Happy the age, happy the time, to which the ancients gave the name of golden, not because in that fortunate age the gold so coveted in this our iron one was gained without labour, but because they that lived in it knew not the two words ‘mine’ and ‘thine.’ In that blessed age all things were in common; to win the daily food no toil was needed from any man but to stretch out his hand and pluck it from the mighty oaks that stood there generously inviting him with their sweet ripe fruit. The crystal streams and rippling brooks yielded their clear and grateful waters in splendid profusion. The busy and wise bees set up their commonwealth in the clefts of the rocks and the hollows of the trees, offering without usance to every hand the abundant produce of their fragrant toil.... Fraud, deceit, or malice had not as yet tainted truth and sincerity. Justice held her own, untroubled and unassailed by the attempts of favour and interest, which so greatly damage, corrupt, and encompass her about.... And so forth. It is a fine piece of embroidered rhetoric, which is fairly entitled to the place it holds in most anthologies of Spanish prose. But it is not specially characteristic of Cervantes: it is a brilliant passage introduced to prove that the writer could, if he chose, rival Antonio de Guevara as a virtuoso in what is thought the grand style. Nor is Cervantes himself in the points and conceits which abound in Marcela’s address to Ambrosio and the assembled friends of the dead shepherd Chrysostom:— By that natural understanding which God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for its beauty is bound to love that which loves it.... As there is an infinity of beautiful objects there must be an infinity of inclinations, and true love (so I have heard it said) is indivisible, and must be voluntary and uncompelled.... I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside.... Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk leave me alone as a thing noxious and evil. To the mind of an English reader, this passage recalls the recondite preciosity of Juliet:— Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but ‘I,’ And that bare vowel, ‘I,’ shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice: I am not I, if there be such an I, Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer ‘I.’