[177] Clemencin, in his Preface, notes “D. Policisne de Boecia,” printed in 1602, as the _last_ book of chivalry that was written in Spain, and adds, that, after 1605, “_no se publicó_ de nuevo libro alguno de caballerías, y _dejaron de_ reimprimirse los anteriores.” (p. xxi.) To this remark of Clemencin, however, there are exceptions. For instance, the “Genealogía de la Toledana Discreta, Primera Parte,” por Eugenio Martinez, a tale of chivalry in octave stanzas, was reprinted in 1608; and “El Caballero del Febo,” and “Claridiano,” his son, are extant in editions of 1617. The period of the passion for such books in Spain can be readily seen in the Bibliographical Catalogue, and notices of them by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, London, 1827, Tom. IV. pp. 29-74. It was eminently the sixteenth century. The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, was simple as well as original. In 1605,[178] he published the First Part of Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha--full of genuine Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants--is represented as so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become the impossible knight-errant they describe,--nay, actually goes forth into the world to defend the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances. [178] See Appendix (E). To complete his chivalrous equipment--which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armour strange to his century--he took an esquire out of his neighbourhood; a middle-aged peasant, ignorant and credulous to excess, but of great good-nature; a glutton and a liar; selfish and gross, yet attached to his master; shrewd enough occasionally to see the folly of their position, but always amusing, and sometimes mischievous, in his interpretations of it. These two sally forth from their native village in search of adventures, of which the excited imagination of the knight, turning windmills into giants, solitary inns into castles, and galley-slaves into oppressed gentlemen, finds abundance, wherever he goes; while the esquire translates them all into the plain prose of truth with an admirable simplicity, quite unconscious of its own humor, and rendered the more striking by its contrast with the lofty and courteous dignity and magnificent illusions of the superior personage. There could, of course, be but one consistent termination of adventures like these. The knight and his esquire suffer a series of ridiculous discomfitures, and are at last brought home, like madmen, to their native village, where Cervantes leaves them, with an intimation that the story of their adventures is by no means ended.