498 Schevill — Studies in Cervantes. 



tliat Cervantes's general knowledge was chiefly of the world and of 

 men and in no sense bookish, he cannot have looked upon the classics 

 and purely academic learning with unmixed favor. We know that 

 he deprecated the pedantic manner frequently enough indulged in 

 by contemporaries, of parading a mass of irrelevant learning, of 

 dragging into the text or scattering along the margin of the pages 

 references to the ancients, to the Church fathers and the like. The 

 prologue to Don Quixote leaves no room for doubt as to his opinion 

 of such vanity.^ And his distrust of the real learning of these 

 pedants was justifiable, for the veriest numskull could quote Latin.- 

 But Cervantes was so wholly a master of the vernacular, so com- 

 pletely absorbed by the natural medium which his unschooled genius 

 had chosen, that any effort to appear at home in Greek or Latin 

 would have been forced.- Hence the sincerity of his defense of the 

 poet in Don Quixote, who without artificial means, and unaided by 

 the stimulus of learning, creates as a inero romancista; indeed the 



praised in the next stanza as a poet and translator on the ground of his 

 rendering (15G9) of Sannazaro's de partu Virginis. Lojje de Vega, on 

 various occasions, praises Hernandez's poetic gift; cf. El Laurel de Apolo, 

 "acudiendo el primero, etc.," vs. .395 ff. ; Dorotea, Vol. II of Comedias escog- 

 idas, p. ,51, col. 2; Virtud, pohrezo y muger, Vol. IV, p. 214, col. 3; cf. 

 Gallardo, Ensayo, etc., Vol. I, col. 648; Clemencin in his edition of Don 

 Quixote, op. cit., II, chap. 62, note 61, quotes a severe passage from Cristobal 

 Suarez de Figueroa's Plaza universal, discourso 46: "testigos de esta 

 verdad (of the wretchedness of various translations) pueden ser los 

 desflguiados Ariosto, Taso y Virgilio, etc." It must be remembered, too, 

 that the Aeneid in the original was a much edited work; cf. Ticknor, Vol. 

 I, p. 451 and Sellar, The lioinaii poets of lite Augustan Age (Oxford, 1877), 

 p. 66. 



^ Cf. Cervantes, el Coloquio de los perros, where Berganza says : "hay 

 algunos romancistas que en las conversaciones disparan de cuando en 

 cuando con algun latin breve y compendioso, etc.," p. 232, col. 1, Oiras 

 de Cervantes, "Biblioteca de autores espauoles." 



^ Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, gives the latter credit for more, classic 

 learning that he had: "ni por esto perdio de vista a los exeelentes maestros 

 de la antigaiedad, a quienes contemplo siempre conio el tipo 6 deciiado del 

 mejor gusto en la literatura, segun se ve en ];is ivnitaeiones que hizo de 

 Apuleyo, de Heliodoro, de Iloracio y de Virgilio." In his Vida de Cervantes 

 y analysis del Quixote, prefixed to the Academy's edition of Don Quixote, 

 tlie author, D. Vicente de los Rios, made a curious attempt to show that 

 the latter contains parallels to the Aeneid; of vol. I, pp. xcv-vi, edition of ' 

 1782: "en las bodas del rico Camacho tienen los lectores un equivalente & 

 los juegos y certainenes de las fabulas epicas; la morada de Don Quixote •! 

 en casa de los Duques, corresponde perfcctamente A la. detenciun de Eneas 

 en Cartago, etc." which no one believes to-day. Bowie, II, 120 of his 



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