism.
At the same time Cervantes grew fond of his hero, and made him, as
we must feel, in some sort a representative of his own chivalrous
enthusiasms and constant disappointments.

We need not, however, see in this transformation any deep-laid
malice or remote significance. As the tale opened out before the
author's fancy and enlisted his closer and more loving attention, he
naturally enriched it with all the wealth of his experience. Just as
he diversified it with pictures of common life and manners, so he
weighted it with the burden of human tragedy. He left upon it an
impress of his own nobility and misfortunes side by side with a record
of his time and country. But in this there was nothing intentional. He
only spoke out of the fullness of his heart. The highest motives and
characters had been revealed to him by his own impulses, and the
lowest by his daily experience.

There is nothing in the book that suggests a premeditated satire upon
faith and enthusiasm in general. The author's evident purpose is to
amuse, not to upbraid or to discourage. There is no bitterness in his
pathos or despair in his disenchantment; partly because he retains a
healthy fondness for this naughty world, and partly because his heart
is profoundly and entirely Christian. He would have rejected with
indignation an interpretation of his work that would see in it an
attack on religion or even on chivalry. His birth and nurture had
made him religious and chivalrous from the beginning, and he remained
so by conviction to the end. He was still full of plans and hopes when
death overtook him, but he greeted it with perfect simplicity, without
lamentations over the past or anxiety for the future.