Page:Don Quixote (Cervantes, Ormsby) Volume 1.djvu/81

 Rh keep it to himself, and that whatever gifts he may have possessed, humor was most certainly not one of them. The craze of Don Quixote seems, in some instances, to have communicated itself to his critics, making them see things that are not in the book, and run full tilt at phantoms that have no existence save in their own imaginations. Like a good many critics nowadays, they forget that screams are not criticism, and that it is only vulgar tastes that are influenced by strings of superlatives, three-piled hyperboles, and pompous epithets. But what strikes one as particularly strange is that while they deal in extravagant eulogies, and ascribe all manner of imaginary ideas and qualities to Cervantes, they show no perception of the quality that ninety-nine out of a hundred of his readers would rate highest in him, and hold to be the one that raises him above all rivalry. If they are not actually insensible to his humor, they probably regard it as a quality which their own dignity as well as his will not allow them to recognize, and I am inclined to suspect that this feeling has as much to do with their bitterness against Clemencin, as his temerity in venturing to point out faults in the god of their idolatry. Clemencin, if not the only one, is one of the few Spanish critics or commentators who show a genuine and hearty enjoyment of the humor of "Don Quixote." Again and again, as he is growling over Cervantes' laxities of grammar and construction, he has to lay down his pen, and wipe his eyes that are brimming over at some drollery or naïveté of Sancho's, and it may well be that this frivolous behavior is regarded with the utmost contempt by men so intensely in earnest as the Cervantistas.

To speak of "Don Quixote" as if it were merely a humorous book, would be a manifest misdescription. Cervantes, at times, makes it a kind of commonplace book for occasional essays and criticisms, or for the observations and reflections and gathered wisdom of a long and stirring life. It is a mine of shrewd observation on mankind and human nature. Among modern novels there may be, here and there, more elaborate studies of character, but there is no book richer in individualized character. What Coleridge said of Shakespeare in minimis is true of Cervantes; he never, even for the most temporary purpose, puts forward a lay figure. There is life and individuality in all his characters, however little they may have to do, or however short a time they may