It is by no means unlikely that he mistrusted his own powers of extracting from Don Quixote and Sancho material enough to fill a book; but above all it is likely he felt doubtful of his venture. It was an experiment in literature far bolder than "Lazarillo de Tornies" or "Guzman de Alfarache;" he could not tell how it would be received; and it was as well, therefore, to provide his readers with something of the sort they were used to, as a kind of insurance against total failure.
The event did not justify his diffidence. The public, he acknowledges, skimmed the tales hastily and impatiently, eager to return to the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho; and the public has ever since done much the same. He himself owns that they are altogether out of place, and nothing but the natural reluctance of editors and translators to mutilate a great classic has preserved them, for in truth they are not only out of place, but positive blemishes. An exception might be made in favor of the story of the Captive, which has an interest in itself independent of the autobiographical touches it contains, and is in the main told in a straightforward soldierly way.
But the others have nothing to recommend them. They are commonplace tales of intrigue that might have been written by any tenth-rate story-teller. With a certain pretence of moral purpose, the "Ill-advised Curiosity" is a nauseous story, and the morality of Dorothea's story is a degree worse than that of Richardson's "Pamela;" it is, in fact, a story of "easy virtue rewarded." The characters are utterly uninteresting; the men, Cardenio and Don Fernando, Anselmo and Lothario, are a contemptible set; and the women are remarkable for nothing but a tendency to swoon away on slight provocation, and to make long speeches the very adjectives of which would be enough for a strong man. The reader will observe the difference between the Dorothea of the tale and the graceful, sprightly, natural Dorothea who acts the part of the Princess Micomicona with such genuine gayety and fun.
But it is in style that these tales offend most of all. They are not worth telling, and they are told at three times the length that would have been allowable if they were. No device known to prolixity is omitted. Verbs and adjectives always go in pairs like panniers on a donkey, as if one must inevitably fall to the ground without the other to balance it. Nobody ever says or sees anything, he always declares and
