In 1606, the court having gone back to Madrid, Cervantes followed it, and there passed the remainder of his life; changing his residence to different parts of the city at least seven times in the course of ten years, apparently as he was driven hither and thither by his necessities. In 1609, he joined the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament,—one of those religious associations which were then fashionable, and the same of which Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and other distinguished men of letters of the time, were members. About the same period, too, he seems to have become known to most of these persons, as well as to others of the favored poets round the court, among whom were Espinel and the two Argensolas; though what were his relations with them, beyond those implied in the commendatory verses they prefixed to each other’s works, we do not know.
Concerning his relations with Lope de Vega there has been much discussion to little purpose. Certain it is, that Cervantes often praises this great literary idol of his age, and that four or five times Lope stoops from his pride of place and compliments Cervantes, though never beyond the measure of praise he bestows on many whose claims were greatly inferior. But in his stately flight, it is plain that he soared much above the author of Don Quixote, to whose highest merits he seemed carefully to avoid all homage;[132] and though I find no sufficient reason to suppose their relation to each other was marked by any personal jealousy or ill-will, as has been sometimes supposed, yet I can find no proof that it was either intimate or kindly. On the contrary, when we consider the good-nature of Cervantes, which made him praise to excess nearly all his other literary contemporaries, as well as the greatest of them all, and when we allow for the frequency of hyperbole in such praises at that time, which prevented them from being what they would now be, we may perceive an occasional coolness in his manner, when he speaks of Lope, which shows, that, without overrating his own merits and claims, he was not insensible to the difference in their respective positions, or to the injustice towards himself implied by it. Indeed, his whole tone, whenever he notices Lope, seems to be marked with much personal dignity, and to be singularly honorable to him.[133]
In 1613, he published his “Novelas Exemplares,” Instructive or Moral Tales,[134] twelve in number, and making one volume. Some of them were written several years before, as was “The Impertinent Curiosity,” inserted in the First Part of Don Quixote,[135] and “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” which is mentioned there, so that both must be dated as early as 1604; while others contain internal evidence of the time of their composition, as the “Española Inglesa” does, which seems to have been written in 1611. All of these stories are, as he intimates in their Preface, original, and most of them have the air of being drawn from his personal experience and observation.
Their value is different, for they are written with different views, and in a variety of style and manner greater than he has elsewhere shown; but most of them contain touches of what is peculiar in his talent, and are full of that rich eloquence and of those pleasing descriptions of natural scenery which always flow so easily from his pen. They have little in common with the graceful story-telling spirit of Boccaccio and his followers, and still less with the strictly practical tone of Don Juan Manuel’s tales; nor, on the other hand, do they approach, except in the case of the Impertinent Curiosity, the class of short novels which have been frequent in other countries within the last century. The more, therefore, we examine them, the more we shall find that they are original in their composition and general tone, and that they are strongly marked with the individual genius of their author, as well as with the more peculiar traits of the national character,—the ground, no doubt, on which they have always been favorites at home, and less valued than they deserve to be abroad. As works of invention, they rank, among their author’s productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.
The first in the series, “The Little Gypsy Girl,” is the story of a beautiful creature, Preciosa, who had been stolen, when an infant, from a noble family, and educated in the wild community of the Gypsies,—that mysterious and degraded race which, until within the last fifty years, has always thriven in Spain since it first appeared there in the fifteenth century. There is a truth, as well as a spirit, in parts of this little story, that cannot be overlooked. The description of Preciosa’s first appearance in Madrid during a great religious festival; the effect produced by her dancing and singing in the streets; her visits to the houses to which she was called for the amusement of the rich; and the conversations, compliments, and style of entertainment, are all admirable, and leave no doubt of their truth and reality. But there are other passages which, mistaking in some respects the true Gypsy character, seem as if they were rather drawn from some such imitations of it as the “Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew” than from a familiarity with Gypsy life as it then existed in Spain.[136]
The next of the tales is very different, and yet no less within the personal experience of Cervantes himself. It is called “The Generous Lover,” and is nearly the same in its incidents with an episode found in his own “Trato de Argel.” The scene is laid in Cyprus, two years after the capture of that island by the Turks in 1570; but here it is his own adventures in Algiers upon which he draws for the materials and coloring of what is Turkish in his story, and the vivacity of his descriptions shows how much of reality there is in both.
The third story, “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” is again quite unlike any of the others. It is an account of two young vagabonds, not without ingenuity and spirit, who join at Seville, in 1569, one of those organized communities of robbers and beggars which often recur in the history of Spanish society and manners during the last three centuries. The realm of Monipodio, their chief, reminds us at once of Alsatia in Sir Walter Scott’s “Nigel,” and the resemblance is made still more obvious afterwards, when, in “The Colloquy of the Dogs,” we find the same Monipodio in secret league with the officers of justice. A single trait, however, will show with what fidelity Cervantes has copied from nature. The members of this confederacy, who lead the most dissolute and lawless lives, are yet represented as superstitious, and as having their images, their masses, and their contributions for pious charities, as if robbery were a settled and respectable vocation, a part of whose income was to be devoted to religious purposes in order to consecrate the remainder; a delusion which, in forms alternately ridiculous and revolting, has subsisted in Spain from very early times down to the present day.[137]
It would be easy to go on and show how the rest of the tales are marked with similar traits of truth and nature: for example, the story founded on the adventures of a Spanish girl carried to England when Cadiz was sacked in 1596; “The Jealous Estremadurian,” and “The Fraudulent Marriage,” the last two of which bear internal evidence of being founded on fact; and even “The Pretended Aunt,” which, as he did not print it himself,—apparently in consequence of its coarseness,—ought not now to be placed among his works, is after all the story of an adventure that really occurred at Salamanca in 1575.[138] Indeed, they are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia; and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ever since without successful rivals.
In 1614, the year after they appeared, Cervantes printed his “Journey to Parnassus”; a satire in terza rima, divided into eight short chapters, and written in professed imitation of an Italian satire, by Cesare Caporali, on the same subject and in the same measure.[139] The poem of Cervantes has little merit. It is an account of a summons by Apollo, requiring all good poets to come to his assistance for the purpose of driving all the bad poets from Parnassus, in the course of which Mercury is sent in a royal galley, allegorically built and rigged with different kinds of verses, to Cervantes, who, being confidentially consulted about the Spanish poets that can be trusted as allies in the war against bad taste, has an opportunity of speaking his opinion on whatever relates to the poetry of his time.
The most interesting part is the fourth chapter, in which he slightly notices the works he has himself written,[140] and complains, with a gayety that at least proves his good-humor, of the poverty and neglect with which they have been rewarded.[141] It may be difficult, perhaps, to draw a line between such feelings as Cervantes here very strongly expresses, and the kindred ones of vanity and presumption; but yet, when his genius, his wants, and his manly struggles against the gravest evils of life are considered, and when to this are added the light-heartedness and simplicity with which he always speaks of himself, and the indulgence he always shows to others, few will complain of him for claiming with some boldness honors that had been coldly withheld, and to which he felt that he was entitled.