Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/149

 [ibid. pp. 485–486]

An ingenious Spaniard at Brussels would needs have it, that the history of Don Quixote had ruined the Spanish monarchy; for before that time love and valour were all romance among them; every young cavalier that entered the scene dedicated the services of his life to his honour first, and then to his mistress. They lived and died in this romantic vein; and the old Duke of Alva, in his last Portugal expedition, had a young mistress to whom the glory of that achievement was devoted; by which he hoped to value himself, instead of those qualities he had lost with his youth. After Don Quixote appeared, and with that inimitable wit and humour turned all this romantic honour and love into ridicule, the Spaniards, he said, began to grow ashamed of both, and to laugh at fighting and loving, or at least otherwise than to pursue their fortune, or satisfy their lust: and the consequences of this, both upon their bodies and their minds, this Spaniard would needs have pass for a great cause of the ruin of Spain or of its greatness and power.

Whatever effect the ridicule of knight errantry might have had upon that monarchy, I believe that of