Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/93

Of a Manchegan gentleman
Thy purpose is to tell the story,
Relating how he lost his wits
O'er idle tales of love and glory,
Of "ladies, arms, and cavaliers:"^[1]
A new Orlando Furioso—
Innamorato, rather—who
Won Dulcinea del Toboso.

Put no vain emblems on thy shield;
All figures—that is bragging play.^[2]
A modest dedication make.
And give no scoffer room to say,
"What! Álvaro de Luna here?
Or is it Hannibal again?
Or does King Francis at Madrid
Once more of destiny complain?"^[3]

Since Heaven it hath not pleased on thee
Deep erudition to bestow.
Or black Latino's gift of tongues,^[4]
No Latin let thy pages show.
Ape not philosophy or wit,
Lest one who can not comprehend,
Make a wry face at thee and ask,
"Why offer flowers to me, my friend?"

1. "Le donne, i cavalieri, l'arme, gli amori"—Orlando Furioso, i. 1. This is one of many proofs that the Orlando of Ariosto was one of the sources from which Cervantes borrowed.
2. "Figures," i.e. picture cards. The allusion to vain emblems on the shield is a sly hit at Lope de Vega, whose portrait in the Arcadia, and again in the Rimas (1602), has underneath it a shield bearing nine castles surrounded by an orle with ten more.
3. This refers to the querulous and egotistic tone in which dedications were often written. Álvaro de Luna was the Constable of Castile and favorite of John II., beheaded at Valladolid in 1450. Francis I. of France was kept a prisoner at Madrid by Charles V. for a year after the battle of Pavia. The last four lines of the stanza are almost verbatim from verses by Fray Domingo de Guzman written as a gloss upon some lines carved by the poet Fray Luis de Leon on the wall of his cell in Valladolid, where he was imprisoned by the Inquisition.
4. Juan Latino, a self-educated negro slave in the household of the Duke of Sesa, who gave him his freedom. He was for sixty years Professor of Rhetoric and Latin at Granada, where he died in 1573.