[169] In the Prólogo to the First Part, he says, “_No mira á mas_ que á deshacer la autoridad y cabida, que en el mundo y _en el vulgo_ tienen los libros de Caballerías”; and he ends the Second Part, ten years afterwards, with these remarkable words: “_No ha sido otro mi deseo_, que poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y disparatadas historias de los libros de Caballerías, que por las de mi verdadero Don Quixote van ya tropezando, y han de caer del todo sin duda alguna. Vale.” It seems really hard that a great man’s word of honor should thus be called in question by the spirit of an over-refined criticism, two centuries after his death. D. Vicente Salvá has partly, but not wholly, avoided this difficulty in an ingenious and pleasant essay on the question, “Whether the Don Quixote has yet been judged according to its merits”;--in which he maintains, that Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalry, but only to purge away their absurdities and improbabilities; and that, after all, he has given us only another romance of the same class which has ruined the fortunes of all its predecessors by being itself immensely in advance of them all. Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, Paris, 1842, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 723-740. [170] Símbolo de la Fé, Parte II. cap. 17, near the end. Conversion de la Magdalena, 1592, Prólogo al Letor. Both are strong in their censures. [171] “Vemos, que ya no se ocupan los hombres sino en leer libros que es affrenta nombrarlos, como son Amadis de Gaula, Tristan de Leonis, Primaleon,” etc. Argument to the Aviso de Privados, Obras de Ant. de Guevara, Valladolid, 1545, folio, f. clviii. b. [172] The passage is too long to be conveniently cited, but it is very severe. See Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. pp. 157, 158. [173] See _ante_, Vol. I. pp. 249-254. But, besides what is said there, Francisco de Portugal, who died in 1632, tells us in his “Arte de Galantería,” (Lisboa, 1670, 4to, p. 96), that Simon de Silveira (I suppose the Portuguese poet who lived about 1500; Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 722) once swore upon the Evangelists, that he believed the whole of the Amadis to be true history. [174] Clemencin, in the Preface to his edition of Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. xi.-xvi., cites many other proofs of the passion for books of chivalry at that period in Spain; adding a reference to the “Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias,” Lib. I. Tít. 24, Ley 4, for the law of 1553, and printing at length the very curious petition of the Cortes of 1555, which I have not seen anywhere else, and which would probably have produced the law it demanded, if the abdication of the Emperor, the same year, had not prevented all action upon the matter.