Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/56

 xlvi they were put forward by Cervantes in all good faith and full confidence in their merits. The reader, however, was not to suppose they were his last word or final effort in the drama, for he had in hand a comedy called "Engaño á los ojos," about which, if he mistook not, there would be no question.

Of this dramatic masterpiece the world has had no opportunity of judging; his health had been failing for some time, and he died, apparently of dropsy, on the 23d of April, 1616, the day on which England lost Shakespeare, nominally at least, for the English calendar had not yet been reformed.

He died as he had lived, accepting his lot bravely and cheerfully. His dedication of the "Persiles and Sigismunda" to the Conde de Lemos is notable among recorded death-bed words for its simple unaffected serenity. He could wish, he says, that the opening line of the old ballad, "One foot in the stirrup already," did not serve so aptly to begin his letter with; they had given him the extreme unction the day before, his time was now short, his pains were growing greater, his hopes growing less; still he would gladly live a little longer to welcome his benefactor back to Spain; but if that might not be, Heaven's will be done. And then, the ruling passion asserting itself, he goes on to talk of his unfinished works, "The Weeks of the Garden," the famous "Bernardo," the conclusion of the "Galatea" that his Excellency liked so much; all which he would complete should Heaven prolong his life, which now could only be by a miracle.

Was it an unhappy life, that of Cervantes? His biographers all tell us that it was; but I must say I doubt it. It was a hard life, a life of poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, of disappointment, but Cervantes carried within himself the antidote to all these evils. His was not one of those light natures that rise above adversity merely by virtue of their own buoyancy; it was in the fortitude of a high spirit that he was proof against it. It is impossible to conceive Cervantes giving way to despondency or prostrated by dejection. As for poverty, it was with him a thing to be laughed over, and the only sigh he ever allows to escape him is when he says, "Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of breap for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself." Add to all this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless invention and sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough to doubt whether his could have been a