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II: ABOUT CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE

Four generations had laughed over "Don Quixote" before it occurred to

anyone to ask, who and what uel de Cervantes

Saavedra whose nae; and it was too late for a

satisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to add a life of

the author to the London edition published at Lord Carteret's instance in

1738 All traces of the personality of Cervantes had by that ti traditions that may once have existed,

trans since died out, and of

other record there was none; for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

were incurious as to "the ainst which the

nineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced no

Shakespeare or Cervantes All that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was

entrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or

Navarrete, could do was to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes to

himself in his various prefaces with such pieces of docu upon his life as they could find

This, however, has been done by the last-naood

purpose that he has superseded all predecessors Thoroughness is the

chief characteristic of Navarrete's work Besides sifting, testing, and

ht, he left, as the saying is, no stone unturned under

which anything to illustrate his subject ht possibly be found

Navarrete has done all that industry and acuiven us ant What Hallam says of

Shakespeare may be applied to the alister of his baptisraphy of his na, no record

of his conversation, no character of him drawnby a contemporary has