give me them, and such as the productiuns of those that have the highest reputation in our Spain could not equal.[1]
"In short, my friend," I continued, "I am determined that Señor Don Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La Mancha until Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason enough, what you have heard from me." Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead and breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, "Before God, Brother, now am I disabused of an error in which I have been living all this long time I have known you, all through which I have taken you to be shrewd and sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far from that as the heaven is from the earth. How? Is it possible that things of so little moment and so easy to set right can occupy and perplex a ripe wit like yours, fit to break through and crush far greater obstacles? By my faith, this comes, not of any want of ability, but of too much indolence and too little knowledge of life. Do you want to know if I am telling the truth? Well, then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and shutting of an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all those deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and mirror of all knight-errantry."
- ↑ The humor of this, and indeed of the greater part of the Preface, can hardly be relished without a knowledge of the books of the day, but especially Lope de Vega's, which in their original editions appeared generally with an imposing display of complimentary sonnets and verses, as well as of other adjuncts of the sort Cervantes laughs at. Lope's Isidro (1599) had ten pieces of complimentary verse prefixed to it, and the Hermosura de Angelica (1602) had seven. Hartzenbusch remarks that Aristotle and Plato are the first authors quoted by Lope in the Peregrino en su Patrin (1604).
Who the two or three obliging friends may have been is not easy to say. Young Quevedo, who had just then taken his place in the front rank of the poets of the day, was, no doubt, one; Espinel may have been another; and Jauregui might have been the third. Cervantes had not many friends among the poets of the day. His friendships lay rather among those of the generation that was dying out when Don Quixote appeared.
