The heroic captive and soldier by degrees despaired of rising to eminence through the profession of arms, and began to think of some other means by which to live comfortably in his own day, and to hand down his name with honour to posterity.

In the midst of these meditations, Cervantes proceeded to Lisbon on private business, and resided there for some time. During this period, he became acquainted with a Portuguese lady, by whom he had a daughter. Why this connection did not end in marriage, is nowhere explained. She seems to have been a highly respectable person, and to have made a deep and lasting impression on the mind of her lover. But there would appear to have existed some insurmountable obstacle to their union. Cervantes, therefore, returned to Spain, taking along with him his little daughter, Doña Isabella de Saavedra, who ever afterwards lived in his house. To despatch all his love-affairs at once, we may here state, that some years afterwards he married a Spanish lady, who shared with him all the calamity and poverty of his life. With this woman he resided successively at Esquivias and Valladolid.

We now arrive at that period in the life of Cervantes in which he made a complete transition from one of the opposite poles of social existence to the other. Arms and letters were in old times commonly enough associated, but in these latter ages of the world the pen and the sword, if not antagonistic, have generally eschewed all intimate association. Soldiers know little how to write; while the servant of the Muses is generally eager to escape from the noise, frivolity, and vices of the camp. But Cervantes, throughout his active career, while following the standard of Don Juan of Austria, in the prisons of Algiers, and in the fascinating society of Lisbon, never wholly lost sight of his original love of literature; for it will be remembered, that in the very opening scenes of his youth, the love of books absorbed him entirely. The cultivation of the intellect was carried on at that period in Spain after a very peculiar fashion. Barbarism, which still lingers in the Peninsula, was then irresistibly predominant; but predominant in conjunction with energy, enterprise, and the effervescence of original thought. The great classic authors exercised a powerful influence, and produced numerous imitations. The imitations, however, were not servile, but exhibited a freedom and a vivacity, united, no doubt, with extreme quaintness, which scarcely any literature of a later period has equalled. Cervantes, when he began to write, fell quite naturally into the taste of his age, which leaned towards pastoral poetry and romance; extravagant in conception, though often in execution extremely polished and refined. Most of these productions passed out of sight with the age which produced them. They were calculated to amuse their contemporaries, but were too local, and bore too completely the stamp of a particular period, to suit the relish of succeeding generations.

Unfortunately, no exact picture has been left us of the life led

by the literary men of those days in Spain. Thomas Roscoe, in his Life of Cervantes, has done much towards throwing light on the manners and studies of the period, and it is to be hoped he may yet be induced to go again over the ground, and finish what he has so ably commenced. Meanwhile it is certain, that few of those who then wrote were mere recluse students. They mingled freely with the world, whose character and manners they desired to describe; they travelled; they fought by sea and land; they entered upon the career of political ambition; they rivalled the doctors of theology in the church; and when they sat down, therefore, to write, it was with minds filled by experience, and rendered capacious by an enlarged intercourse with mankind. Yet we must not exaggerate the advantages of such a state of things. What authors gained on one hand, they lost on the other. The art of writing is the most difficult which the intellect of man has ever attempted for the advantage of the human race. It asks the whole mind, the whole energy, and the entire love of those who cultivate it.

'Desire of fame the noble mind doth raise,

To scorn delights and live laborious days.'

The furnishing of the mind with ideas is a more difficult process than we are apt to believe. It is not men of the world who best understand the world; but men of study, who calmly look down upon it from the lofty heights of speculation. The others are actors, these are spectators; the others, consequently, are too busy to observe, while of the latter, observation is nearly the only business. Then comes the art itself-the translating of ideas into words, the grouping, the painting, the colouring of thought, with all those fascinating and marvellous contrivances by which the most fleeting of all essences is fixed, and invested with indestructible durability.

