Cervantes Remembered Too Late.
There is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of departed genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much eloquence wasted—often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and much money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would have relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored son of genius.
In the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August, [Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a certain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the commencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been ascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and the very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the plan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has purchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited printer, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two impressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don Quixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the libraries and salons of the great, the other a carefully executed but low-priced edition for the populace.
[Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]
The English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in his need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius, good business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring to improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though probably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his income, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his countrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his memory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each other with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or centenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves. They journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as tiresome a fashion as if they were members of the "British Association for bettering the Universe," under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms, crowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of the kind in Spain with a difference.
Some years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress building, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention the opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue held between them.
"During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose of my soul—a thing of which I have much need."
Whether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the editions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not, it is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have been celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of Madrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his Études Littéraires sur l'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some particulars of which are worth being presented.
[Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix (Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre. Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans. He made his literary début in poetry, his other productions being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish subjects.]