Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/64

 liv suppose, saw nothing improbable in the Archbishop of Toledo making a protégé of the man that according to them had ridiculed and satirized his brother. Other suggestions were that Cervantes meant Charles V., Philip II., Ignatius Loyola; while those who were not prepared to go so far as to declare the whole book to be a political satire, applied their ingenuity to the discovery of allusions to the events and personages of the day in almost every incident of the story. It became, in short, a kind of pastime with literary idlers to go a mare's-nesting in "Don Quixote," and hunt for occult significations in the bill of ass-colts delivered to Sancho Panza, the decision on the pack-saddle and basin question, the names and arms of the chieftains in the encounter with the sheep, or wherever the ordinary reader in his simplicity flattered himself that the author's drift was unmistakable. In fact, to believe these scholiasts, Cervantes was the prince of cryptographers, and "Don Quixote" a tissue of riddles from beginning to end.

The pursuit has evidently attractions inexplicable to the uninitiated, but perhaps its facility may have something to do with its charm, for in truth nothing is easier than to prove one's self wiser than the rest of the world in this way. All that is necessary is to assert dogmatically that by A the author means B, and that when he says "black" he means "white." If some future commentator chooses to say that "Pickwick" is an "emblematic history" of Lord Melbourne; that Jingle, with his versatility, audacity, and volubility, is meant for Lord Brougham; Sam Weller for Sydney Smith, the faithful joker of the Whig party; and Mr. Pickwick's mishap on the ice for Lord Melbourne's falling through from insufficient support in 1834; and that he is a blockhead who offers to believe otherwise; who shall say him nay? It will be impossible to confute him, save by calling up Charles Dickens from his grave in Westminster Abbey.

According to others, there are philosophical ideas of a startling kind to be found in abundance in "Don Quixote" by those who choose to look for them, ideas that show Cervantes to have been far in advance of his time. The precise nature of these ideas is in general rather vaguely intimated; though, to be sure, in one instance it is claimed for Cervantes that he anticipated Descartes. "Don Quixote," it will be remembered, on awaking in the cave of Montesinos was at first doubtful of his own identity, but on feeling himself all over and observing