Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/80

 lxx That unsmiling gravity of which Cervantes was the first great master, "Cervantes' serious air," which sits naturally on Swift alone, perhaps, of later humorists, is essential to this kind of humor, and here again Cervantes has suffered at the hands of his interpreters. Nothing, unless indeed the coarse buffoonery of Phillips, could be more out of place in an attempt to represent Cervantes, than a flippant, would-be facetious style, like that of Motteux's version for example, or the sprightly, jaunty air, French translators sometimes adopt. It is the grave matter-of-factness of the narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is saying anything ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, that give its peculiar flavor to the humor of Cervantes. His, in fact, is the exact opposite of the humor of Sterne and the self-conscious humorist. Even when Uncle Toby is at his best, you are always aware of "the man Sterne" behind him, watching you over his shoulder to see what effect he is producing. Cervantes always leaves you alone with Don Quixote and Sancho. He and Swift and the great humorists always keep themselves out of sight, or, more properly speaking, never think about themselves at all, unlike our latter-day school of humorists, who seem to have revived the old horse-collar method, and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque assumption of ignorance, imbecility, or bad taste.

It is true that to do full justice to Spanish humor in any other language is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and a sonorous stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that make an absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most preposterous statement. This is what makes Sancho Panza's drollery the despair of the conscientious translator. Sancho's curt comments can never fall flat, but they lose half their flavor when transferred from their native Castilian into any other medium. But if foreigners have failed to do justice to the humor of Cervantes, they are no worse than his own countrymen. Indeed, were it not for the Spanish peasant's hearty relish of "Don Quixote," one might be tempted to think that the great humorist was not looked upon as a humorist at all in his own country. Any one knowing nothing of Cervantes, and dipping into the extensive exegetical literature that has grown up of late years round him and his works, would infallibly carry away the idea that he was one of the most obscure writers that ever spoiled paper, that if he had a meaning his chief endeavor was to