be before the reader. Samson Carrasco, the curate, Teresa Panza, Altisidora, even the two students met on the road to the cave of Montesinos, all live and move and have their being; and it is characteristic of the broad humanity of Cervantes that there is not a hateful one among them all. Even poor Maritornes, with her deplorable morals, has a kind heart of her own and "some faint and distant resemblance to a Christian about her;" and as for Sancho, though on dissection we fail to find a lovable trait in him, unless it be a sort of doglike affection for his master, who is there that in his heart does not love him?
But it is, after all, the humor of "Don Quixote" that distinguishes it from all other books of the romance kind. It is this that makes it, as one of the most judicial-minded of modern critics calls it, "the best novel in the world beyond all comparison."[1] It is its varied humor, ranging from broad farce to comedy as subtle as Shakespeare's or Moliere's, that has naturalized it in every country where there are readers, and made it a classic in every language that has a literature. We are sometimes told that classics have had their day, and that the literature of the future means to shake itself loose from the past, and respect no antiquity and recognize no precedent. Will the coming iconoclasts spare "Don Quixote," or is Cervantes doomed with Homer and Dante, Shakespeare and Moliere? So far as a forecast is possible, it seems clear that their humor will not be his humor. Even now, persons who take their idea of humor from that form of it most commonly found between yellow and red boards on a railway book-stall may be sometimes heard to express a doubt about the humor of "Don Quixote," and the sincerity of those who profess to enjoy it, they themselves being, in their own phrase, unable to see any fun in it. The humor of "Don Quixote" has, however, the advantage of being based upon human nature, and as the human nature of the future will probably be, upon the whole, much the same as the human nature of the past, it is, perhaps, no unreasonable supposition that what has been relished for its truth may continue to find some measure of acceptance. If it be not presumptuous to express any solicitude about
- ↑ I am going through Don Quixote again, and admire it more than ever. It is certainly the best novel in the world beyond all comparison. — Macaulay, Life and Letters.
