All this looks very reserved; but when we add to it, that there were numberless occasions on which Lope could have gracefully noticed the merit to which he could never have been insensible,—especially when he makes so free a use of Cervantes’s “Trato de Argel” in his own “Esclavos de Argel,” absolutely introducing him by name on the stage, and giving him a prominent part in the action, (Comedias, Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, Tom. XXV. pp. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of those kindly or respectful feelings which it was easy and common to show to friends on the Spanish stage, and which Calderon, for instance, so frequently shows to Cervantes, (e. g. Casa con Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.),—we can hardly doubt that Lope willingly overlooked and neglected Cervantes, at least from the time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605, till after its author’s death, in 1616.
On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the “Canto de Calíope” in the “Galatea,” 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all contemporary doubt or rivalship, was at the head of Spanish literature; and, among other proofs of such elevated and generous feelings, prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Lope’s “Dragontea.” But at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully, there is a dignified reserve and caution in some parts of his remarks about Lope that show he was not impelled by any warm, personal regard; a caution which is so obvious, that Avellaneda, in the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it into envy.
It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion, that the relations between the two great Spanish authors of this period were such as might be expected, where one was, to an extraordinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about the whole matter is the generous justice Cervantes never fails to render to Lope’s merits.
[134] He explains in his Preface the meaning he wishes to give the word exemplares, saying, “Heles dado nombre de exemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se puede sacar algun exemplo provechoso.” The word exemplo, from the time of the Archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel, has had the meaning of instruction or instructive story.
[135] The “Curioso Impertinente,” first printed in 1605, in the First Part of Don Quixote, was separately printed in Paris in 1608,—five years before the collected Novelas appeared in Madrid,—by Cæsar Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at the French court, who caused several other Spanish books to be printed in Paris, where the Castilian was in much favor from the intermarriages between the crowns of France and Spain.
[136] This story has been dramatized more than once in Spain, and freely used elsewhere. See note on the “Gitanilla” of Solís, post, Chap. 25.
[137] It is an admirable hit, when Rinconete, first becoming acquainted with one of the rogues, asks him, “Es vuesa merced por ventura ladron?” and the rogue replies, “Sí, para servir á Dios y á la buena gente.” (Novelas, Tom. I. p. 235.) And, again, the scene (pp. 242-247) where Rinconete and Cortadillo are received among the robbers, and that (pp. 254, 255) where two of the shameless women of the gang are very anxious to provide candles to set up as devout offerings before their patron saints, are hardly less happy, and are perfectly true to the characters represented. Indeed, it is plain from this tale, and from several of the Entremeses of Cervantes, that he was familiar with the life of the rogues of his time. Fermin Caballero, in a pleasant tract on the Geographical Knowledge of Cervantes, (Pericia Geográfica de Cervantes, Madrid, 1840, 12mo), notes the aptness with which Cervantes alludes to the different localities in the great cities of Spain, which constituted the rendezvous and lurking-places of its vagabond population. (p. 75.) Among these Seville was preëminent. Guevara, when he describes a community like that of Monipodio, places it, as Cervantes does, in Seville. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco IX.
[138] Coarse as it is, however, the “Tia Fingida” was found, with “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” and several other tales and miscellanies, in a manuscript collection of stories and trifles made 1606-10, for the amusement of the Archbishop of Seville, D. Fernando Niño de Guevara; and long afterwards carefully preserved by the Jesuits of St. Hermenegild. A castigated copy of it was printed by Arrieta in his “Espíritu de Miguel de Cervantes” (Madrid, 1814, 12mo); but the Prussian ambassador in Spain, if I mistake not, soon afterwards obtained possession of an unaltered copy and sent it to Berlin, where it was published by the famous Greek scholar, F. A. Wolf, first in one of the periodicals of Berlin, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet. (See his Vorbericht to the “Tia Fingida, Novela inédita de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” Berlin, 1818, 8vo.) It has since been printed in Spain with the other tales of Cervantes.
Some of the tales of Cervantes were translated into English as early as 1640; but not into French, I think, till 1768, and not well into that language till Viardot published his translation (Paris, 1838, 2 tom., 8vo). Even he, however, did not venture on the obscure puns and jests of the “Licenciado Vidriera,” a fiction of which Moreto made some use in his play of the same name, representing the Licentiate, however, as a feigned madman and not as a real one, and showing little of the humor of the original conception. (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tom. V. 1653.) Under the name of “Léocadie,” there is a poor abridgment of the “Fuerza de la Sangre,” by Florian. The old English translation by Mabbe (London, 1640, folio) is said by Godwin to be “perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose translation in the English language.” (Lives of E. and J. Phillips, London, 1815, 4to, p. 246.) The praise is excessive, but the translation is certainly very well done. It, however, extends only to six of the tales.
[139] The first edition is in small duodecimo, (Madrid, 1614), 80 leaves; better printed, I think, than any other of his works that were published under his own care. Little but the opening is imitated from Cesare Caporali’s “Viaggio in Parnaso,” which is only about one fifth as long as the poem of Cervantes.