[20] Drunkenness is especially rare in Spain. Their sobriety has been made a reproach, as being based on laziness and lack of initiative. The second half of their proverb: “Goza de tu poco mientras busca más el loco—Enjoy the little you have, and let the fool seek more” is, indeed, as foolish as the first half is wise.
[21] Cf. the “altos pensamientos,” of Quevedo’s famous Pablos of Segovia and his father, the barber-thief, and the latter’s remark: “Esto de ser ladron no es arte mecánica sino liberal”—the thief’s is no base mechanical trade, but a liberal profession.
[22] “Drudgery they will do none at all.” Sir R. Wynn, “A brief relation of what was observed by the Prince’s servants in their journey into Spain.” 1623.
[23] They have that momentary isolated intensity which M. Anatole France ascribes to men of action: “Ils sont tout entiers dans le moment qu’ils vivent et leur génie se ramasse sur un point. Ils se renouvellent sans cesse et ne se prolongent pas.”
[24] Episodios Nacionales. Narváez. 1902.
[25] Cf. Joseph Townsend. “A journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787,” 3 vols. London. 1792: “We must not imagine that the Spaniards are naturally indolent; they are remarkable for activity, capable of strenuous exertions and patient of fatigue.” Another noteworthy judgment of the same author concerning the Spaniards is that “Their ambition aims in everything at perfection, and by seeking too much they often obtain too little.”
[26] “Non hi ha res al mon que vosaltres non faessetz exir de mesura.”
[27] “La letra con sangre entra,” is a sad proverb of the Spanish and in the modern education of the printed page they are deficient.
[28] Cf. the sayings, Poderoso caballero es don Dinero; Dadivas quebrantan peñas; Dineros son calidad, etc. Sancho goes to govern the island of Barataria “with a very great desire to make money.” The tendency is still to hoard, rather than invest, as did Don Bernard de Castil Blazo in Gil Blas, keeping 50,000 ducats in a chest in his house.
[29] Spaniards prefer to enjoy time as a gift sent by the gods, than to waste it in trying to spend it too nicely. El tiempo lo da Dios; Dios mejora las horas; Con el tiempo maduran las uvas. To a peasant two o’clock on a day of March is “four more hours of sun.” Time is not parcelled out mechanically into tiny divisions by clocks. Distances are given by hours—an hour to a league. The Catalans are less lavish of the minutes; to a stranger asking the distance to a village near Tarragona, a peasant answered cannily in Catalan, “un cuart y mitj”—that is, the village was a quarter of an hour and half a quarter of an hour distant. Curiously the Catalans give the hour as in German, e.g. half-past eight is dos cuarts de nou—halb Neun.