Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/60

 l "DON QUIXOTE."

editions of the First Part of "Don Quixote" had, as we have seen, already appeared before Cervantes died, thirty thousand copies in all, according to his own estimate, and a tenth was printed at Barcelona the year after his death. Of the Second Part, five had been published by the middle of the same year. So large a number naturally supplied the demand for some time, but by 1634 it appears to have been exhausted; and from that time down to the present day the stream of editions has continued to flow rapidly and regularly. The translations show still more clearly in what request the book has been from the very outset. Shelton's seems to have been made as early as 1607 or 1608; Oudin's, the first French one, in 1616; the first German in 1621, and Franciosini's Italian version in 1622; so that in seven years from the completion of the work it had been translated into the four leading languages of Europe. How translations and editions of translations multiplied as time went on will be seen by a glance at the list given in the Appendix, necessarily incomplete as it is. Except the Bible, in fact, no book has been so widely diffused as "Don Quixote." The "Imitatio Christi" may have been translated into as many different languages, and perhaps "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" into nearly as many, but in multiplicity of translations and editions "Don Quixote" leaves them all far behind.

Still more remarkable is the character of this wide diffusion. "Don Quixote" has been thoroughly naturalized among people whose ideas about knight-errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest, who had never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could not possibly feel the humor of the burlesque or sympathize with the author's purpose. Another curious fact is that this, the most cosmopolitan book in the world, is one of the most intensely national. "Manon Lescaut" is not more thoroughly French, "Tom Jones" not more English, "Rob Roy" not more Scotch, than "Don Quixote" is Spanish, in character, in ideas, in sentiment, in local color, in everything. What, then, is the secret of this unparalleled popularity, increasing year by year for well-nigh three centuries? One explanation, no doubt, is that of all the books in the world, "Don Quixote" is the most catholic. There is