"And I (Don Q.) say again, they lie, and will lie two hundred times more, all who say, or think her so." "I neither say, nor think so," answered Sancho: "let those who say it, eat the lie, and swallow it with their bread: whether they were guilty or no, they have given an account to God before now: I come from my vineyard, I know nothing; I am no friend to inquiring into other men's lives; 'for' he that buys and lies shall find the lie left in his purse behind; 'besides,' naked was I born, and naked I remain; I neither win nor lose; if they were guilty, what is that to me? Many think to find bacon, where there is not so much as a pin to hang it on: 'but' who can hedge in the cuckoo? 'Especially,' do they spare God himself?" (Ib.) "And it is no great matter, if it be in another hand; for by what I remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor read," &c. The wonderful twilight of the mind! and mark Cervantes's courage in daring to present it, and trust to a distant posterity for an appreciation of its truth to nature. (P. II. B. III. c. 9.) Sancho's account of what he had seen on Clavileno is a counterpart in his style to Don Quixote's adventures in the cave of Montesinos. This last is the only impeachment of the knight's moral character; Cervantes just gives one instance of the veracity failing before the strong cravings of the imagination for something real and external; the picture would not have been complete without this; and yet it is so well managed, that the reader has no unpleasant sense of Don Quixote having told a lie. It is evident that he hardly knows whether it was a dream or not; and goes to the enchanter to inquire the real nature of the adventure. [Footnote 1: 'Bien como quien se engendrò en una carcel, donde toda incomodidad tiene su assiento, y todo triste ruido hace su habitacion.' Like one you may suppose born in a prison, where every inconvenience keeps its residence, and every dismal sound its habitation. Pref. Jarvis's Tr. Ed.] [Footnote 2: 'No estaba muy bien con'. Ed.] [Footnote 3: Pero con todo. Ed.] [Footnote 4: 'Donde no, conmigo sois en batalla, gente descomunal!' Ed.] [Footnote 5: 'Dichosa edad y siglos dichosos aquellos, &c.' Ed.] [Footnote 6: See the 'Friend', vol. iii. p. 138. Ed.] SUMMARY ON CERVANTES. A Castilian of refined manners; a gentleman, true to religion, and true to honour. A scholar and a soldier, and fought under the banners of Don John of Austria, at Lepanto, lost his arm and was captured. Endured slavery not only with fortitude, but with mirth; and by the superiority of nature, mastered and overawed his barbarian owner.