Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra; a Memoir

^ /& MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY us MIG1JEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA A MEMOIR BY JAMES FITZMAURICE KELLY F.B.A. GILMOUR PROFESSOR OF SPANISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL 522081 OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1913 PQ (^537 TO K. FOULCHE-DELBOSC IN RECOGNITION OF HIS EMINENT SERVICES TO LEARNING AND IN MEMORY OF A TWENTY YEARS' FRIENDSHIP PREFACE While Cervantes was still alive, a narrative of his experiences as a slave at Algiers was compiled by Diego de Haedo, Archbishop of Palermo, whose Topographia, e Mstoria general de Argel was completed by the end of 1604. The Archbishop died on July 5, 1608, and four years later his book appeared under the editorship of his nephew and namesake. Over a century passed before any consecutive account of Cervantes's life was published. Little anecdotes, mostly apocryphal, were invented about him, and were circulated in France and England respectively by such writers as Rapin and Motteux. But it was not till 1737-8 that any serious attempt was made to reconstruct Cervantes's biography. This preliminary essay by Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, the most promi- nent Spanish scholar of his time, will be found in the prolegomena to the London reprint of Don Quixote issued by Jacob Tonson : naturally it contains much conjectural matter and some erroneous statements. In 1778 additional information concerning Cervantes was given by Juan Antonio Pellicer y Saforcada, who, in the Varias noticias Uterarlas para las vidas de viii PKEFACE oiros escritores espaiioks which precede his Ensayo de una hihliotheca de traductores espanoJes, included official documents which threw light on various incidents in Cervantes's career. One or two additional documents were disclosed by Vicente de los Kios in the biographical sketch which he supplied to the edition of Don Quixote published by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1780. Meanwhile, Pellicer had con- tinued his researches, the useful results of which are embodied in the preliminaries to his edition of Don Quixote, published in 1797-8; he disproved some current misconceptions, and did good service by substituting facts for surmises in many cases. Greater progress was made by Martin Fernandez de Navarrete in his Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, issued by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1819. In this scholarly work a careful collation of the available evidence placed Cervantes's biography on a solid basis. Its merits were at once recognized ; it took rank as the leading authority on the subject, and is the source of all the subsequent biographies of Cervantes published in many languages during the nineteenth century. No doubt, after 1819, further information on obscure points in Cervantes's life was furnished by Travadillo, Moran, Asensio y Toledo, Sigiienza and others ; but no substantial addition was made to PEEFACE ix the facts collected by Navarrete, and these later discoveries were often ignored by foreign biographers who were content to produce diluted versions of Navarrete's work. No great advance was made during the ensuing seventy-eight years. At last, in 1897, the late Cristobal Perez Pastor edited a volume entitled Bocumentos cervantinos hasta ahora ineditos. Some of his theories, notably one referring to a supposititious edition of Don Quixote ascribed to the were at year 1604, once successfully challenged ; the value of the volume lay— not in such superfluous speculations, but—in the fifty-six contemporary documents brought to light by the zealous investigator. These were followed in 1902 by one hundred and five more contemporary documents in a second series of Bocumentos cervantinos hasta ahora ineditos : in this supplementary collection the theory concerning the supposititious Bon Quixote of 1604 was explicitly abandoned, corrections were supplied, missing links were made good, and, as before, a useful commentary was added. It is not too much to say that Perez Pastor did more than any other recent investigator—perhaps more than all other modern investigators put together—to fill up blanks in the record of Cervantes's life. The publication of the one hundred and sixty-one new documents revealed by Perez Pastor's researches A3 PEEFACE made it imperative to write Cervantes's biography anew. Little, however, has been done in this direction beyond the summary of results put together by Sr. D. EmiHo Cotarelo y Mori under the title of Efemerides cervantinas, a small volume published shortly before the Cervantes tercentenary commemoration of 1905. Many of these results were utilized by the late Francisco Navarro y Ledesma in El Ingenioso Hidalgo Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, also