forms an excellent contrast to the idealizing monomania of his master. The story consists of the adventures of this worthy pair. The inns which the knight takes for castles, and the windmills which he takes for giants, are now a commonplace, and had become proverbial in England within a few years of the appearance of the book. The word “Quixotic” itself tells the story of the vogue which the work secured. But thousands have been entertained by the book as a novel without realizing its deeper perfections. _Don Quixote_ is something far greater than a satire upon the chivalric romances. It is a work of creative art, a perfect mirroring of two types of character, all the more true to nature for the apparent contradictions which each embraces. And Cervantes possesses the supreme gift of creation, in that, like Swift or Defoe, he makes his persons live. We are apt to feel, not that the Don is an imaginary character in a book, but that he once actually lived and entertained his noble delusions in La Mancha. The skill which not only saves him from contempt, but invests him with pathetic admiration, is in itself the skill of genius. It should be observed that Cervantes adapts his Spanish to the situations with the delicate tact of a master, and that more than usual is therefore inevitably lost in translation. The difficulty of imitating such a work is manifest. Among the best known must be reckoned the _Hudibras_ of Samuel Butler (1663), but beyond adopting the notion of an errant knight and squire, in the persons of Sir Hudibras and Ralpho, he achieves little that is comparable to his original. Sir Hudibras is a cowardly and contemptible person of narrow mind, but, even as such, his treatment is inconsistent, and the verse which Butler employs in place of Cervantes’ prose is but facile doggerel. It would be better indeed to speak of _Hudibras_ as a vulgar, if often amusing, travesty of _Don Quixote_ than as an imitation. * * * * *