500 Schevill — Studies in Cervantes. 



functory and varies little from an inherited phraseology^ in the 

 manner in Avhich it is expressed. 



With regard to Virgil himself, Cervantes was probably impressed 

 by the oft-repeated story which tells how the Aeneid had been in 

 danger of being consigned to the flames after the poet's death, and 

 how it Avas saved by his august patron, the Emperor ;- but there is 

 never a word on the poem which leads one to suspect that he knew 

 it in the original. In general his allusions to Virgil and other 

 classics, in which any display of learning may have been intended, 

 are no clue to his classic education; they are merely a concession 

 to his times. Moreover, it seems certain that Cervantes was to his 

 immediate contemporaries, his neighbors and friends, an unimport- 

 ant personage who did not shine by any erudition or social savoir 

 faire, whose academic training was not great, and whose rank in 

 society could not have been raised to any very high level during his 

 checkered career as wanderer, slave, soldier and clerk. Like his 

 great English contemporary, Shakespeare, he could claim no promi- 

 nent social station, and as an inferior scholar he too had ''small 

 Latin and less Greek." Finally, as* we shall see, all that Cervantes 

 borrowed from the Aeneid could have been taken from Gregorio 

 Hernandez de Velasco's translation, and that he knew it well is fairly 

 certain from quotations^ and from similarities of phrase which will 

 speak for themselves. 



'Cf. Galatea, "Obras de Cervantes" (Rivadeneyra) , p. 85, col. 2: "la 

 [fama] que hara vivir el Marituano Titiro por todos los siglos venideros, 

 etc." ; Pellicer and Clemenin saw in the position ' of Don Quixote at the 

 end of 1, chapter 43, an imitation of the situation of the enchanter Virgil, 

 who was suspended in a basket. It is more likely patterned after some 

 event in the romances of chivalry. 



^ Cf . Don Quixote, I, chapter 13; also an introductory poem of the 

 Spanish version of the Aeneid: "El Emperador Augusto Cesar, sabiendo 

 como Virgil io avia niandado en su testamento quemar la Eneyda, porque 

 no la dejava tan limada como quisiera, hizo ciertos versos Latinos cuya 

 sentencia es 6sta"; then follows the poem. 



^"Callaron todos, Tirios y Troyanos" (opening of book II of the Spanish 

 version of the Aeneid) is supposed to represent the eagerness of the 

 spectators gathered before the puppet theatre (Don Quixote, II, 26) to 

 hear the story of Caiferos and Melisendra, just as it did the interest of the 

 Tyrians and Trojans who listened to the story of Aeneas. Clemencin, Don 

 Quixote, op. cit.. Vol. VI, p. 158, calls the rest of the phrase, "pendientes 

 estaban todos, etc.," a translation from the original. But the phrase is 

 a common one, and Cervantes had used it before, I, chap. 51: "nos tenia 



