"As you will," said the barber; "but what are we to do with these little books that are left?"
"These must be, not chivalry, but poetry," said the curate; and opening one he saw it was the "Diana" of Jorge de Montemayor, and, supposing all the others to be of the same sort, "these," he said, "do not deserve to be burned like the others, for they neither do nor can do the mischief the books of chivalry have done, being books of entertainment that can hurt no one."
"Ah, señor!" said the niece, "your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady."
"The damsel is right," said the curate, "and it will be well to put this stumbling-block and temptation out of our friend's way. To begin, then, with the 'Diana' of Montemayor. I am of opinion it should not be burned, but that it should be cleared of all that about the sage Felicia and the magic water, and of almost all the longer pieces of verse; let it keep, and welcome, its prose and the honor of being the first of books of the kind."
"This that comes next," said the barber, "is the 'Diana,' entitled the 'Second Part, by the Salamancan,' and this other has the same title, and its author is Gil Polo."
"As for that of the Salamancan," replied the curate, "let it go to swell the number of the condemned in the yard, and let Gil Polo's be preserved as if it came from Apollo himself;[1] but get on, gossip, and make haste, for it is growing late."
"This book," said the barber, opening another, "is the ten
Don Pascual de Gayangos is in doubt whether the curate's eulugy is to be taken as ironical or serious, but rather inclines to the belief that Cervantes meant to praise the book. It would be rash to differ with such an authority, otherwise I should say that the laudation is rather too boisterously expressed and too like the extravagant eulogy of Lo Frasso farther on, to be sincerely meant.
- ↑ Los Siete Libros de la Diana de Jorge de Montemayor. Impreso en Valencia, 4to. The first edition is undated, and from the dedication appears to have been printed in the author's lifetime. He died in 1561, in which year the second edition, with additions, appeared. (V. note 1, page 28.) The Diana was the first and best of the Spanish pastoral romances, the taste for which was created by Sannazaro's Arcadia. The Salamancan was Alonso Perez, who published a continuation of the Diana at Alcalá de Henares in 1564, but Gil Polo's, printed the same year
