amid a brilliant, new generation, those last years of Cervantes' life are pregnant with sombre, sinister suggestion. His golden locks time hath to silver turned; O time too swift! O swiftness never ceasing! His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms; And feed on prayers which are old age's alms. But his rich humour cheered him on. His incomparable irony, his vast sense of the opulence of existence, his amused appreciation of the many-sided aspect of things, lit up his squalid life with radiance. In his bare cell, left to his own reflexions on a mournful, diverting, adorable, odious world, the noble veteran was assured of his own immortality. The papilionaceous courtiers, the worldlywise of his own contemporaries, not knowing the keen eye which pierced through their petty absurdities, smiled at the honourable inflexibility, the courtly, patient amenity, the gracious, reticent urbanity, the noble poverty of the simple, gray-haired prætorian, without ever suspecting that the object of their cheap sneers, halting painfully onwards, shivering and cloakless appreciative spirit. Cp. e.g. the allusions in "La Banda y la Flor" (Act I. sc. i.), "Los empeños de un acaso" (Act I. sc. vii.), "El maestro de danzar" (Act I. sc. i.), "El Alcalde de Zalamea" (Act I. sc. iii.), and "Casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar" (Act I. sc. v.). Tirso de Molina's references are always friendly too. Cp. "El Castigo de Penseque" (Act I. sc. x.) and "Marta la piadosa" (Act I. sc. v.). in the glacial winter air, was after all one of the finest gentlemen in the whole world. But those who knew him better would have agreed with posterity that it was impossible to rise without edification from the study of a life and character which, with all their many blemishes and infirmities, are so rich in genius and pathos, so chequered by stern vicissitude, so sanctified by disillusioning trial, so fulfilled of strenuous battle, of lofty aims, of sustained purpose, of valiant, plenary, persistent, and superb endeavour. He dicho! |