El Buscapié

by Adolfo de Castro

Cervantes must have resided in Seville for the space of ten years uninterruptedly, with the exception of little intervals spent in excursions to neighbouring places in Andalusia, and in one visit he made to Madrid. In addition to his official occupations, he occasionally transacted business of other kinds, and was sometimes employed as a mercantile agent (agente de negocios.) Though it may be fairly inferred that these pursuits were not the most congenial to his taste, and though they were of a nature to repress rather than to encourage the excursiveness of a poetic imagination, yet the genius of Cervantes turned to fruitful account even the plodding interval of his existence which was spent in business in Seville. That noble city, then the emporium of the wealth of Spanish America, offered in the active life and busy pursuits of its inhabitants a rich field for the study of human nature. That no object of interest, no trait of character or manners peculiar to this part of Spain, escaped the keen perception of Cervantes is shewn in his novel of Riconete y Cortadillo, and in that entitled, El Zeloso Extremeño. Those animated pictures of Andalusian manners could only have been drawn from actual observation. The peculiar tone which pervades the writings of the author’s latter years, and which distinguishes them in a marked manner from his early productions;—the graceful humour and delicate irony of which he had so masterly a command, may possibly be in a great degree assignable to his residence in the province of Andalusia, and his intercourse with its intelligent and lively inhabitants.

An unfounded accusation, of which he was the object, during his abode in Seville, caused him no little annoyance. He had placed in the hands of a Sevillian merchant, a sum of money, which he had received in the course of some transactions connected with his official duties. The merchant had undertaken to lodge this sum in the national treasury; but instead of so doing, he appropriated the money to himself and fled. Poor Cervantes, who was unable to make good the sum from his own means, was arrested and thrown into a jail on the charge of embezzlement; and he was only liberated on obtaining security for the repayment of the lost money.

After the close of 1598, we find, during an interval of four years, no clear intelligence respecting the life of Cervantes. His early biographers state, that about that period he made a visit to La Mancha, and there wrote the first part of his Don Quixote,[36] that work indeed bears such unquestionable traces of familiar acquaintance with the localities of La Mancha, and with traditions, still preserved there, that it cannot be doubted the author at some period of his life must have made a lengthened sojourn in that province. But though the time and circumstances of his visit to La Mancha may he hypothetical, there is every reason to infer that in the interval during which his biographers partially lose sight of him, Cervantes planned and partly wrote his Don Quixote, that bright gem in the literature of Spain.

After the death of Philip II., the Court removed from Madrid to Valladolid, and in 1603 Cervantes became a resident of the latter city. His removal thither appears to have been influenced by two strong motives; one was to facilitate the means of refuting certain calumnious charges brought against him in Seville and now renewed; and the other was to urge on the attention of the government his claim to reward for long public service. In the first object he succeeded, but in the second he failed; and consequently he was doomed to continue in penury.

The first part of Don Quixote was published in the year 1604,[37] and we have the authority of Cervantes himself for the fact that it was the first book he had written since he “laid aside his pen,” on being installed in his appointment at Seville. The eager interest with which the work was immediately perused by all classes of readers well warranted the remark of the Duchess; “that it came forth to the world amidst the approbation of the public.”[38] The original idea which forms the fundamental principle of the whole work has frequently been the subject of critical controversy; but it appears to have been more accurately understood and defined by Bouterwek than by any other critic. “It has often been said,” remarks the Historian of Spanish literature, “though the opinion has not, perhaps, been duly weighed, that the worthy Knight of La Mancha is the immortal representative of all men of exalted imagination, who carry the noblest enthusiasm to a pitch of folly. This sort of exaggerated feeling may be accounted for by the fact that with understandings in other respects sound, they are unable to resist the fascinating power of a self-deception by which they are led to regard themselves as beings of a superior order. None but an experienced observer of mankind, endowed with profound judgment,—and a genius to whose penetrating glance one of the most interesting recesses of the human heart had been newly disclosed, could have seized the idea of such a romance with energetic precision. No one but a poet, and a man of wit, could have thrown so much interest into the execution of that idea, and no one but an author who had at his disposal all the richness and variety of one of the finest languages in the world, could have invested such a work with that classic perfection of style which gives the stamp of excellence to the whole.”[39]

That the Ingenioso Hidalgo made his way to court, and even attracted the notice of the monarch, is shown by an anecdote which, though often related, may be repeated here, since it bears evidence to the general popularity which attended the publication of the great work of Cervantes. The anecdote is as follows: “King Philip III. standing one day in the balcony of his palace in Madrid, observed on the opposite bank of the Manzanares, a student who was earnestly engaged in reading a book. At intervals the reader raised his eyes from the volume, and striking his forehead with his hand, burst into fits of laughter, and made other movements indicative of extreme pleasure and mirth. ‘That student,’ observed the King, ‘is either crazy, or he is reading the history of Don Quixote.’ The King’s conjecture proved to be correct, for some of the courtiers ascertained on enquiry that it was the masterpiece of Cervantes that occasioned the student’s merriment.”[40]

The first part of Don Quixote was dedicated to Don Alonso López de Zuñiga y Sotomayor, Duke de Bexar, a literary nobleman who was ambitious to be thought the Mecænas of his age and who patronised Cervantes, though without extending to the poor author the generosity which his wealth gave him the means of exercising. It is related that the duke was at first reluctant to receive the homage of dedication offered by Cervantes. Under the mistaken impression that the book was merely one of those romances of chivalry then so much in fashion, he was unwilling to lend the sanction of his name to a work which he supposed to be of that class. Cervantes requested permission to read a chapter of the book to his patron. The request was granted, and with this specimen of the work the duke was so delighted that he readily consented to accept a dedication, which has transmitted his name to posterity.

The misapprehension of the Duke de Bexar respecting the nature of the work prevailed for a time among a portion of the public; and some individuals of the educated class refrained from reading it, under the supposition that it was merely a narrative of romantic chivalrous adventure. Others again, and these were the unlearned, perused the book, and were pleased with it, though without perceiving the delicate vein of satire which constitutes its very essence and spirit. Finding that his book was read by persons who did not understand it, and not read by some who were capable of fully comprehending it, Cervantes devised a plan for explaining its real nature and purpose; and for rendering it an object of interest to those who had regarded it with indifference. This plan he carried out in a very effective manner in the manuscript opuscule which forms the principal subject of this volume. Alluding to El Buscapié, Navarrete, the author’s able Spanish biographer, styles it una obra anonima, pero ingeniosa y discreta.

Cervantes was fifty-seven years of age when he completed the first part of Don Quixote; and it is a fact worthy to be mentioned, that several of our eminent English novelists have produced their best works in the latter part of their lives. Fielding was between forty and fifty when he wrote Tom Jones. Richardson was somewhere about sixty when he produced Clarissa; and Scott was upwards of forty when he commenced Waverley. These facts fully verify the observation of an able literary critic, who says—“The world, the school of the novelist, cannot be run through like the terms of a university, and the knowledge of its manifold varieties must be the result of long and diligent training.”

The gleam of sunshine which dawned upon Cervantes, through the popularity of his Don Quixote, was partially overclouded by the malignity of his literary rivals. Success arrayed against him a host of enemies, whose attacks annoyed him and disturbed his peace. Many of these assailants were men of no literary distinction, and their censure was characterized merely by that petty envy which finds pleasure in depreciating superiority of every kind;—others, though actuated by unbecoming jealousy, were nevertheless men of talent. Several of them ranked among the most distinguished poets of the time, for example, Góngora, Christoval, Suárez de Figueroa, and Estevan Manuel de Villegas.