Nor can the internal evidence be accounted more satisfactory than the external.
In the first place, the Buscapié in question is a closer imitation of Cervantes than he would be likely to make of himself. It opens like the Prólogo to the “Persiles and Sigismunda,” in which the conversation that Cervantes says he held with a travelling medical student seems to have been the model for the one he is represented as holding with the travelling Bachelor in the Buscapié;—it then goes on with an examination of one or two contemporary authors, and allusions to others, in the manner of the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library;—and it ends with an acknowledged parallel to the story of the Yanguese carriers and their beasts; different parts of the whole reminding us of different works of Cervantes, but of the “Adjunta al Parnaso” oftener than of any other. In many cases, phrases seem to be borrowed directly from Cervantes. Thus, of an author praised in the Buscapié, it is said, “Se atreve á competir con los mas famosos de Italia,” (p. 20,) which is nearly the phrase applied to Rufo, Ercilla, and Virues in the Don Quixote. In another place, (p. 22,) Cervantes is made to say of himself, when speaking in the third person of the author of Don Quixote, “Su autor esta mas cargado de desdichas que de años,” which strongly resembles the more beautiful phrase he, in the same way, applies to himself, as the author of the “Galatea”; and in another place, (p. 10,) the little Bachelor’s shouts to his mule are said to be as much wasted “as if they were tossed into the well of Airon, or the pit of Cabra,”—an allusion much more appropriately made by Cervantes in the “Adjunta al Parnaso,” where mothers are advised to threaten their naughty children, that “the poet shall come and toss them, together with his bad verses, into the pit of Cabra, or the well of Airon,”—natural caves in the kingdoms of Granada and Córdova, about which strange stories were long credited. (Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 25; Diccionario de la Academia, 1726, in verb. Airon; Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV. p. 237; and Miñano, Diccionario Geográfico.) But there is no need of citing parallel passages. The Buscapié is full of them; some being happily chosen and aptly adjusted to their new places, like three allusions to the words of Cervantes in Don Quixote about “driving books of chivalry out of the world,” (see, ante, Vol. II. p. 105, note,) and others, like those I have just cited, being awkwardly introduced, and fitting their subjects less well than they did those to which they were originally applied. But whether well or ill selected, whether well or ill applied, these phrases in the Buscapié have seldom or never the appearance of accidental coincidences arising out of the carelessness of an author repeating from himself. They seem rather to be words and forms of expression carefully selected, and are so used as to give an air of constraint to the passages where they occur, showing that the writer turns, as it were, in a narrow circle;—an air as unlike as possible to the bold and unfettered movement which is so eminently characteristic of Cervantes.
In the next place, the Buscapié contains many allusions to obscure authors and long-forgotten trifles; but, with an inconsiderable exception, which seems to be a little ostentatiously announced as such, (p. 12, and note B,) not one, I believe, occurs, that is beyond the reach of the singular learning of Don Adolfo, whose ample notes, fitting with suspicious exactness to the text, drive the reader to the conjecture, that the text may have been adjusted to the notes quite as much as the notes to the text. Now and then, this conjecture seems to be confirmed by a slight inaccuracy. Thus, in both text and notes, the name of Pedro de Enzinas—whose poetry is cited and examined just as I find it in my copy of the “Versos Espirituales,” printed at Cuenca, in 1596 (see, ante, Vol. III. [p. 13, note])—is uniformly spelt many times over Ezinas, that is, without the first n, (Buscapié, pp. 19-21, and note I,)—a trifling mistake, which a copyist might easily have made in 1606, or which Don Adolfo might have easily made in 1847, when transcribing, as he did, from the printed book before him, but a mistake which there is not one chance in a thousand that both should have made, if there were no other connection between the two than the one avowed. And, again, a little farther on, a mistake occurs which seems to have arisen from the very excess of Don Adolfo’s recondite learning. The old Castilian proverb, “Al buen callar llaman sage,”—or, “He is a wise man that knows when to hold his tongue,”—is found in the text of the Buscapié, (p. 26,) and Don Adolfo in the note on it (L) informs us, that, “in the same way in which this proverb is here used by Cervantes, it is to be seen in the Conde Lucanor,[464] and in other older works. Somebody corrupted it into ‘Al buen callar llaman Sancho.’” But the idea, that Cervantes adhered to an old form of the proverb, because he rejected or did not know the supposed corrupt one, is not well founded. The proverb occurs, in what Don Adolfo considers a corrupted form, as early as the “Cartas de Garay,” in 1553, and the collection of Proverbs by the learned Hernan Nuñez, in 1555, and in this very form it is, in fact, used by Cervantes himself (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 43); for when Sancho Panza is rebuked by his master for stringing together proverbs without end, he first promises he will not utter another, and then instantly opens his mouth with this one. Indeed, I rather think that the word sage, which was in use as late as the time of Juan de Mena, had dropped out of the current language of good society before that of Cervantes. Nebrixa, before 1500, says it was then antiquated. (See Diccionario de la Academia, 1739.)
The last suggestion I have to make in relation to the genuineness of the Buscapié published by Don Adolfo de Castro is, that, though on its title-page it professes to explain “all the hidden and unexplained things” in the Don Quixote, it does not, in fact, even allude to one such; and though it professes to have been written by Cervantes in order to defend himself against certain learned adversaries, it does not cite any one of them, and only defends him in a light, jesting tone against the charge of the little Bachelor by admitting its truth, and then justifying it, on the ground that knight-errantry is still flourishing and vigorous in Spain,—a charge which no sensible or learned man can be supposed to have made, and a defence which is humorous, so far as it is so at all, only for its absurdity.
Other things might be mentioned, such as that Cervantes, in the Buscapié, is made to speak in a disparaging way of Alcalá de Henares, his native place, (pp. 13 and 41,) which, as we have seen, (ante, Vol. II. p. 53,) he delighted to honor; and that he is made to represent his imaginary Bachelor as talking about his own painful personal deformities, (pp. 24, 25, 28, 29,) and his father’s contemptible poltroonery, (pp. 27, 28, 34,) in a way inconsistent with the tact and knowledge of human nature which are among the strongest characteristics of the author of Don Quixote.
But I will go no farther. The little tract published by Don Adolfo de Castro is, with the exception of two or three coarse passages,[465] a pleasant, witty trifle. It shows in many parts much lively talent, a remarkable familiarity with the works of Cervantes, and a hardly less remarkable familiarity with the literature of the period when Cervantes lived. If Don Adolfo wrote it, he has probably always intended, in due time, to claim it as his own, and he may be assured that, by so doing, he will add something to his own literary laurels without taking any thing from those of Cervantes. If he did not write it, then he has, I think, been deceived in regard to the character of the manuscript, which he purchased under circumstances that made him believe it to be what it is not. In any event, I find no sufficient proof that it was written by Cervantes, and therefore no sufficient ground to think that it can be placed permanently under the protection of his great name.
APPENDIX, E.
ON THE DIFFERENT EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND IMITATIONS OF THE “DON QUIXOTE.”