Don Quixote - Part I

In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere

continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to

it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man

could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having lost his

hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless,

accuses him of envy of Lope's success, of petulance and querulousness,

and so on; and it was in this that the sting lay. Avellaneda's reason for

this personal attack is obvious enough. Whoever he may have been, it is

clear that he was one of the dramatists of Lope's school, for he has the

impudence to charge Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his

criticism on the drama. His identification has exercised the best critics

and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear

on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes

knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an

invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a

mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language

pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself,

supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an

ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably.

Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is too dull

to reflect much. "Dull and dirty" will always be, I imagine, the verdict

of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers. He is, at best, a poor

plagiarist; all he can do is to follow slavishly the lead given him by

Cervantes; his only humour lies in making Don Quixote take inns for

castles and fancy himself some legendary or historical personage, and

Sancho mistake words, invert proverbs, and display his gluttony; all

through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has

contrived to introduce two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth

century novellieri and without their sprightliness.

But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget the debt

we owe them. But for them, there can be no doubt, "Don Quixote" would

have come to us a mere torso instead of a complete work. Even if

Cervantes had finished the volume he had in hand, most assuredly he would

have left off with a promise of a Third Part, giving the further

adventures of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza as shepherds. It is

plain that he had at one time an intention of dealing with the pastoral

romances as he had dealt with the books of chivalry, and but for

Avellaneda he would have tried to carry it out. But it is more likely

that, with his plans, and projects, and hopefulness, the volume would

have remained unfinished till his death, and that we should have never

made the acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess, or gone with Sancho to

Barataria.