Galatea

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Simple as the bibliography of the Galatea really is, a habit of conjecture has succeeded in complicating it. Though the earliest known edition of the book is unanimously admitted to have appeared at Alcalá de Henares in 1585, it is often alleged that the princeps was actually issued at Madrid during the previous year. This is a mistaken idea arising, probably, out of a slip made by Gregorio Mayáns y Siscar, the first Spaniard[1] who attempted to write a formal biography of Cervantes. In his thirteenth paragraph Mayáns[2] remarked by the way that the Galatea was published in 1584; but he laid no stress upon the date, and dismissed the matter in a single sentence. The error (if it were really an error, and not a mere misprint) was natural and pardonable enough in one who lived before bibliography had developed into an exact study. Unfortunately, it was reproduced by others. It is found, for instance, in a biographical essay on Cervantes which precedes the first edition of Don Quixote issued by the Royal Spanish Academy;[3] and the essayist, Vicente de los Ríos, adds the detail that the Galatea came out at Madrid. It was unlucky that this statement should be put forward where it is. The Academy's responsibility for the texts issued in its name is chiefly financial: for the rest, it habitually appoints the most competent representatives available, and it naturally gives each delegate a free hand. But foreigners, unacquainted with the procedure, have imagined that Ríos must be taken as expressing the deliberate and unanimous opinion of the entire Academy. This is a complete misapprehension. On the face of it, it is absurd to suppose that any corporation, as a whole, is irrevocably committed to every view expressed by individual members. Even were it otherwise, it would not affect the case. An error would be none the less an error if a learned society sanctioned it. But, as a matter of fact, like all those concerned in editing texts or in writing essays for the Academy, Ríos spoke for himself alone. He was followed by Pellicer[4] who, though he gives 1584 as the date of the princeps, is less categorical as to the place of publication. Some twenty-two years after Pellicer's time, Fernández de Navarrete[5] accepted his predecessors' view as regards the date, and to this acceptance, more than to anything else, the common mistake is due. Relying on Navarrete's unequalled authority, Ticknor[6] repeated the mis-statement which has since passed into general circulation. Further enquiry has destroyed the theory that the Galatea first appeared at Madrid in 1584. However, as most English writers[7] on this question have given currency to the old, erroneous notion, it becomes necessary to set forth the circumstances of the case. But, before entering upon details, it should be observed (1) that no copy of the supposititious 1584 edition has ever been seen by any one; (2) that there is not even an indirect proof of its existence; and (3) that, so far as the evidence goes, no edition of the Galatea was published at Madrid before 1736: that is to say, until more than a century after Cervantes's death.

We do not know precisely when the Galatea was written. M. Dumaine,[8] indeed, declares positively that the poems in the volume—he must surely mean some of them, not all—were addressed to a lady during the author's stay in Italy. If this were so, these verses would date (at latest) from September, 1575, when Cervantes left Italy for the last time. Sr. D. José María Asensio y Toledo[9] holds that the Galatea was begun in Portugal soon after the writer's return from Algiers in 1580. Of these views one may conceivably be true; one must necessarily be false; and it is more than possible that both are wrong. As no data are forthcoming to support either opinion, we may profitably set aside these speculations and proceed to examine the particulars disclosed in the preliminaries of the Galatea. The Aprobación was signed by Lucas Gracián[10] Dantisco at Madrid on February 1, 1584, and, as some time must have passed between the submission of the manuscript to the censor and the issue of his license, it seems certain that the text of the Galatea was finished before the end of 1583. In its present form, the dedication, as will be seen presently, cannot have been written till about the end of the following summer. Meanwhile, on February 22, 1584, the Privilegio was granted at Madrid in the King's name by Antonio de Erasso. It was not till a year later—the very end of February 1585—that the Fe de erratas was passed at Alcalá de Henares by the Licenciado Vares de Castro, official corrector to the University of that city. The Tasa, which bears the name of Miguel Ondarza Zabala, was despatched at Madrid on March 13, 1585.

