witty nor more unjust; but it is true that the greatest Spanish book is
that in which the author does mock at many other Spanish books. Cervantes
wrote his _Don Quixote_ to ridicule the romances of chivalry which in his
land were a craze among the townsfolk and smaller aristocratic
landowners, but he wrote in no spirit of animosity and even reserved for
his comic hero, that is, for his victim, a discreet sympathy which he
made his reader share. A hero of chivalry himself, warrior with
indomitable courage, thrice wounded at the battle of Lepanto, where he
lost an arm, seven years in captivity in Algiers, on his return to Spain
he became involved in adventures which again consigned him to prison
before he at length attained success, if not fortune, with _Don Quixote_.
_Don Quixote_ is a realistic romance traversed by a frenzied idealist:
here are the manners of the populace, of innkeepers, muleteers,
galley-slaves, monks, petty traders, peasants, and amid them passes a man
who views the entire world as a romance and who believes he finds romance
at every turn of his road. This perpetual contrast is, first, effective
and supremely artistic in itself, then is of a reality superior to that
of any realism, since it is the complete life of humanity which is thus
painted and penetrated to its very foundations and shown in all its
aspects. There are two portions to this romance, and they are constantly
near each other and, as it were, interlaced; namely, the episodes and the
conversations. The episodes, comic incidents, humorous or sentimental
adventures are of infinite variety and display incredible imagination;
the conversations between Don Quixote and his faithful Sancho represent
the two tendencies of the human mind to recognise on the one side, the
goodness, generosity, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, and the
illusions; on the other side, common sense, the sense of reality, the
sense of the just mean and, as it were, the proverbial reason, without
malice or bitterness. This masterpiece is perhaps the one for which
would have had to be invented the epithet of _inexhaustible_.