12 ([return])
Señor Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions of 1605 which have wholly perished; one probably at Barcelona, the press of which city was very active in that year; one at Pamplona, and probably one at Saragossa, which were capitals of old kingdoms. See also Señor Asensio's letter to the Ateneo, No. 23, p. 296; and the Bibliography of Don Quixote at the end of this volume.
13 ([return])
The ordinary obrada, or impression, of a book at this period, I am told by Señor Gayangos—and there can be no better authority—was 250 copies. But in the case of a popular book like Don Quixote the impression would be larger—probably 500 copies. Supposing 8 editions to have been issued in 1605, there would thus have been printed 4,000 copies in the first year—a number unprecedently large in an age when readers were few and books a luxury.
14 ([return])
The last book of the kind written before Don Quixote, according to Clemencin, was Policisne de Boecia, published in 1602; but La Toledana Discreta, which is a romantic poem in ottava rima, was published in 1604, and a few chap-books and religious romances, of the slighter kind, afterward.
15 ([return])
The question is reopened in the España Moderna (1894), by my good friend Asensio, who quotes from one of the histories of Charles V how that as a youth he would draw his sword and lay about him at the figures in the tapestry, and how once he was discovered teasing a caged lion with a stick. This is slender material on which to base the theory of Charles V being the original of Don Quixote.
16 ([return])
See the eloquent and judicious prologue to his Romancero General by Don Agustin Duran.