"For, how could you expect me not to feel uneasy about what that ancient

lawgiver they call the Public will say when it sees me, after slumbering

so many years in the silence of oblivion, coming out now with all my

years upon my back, and with a book as dry as a rush, devoid of

invention, meagre in style, poor in thoughts, wholly wanting in learning

and wisdom, without quotations in the margin or annotations at the end,

after the fashion of other books I see, which, though all fables and

profanity, are so full of maxims from Aristotle, and Plato, and the whole

herd of philosophers, that they fill the readers with amazement and

convince them that the authors are men of learning, erudition, and

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eloquence. And then, when they quote the Holy Scriptures!--anyone would

say they are St. Thomases or other doctors of the Church, observing as

they do a decorum so ingenious that in one sentence they describe a

distracted lover and in the next deliver a devout little sermon that it

is a pleasure and a treat to hear and read. Of all this there will be

nothing in my book, for I have nothing to quote in the margin or to note

at the end, and still less do I know what authors I follow in it, to

place them at the beginning, as all do, under the letters A, B, C,

beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis,

though one was a slanderer and the other a painter. Also my book must do

without sonnets at the beginning, at least sonnets whose authors are

dukes, marquises, counts, bishops, ladies, or famous poets. Though if I

were to ask two or three obliging friends, I know they would give me

them, and such as the productions of those that have the highest

reputation in our Spain could not equal.

"In short, my friend," I continued, "I am determined that Senor Don

Quixote shall remain buried in the archives of his own La Mancha until

Heaven provide some one to garnish him with all those things he stands in

need of; because I find myself, through my shallowness and want of

learning, unequal to supplying them, and because I am by nature shy and

careless about hunting for authors to say what I myself can say without

them. Hence the cogitation and abstraction you found me in, and reason

enough, what you have heard from me."

Hearing this, my friend, giving himself a slap on the forehead and

breaking into a hearty laugh, exclaimed, "Before God, Brother, now am I

disabused of an error in which I have been living all this long time I

have known you, all through which I have taken you to be shrewd and

sensible in all you do; but now I see you are as far from that as the

heaven is from the earth. It is possible that things of so little moment

and so easy to set right can occupy and perplex a ripe wit like yours,

fit to break through and crush far greater obstacles? By my faith, this

comes, not of any want of ability, but of too much indolence and too

little knowledge of life. Do you want to know if I am telling the truth?

Well, then, attend to me, and you will see how, in the opening and

shutting of an eye, I sweep away all your difficulties, and supply all

those deficiencies which you say check and discourage you from bringing

before the world the story of your famous Don Quixote, the light and

mirror of all knight-errantry."




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