To those who have had no occasion to study such matters as these, the space of time which elapsed between the concession of the Privilegio and the despatch of the Tasa might seem considerable; and it is not surprising that this circumstance should be the basis of erroneous deductions on their part. Apparently for no other reason than the length of this interval, it has been concluded that, between February 22, 1584, and March 13, 1585, there was printed at Madrid an edition of the Galatea, every copy of which has—ex hypothesi—vanished. This assumption is gratuitous.

It is true that the first editions of certain very popular Spanish books—such as the Celestina,[11] Amadís de Gaula,[12] Lazarillo de Tormes,[13] Guzmán de Alfarache,[14] and Don Quixote[15]—tend to become exceedingly rare and are, perhaps, occasionally thumbed out of existence altogether. But the Galatea, like all pastoral novels, appealed to a comparatively restricted class of readers, and was in no danger of wide popularity. No doubt the princeps of the Galatea is exceptionally rare,[16]—rarer than the princeps of Don Quixote; but rarity, taken by itself, is no proof that a work was popular, and, in the present instance, the rarity may be due to the fact that the Galatea was issued in a more or less limited edition. This is what we should expect in the case of a first book published in a provincial town by an author who had still to make his reputation; but, in the absence of direct testimony, the question cannot be decided. What can be proved by any one at all acquainted with Spanish bibliography is that there was no unexampled delay in publishing the Galatea. Similar instances abound; but, for our present purpose, it will suffice to mention two which are—or should be—familiar to all who are specially interested in Cervantes and in his writings. As we have just seen, the Tasa of the Galatea is dated thirteen months after the Aprobación. An exact parallel to this is afforded by Cervantes's own Novelas exemplares: Fray Juan Bautista signed the Aprobación on July 9, 1612, and Hernando de Vallejo signed the Tasa on August 12, 1613.[17] Here the interval is precisely thirteen months. A still more striking instance of dilatoriness is revealed in the preliminaries to another work which has been consulted—or, at least, quoted as though it were familiar to them—by almost all writers on Cervantes from 1761 onwards: namely, Diego de Haedo's Topographia e Historia general de Argel, published at Valladolid in 1612. Haedo obtained the Aprobación on October 6, 1604, but the licence was not given till February 8, 1610. In this instance, then, the legal formalities were spread out over five years and, at the final stage, there was a further pause of three years; in all, a delay of eight years.[18] There is no ground for assuming that the official procedure in these matters was more expeditions in 1585 than it was a quarter of a century later and, consequently, in the case of the Galatea, the interval of time between the issue of the Aprobación and the despatch of the Tasa cannot be regarded as calling for any far-fetched explanation.

The author's Letter Dedicatory to Ascanio Colonna, Abbot of St. Sophia, is undated, but it contains a passage which incidentally throws light on the bibliography of the Galatea. Speaking of his military service under Ascanio Colonna's father, Cervantes mentions his late chief—aquel sol de la milicia que ayer nos quitó el cielo delante de los ojos—in terms which imply that Marco Antonio Colonna's death was a comparatively recent event. Now, we know from the official death-certificate[19] that the Viceroy of Sicily, when on his way to visit Philip II., died at Medinaceli on August 1, 1584—exactly six months after the Aprobación for the Galatea had been obtained. Allowing for the rate at which news travelled in the sixteenth century, it seems improbable that Cervantes can have written his dedication much before the end of August 1584. It is conceivable, no doubt, that he wrote two different dedications—one for the alleged Madrid edition of 1584, and another for the Alcalá edition of 1585. It is equally conceivable that though the Alcalá edition of the Galatea, in common with every subsequent work by Cervantes, has a dedication, the supposititious Madrid edition was (for some reason unknown) published without one. Manifestly, one of these alternatives must be adopted by believers in the imaginary princeps. But, curiously enough, the point does not appear to have occurred to them; for, up to the present time, no such hypothesis has been advanced. Assuming, as we may fairly assume, that only one dedication was written, the complete manuscript of the Galatea cannot well have reached the compositors till September or October 1584. It is possible that some part of the text was set up before this date, but of this we have no proof. If the 375 leaves—750 pages—of which the book consists were struck off late in January or early in February 1585, so as to allow of the text being revised by the official corrector at Alcalá de Henares, and thence forwarded to Madrid by the beginning of March, it must be admitted that the achievement did credit to the country printer, Juan de Gracián, whose name figures on the title-page. Further, as Salvá[20] shrewdly remarks, the appearance of the Colonna escutcheon on this same title-page affords a presumption that the Alcalá edition of 1585 is the princeps: for it is unreasonable to suppose that a struggling provincial publisher of the sixteenth century would go to the expense of furnishing a simple reprint with a complimentary woodcut.

