THE LIFE OF CERVANTES. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. “IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN.” “THE ALHAMBRA.” “THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA.” “THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.” “MY FOURTH TOUR IN AUSTRALIA.” “BACON AND SHAKESPEARE.” “THE POLITICAL VALUE OF OUR COLONIES.” [Illustration: signature: _Miguel Cerbantes Saavedra_] THE LIFE OF CERVANTES. BY ALBERT F. CALVERT. WITH NUMEROUS PORTRAITS AND REPRODUCTIONS FROM EARLY EDITIONS OF DON QUIXOTE. THE TERCENTENARY EDITION. JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, LONDON AND NEW YORK, MDCCCCV. _E. Goodman and Son, Phœnix Printing Works, Taunton._ PREFACE. Three hundred years ago this month the First Part of _El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha_ was published in Madrid, and the world was made the richer by a book which will last until “the silver chord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken”; until the earth relapses into its original silence and language is no more spoken or read. It is somewhat late to weave new laurels for the brow of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra--the last word on _Don Quixote_ has been spoken. The great contemporary of Shakespeare has long since come into his own among the world’s heroes; no country has forborne to do him honour; no literature is complete that does not contain a translation of his book. But while the career of Cervantes forms as eventful and varied a history as that of the Knight-errant of La Mancha himself--_Don Quixote_ might even be read as the sequel of its author’s life--the number of biographies of the Spanish writer in the English tongue is curiously limited. It is ten years since Mr. Henry Edward Watts--whose recent demise will be regretted by all Cervantists in this country--issued his new and revised edition of the _Life and Works of Cervantes_, and the scholarly and deeply-interesting _Life_ by Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Cervantes’ most brilliant and discriminating biographer, is already a rare and almost unobtainable work.