Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/70

 40 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS obtaining a heavy ransom. He was sentenced to be imprisoned in a place called the Baths. The Moorish dungeons had three depths of caverns, like under- ground granaries. In mockery of the light of heaven, there was one small win- dow, and that was crossed with iron bars. The sun and air never entered this awful place. The only sights were harrowing ; the only company was that of convicts, thieves, murderers, and the lowest Moorish rabble ; and the sounds and voices, mixed with blasphemies and oaths, were re-echoed as if from the vaults of the dead. Every sense was outraged by the accumulation of horrors that com- bined to disgust and horrify. Hunger, nakedness, thirst, heat, damp, and cold, all combined to swell the catalogue of their miseries and their woes. We can easily picture the sufferings of Cervantes, whose captivity was as severe as it was possible even for his Algerian master to make it. No wonder that a man so full of energy as Cervantes should try again and again to escape from his infernal captivity. On four occasions he was on the point of being impaled, hanged, or burned alive for his daring attempts to liberate himself and his unfortunate com- rades. But, of all the enterprises which entered the imagination of this fearless soldier, the most generous, noble, and remarkable, as regarded its consequences, made too at a period when Europe trembled at the clank of the Ottoman chains, was that of rising upon their tyrants and destroying them in the very stronghold of their cruelty and their power. There is the best authority for believing that, if the good fortune of Cervantes had been equal to his courage, perseverance, and skill, the city of Algiers would have been taken by the Christians ; for his bold and resolute project aimed at no less a result. Moreover, if he had not been sold and betrayed by those who un- dertook to assist him in his grand and noble undertaking to liberate the captives of so many lands his own captivity might have proved a fortunate event. At last Cervantes returned to Spain, after five years' slavery at Algiers. He returned fired with animosity against the Moors, and filled with ardent sympathy for those Christians still in slavery. Thus his comedy of " El Trato de Argel, Los Baflos de Argel," his tale of the Captive in ** Don Quixote," and that of the Generous Lover, were not mere literary works, but charitable endeavors to serve the Christian captives, and to excite the public sympathy in their favor. I have dwelt fully on this extraordinary experience of Cervantes, an experience which brought him into direct contact with the lowest classes and the elementary passions of mankind, with a view of showing how profound and terrible was his knowledge of human character and human passion. Before producing his immortal masterpiece, " Don Quixote," Cervantes wrote a great number of plays which were not successful. When Cervantes speaks of his own dramatic works in his old age, his simplicity and gayety are very touch- ing, because he was evidently deeply wounded at the neglect of his plays. " Some years ago," he says, " I returned to the ancient occupation of my leisure hours ; and, imagining that the age had not passed away in which I used to hear the sound of praise, I began to write comedies. The birds, however, had flown from their nest. I could find no manager to ask for my plays,, though they knew