Puesto ya el pie en el estribo,
Con las ansias de la muerte,
Gran Señor, ésta te escribo.[46]
“Yesterday they gave me the extreme unction, and to-day I write this.”
After an illness of seven months’ duration, Cervantes expired on the 23rd of April, 1616, in his sixty-ninth year. It is a curious fact, and one that will not escape the observation of the English reader, that Cervantes and Shakespeare, two writers whose genius exhibits more than one trait of resemblance, both died on the same day.[47]
In conformity with his own desire, Cervantes was interred in the Convent of the Trinitarias, situated in the Calle del León, in Madrid, in which street he himself resided at the period of his death. The quiet and unostentatious style of his funeral corresponded with his humble circumstances, and no monument or even inscription of any kind marks the spot where the ashes of Cervantes repose.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] That learned Benedictine wrote an essay entitled Noticias de la Verdadera patria de Cervantes; y conjectura sobre la insula Barataria. (Observations relative to the native place of Cervantes, and conjectures respecting the Island of Barataria). It has never been printed, and is very scarce, but the writer of this memoir has recently had the opportunity of perusing an old MS. copy.
[6] There is some reason to conjecture that this lady was a relative of Isabel de Urbina, the first wife of Lope de Vega. It is pleasing to indulge the belief that such was really the fact, and that the two most eminent writers Spain has produced were allied by family ties, as well as by kindred genius.
“Desde mis tiernos años amé el arte
Dulce de la agradable Poesía.”
Viaje del Parnaso.—Cap. IV.