I must believe the real answer (to themselves) will be, No. At all events, I am pretty well convinced that they would never have been able to get beyond the first half-dozen letters, if they had been told it was a nameless novel, by a nameless man-and that they ought to read it for its moral tendency. His name, therefore, is more generally talked of than those of his (immeasurably superior) countrymen whom I have instanced above*.

The great Italian poets-Petrarch, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto-have European reputations also, as far as the cultivated classes extend-so (though, as I take it, in a less degree,) has Boccacio. But scarcely any popular writer would, as a matter of course, make familiar allusions to the writings of any one of these, as things so universally known as to need no sort of explanation or reference. We have lately indeed tried to coin such epithets, as Dantesque, and Petrarcan; but they are still uncouth and new-they have not, (to use a most expressive phrase usually applied to nicknames,) they have not stuck. Nobody talks of a thing being Godfrey-de-Bouillon-ish, or Orlando-tic; while Cervantic humour, is the only intelligible mode of describing the indescribable quality understood by the phrase; and quixotic' is an adjective which we begin to write with a small letter. It ought (as saving a world of periphrasis) to be included in our next dictionary.

Cervantes has an European reputation-but, after his own country, England is the soil on which his fame has chiefly flourished. These unequivocal testimonies of intimate acquaintance with his writings, do not (as far as I know) exist in any other country. The French, indeed, have

* I beg to refer the reader to the spirited and admirable lines, in the “Rhymes on the Road," of Mr. Moore, (published with the Fables for the Holy Alliance,) on Les Charmettes. They are a worthy antidote to the mire, and strife,

And vanity of that man's life."

two or three translations of Don Quixote; and when their armies passed through La Mancha, they spared Toboso from all pillage and exaction, in compliment to Dulcinea. M. de Rocca, who himself went through the campaigns in the Peninsula, tells us that Toboso was one of the few towns in which the French troops were on any thing approaching to terms of friendship with their conquered hosts; and this solely, as it would seem, from Dulcinea and Don Quixote being points of common feeling and common interest between them; a compliment equally peculiar and remarkable. I question whether any tribute, at once so useful and flattering, was ever paid to the memory of any author; and yet, I almost question also whether the Castilian pride, and Castilian courage of Cervantes, would not have preferred, "War even to the knife!" being the cry of La Mancha as well as of Arragon-of Dulcinea as well as of the " Maid of Saragossa." It is better, however, far better, that there should be some points of forgiveness and fellow-feeling for the dove of peace to rest her blessed foot upon, amidst the flood of war and bloodshed, and the raven-attracting carcasses of the slain. The defence of Saragossa was noble; but it was unavailing also. Every nation has a thousand songs and tales to rouse her sons to strife and war. How few can boast, like this, a general rallying-point of mind to the good and gentle, as well as to the fiercer, passions!

How few, also, are there who would appreciate, and shew their appreciation of the supremacy of mind, in the manner which the French soldiers did in Toboso! Let us be just. Their armies were exposed to all the harassing and galling inconveniences and indignities of a partisan warfare, in a difficult country, swarming with an implacable enemy. They were assassinated if they appeared singly-they were received gloomily, and with all the vis

inertia of reluctance every where. And yet the exclamation of a simple soldier, at the sight of the first woman who appeared at a window in Toboso,-"Ah! voilà Dulcinée!"-this exclamation, I say, was sufficient to recall all the train of good-humoured and kindly ideas connected with their national writer; and to establish at once an ark of friendliness and peace in the midst of all the desolating and dreadful animosities of a "War to the Knife!"

I question much whether our armies would have felt in an equal, or to so extended, a degree, the force of these associations. We were very differently situated in Spain;— we came as allies and deliverers; and, though our characters of heretics in great measure neutralized the burst of feeling with which we otherwise should, beyond doubt, have been received,-yet that is very different from the inextinguishable hatred which was manifested towards our opponents. I do not believe that in this particular instance the difference was demonstrated by proof; for, as far as my recollection serves me, our armies were at no period in La Mancha; Toboso was not, I believe, among

which Mr. Fitz-G-d, apud the Rejected Addresses, so poetically describes as being entered by Lord Wellington at the cannon's mouth.” But I doubt, very considerably, whether many of the inferior grades of our army would have known any thing concerning the personage whom Win. Jenkins designates as Dun Quickset; and if they had chanced to know any thing about them, they certainly would not have cared.

But, nevertheless, I cannot consider this as any argument against my belief that, next to Spain, Cervantes

* See M. de Rocca's Account of the War in Spain.

is more universally known and popular in England, than in any other country;-that is, compounding for the relative difference of cultivation in the different countries of Europe. The belles-lettres are much more generally spread in France than any where else. The English are, as a body, far more soundly, and better, informed :-witness our extraordinary progress in science, as blending with the useful arts. But, again, the lower orders in France are conversant with the more elegant branches of literature to a degree which, to us, seems extraordinary ; and their army, as a body, was certainly composed of a very intellectually superior order of men to our's; hence their being on such good terms with the Dulcineas del Toboso.

But notwithstanding the extent, and (if I may so speak) the intimacy of Cervantes' fame in England, we are, comparatively, little conversant with even the more prominent events of his life. We all know, as it were by instinct and by rote, that he lost a hand at the battle of Lepanto, where he served as a private soldier. But of the details of his after-fate, few, comparatively, have accurate knowledge. Of that particular part of it of which I purpose to give some slight account, very few, I believe, know more than the bare fact of his having been in captivity in Barbary; while some have a vague (and, by the way, an erroneous) impression of the story of the captive, in Don Quixote, being that of the writer himself. His knowledge of the customs of Africa, was probably derived from his captivity, which lasted as long as five years; but in no further degree are the author and his hero identical.

But we need, in no degree, reproach ourselves with this ignorance; for it would appear that none of the details of his captivity were accurately known, even in Spain, till as lately as the year 1766; when the particulars were

ascertained by the author of the Life of Cervantes, prefixed to the edition of Don Quixote by the Royal Spanish Academy, in 1780. The exertions to render that edition as perfect as possible appear to have been extreme, and the individual who collected the necessary documents for the composition of the Life, and who wrote both that and the Critical Analysis, seems to have given to his labours that indefatigable industry, and that eager and consecutive attention, which all literary men must at some period have felt, in the prosecution of a favourite and engrossing undertaking. In one of the notes to the Life, it is said, "If it had not been for the diligence of the author of these proofs, to whom it first occurred to refer to the documents of the ransom, to determine with certainty the birth place of Cervantes, we should be ignorant of the day, the year, and the other particulars of his captivity. For, although Cervantes, in several passages in his works, as in the preface to the novels, makes mention of his captivity, he does not of either the day, or the year, or by whom he was taken, or by what means he returned to Spain*.

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To this literary ardour and admiration, the writer seems also to have added the fellow-feeling of a soldier towards so distinguished an addition to the intellectual ho

* Pruebas de la Vida de Miguel de Cervantes ; [13] edicion de la Réal Academia Espanola, 1782. In the excellent edition of Motteux's Translation of Don Quixote, published two or three years back by Messrs. Hurst and Robinson, there is a new life of Cervantes, in which some mention is made of his captivity, taken from the edition of the Academy and others. It is, however, considerably less ample than might have been expected from the fulness and excellence of the notes, and from the evident knowledge and love of Spanish literature which the editor brings to his subject. A memoir of the life and writings of Cervantes, executed proportionately with the copiousness of the notes to that edition, and with equal learning and talent, would be a real gift to our literature; for never was there a popular writer who (especially for foreigners) more needed illustration, and never was there one who received so little: till the edition in question, I may say, none.