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 xliv reason for taking the book up and proving it meritorious; and this he did in an edition in 1732, in which he showed that it was on the whole a superior work to the genuine "Don Quixote." The originality of this view—not that it was original, for Le Sage had said much the same—so charmed M. Germond de Lavigne that he produced in 1853 a French translation with a preface and notes, wherein he not only maintained that in humor, taste, invention, and truth to nature, Cervantes was surpassed by Avellaneda; but pointed out several passages to prove that he had borrowed ideas from a book that most likely did not exist at the time, and that most certainly he had not seen or heard of. All this of course is intelligible, but not so that a sound Spanish scholar and critic like the late Vicente Salva should have said, that if Cervantes' "Don Quixote" were not in existence Avellaneda's would be the best novel in the language; which (not to speak of the absurdity of putting it before "Lazarillo de Tormes," "Guzman de Alfarache," Quevedo's "Gran Tacaño," Isla's "Fray Gerundio de Campazas") is like saying that if there were no sun, the moon would be the brightest body in the heavens. Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is too dull to reflect much. "Dull and dirty" will always by, 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 humor 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; tales that even Le Sage and M. de Lavigne did not dare to reproduce as they found them.

But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we much not forget the deby 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 Park, giving the further adventures of Don Quixote and humors 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