“I could manage the gram well enough,” said Sancho; “but for the mar I have neither leaning nor liking, for I don’t know what it is; but leaving this matter of the government in God’s hands, to send me wherever it may be most to his service, I may tell you, señor bachelor Samson Carrasco, it has pleased me beyond measure that the author of this history should have spoken of me in such a way that what is said of me gives no offence; for, on the faith of a true squire, if he had said anything about me that was at all unbecoming an old Christian, such as I am, the deaf would have heard of it.”
“That would be working miracles,” said Samson.
“Miracles or no miracles,” said Sancho, “let everyone mind how he speaks or writes about people, and not set down at random the first thing that comes into his head.”
“One of the faults they find with this history,” said the bachelor, “is that its author inserted in it a novel called ‘The Ill-advised Curiosity;’ not that it is bad or ill-told, but that it is out of place and has nothing to do with the history of his worship Señor Don Quixote.”
“I will bet the son of a dog has mixed the cabbages and the baskets,” said Sancho.
“Then, I say,” said Don Quixote, “the author of my history was no sage, but some ignorant chatterer, who, in a haphazard and heedless way, set about writing it, let it turn out as it might, just as Orbaneja, the painter of Ubeda, used to do, who, when they asked him what he was painting, answered, ‘What it may turn out.’ Sometimes he would paint a cock in such a fashion, and so unlike, that he had to write alongside of it in Gothic letters, ‘This is a cock;’ and so it will be with my history, which will require a commentary to make it intelligible.”
“No fear of that,” returned Samson, “for it is so plain that there is nothing in it to puzzle over; the children turn its leaves, the young people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it; in a word, it is so thumbed, and read, and got by heart by people of all sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, ‘There goes Rocinante.’ And those that are most given to reading it are the pages, for there is not a lord’s ante-chamber where there is not a ‘Don Quixote’ to be found; one takes it up if another lays it down; this one pounces upon it, and that begs for it. In short, the said history is the most delightful and least injurious entertainment that has been hitherto seen, for there is not to be found in the whole of it even the semblance of an immodest word, or a thought that is other than Catholic.”
“To write in any other way,” said Don Quixote, “would not be to write truth, but falsehood, and historians who have recourse to falsehood ought to be burned, like those who coin false money; and I know not what could have led the author to have recourse to novels and irrelevant stories, when he had so much to write about in mine; no doubt he must have gone by the proverb ‘with straw or with hay, &c.,’ for by merely setting forth my thoughts, my sighs, my tears, my lofty purposes, my enterprises, he might have made a volume as large, or larger than all the works of El Tostado would make up. In fact, the conclusion I arrive at, señor bachelor, is, that to write histories, or books of any kind, there is need of great judgment and a ripe understanding. To give expression to humour, and write in a strain of graceful pleasantry, is the gift of great geniuses. The cleverest character in comedy is the clown, for he who would make people take him for a fool, must not be one. History is in a measure a sacred thing, for it should be true, and where the truth is, there God is; but notwithstanding this, there are some who write and fling books broadcast on the world as if they were fritters.”
“There is no book so bad but it has something good in it,” said the bachelor.
“No doubt of that,” replied Don Quixote; “but it often happens that those who have acquired and attained a well-deserved reputation by their writings, lose it entirely, or damage it in some degree, when they give them to the press.”