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To call "Don Quixote" a sad book, preaching a pessiues a total misconception of its drift It would be so if its moral

were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to ridicule and

disco of the sort; its moral, so far as

it can be said to have one, is that the spurious enthusiasm that is born

of vanity and self-conceit, that is made an end in itself, not a ardless of circumstances and

consequences, is mischievous to its owner, and a very considerable

nuisance to the couish

between the one kind and the other, no doubt "Don Quixote" is a sad book;

no doubt to some minds it is very sad that a man who had just uttered so

beautiful a sentiment as that "it is a hard case to make slaves of those

whoratefully pelted by the

scoundrels his crazy philanthropy had let loose on society; but to others

of a ret that reckless

self-sufficient enthusiasm is not oftener requited in some such way for

all the ht examination of the structure of "Don Quixote" will suffice

to show that Cervantes had no deep design or elaborate plan in his an the book When he wrote those lines in which "with a few