The contemporaries of Cervantes were comparatively ignorant of this art of arts; but he, through superior sagacity, gradually made the discovery, that an author is rendered immortal or otherwise by his style, which he fits like an impenetrable coat of armour about his ideas. He felt also, no doubt, how absurd it would be to put such a coat of mail on anything too weak to bear it, and laboured to develop his thoughts to the proportions which nature designed them to possess.

In the year 1585, Cervantes married at Esquivias a lady whose name was much more considerable than her fortune; but, with the generosity natural to all children of the Muses, he preferred beauty to gold, and elegance of manners to extent of domains. The lady rejoiced in the appellation of Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozniediano, and was descended, we are told, from two distinguished families, which, like many others, had tried to live upon their distinction till very little else was left them. uncle, however, bestowed upon Catalina one-tenth of his property, which proves him not to have been rich, since her portion

Her

amounted to no more than 100 ducats. But Cervantes was opulent in his feelings and affections. He loved the lady whom he had espoused, and with her, as with untold treasures, he removed to Madrid, where he doubted not he should speedily acquire both fame and riches. Experience by degrees had taught him that fame, even with men of the greatest merit, is often of slow growth. He became acquainted with the literary celebrities of his day, who were in the praiseworthy habit of augmenting each other's reputation by friendly sonnets and redondillas. The effect of these was like the circle made by throwing a stone into water-at first small and insignificant, but spreading continually, till it at length embraced the whole kingdom of Spain.

At that time it became the fashion in Italy to found academies for encouraging the cultivation of literature. Society had not then learned to dread the consequences of exciting the popular intellect. Nobles and grandees felt they derived honour from associating with the lords of thought, and were not ashamed to confess it, which proved them to be in possession of some elements at least of true greatness. But it may perhaps be doubted whether letters or the professors of them derived all the advantages which might have been made to flow from the institutions to which we have alluded. Still much good was certainly done, because a mental elegance was then infused into Italian society, which, after the lapse of 300 years, has not yet entirely disappeared. From Italy the passion for establishing academies passed into Spain, where an association of poets and learned men was formed in the latter portion of the sixteenth century, of which it is presumed Cervantes was a member. But as many heroes who flourished before Agamemnon were swallowed up remorselessly by oblivion, because they had no Homer to pour an immortal blaze of glory upon their names, so the deeds done, the suppers eaten, and the witty and elegant things uttered by the members of the Spanish academy, have perished utterly, because none undertook in time to chronicle them for the benefit of posterity. The authors of those days resembled in no respect the French writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who have left us, embalmed in delightful memoirs, ten thousand things which would scarcely be thought worth remembering if they were not invested with brilliance by practised and polished pens. Literature in Spain, as in England, seems as a rule to have invariably led to poverty, and therefore the professors of it were little induced to dwell with anything like pleasure on the history of their own struggles. All their arts and energies were exhausted in the endeavour to live, especially when they happened, as they generally did, to depend for success on the caprices of the court.

Cervantes may almost be said to have commenced his career as a regular author with the pastoral romance of Galatea, in which he is supposed to have celebrated his own love for the lady of the

