trait of personal individuality, he becomes a substantial living
allegory, or personification of the reason and the moral sense, divested
of the judgment and the understanding. Sancho is the converse. He is the
common sense without reason or imagination; and Cervantes not only shows
the excellence and power of reason in, Don Quixote, but in both him and
Sancho the mischiefs resulting from a severance of the two main
constituents of sound intellectual and moral action. Put him and his
master together, and they form a perfect intellect; but they are
separated and without cement; and hence each having a need of the other
for its own completeness, each has at times a mastery over the other.
For the common sense, although it may see the practical inapplicability
of the dictates of the imagination or abstract reason, yet cannot help
submitting to them. These two characters possess the world, alternately
and interchangeably the cheater and the cheated. To impersonate them,
and to combine the permanent with the individual, is one of the highest
creations of genius, and has been achieved by Cervantes and Shakspeare,
almost alone.



Observations on particular passages,


(B. I. c. 1.)
But not altogether approving of his having broken it to pieces with so
much ease, to secure himself from the like danger for the future, he
made it over again, fencing it with small bars of iron within, in such
a manner, 'that he rested satisfied of its strength; and without
caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and looked upon
it as a most excellent helmet.'