APPENDIX, E.
ON THE DIFFERENT EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND IMITATIONS OF THE “DON QUIXOTE.”
(See Vol. II. p. 108, note, and p. 112, note.)
Whatever relates to the “Don Quixote” of Cervantes is so interesting, that I will add here such an account of its different editions, translations, and imitations as may serve, in some degree, to give the just measure of its extraordinary popularity, not only in Spain, but all over Christendom.
The first edition of the First Part of Don Quixote, of which I have a copy, was printed with this title: “El Ingenioso Hidalgo, Don Quixote de la Mancha, compuesto por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, dirigido al Duque de Bejar, Marques de Gibraleon, etc. Año 1605. Con Privilegio, etc. En Madrid, por Juan de la Cuesta,” 4to, in one volume. Three editions more appeared in the same year, namely, one at Madrid, one at Lisbon, and the other at Valencia. These, with another at Brussels, in 1607,—five in all,—are the only editions that appeared, till he took it in hand to correct some of its errors. But he did this, as I have intimated, very imperfectly and carelessly. Among other changes, he did away with the division of the volume into four parts or books, but did not take the trouble to remove from the text the proofs of such a division, as may be seen at the end of Chapters VIII., XIV., and XXVII., where the work was divided, and where, in all our editions, the proofs of it still remain. Such corrections, however, as he saw fit to make, with sometimes a different spelling of words, appeared in the Madrid edition of 1608, 4to; of which I have a copy. This edition, though somewhat better than the first, is yet ordinary; but, as the one containing Cervantes’s only amendments of the text, it is more valued and sought after than any other, and is the basis on which all the good impressions since have been founded. After this, an edition at Milan, 1610, and one at Brussels, 1611, are known to have been printed before the appearance of the Second Part, in 1615. So that, in nine or ten years, there were eight editions of the First Part of Don Quixote, implying a circulation greater than that of the works of Shakspeare or Milton, Racine or Molière, who, as of the same century, may be fitly compared with him.
The first edition of the Second Part of Don Quixote, which, like the first edition of the First Part, is poorly printed, is entitled, “Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, autor de su Primera Parte, dirigida á Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Conde de Lemos, etc. Año 1615. Con Privilegio, en Madrid, por Juan de la Cuesta,” 4to. It was printed separately, Valencia, 1616; Brussels, 1616; Barcelona, 1617; and Lisbon, 1617; after which no separate edition is known to have appeared.[466]
Thus, as we have seen, eight editions of the First Part were printed in ten years, and five of the Second Part in two years. Both parts appeared together at Barcelona in 1617, in two volumes, duodecimo; and from this period the number of editions has been very great, both in Spain and in foreign countries; nearly fifty of them being of some consequence. Only five, however, need to be here particularly noted. These are,—1. Tonson’s edition, (London, 1738, 4 vols., 4to,) published at the instance of Lord Carteret, in compliment to the queen, and containing the Life by Mayans y Siscar, already noticed; the first attempt either to edit Don Quixote or to write its author’s life with care. 2. The magnificent edition printed by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 tom., folio,) in which the text is settled with some skill, a few notes are added, and the Life of Cervantes and an Analysis, or rather an extravagant eulogy and defence, of the Don Quixote, by Don Vicente de los Rios, prefixed. It has been several times reprinted, though not without expressions of disapprobation, especially at the indiscriminate admiration of Los Rios, who found, among other opponents, a very resolute one in a Spaniard by the name of Valentine Foronda, who, in 1807, printed in London a thin octavo volume of very captious notes on Don Quixote, written in the form of letters, between 1793 and 1799, and entitled “Observaciones sobre Algunos Puntos de la Obra de Don Quixote, por T. E.” Clemencin gives the name of the author, who is otherwise unknown to me. (Ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 305.) 