long name, who is the heroine of the piece. Several of his literary friends figure among the other characters, and doubtless he himself is the principal hero. But this is not at all a peculiar circumstance. The Galatea, however, is so little known out of Spain, except by the pretty imitation of Florian, that it is quite unnecessary to enter into any detailed criticism of it. It may be more to the purpose to advert to his dramatic performances, which about this period of his life followed each other in rapid succession. Previous to his time, an extraordinary degree of barbarism prevailed upon the Spanish stage, which resembled neither that of the Greeks nor that of modern times. The pieces called eclogues, dialogues, or colloquies, were substituted for tragedies and comedies; and little art or ingenuity appears to have been displayed in the conduct of the story, for plot, properly speaking, there was none. Still, the writers persisted in spinning out these performances to the length of five acts, to their own great discomfort, and to the positive annoyance of the public. The author of Don Quixote, who makes so many just observations on the laws which should regulate the theatre, commenced his dramatic career in the character of a reformer. He determined to introduce greater vivacity and more poetic splendour into the plays of his age. In some respects, also, he may be said to have shewn superior regard for nature and probability; but while he was building up with one hand, he was in some sense pulling down with the other; because, by entering upon the field of morals and allegory, he communicated an inexpressibly insipid character to dramatic exhibitions. Authors sometimes are tempted to write against the bent of their natural genius, in obedience to the spirit of the times. They think more of what will suit the public, than of what will best harmonise with their own genius. Cervantes is an illustration of this truth. The idiosyncrasies of his mind were essentially undramatic, as he ran naturally into description, not into impersonation. He loved detail, with minute and graphic touches, and was inclined to indulge in luxuriant developments, while the drama is concentrated, condensed, and abounding in rapid energy. Yet as the pieces of Cervantes were an improvement on those of his predecessors, he was for awhile popular, until his example awakened the slumbering fire in the breast of a greater poet-Lope de Vegawhose plays were afterwards so familiar to Doña Inez, that if actor missed his part, she could have served him for the prompter's copy. Besides, to say the truth, Cervantes was not naturally a poet. His mind was observing, discursive, full of humour, and inclined to luxury of illustration, but he could not convert his observations into living principles; his thoughts, when fused, did not run naturally into metaphors; he was wanting in that flashing power which, like lightning, pervades the whole world of ideas, and quickens them into life. Neither did he excel in the invention of dramatic characters or incidents. His persons of the drama declaim rather than act, and tell stories instead of giving efficacy

any

to their own determinations and passions. When a true master of the stage, therefore, arose, Cervantes was almost ignominiously banished; and as authorship then, as now, seldom inclined or enabled men to practise economy with success, he soon found himself in debt and difficulties.

Now came a proof of the flexibility and vigour of Cervantes's character. He really loved literature for its own sake, and had fortune vouchsafed him the slightest independence, would have pursued it cheerfully in a garret. But even the garret could not be secured to him by his devotion at the shrine of the Muses; and as he sincerely loved his wife, with all those whom nature had made dependent upon him, he resolved to make the bitterest of all sacrifices to one thinking as he thought and felt, and gave up literature for a petty employment in the provinces. Some endeavours have been made to invest his new position with imaginary importance; but it was very much to him what the Excise office was to Burns-a misery and a degradation-although he bore up with superior manliness and dignity against the torrent of reflections which it must have inspired. The office he held it is somewhat difficult to describe. Antoine de Guevara, a man who would now be utterly unknown but for his connection with Cervantes, having been appointed commissary-general, shewed his respect for his distinguished countryman in the best way he could, by appointing him one of his four subordinates under the name of commissioner. The duties of the office consisted in receiving and laying out money in the purchase of stores and provisions for the fleets and armaments of the Indies. In the exercise of these functions, it was necessary for Cervantes to travel through Andalucia and the neighbouring provinces, which enabled him to observe frequently and at leisure the manners and customs of the inhabitants, which in those days were still more peculiar than they are now. During these excursions, he heard likewise innumerable anecdotes, stories, and legends, which he naturally treasured up in his capacious memory; witnessed striking traits of character, and prepared himself in other ways to produce, at a future period, the most original picture ever drawn of the idiosyncrasies of a semibarbarous nation. Still, though he derived such advantages from his position, the position itself was by no means agreeable or flattering. It required unremitting attention, and appears to have absorbed entirely both his time and energies. In such occupations, opportunities may no doubt be found for amusement and personal enjoyment, for dissipation and frivolity, for cultivating ordinary friendships, and performing all the usual duties of domestic life. For the taste and intellect little can be done. There can be no continuous study, no profound meditation, no long solitary hours devoted to the mechanism of style, to the invention of plots, to the delineation of sentiments, or to the development of original theories. Accordingly, Cervantes was soon disgusted with his new manner of life, as may be certainly