The History of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra pdf

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brown, spring out of the thicket with a goatherd after it, calling to it and uttering the usual cries to make it stop or turn back to the fold. The fugitive goat, scared and frightened, 

ran towards the company as if seeking their protection and then stood still, and the goatherd coming up seized it by the horns and began to talk to it as if it were possessed of reason and understanding: “Ah wanderer, wanderer, Spotty, Spotty; how have you gone limping all this time? What wolves have frightened you, my daughter? Won’t you tell me what is the matter, my beauty? But what else can it be except that you are a she, and cannot keep quiet? A plague on your humours and the humours of those you take after! Come back, come back, my darling; and if you will not be so happy, at any rate you will be safe in the fold or with your companions; for if you who ought to keep and lead them, go wandering astray, what will become of them?”

The goatherd’s talk amused all who heard it, but especially the canon, who said to him, “As you live, brother, take it easy, and be not in such a hurry to drive this goat back to the fold; for, being a female, as you say, she will follow her natural instinct in spite of all you can do to prevent it. Take this morsel and drink a sup, and that will soothe your irritation, and in the meantime the goat will rest herself,” and so saying, he handed him the loins of a cold rabbit on a fork.

The goatherd took it with thanks, and drank and calmed himself, and then said, “I should be sorry if your wo

Ebook Editor’s Note______________

The book cover and spine above and the images which follow were not part of

the original Ormsby translation—they are taken from the 1880 edition of J. W.

Clark, illustrated by Gustave Doré. Clark in his edition states that, “The English

text of ‘Don Quixote’ adopted in this edition is that of Jarvis, with occasional

corrections from Motteaux.” See in the introduction below John Ormsby’s

critique of both the Jarvis and Motteaux translations. It has been elected in the

present Project Gutenberg edition to attach the famous engravings of Gustave

Doré to the Ormsby translation instead of the Jarvis/Motteaux. 

The detail of

many of the Doré engravings can be fully appreciated only by utilizing the “Full

Size” button to expand them to their original dimensions. Ormsby in his Preface

has criticized the fanciful nature of Doré’s illustrations; others feel these

woodcuts and steel engravings well match Quixote’s dreams. D.W.

Four generations had laughed over “Don Quixote” before it occurred to

anyone to ask, who and what manner of man was this Miguel de Cervantes

Saavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too late for a satisfactory

answer to the question when it was proposed to add a life of the author to the

London edition published at Lord Carteret’s instance in 1738. All traces of the

personality of Cervantes had by that time disappeared. 

Any floating traditions

that may once have existed, transmitted from men who had known him, had long

since died out, and of other record there was none; for the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries were incurious as to “the men of the time,” a reproach

against which the nineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced no

Shakespeare or Cervantes. All that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task was

entrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, or Navarrete, could

do was to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes to himself in his various

prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidence bearing upon his life as they

could find.

This, however, has been done by the last-named biographer to such good

purpose that he has superseded all predecessors. Thoroughness is the chief

characteristic of Navarrete’s work. Besides sifting, testing, and methodising with

rare patience and judgment what had been previously brought to light, he left, as

the saying is, no stone unturned under which anything to illustrate his subject

might possibly be found. Navarrete has done all that industry and acumen could

do, and it is no fault of his if he has not given us what we want. 

What Hallam

says of Shakespeare may be applied to the almost parallel case of Cervantes: “It

is not the register of his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of

his name that we seek; no letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no

character of him drawn … by a contemporary has been produced.”

It is only natural, therefore, that the biographers of Cervantes, forced to make

brick without straw, should have recourse largely to conjecture, and that

conjecture should in some instances come by degrees to take the place of

established fact. 

All that I propose to do here is to separate what is matter of fact

from what is matter of conjecture, and leave it to the reader’s judgment to decide

whether the data justify the inference or not.