Quixote" differs but little in language from the colloquial Spanish of
the present day. Except in the tales and Don Quixote's speeches, the
translator who uses the simplest and plainest everyday language will
almost always be the one who approaches nearest to the original.

Seeing that the story of "Don Quixote" and all its characters and
incidents have now been for more than two centuries and a half familiar
as household words in English mouths, it seems to me that the old
familiar names and phrases should not be changed without good reason. Of
course a translator who holds that "Don Quixote" should receive the
treatment a great classic deserves, will feel himself bound by the
injunction laid upon the Morisco in Chap. IX not to omit or add anything.

II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE

Four generations had laughed over "Don Quixote" before it occurred to
anyone to ask, who and what manner of man was this Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too late for a
satisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to add a life of
the author to the London edition published at Lord Carteret's instance in
1738. All traces of the personality of Cervantes had by that time
disappeared. Any floating traditions that may once have existed,
transmitted from men who had known him, had long since died out, and of
other record there was none; for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were incurious as to "the men of the time," a reproach against which the
nineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced no
Shakespeare or Cervantes. All that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was
entrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or
Navarrete, could do was to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes to
himself in his various prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidence
bearing upon his life as they could find.

This, however, has been done by the last-named biographer to such good
purpose that he has superseded all predecessors. Thoroughness is the
chief characteristic of Navarrete's work. Besides sifting, testing, and
methodising with rare patience and judgment what had been previously
brought to light, he left, as the saying is, no stone unturned under
which anything to illustrate his subject might possibly be found.
Navarrete has done all that industry and acumen could do, and it is no
fault of his if he has not given us what we want. What Hallam says of
Shake