Cervantes, and of reflection in Shakspeare, which is the specific
difference between the Spanish and English characters of mind.

I. The nature and eminence of Symbolical writing;--

II. Madness, and its different sorts, (considered without pretension to
medical science);--

To each of these, or at least to my own notions respecting them, I must
devote a few words of explanation, in order to render the after critique
on Don Quixote, the master work of Cervantes' and his country's genius
easily and throughout intelligible. This is not the least valuable,
though it may most often be felt by us both as the heaviest and least
entertaining portion of these critical disquisitions: for without it, I
must have foregone one at least of the two appropriate objects of a
Lecture, that of interesting you during its delivery, and of leaving
behind in your minds the germs of after-thought, and the materials for
future enjoyment. To have been assured by several of my intelligent
auditors that they have reperused Hamlet or Othello with increased
satisfaction in consequence of the new points of view in which I had
placed those characters--is the highest compliment I could receive or
desire; and should the address of this evening open out a new source of
pleasure, or enlarge the former in your perusal of Don Quixote, it will
compensate for the failure of any personal or temporary object.

I. The Symbolical cannot, perhaps, be better defined in distinction from
the Allegorical, than that it is always itself a part of that, of the
whole of which it is the representative.--"Here comes a sail,"--(that
is, a ship) is a symbolical expression. "Behold our lion!" when we speak
of some gallant soldier, is allegorical. Of most importance to our