head of La Mancha our author has much to say on the subject of Don Quixote; and to the greater part of what he says we yield our respectful assent.  His observations upon the two principal characters in that remarkable work display much sound as well as original criticism.  We cannot however agree with him in preferring the second part, which we think a considerable falling off from the first.  We should scarcely believe the two parts were written by the same hand.  We have read through both various times, but we have always sighed on coming to the conclusion of the first.  It was formerly our custom to read the Don ‘pervasively’ once every

three years; we still keep up that custom in part, and hope to do so whilst life remains.  We say in part, because we now conclude with the first part going no farther.  We have little sympathy with the pranks played off upon Sancho and his master by the Duke and Duchess, to the description of which so much space is devoted; and as for the affair of Sancho’s government at Barataria, it appears to us full of inconsistency and absurdity.  Barataria, we are told, was a place upon the Duke’s estate, consisting of two or three thousand inhabitants; and of such a place it was very possible for a nobleman to have made the poor squire governor; but we no sooner get to Barataria than we find ourselves not in a townlet, but in a capital in Madrid.  The governor at night makes his rounds, attended by ‘an immense watch;’ he wanders from one street to another for hours; he encounters all kinds of adventures, not mock but real adventures, and all kinds of characters, not mock but real characters; there is talk of bull-circuses, theatres, gambling-houses, and such like; and all this in a place of two or three thousand inhabitants, in which, by the way, nothing but a cat is ever heard stirring after eight o’clock; this we consider to be carrying the joke rather too far; and it is not Sancho but the reader who is joked with.  But the first part is a widely different affair: all the scenes are admirable.  Should we live a thousand years, we should never forget the impression made upon us by the adventure

of the corpse, where the Don falls upon the priests who are escorting the bier by torch light, and by the sequel thereto, his midnight adventures in the Brown Mountain.  We can only speak of these scenes as astonishing—they have never been equalled in their line.  There is another wonderful book which describes what we may call the city life of Spain, as the other describes the vida del campo—we allude of course to Le Sage’s novel, which as a whole we prefer to Don Quixote, the characters introduced being certainly more true to nature than those which appear in the other great work.  Shame to Spain that she has not long since erected a statue to Le Sage, who has done so much to illustrate her; but miserable envy and jealousy have been at the bottom of the feeling ever manifested in Spain towards that illustrious name.  There are some few stains in the grand work of Le Sage.  He has imitated without acknowledgment three or four passages contained in the life of Obregon, a curious work, of which we have already spoken, and to which on some future occasion we may perhaps revert.

But the Hand-book?  We take leave of it with the highest respect and admiration for the author; and recommend it not only to travellers in Spain, but to the public in general, as a work of a very high order, written con amore by a man who has devoted his whole time, talents, and all the various treasures of an extensive learning to its execution.  We repeat that

we were totally unprepared for such a literary treat as he has here placed before us.  It is our sincere wish that at his full convenience he will favour us with something which may claim consanguinity with the present work.  It hardly becomes us to point out to an author subjects on which to exercise his powers.  We shall, however, take the liberty of hinting that a good history of Spain does not exist, at least in English—and that not even Shelton produced a satisfactory translation of the great gem of Spanish literature, ‘The Life and Adventures of Don Quixote.’

* * * * *

London:
Printed for Thomas J. Wise, Hampstead, N.W.
Edition limited to Thirty Copies

Footnote:

[13]  Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER TO THE BIBLE IN SPAIN***