3. The extraordinary edition published in two volumes, quarto, at Salisbury, in England, in 1781, and accompanied by a third volume, consisting of notes and verbal indexes, all in Spanish, by the Rev. John Bowle, a clergyman in a small village near Salisbury, who gave fourteen years of unwearied labor to prepare it for the press; studying, as the basis of his system of annotation, the old Spanish and Italian authors, and especially the old Spanish ballad-books and books of chivalry, and concluding his task, or at least dating his Prefaces and Dedication, on the 23d of April, the anniversary of Cervantes’s death. There are few books of so much real learning, and at the same time of so little pretension, as the third volume of this edition. It is, in fact, the true and safe foundation on which has been built much of what has since been done with success for the explanation and illustration of the Don Quixote, which thus owes more to Bowle than to any other of its editors, except Clemencin. 4. The edition of Juan Antonio Pellicer, (Madrid, 1797-98, 5 tom., 8vo,) an Aragonese gentleman, who employed above twenty years in preparing it. (Latassa, Bib. Nov., Tom. VI. p. 319.) The notes to this edition contain a good deal of curious matter, but this matter is often irrelevant; the number of the notes is small, and they explain only a small part of the difficulties that occur in the text. It should be observed, too, that Pellicer is indebted to Bowle further than he acknowledges, and that he now and then makes mistakes on points of fact. 5. The edition of Diego Clemencin, (Madrid, 1833-39, 6 tom., 4to,) one of the most complete commentaries that has been published on any author, ancient or modern. It is written, too, with taste and judgment in nearly all that relates to the merits of the author, and is free from the blind admiration for Cervantes which marks Vicente de los Rios and the edition of the Academy. Its chief fault is, that there is too much of it; but then, on the other hand, it is rare to find an obscure point which it does not elucidate. The system of Clemencin is the one laid down by Bowle; and the conscientious learning with which it is carried out seems really to leave little to be desired in the way of notes.
In other countries the Don Quixote is hardly less known than it is in Spain. Down to the year 1700, it is curious to observe, that as many editions of the entire work were printed abroad as at home, and the succession of translations from the first has been uninterrupted. The oldest French translation is of 1620, since which there have been six or seven others, including the poor one of Florian, 1799, which has been the most read, and the very good one of Louis Viardot, (Paris, 1836-38, 2 tom., 8vo,) with the admirable illustrations of Granville,—a translation, however, which has been somewhat roughly handled by F. B. F. Biedermann, in a tract entitled “Don Quixote et la Tâche de ses Traducteurs” (Paris, 1837, 8vo). The oldest English one is by Shelton, 1612-20, the first half of which was made, as he says in the Dedication, in forty days, some years before, and which was followed by a very vulgar, unfaithful, and coarse one by John Philips, the nephew of Milton, 1687; one by Motteux, 1712; one by Jarvis, 1742, which Smollet used too freely in his own, 1755; one by Wilmot, 1774; and, finally, the anonymous one of 1818, which has adopted parts of all its predecessors. Most of them have been reprinted often; and, on the whole, the most agreeable and the best, though certainly somewhat too free, is that of Motteux, in the edition of Edinburgh, 1822, (5 vols., 12mo,) with notes and illustrative translations, full of spirit and grace, by Mr. J. G. Lockhart. No foreign country has done so much for Cervantes and Don Quixote as England, both by original editions, published there, and by translations. It may be noticed further, that, in 1654, Edmund Gayton, a gay fellow about town, of whom Wood gives no very dignified account, published in London a small folio volume, entitled “Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote,” the best of its author’s various works, and one that was thought worth publishing again in the next century, for the sake, I suppose, of the amusing vein in which it is written, but not on account of any thing it contains that will serve to explain difficult or obscure passages in the original. Some of it is in verse, and the whole is based on Shelton’s translation.
All countries, however, have sought the means of enjoying the Don Quixote, for there are translations in Latin, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Russian, Polish, and Portuguese. But better than any of these is, probably, the admirable one made into German by Ludwig Tieck, with extraordinary freedom and spirit, and a most genial comprehension of his author; four editions of which appeared between 1815 and 1831, and superseded all the other German versions, of which there are five, beginning with an imperfect attempt in 1669. It ought, perhaps, to be added, that, in the course of the last half-century, more editions of the original have appeared in Germany than in any other foreign country.
