Sismondi also says the same in speaking of this work, and of its estimation in Spain; but he goes on to observe, "a foreigner will not, I should imagine, concede to it so much merit: it is the offspring of a rich, but at the same time of a wandering imagination, which confines itself within no bounds of the possible or the probable, and which is not sufficiently founded on reality. He has entitled this Romance 'A Northern Story,' and his complete ignorance of the North, in which his scene is laid, and which he imagines to be a land of Barbarians, Anthropophagi, Pagans, and Enchanters, is sufficiently singular."
The truth of this cannot be denied; but I believe that it has never yet been translated into English,[B] and, as it certainly possesses great merits in spite of the absurdities, and a good deal of imagination as well as beauty (though I fear much of the latter will be lost in a translation) as a work of Cervantes it appears to me worthy of being introduced to English readers.
The plan of the story is plainly imitated from Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, who in his youth wrote a Romance in the Greek language, called The Æthiopian History; or, the Adventures of two Lovers, Chariclea, the daughter of the King of Ethiopia, and Theagenes, a noble Thessalian. He lived in the reigns of Theodosius and Arcadius, about the end of the fourth century.
Few modern readers, I imagine, would have patience to read this very heavy Romance; but in 1590, when Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia was published, stories of amusement and interest were not as plentiful as in the present day, and it was a short time before that Romance appeared, that a translation of Heliodorus's Æthiopic History was published in England. The edition which I have seen is translated by N.
Tate, the first five books by "a Person of Quality." The date is 1753. The other editions are 1587, 1622, 1686.
But though the plan of Persiles and Sigismunda is taken from Heliodorus, I do not think they have any resemblance in style, and there is far more vivacity and humour in the narrative and characters, and more nature too, in spite of the high flown romance that surrounds them.
I fear the modern reader will find the numerous episodes tedious; and story after story, which every additional personage we meet, thinks it necessary to relate, will perhaps try his patience; yet there is great beauty in many of these, at least in the original language.
The remarkable ignorance which Cervantes displays on geographical points has a parallel in our own Shakespeare, who makes Bohemia a country with a sea coast.