Each of the foregoing circumstances, considered separately, tells against the current idea that the Galatea was published at Madrid in 1584, and it might have been hoped that an intelligent consideration of their cumulative effect would ensure the right conclusion: that the story is a myth. But, so Donoso Cortés[21] maintained, man has an almost invincible propensity to error, and the discussion on so plain a matter as the bibliography of the Galatea lends colour to this view. The amount of confusion introduced into the debate is extraordinary. It is occasionally difficult to gather what a partisan of the alleged 1584 edition holds; his pages blaze with contradictions: his theory is half-heartedly advanced, hastily abandoned, and confidently re-stated in a bewildering fashion.[22] Again, what was originally put forward as a pious opinion is transfigured into a dogma. Just as there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of Don Quixote, insist that the 1608 edition of that book "must have been revised by the author,"[23] so there are some who, when writing on the bibliography of the Galatea, insist with equal positiveness that there "must have been an edition of 1584."[24] This emphasis is out of place in both cases; but it is interesting and instructive to note that these two opinions are practically inseparable from each other. The coincidence can scarcely be accidental, and it may prove advantageous: for, obviously, the refutation of the one thesis must tend to discredit the other. If a writer be convicted of error in a very simple matter which can be tested in a moment, it would clearly be imprudent to accept his unsupported statement concerning a far more complex matter to which no direct test can be applied. And, as it happens, we are now enabled to measure the accuracy of the assertion that the princeps of the Galatea was published at Madrid in 1584.

Those who take it upon themselves to lay down that there "must have been" an edition of that place and date are bound to establish the fact. They are not entitled to defy every rule of evidence, and to call on the other side to prove a negative. The burden of proof lies wholly with them. But, by a rare and happy accident, it is possible to prove a negative in the present case. In view of recent researches, the theory that the princeps of the Galatea was issued at Madrid in 1584 is absolutely untenable. All doubts or hesitations on this head are ended by the opportune discovery, due to that excellent scholar and fortunate investigator, Dr. Pérez Pastor, of the original contract between Cervantes and the Alcalá publisher, Blas de Robles. By this contract Blas de Robles binds himself to pay 1336 reales (£29. 13s. 9d. English) for the author's entire rights.[25] This legal instrument is decisive, for it would be ridiculous—not to say impertinent—to suppose that Cervantes sold his interest twice over to two different publishers in two different cities. There can, therefore, be no further controversy as to when and where the Galatea appeared. It is now placed beyond dispute that Cervantes had not found a publisher before June 1584, and that the book was issued at Alcalá de Henares in 1585—probably not before the month of April. The first intention was to entitle the volume Los seys libros de Galatea but (perhaps with a view to emphasizing the promise of a sequel) it was actually published as the Primera Parte de la Galatea, dividida en seys libros.[26] On June 14, 1584, Cervantes received 1116 reales in advance, and, by a deed of the same date, Blas de Robles undertook to pay the balance of 250 reales at the end of September:[27] the very period when, as already conjectured, the printing was begun.[28]

