Cervantes Saavedra, MIGUEL DE, the author of Don Quixote, was born at Alcalá de Henares in 1547. His birthday is unknown, but he was baptised on the 9th of October. He was a descendant of a family that traced its origin back to the 10th century through a line of Castilian nobles, of whom one was the renowned warrior Nuño Alfonso, whose grandson took the surname of Cervantes from the old castle of San Servando, or Cervantes, near Toledo. It was borne with honour by many church dignitaries, soldiers, and magistrates of the 14th and 15th centuries, but at the birth of the man who gave it immortality it had ceased to be one of the prominent names of Spain. The name of Saavedra came into the poet's branch of the family by marriage in the 15th century. Of Cervantes personally we know little or nothing beyond what he himself tells us, but of the events of his life there is a tolerably complete record. The story of his having studied at Salamanca is improbable; all we know of his education is that Juan Lopez de Hoyos, a professor of belles-lettres at Madrid, calls him his 'dearly beloved pupil.' The first known productions of his pen appeared in 1569 in a collection of pieces on the death of the queen, edited by the professor. Early in the same year he passed over into Italy in the service of Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva, but shortly afterwards enlisted as a soldier under the command, it would appear, of Marc Antony Colonna. At the battle of Lepanto he was in the thick of the fight, and received three severe gunshot wounds, by one of which his left hand and arm were permanently disabled. After having seen some further service against the Turks in Tunis, he was returning to Spain in 1575 with letters of recommendation to the king from Don John of Austria and the Viceroy of Sicily, when the galley he sailed in was captured by Algerine corsairs, and with his brother Rodrigo and several others he was carried into Algiers. He remained in captivity five years, during which he made four daring attempts to escape, and lived in almost daily expectation of death or torture. It was not for himself alone that he sought freedom. No nobler story of unselfish heroism has ever been told than that in the depositions of his fellow captives at Algiers, where they testify to his self-devotion, his dauntless spirit, and his generosity, and with touching earnestness strive to give expression to their own gratitude, love, and admiration. In 1580 he was ransomed by the charity of the Redemptorist Fathers and the devotion of his family, which reduced itself to poverty to provide the sum required; and rejoining his old regiment in Portugal, he served in the expedition to the Azores under the Marquis of Santa Cruz. The story of a liaison with a Portuguese lady is an invention of the biographers to account for a certain Isabel de Saavedra mentioned in an official document of 1605 as his natural daughter. There is no other evidence of her existence, and if this is to be relied upon she was born after his marriage, and nearly two years after his return from Portugal. At the close of the war he retired from military life and turned his attention to literature. His first work was the Galatea, a pastoral romance of the same class as the Diana of Montemayor and the Filida of his friend Montalvo. It was printed at Alcalá in 1585—not, as is commonly said, Madrid, 1584. While it was passing through the press he married, and for two or three years strove to gain a livelihood by writing for the stage. He produced between twenty and thirty plays, of which two only, the Numancia and the Trato de Argel, have survived; but from his own account it is plain that, though not ill received, they failed to attract, and that he was driven to seek some other employment. In 1587 he migrated to Seville, where he obtained the post of deputy-purveyor to the fleet. In 1594 he was appointed a collector of revenues for the kingdom of Granada; but in 1597, failing to make up the sum due to the treasury, he was sent to prison at Seville. He was released, however, on giving security for the balance, but not reinstated; nor can the government be charged with undue harshness, for though no stain attaches to his integrity, it is clear that as a business-like official he was not faultless. He remained some time longer at Seville, but nothing is known of his movements from 1599 to 1603. Local tradition maintains that he wrote Don Quixote in prison at Argamasilla in La Mancha; but it has nothing to support it save the fact that Argamasilla is Don Quixote's village. In 1603 he was living at Valladolid; in September 1604 leave was granted to print the first part of Don Quixote, and early in January 1605 the book came out at Madrid. It is commonly asserted that its reception was cold; but the truth is that it leaped into popularity at once. Within a month two pirated editions were in the press at Lisbon; by the autumn five editions had been published; and Don Quixote and Sancio Panza paraded the streets as familiar characters in the pageants at Valladolid that spring. By a minority, however, it was not welcomed. Lope de Vega wrote sneeringly of it and its author months before it was printed—for it had a pre- vious circulation in manuscript—and he and his brother-dramatists showed how bitterly they resented the criticism in chapter 48. Cervantes was slow in taking advantage of his popularity. Instead of giving his readers the sequel they asked for, he busied himself with writing for the stage and composing short tales, or 'exemplary novels' as he called them. The Viage del Parnaso, a poem of over 3000 lines in terza rima, reviewing the poetry and poets of the day, was another of his productions at this time. In 1613 he published his twelve Novelas, and promised his readers the second part of Don Quixote 'shortly.' But in 1614 a writer, under the pseudonym of Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, brought out a spurious second part, with an insulting preface, full of coarse personal abuse of Cervantes. It was the work of a dull plagiarist, an imitator insensible to the merits of his model; but it served as the spur Cervantes needed to urge him to the completion of the genuine second part, which was sent to the press early in 1615, and published at the end of the year. It was not too soon; his health was already failing, and he died at Madrid on the 23d of April 1616. His last labours were given to things more important in his eyes than Don Quixote. While it was in the press he revised and published his rejected comedies and interludes, and but a short time before his death he finished his romance of Persiles and Sigismunda. There are few pieces of his writing more characteristic of the man than the last two that ever came from his pen—written, indeed, upon his very deathbed—the address to the reader and the dedication to the Conde de Lemos, whose generosity had relieved him from the pressure of poverty; and, like every glimpse of himself that his pages give us, they make us wish that we knew more of one so full of wisdom, patience, and charity, so bright and so brave.
