ay with
more reason pronounce it to be the necessity of proportioning our
undertakings to our capacities.

The mind of the hero, Don Quixote, is an ideal world into which
Cervantes has poured all the rich stores of his own imagination, the
poet's golden dreams, high romantic exploit, and the sweet visions of
pastoral happiness; the gorgeous chimeras of the fancied age of
chivalry, which had so long entranced the world; splendid illusions,
which, floating before us like the airy bubbles which the child throws
off from his pipe, reflect, in a thousand variegated tints, the rude
objects around, until, brought into collision with these, they are
dashed in pieces and melt into air. These splendid images derive
tenfold beauty from the rich antique coloring of the author's
language, skilfully imitated from the old romances, but which
necessarily escapes in the translation into a foreign tongue. Don
Quixote's insanity operates both in mistaking the ideal for the real,
and the real for the ideal. Whatever he has found in romances he
believes to exist in the world; and he converts all he meets with in
the world into the visions of his romances. It is difficult to say
which of the two produces the most ludicrous results.

For the better exposure of these mad fancies Cervantes has not only
put them into action in real life, but contrasted them with another
character which may be said to form the reverse side of his hero's.
Honest Sancho represents the material principle as perfectly as his
master does the intellectual or ideal. He is of the earth, earthy.
Sly, selfish, sensual, his dreams are not of glory, but of good
feeding. His only concern is for his carcass. His notions of honor
appear to be much the same with those of his jovial contemporary
Falstaff, as conveyed in his memorable soliloquy. In the sublime
night-piece which ends with the fulling-mills--truly sublime until we
reach the denouement--Sancho asks his master: "Why need you go about
this adventure? It is main dark, and there is never a living soul sees
us; we have nothing to do but to sheer off and get out of harm's way.
Who is there to take notice of our flinching?" Can anything be
imagined more exquisitely opposed to the true spirit of chivalry? The
whole compass of fiction nowhere displays the power of contrast so
forcibly as in these two characters; perfectly opposed to each other,
not only in their minds and general habits, but in the minutest
details of pers