This masterpiece has been imitated in the most close and direct manner by many, and some of these works so composed, with the avowed purpose of laughing down particular absurdities in the same way in which Cervantes had exploded the romances of knight erran try, are by no means destitute of merit and interest. The English Spiritual Quixote, in which, the enthusi asm and folly of the first itinerant Methodist preachers was attacked; the Sylrio de RosaIva of Wieland, di rected against the mania for Fairy Tales which pre vailed in those days in Germany; The Heroine, a laugh able satire upon modern novel readers, by the late Mr. Barrett; and a crowd of other works of the same order might be mentioned. By far the ablest and best of them all, however, is scarcely known in this coun try even by name—the Don Gerundio of the Spanish Jesuit Ysla, a work written with the view of ridiculing the various tricks of the Mendicant Friars, who still infest every quarter of the Peninsula. The author being a man of true genius, has done much more than his plan might seem to suggest—so much that in its own country the Don Gerundio has come to be ge nerally talked of as the Quixote of Letters.
But the influence of Cervantes has extended very far beyond all this. He had set the example of represent ing men and manners in a totally new style—a style not essentially less captivating than that of the drama, and admitting of a fulness of detail and execution far beyond the limits of works intended for sentation. His work, though designed for a main comic purpose, contains, within itself, abundant speci mens of serious eloquence, and profound pathos, and, written to ridicule one kind of romance, overflows with every element of romantic interest, the loftiness of sentiment, and the picturesque of nature. In a word, it may be doubted whether any one specimen of fictitious narrative in prose, has since that time com manded real lasting success in any European country, the author of which has not been in a high degree indebted to the Cervantic model. The whole race of our modern novel and romance writers are his imi tators, in the just but liberal sense of that term. He has taught every thing to those whose genius was exclusively comic: and to those whose turn of mind and purpose of writing are the most opposed to the comic—to the most ardent lovers of the tragic, the marvellous, the sentimental, the passionate, he still continues to teach the great lesson of controlling the extravagances of enthusiasm. It was he who revealed the secret of throwing an air of truth and reality even over the wildest dreams of imagination.
It is true that Xenophon, in his Cyropmdia, set the first example or attempting to attain a particular phi losophical the means of narrating the life of a particular individual. But, to say nothing of the important circumstance that after all Cyrus was a real personage, and that we do not know how much, or how little, of Xenophon's materials falls within the proper limits of fiction, the tameness and total want of dramatic power of his work are too ob vious to be denied by any one. He was not a man of sufficient genius to do a thing that had not been done before, so well as to make that often be done again. It is doubtful whether Cervantes knew Xenophon at all. It is certain that if the elegant Greek modelled a coldly pleasing statue, he was the true Prometheus who breathed the breath of life into it.
The truth is, that refined as the arts of Greece were, the Greek nation was never in such a state of refine ment as to admit of this kind of composition becoming an effectual instrument of delight and instruction among them. The drama was their romance. Their imagination was more lively than their curiosity was profound, and they preferred the visible representation of a part to the complete exposition of a whole. In a word, they were not a reading population; and we hold it to be equally clear, that a species of composi tion, such as the modern fictitious narrative of Europe, could never have become extensively popular among any people, unless reading had come to be most ex tensively the amusement of that people; in other words, we consider this species of literature as inca pable of existing. unless among nations far more tho roughly educated and refined than any of the nations of classical antiquity could have been. " The drama," says Goethe, in his Ifilhelni Meister, 6C has characters and deeds—the field of romance is incident, feeling, and manners." The Greeks were (when their litera ttire flourished) a young people; they were almost ignorant of peace; their proper heroic poetry was so unrivalled in excellence,—and its heroes were, com paratively speaking, so near to them; and their drama was so admirably calculated to satisfy all the wishes of a clever people, who, as a people, could not read; —that it is any thing but wonderful they should have left at least one great department of imaginative litera ture to be opened and cultivated by the moderns.
Their domestic manners, moreover, were always bar barous—the hearth had with them but a narrow cir cle.—What wonder that they should have clung ex clusively to the literature of character and of action, as contradistinguished from that of sentiment and feeling ? Lastly, they knew no manners but their own, therefore, they did not understand their own manners. Upon what other principle can we account for the real ignorance of their domestic life, under which, with so much of their beautiful literature before us, we unquestionably feel ourselves to he left, unless upon the very same principle which we have men tioned as accounting for their having no literature of the kind we are now discussing; none, at least, that can be talked of as worthy of their genius—none that has, in point of fact, been found worthy or capable of commanding our elsewhere willing imitation ? It does not, we must confess, appear to us, that this matter has ever, in any of its really essential points, obtained any thing like the attention to which it is entitled. Above all, it does not appear to us, that the philosophical criticism of modern Europe has been in any effectual manner directed to the consideration of a fact, which one might have supposed to be of a na ture sufficiently distinct and obvious, as well as im portant—the fact, namely, that to all intents and pur poses the literature of romance has supplanted, itr modern Europe, the literature of the drama. Lope de Vega was the contemporary of Cervantes; and Calderon flourished immediately after him. Lope was a greater man in his own clay than Cervantes, and Calderon was as great a one in his: but what are their plays to Spain now ? What have they been to Spain, compared with the author of Don Quixote ? What characters of theirs are known at all, when compared with his? Are their books, or have they been, like his, the staple food of the Spanish mind? It is absolutely impossible that if they bad been so, they should have remained so completely unknown out of Spain as they have done. Looking to England, again, Shakspeare was exactly contemporary with Cervantes; he alone created the drama of England— did not that drama also (to all serious intents and purposes,) terminate with him? Is it not the fact that the genius exerted on our drama, subsequent to his time, is totally unworthy of being named in the same day with the genius exerted on our romance, since the masterpiece of Cervantes was made known amongst us? Is it not the fact, that but few even of Shak speare's plays are in possession of the British stage? Is it not the fact, that the stage has ceased to be to any extent worth mentioning an entertainment of the more refined classes of British society? Is it not the fact, that Shakspeare is studied and enjoyed by us in the closet?—Is it not a fact, that Lear and Macbeth are read rather than seen?—In France the play-house is more popular than with us—the French are a more frivolous people than we; and are more easy to be pleased as to amusements. But what has been the case as to the real talent of France? What has been the course of her literature? Their drama has cer tainly made no progress since the time of Louis XIV. —their imaginative literature has been the literature of romance, not of the drama. What are all their co medies subsequent to Moliere, compared with a sin gle volume of Le Sage? What literature has exerted that sort of influence over them which the Greek drama did over the old Greeks?—Not their drama certainly—but their exquisite romances. Rousseau's Emilius, Voltaire's Candide, Madame de Stael's Del phine and Corinne—what plays of the last century can they compare as to real influence with such works as these? Germany is the only other country worth mentioning. Tier modern imaginative literature, how ever, is essentially nothing but an imitation of the li terature of England, of recent growth too, and grown among a nation highly refined and educated ere it be gan to appear among them. Their stage, in particu lar, is a mere child of ours, and so is their romance. In spite of all the exertions of courts and patrons, what has been the fate of these? Have not Werther and William :Meister produced ten times more effect in Germany, than the dramatic works of Goethe? excepting, perhaps, the Faustus, which is a dramatic poem, not a drama. And is not the only tragedy of Schiller's that can be said to sustain his fame in the altitude for which his genius was born—his Wallen stein—is not that tragedy a complete romance, thrown merely into a dramatic form? A tragedy in three long plays; a complete history, in the form of scenes! The drama has been found incapable of contending in the great race of influence with the romance. The latter species of composition has almost supplanted the former, even among the nations richest in them