Cervantes was in his thirty-third year when he was ransomed at Algiers on September 19, 1580, and, when he reached Portugal in 1581, he may have intended to enlist once more. It has, in fact, been generally thought that he shared in at least one of the expeditions against the Azores under the famous Marqués de Santa Cruz in 1581-83. This belief is based on the Información presented by Cervantes at Madrid on June 6, 1590;[29] but in this petition to the King the claims of Rodrigo de Cervantes and Miguel de Cervantes are set forth in so confusing a fashion that it is difficult to distinguish the services of the elder brother from those of the junior. It is certain that Rodrigo served at the Azores in 1583, and we learn from Mosquera de Figueroa that he was promoted from the ranks for his distinguished gallantry in the action before Porto das Moas.[30] But it is by no means clear that Miguel de Cervantes took any part in either campaign. Such evidence as we have tells rather against the current supposition. It is ascertained that Cervantes was at Tomar on May 21, 1581, and that he was at Cartagena towards the end of June 1581, while we have documentary evidence to prove that he pawned five pieces of yellow and red taffeta to Napoléon Lomelin at Madrid in the autumn of 1583.[31] If these dates are correct (as they seem to be), it is scarcely possible that Cervantes can have sailed with Santa Cruz for the Azores.[32] The likelihood is that he had to be content with some civil employment and, if so, it was natural enough that he should turn to literature with a view to increasing his small income. A modest, clear-sighted man, he probably did not imagine that he was about to write masterpieces, or to make a fortune by his pen. He perhaps hoped to keep the wolf from the door, or, at the most, to find a rich patron, as his friend Gálvez de Montalvo had done.[33] If these were his ideas, and if, as seems likely, he thought of marrying at about this time, it is not surprising that he should write what he believed would sell. So far as we can judge, he would much rather have wielded a sword than a goose-quill, and he was far too great a humorist to vapour about "art" or an "irresistible vocation." His juvenile verses had found favour with Juan López de Hoyos, and perhaps Rufino de Chamberí had appreciated the two sonnets written in Algiers; but the spirited tercets to Mateo Vázquez had failed of their effect, and Cervantes was shrewd enough to know that versifying was not lucrative. Eighty years before it was uttered, he realized the truth of the divine Gombauld's dying exclamation: On paie si mal des vers immortels! Fortunately, he had many strings to his bow. Like Lope de Vega, he was prepared to attempt anything and everything: prose or verse, the drama, picaresque tales, novels of adventure, and the rest. But, to begin with, he divided his efforts between the theatre and fiction.

In the latter province the path of a beginner was clearly marked out. Too obscure, as yet, to venture upon a line of his own, and anxious, if possible, to conciliate the general body of readers, Cervantes was practically compelled to choose between the chivalresque romance and the pastoral. Not knowing that he was born to kill the former kind, he decided in favour of the latter—and for obvious reasons. The Knight-errantries of Amadís and his comrades had been in vogue from the fourteenth—perhaps even from the thirteenth[34]—century onwards. Amadís de Gaula was printed at least as early as 1508,[35] and had begotten a numerous tribe; but, when Cervantes was feeling his way in the ninth decade of the sixteenth century, popular enthusiasm for these tales of chivalry was cooling. The pastoral novel was the latest literary fashion. It would, possibly, be too much to say that the Spanish pastoral novel was a mere offshoot of the chivalresque romances; yet it is undeniable that the pastoral element is found in chivalresque stories of comparatively early date. For example, in the ninth book of Amadís, entitled Amadís de Grecia (1530) the shepherd Darinel and the shepherdess Sylvia are among the characters; in the first two parts of Don Florisel de Niquea (1532) the hero masquerades as a shepherd and pays his court to the shepherdess Sylvia; in the fourth part of Don Florisel de Niquea (1551) the eclogues of Archileo and Laris are early instances of what was destined to become a tedious convention.[36] These, however, are simple foreshadowings of an independent school of fiction which was in full vigour while Cervantes was still a boy.