has stepped forth straight from the pages of the Spanish novel. This story has also had the doubtful honour of being dramatised for the French stage in 1639 by Jean de Rotrou, under the title of Les Deux Pucelles. Once more, Fletcher, who in The Chances has followed La Señora Cornelia, in Rule a Wife and have a Wife has drawn upon El Casamiento Engañoso. It is no small tribute to Cervantes' richness of invention, to the triumphant, inexhaustible fertility of his resource, his incalculable wealth of design, his redundant amplitude of ideas, that one of the mighty twin-brethren of the golden period of the English drama should have found in him a source of inspiration, so strong, so deep, so continuous and abiding, towards magnificent achievement. Across the wide, estranging gulfs of time, and despite all differences of race and language, the author of the Novelas Ejemplares and the lesser of our superb Dioscuri clasp hands. There were giants in the earth in those days. Eripitur persona, manet res. CHAPTER VIII. THE VIAJE DEL PARNASO. Was hilft es, viel von Stimmung reden? Gebt ihr euch einmal für Poeten, So commandirt die Poesie. FAUST, Vorspiel auf dem Theater. No sooner were the Novelas Ejemplares before the public than the indefatigable veteran was at work again. The Perugian Cesare Caporali, Il Stemperato, had died some twelve or thirteen years earlier, leaving behind him his Viaggio di Parnaso, a burlesque poem in terza rima, modelled after Berni, the pattern of all the secondary artists of his generation. The Italian poem of 1582 had come into the hands of Cervantes, and had suggested to him a Viaje del Parnaso which should be of a peculiarly local, Spanish type. The Coro Febeo de Romances Historiales had probably afforded a similar trouvaille to his receptive mind. Caporali's leading idea is retained, but the treatment of the theme is in many respects the writer's own. It had always been the day-dream of Cervantes to be considered, in his own phrase, Poeta ilustre ó al menos manifico. The unexampled success of Don Quixote, and the very considerable vogue of the Novelas, had apparently brought his name into notice with the widow of Alonso Martín and the other publishers of Madrid, sufficiently at least to induce them to consider with favour his proposal of a poetic satire. On ne saura jamais combien les marchands de la pensée et de l'écriture des autres, sont bêtes. The Tassa of the poem is dated September 17, 1614, and probably the book reached the public a few weeks later. In the initial lines, the obligations of the writer to his Perugian predecessor are gracefully acknowledged in a passage which contains a half-reminiscence of Rocinante. The description of Caporali's mule Corta de vista, aunque de cola larga, seems taken from an imagination in which the memory of Don Quixote's immortal steed played no common part. There is, then, a confession, half-earnest, halfjesting, but wholly pathetic, of that misplaced desire which for so long a time led the writer to conceive that poetry, pure and simple, was his vocation. siempre trabajo y me desvelo Por parecer que tengo de poeta La gracia, que no quiso darme el cielo. . . . de There are reflections on the proverbial poverty of poets, and an ironical farewell to Madrid, the centre and focus of all human greatness. Then we have a bantering reference to the theatres, the doors of which, closed upon the author of Don Quixote, are open to the commonest pretenders. Adiós, teatros públicos, honrados Por la ignorancia que ensalzada veo And finally there is the inevitable introduction of Don John and his heróica hazaña. Beyond Carthage, the wandering bard falls in with Mercury, who hails him Adán de los poetas, compliments him on being one of Apollo's elect, and tells him that the enthusiasm with which his works are received move the envy of the base. The poet boards the galley of the fleet-footed god, describing in an "ingenious" passage a barque wherein the port-holes are formed of glosas, after the famous model, La bella mal maridada The bank of oars is made up of fleet Romances; the poop is beaten out of sonnets good and bad; the stroke oars consist of synchronous tercets; the gangway of a doleful elegy, with its linked sweetness only too long drawn out; the murmuring parrals of swift redondillas, id the rigging of light seguidillas. In this fantastic Oreon, Apollo summons from every part of Spain the bards who hold his name in fealty-Yangüeses, Vizcaínos, and Coritos, all. Then the long roll-call, a tedious repetition of the Canto de Caliope, begins. It is for the most part dreary reading. The few distinguished names are borne down by the disastrous avalanche of illustrious nobodies. Who to-day reads the immortal works of Francisco de Calatayud, Félix Arias, or Antonio de Monroy? Who knows or cares whether they ever published a line? Here and there we meet with a happy touch. The venomous Góngora is pleasantly bantered under the style of aquel agradable, aquel bienquisto, and Cabrera de Córdoba, the useful Dryasdust of the day, is ironically classed with Tacitus. The faults of Espinel (and they were by no means small) are passed by with indulgence, and a grateful friendship for the actor Morales is recorded in the phrase, asilo Adonde se repara mi ventura. The obsequious tone in which Cervantes speaks of the works of such grandees as the Conde de Salinas, the Príncipe de Esquilache, the Condes de Salbaña and Villamediana-some of them writers undoubtedly of real merit, but by no means of the first order-testifies to the general consideration enjoyed, the reverential awe inspired, by noblemen in days when it was almost worth while to be a professional aristocrat. The kindly, natural side of the writer's genius is manifested in the gorgeous eulogy of a fifth phoenix, the Marqués de |