No More Learning

--Ed. ]


[Footnote D: Mr. A. J. Duffield, the translator of Don Quixote, wrote me
the following letter on Wordsworth and Cervantes, which I transcribe in
full.

"So far as I can learn Wordsworth had not read any critical work on
Don Quixote before he wrote the fifth book of 'The Prelude', [a] nor
for that matter had any criticism of the master-piece of Cervantes
then appeared. Yet Wordsworth,

'by patient exercise
Of study and hard thought,'

has given us not only a most poetical insight into the real nature of
the 'Illustrious Hidalgo of La Mancha'; he has shown us that it was a
nature compacted of the madman and the poet, and this in language so
appropriate, that the consideration of it cannot fail to give pleasure
to all who have found a reason for weighing Wordsworth's words.

"He demands

'Oh! why hath not the Mind
Some element to stamp her image on? '

then falls asleep, 'his senses yielding to the sultry air,' and he
sees before him

'stretched a boundless plain
Of sandy wilderness, all black and void,
And as I looked around, distress and fear
Came creeping over me, when at my side,
Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared
Upon a dromedary, mounted high.
He seemed an Arab . . . '

Here we have the plains of Montiel, and the poet realising all that
Don Quixote felt on that day of July, 'the hottest of the year,' when
he first set out on his quest and met with nothing worth recording.

'The uncouth shape'

is of course the Don himself,

the 'dromedary'

is Rozinante, and

the 'Arab'

doubtless is Cid Hamete Benengeli.
"Taking such an one for the guide,

'who with unerring skill
Would through the desert lead me,'

is a most sweet play of humour like to the lambent flame of his whose
satire was as a summer breath, and who smiled all the time he wrote,
although he wrote chiefly in a prison.

'The loud prophetic blast of harmony'

is doubtless a continuation of this humour, down to the lines

'Nor doubted once but that they both were books,
Having a perfect faith in all that passed. '

"Our poet now becomes positive,

'Lance in rest,
He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now
He, to my fancy, had become the knight
Whose tale Cervantes tells; _yet not the knight
But was an Arab of the desert too_,
Of these was neither, and was both at once. '

This is absolutely true, and was one of the earliest complaints made a
century and a half ago, when Spaniards began to criticise their one
great book. They could not tell at times whether Don Quixote was
speaking, or Cervantes, or Cid Hamete Benengeli.

'A bed of glittering light'

is a delightful description of the attitude of Don Quixote's mind
towards external nature while passing through the desert.

'It is,' said he, 'the waters of the deep
Gathering upon us. '

"It was, of course, only the mirage; but this he changed to suit his
own purpose into the 'waters of the deep,' as he changed the row of
Castilian wind-mills into giants, and the roar of the fulling mills
into the din of war.

"Wordsworth is now awake from his dream, but turning all he saw in it
into a reality, as only the poet can, he feels that

'Reverence was due to a being thus employed;
And thought that, _in the blind and awful lair
Of such a madness, reason did lie couched. _'

Here again is a most profound description of the creation of
Cervantes. Don Quixote was mad, but his was a madness that proceeded
from that 'blind and awful lair,' a disordered stomach, rather than
from an injured brain. Had Don Quixote not forsaken the exercise of
the chase and early rising, if he had not taken to eating chestnuts at
night, cold spiced meat, together with onions and 'ollas podridas',
then proceeding to read exciting, unnatural tales of love and war, he
would not have gone mad.

"But his reason only lay 'couched,' not overthrown. Only give him a
dose of the balsam of Fierabras, his reason shall spring out of its
lair, like a lion from out its hiding-place, as indeed it did; and you
then have that wonderful piece of rhetoric, which describes the army
of Alifanfaron in the eighteenth chapter, Part I.

"There are many other things worthy of note, such as

'crazed
By love and feeling, and internal thought
Protracted among endless solitudes,'

all of which are 'fit epithets blessed in the marriage of pure words,'
which the author of 'The Prelude', without any special learning, or
personal knowledge of Spain, has given us, and are so striking as to
compel us once again to go to Wordsworth and say, 'we do not all
understand thee yet, not all that thou hast given us. '

Very truly yours, A.