issued in connexion with the tercentenary commemoration of 1905. As might be inferred from the title, this reconstruction reverts too often to the hypothetical methods which Perez Pastor had made unnecessary. In reading Navarro y Ledesma, one can never feel sure whether a given statement is established fact or a flight of fancy. In the present volume I have eschewed all such decorative devices, as I have eschewed literary criticism. With Cervantes's works I have dealt in detail elsewhere, and elsewhere I may deal with them again. In any case, criticism of Cervantes's literary achievement is never likely to be wanting. For the moment it seems to me more important to continue Navarrete's work, to place on record all that is positively known of Cervantes's life, to sift the guesses from the facts, and to establish the facts by such evidence as might satisfy a legal tribunal. PREFACE xi In the process of examining the evidence some picturesque legends must be discarded. Carlyle is * quoted as saying : A certain strong man, of former time, fought stoutly at Lepanto, worked stoutly as slave delivered himself from such Algerine ; stoutly working; with stout cheerfulness endured famine the world's and nakedness and ingratitude ; and sitting in gaol, with one arm left him, wrote our joyfullest, and all but our deepest, modern book, and named it Bon Quixote,' The details are not strictly accurate: Cervantes did not deliver himself from slavery, was not treated with any special ingratitude by the world, did not lose one of his arms, and did not (so far as we know) write Don Quixote when in gaol. We must part with these pleasing inventions and others like them. It has often been said that, of the six hundred and sixty-nine characters in Don Quixote, not one is wholly bad; nor does nature, in whose school Cervantes learned his hard lesson, make men wholly good. A master in literature, a hero in battle, Cervantes had his share of human weakness, and his failings bring him into relation with such petty creatures as ourselves. They make him more real, more interesting, more sympathetic, and help to explain his bland forbearance in an age when urbanity and tolerance were as rare as they xii PEEFACE are now. My aim has been to give every known fact about Cervantes, suppressing nothing, extenu- ating nothing, unswayed as far as possible by the natural bias which we all have in favour of a great creative genius whose subtle charm has fascinated successive generations for three centuries. Against this inevitable prepossession I have been constantly on guard. As it happens, Cervantes needs no apologist: he is one of those rare men who can afford to have the whole truth told about them. In this belief I have tried to make my record as full and exact as possible. My best thanks are due to my friend Dr. Henry Thomas for the scrupulous care with which he has read the proofs of this memoir : without his vigilant aid I should have come short of such accuracy as may be attained in it. For help in drawing up the index I am much indebted to Miss Rachel Alcock. J. F.-K. The Old Hall; Aigburth: Liverpool. June 20, 1913. THE PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES NOTE The frontispiece of this volume reproduces a picture which was first brought to notice in 1911. The original, a painting on wood, has been regarded as an authentic contemporary portrait of Cervantes. As such, it is assigned a conspicuous place in the main room of the Royal Spanish Academy, to which body the picture was generously pre- sented by its former owner, Sr. Albiol.^ Since the Royal Spanish Academy pretends to no authority in artistic matters, its conclusions respecting the authenticity of this alleged portrait of Cervantes must be received with some reserve. It will be observed that the painting, which purports to be signed by Juan de Jauregui, is dated 1600 and bears Cervantes's name. These inscriptions are said to ba contemporary with the portrait. But assertion is not proof, and the abundance of detail in these inscriptions may perhaps awaken, instead of allaying, doubts concerning the authenticity of the painting. In the first place, it is far from certain that Jauregui ever painted any likeness of Cervantes. The opinion that Jauregui did paint a portrait of Cervantes is based on a humorous, apologetic passage in the prologue to the Novelets exemplares : Quisiera yo, si fuera possible (Lector amantissimo) escusarme de escriuir este prologo, porque no me fue tan bien con el que puse en mi don Quixote, que quedasse c6 * Sr. Albiol is a professor in the School of Arts at Oviedo. Accord- * ing to Sr. Sentenach, he was formerly a restaurateur de tableaux ' anciens a Madrid {Revue hispanique, Paris, 1911, vol. xxv,pp. 13-18). xiv THE PORTEAIT OF CERVANTES gana de segundar con este. Desto tiene la culpa algun amigo de

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