Of imitations out of Spain, it is only necessary to allude to three. The first is a “Life of Don Quixote, merrily translated into Hudibrastic Verse, by Edward Ward,” (London, 1711, 2 vols., 8vo,)—a poor attempt, full of coarse jests not found in the original. The second is “Don Silvio de Rosalva,” by Wieland, (1764, 2 vols.,) in ridicule of a belief in fairies and unseen agencies;—his first work in romantic fiction, and one that never had much success. The third is a curious poem, in twelve cantos, by Meli, the best of the Sicilian poets, who, in his native dialect, has endeavoured to tell the story of Don Quixote in octave stanzas, with the heroi-comic lightness of Ariosto; but, among other unhappinesses, has cumbered Sancho with Greek mythology and ancient learning. It fills the third and fourth volumes of Meli’s “Poesie Siciliane” (Palermo, 1787, 5 vols., 12mo). All these, as well as Smollet’s “Sir Launcelot Graves” and Mrs. Lenox’s “Female Quixote,” both published in 1762, are direct imitations of the Don Quixote, and on that account, in part, they are all failures. Butler’s “Hudibras,” (first edition, 1663-78,) so free and so full of wit, comes, perhaps, as near its model as genius may venture with success.
Don Quixote has often been produced on the stage in Spain; as, for instance, in a play by Francisco de Avila, published at Barcelona, in 1617; in two by Guillen de Castro, 1621; in one by Calderon, that is lost; and in others by Gomez Labrador, Francisco Marti, Valladares, Melendez Valdes, and, more lately, Ventura de la Vega; some of which were noticed when we spoke of the drama. But all of them were failures. (Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV., 1835, p. 399, note.)
As to prose imitations in Spain, except the attempt of Avellaneda, in 1614, I know of none for above a century;—none, indeed, till the popularity of the original work was revived. But since that period, there have been several. One is by Christóval Anzarena,—“Empressas Literarias del ingeniosíssimo Cavallero, Don Quixote de la Manchuela,” (Sevilla, 12mo, without the year, but printed about 1767,)—intended to ridicule the literary taste of the times, which, after going through the education of the hero, breaks off with the promise of a second part, that never appeared. Another is called “Adiciones á Don Quixote, por Jacinto María Delgado,” (Madrid, 12mo, s. a.,) printed apparently soon after the last, and containing the remainder of Sancho’s life, passed chiefly with the Duke and Duchess in Aragon, where, at a very small expense of wit, he is fooled into the idea that he is a baron. Another, by Alonso Bernardo Ribero y Sarrea, called “El Quixote de la Cantabria,” (Madrid, 1792, 2 tom., 12mo,) describes the travels of a certain Don Pelayo to Madrid, and his residence at court there, whence he returns to his native mountains, astonished and shocked that the Biscayans are not everywhere regarded as the only true nobility and gentlemen on earth. A fourth, “Historia de Sancho Panza,” (Madrid, 1793-98, 2 tom., 12mo,) is an unsuccessful attempt to give effect to Sancho as a separate and independent person after Don Quixote’s death, making him Alcalde of his native village, and sending him to figure in the capital and get into prison there;—the whole bringing the poor esquire’s adventures down to a very grave ending of his very merry life. And a fifth, by Juan Siñeriz, “El Quixote del Siglo XVIII.,” (Madrid, 1836, 4 tom., 12mo,) is an account of a French philosopher, who, with his esquire, travels over the earth to regenerate mankind; and, coming back just at the close of the French Revolution, which happened while he was in Asia, is cured, by the results of that great convulsion, of his philosophical notions; a dull, coarse book, whose style is as little attractive as its story. Perhaps there are other Spanish imitations of Don Quixote; but there can be none, I apprehend, of any merit or value.
All this account, however, incomplete as it is, of the different editions, translations, and imitations which, for above two centuries, have been poured out upon the different countries of Europe, gives, still, but an imperfect measure of the kind and degree of success which this extraordinary work has enjoyed; for there are thousands and thousands who never have read it, and who never have heard of Cervantes, to whom, nevertheless, the names of Don Quixote and of Sancho are as familiar as household words. So much of this kind of fame is enjoyed, probably, by no other author of modern times.