Indeed Sir Topaz is all Don Quixote in little; as you will easily see from comparing the two knights together; who are drawn with the same features, are characterized by the same strokes, and differ from each other but as a sketch in miniature from a finished and full-sized picture.
1. Cervantes is very particular in describing the person and habit of his Hero, agreeably to the known practice of the old Romancers. Chaucer does the same by his knight, and in a manner that almost equals the arch-gravity of the Spanish author:
Sir Topaz was a doughty swaine,
White was his face as paine maine,
His lippes red as rose,
His rudde is like scarlet in graine,
And I you tell in good certaine,
He had a seemely nose.
His haire, his berde, was like safroune,
That to his girdle raught adowne,
His shoone of cordewaine,
Of Bruges were his hosen broun.
His robe was of chekelatoun,
That cost many a jane.
2. Cervantes tells us how Don Quixote passed his time in the country, before he turned Knight-errant. Chaucer, in the same spirit, celebrates his knight’s country diversions of hunting, hawking, shooting, and wrestling, those known prolusions to feats of arms:
He couth hunt at the wilde dere,
And ride an hauking for by the rivere
With grey Goshauke on honde,
Thereto he was a good archere,
Of wrastling was there none his pere
There any Ram should stonde.
3. The Knights of Romance were used to dedicate their services to some paragon of beauty, such as was only conceived to exist in the land of Fairy, and could no where be found in this vulgar disenchanted world. Hence one of the strongest features in Don Quixote’s character is the sublime passion he had conceived for an imaginary or fairy mistress. Sir Topaz is not behind him in this extravagance:
An Elfe-queene woll I love, I wis,
For in this world no woman is
To be my make in towne,
All other women I forsake
And to an Elfe-queene I me take
By dale and eke by downe.
4. Don Quixote’s passion for this idol of his fancy was so violent, that, after all the bangs and bruises of the day, instead of suffering his weary limbs to take any rest, it occupied him all night with incessant dreams and reveries of his mistress. Sir Topaz is in the same woful plight:
Sir Topaz eke so weary was—
That down he laid him in that place—
Oh, Saint Mary, benedicite
What aileth this love at me
To blind me so sore?
Me dreamed all this night parde
An Elfe-queen shall my leman be
And sleepe under my gore.