It is in right of Don Quixote that the name of Cervantes has a place here; but his minor works entitle him to an honourable one in the history of Spanish literature. His novels are the best of their kind—a kind Spain excelled in; and though the Galatea is doubtless inferior to the Diana, its greatest fault is that, like the Diuna, it belongs to a radically insipid species of romance. The title of poet is commonly denied him; but if a good deal of his poetry is weak, there is much that only a poet could have written, and not even Garcilaso had a finer sense of melody or a truer touch in verse. It would be unjust to judge of his dramatic powers by the comedies printed in 1615. They were nothing more than a desperate attempt to gain a footing on the stage by a concession to the popular taste. To found a great national drama worthy of his country was the ambition of his life, and the first step was to obtain a hearing. The tragedy of Numancia, with all its defects the most powerful and original drama in the language, is a better measure of Cervantes as a dramatist. And if it is impossible to accept his own estimate of the Persiles and Sigismunda, no reader will deny its invention and grace of style. His minor works all show signs of the author's care; Don Quixote, on the other hand, is the most carelessly written of all great books. Cervantes, it is plain, did not look upon it in that light. He was very proud of its popularity; but all he ever claims for it is that it will amuse, and that it did the state some service in laughing chivalry romances out of fashion. He wrote it by fits and starts; he neglected it for his other works; he sent it to the printers without revision, and made merry over their blunders and his own oversights. But it may be that we owe more to this carelessness than we think. One of the marvels of this marvellous book is its perennial youth. After well-nigh three centuries it is as fresh and full of life as when it came from La Cuesta's press. In his other works Cervantes studied recognised models and consulted the tastes of the day; in Don Quixote he followed the lead of his own genius alone, and wrote only as instinct prompted him. Written in a desultory fashion, it had time to grow and ripen under his hand; Don Quixote and Sancho, outlines at first, became by degrees flesh and blood realities to his mind, and beings that he loved; and the book—the second part especially—served him as a kind of commonplace-book to which he turned to when he was in the mood, making it the depository of his thoughts and record of the experience and observation of a stirring life. We need not commit the disloyalty of doubting his word when he says that all he sought was to cure his countrymen of their passion for chivalry romances. He had motive enough in the magnitude of the evil, and his was only one of scores of voices lifted up against it; nor is there anything extraordinary in a champion of true chivalry, as he was, resenting a mockery that made it contemptible. But the genius of Cervantes was essentially discursive, and many other offenders and offences were comprehended in the indictment that he brought against the romances of chivalry and their readers.
The only complete edition of Cervantes' works is that of Rivadeneyra (in 12 vols. large 8vo, Madrid, 1863-64). Editions of the selected works are those of Ibarra (16 vols. small 8vo, Madrid, 1803-5), Bossange (10 vols. 12mo, Paris, 1826), and vol. i. of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid, 1846). Of Don Quixote in the original about 150 editions are known, and more than double that number in other languages. The first worthy of the book was Tonson's (Lond. 1738, 4 vols.); other notable ones are the Academy edition (4 vols. Madrid, 1780); Bowle's (6 vols. Salisbury and Lond. 1781); Pellicer's (5 vols. Madrid, 1797-98); Clemencín's (6 vols. Madrid, 1833-39); Hartzenbusch's, in vols. iii.-vi. of the complete works, and also in 4 vols. 1863, a beautiful pocket edition printed at Argamasilla, in the house called Cervantes' prison; in these last the editor has often restored the text of the first edition, but often also recklessly tampered with it. F. Lopez Fabra's (2 vols. Barcelona, 1871-74) is an admirable reproduction by photography of the first edition. The claim of Señor Ortega's edition (Palencia, 1884) to give corrections made by Cervantes himself cannot be seriously maintained. The reprint of the editio princeps of the first part of Don Quixote by Mr Ormsby and Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly (Lond. 1898) is a splendid folio. There are translations in fourteen languages. The oldest is the English by Shelton, made in 1608 and printed 1612 (second part, 1620), a vigorous but rude and inaccurate version. Other English translations are those of Phillips (1689), Motteux (1702), Jervas (commonly called Jarvis, 1742), Smollett (1755), A. J. Duffield (3 vols. 8vo, 1881), John Ormsby (4 vols. 8vo, 1885), and H. E. Watts (5 vols. 4to, 1888 et seq.). In French there are nine versions, besides abridgments: the oldest is Oudin's (printed in 1616), the best Viardot's (1836). In German there are no less than thirteen, from the earliest in 1621 to the latest and best by Ludwig Braunfels in 1883-84. There are as many as ten Russian versions, but most of these are from the French, or abridgments. Franciosini's Italian version appeared as early as 1622, and has been followed by two others; and there are versions in Dutch, Danish, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Hungarian, Bohemian, Servian, and Greek. The best Life of Cervantes is by Navarrete; but there is also a good one by D.
Geronimo Morau, in his Don Quixote (Madrid, 1863), and English Lives by Watts (1895, from his edition), and by J. F. Kelly (1892).