eal god and the god with human weaknesses and follies as he had been
degraded in the popular conception. And is it too absurd to be within
the limits even of comic probability? Is it even so absurd as those
hand-mills for grinding out so many prayers a minute which Huc and Gabet
saw in Tartary?

Cervantes was born on October 9, 1547, and died on April 23, 1616, on
the same day as Shakespeare. He is, I think, beyond all question, the
greatest of humorists. Whether he intended it or not,--and I am inclined
to believe he did,--he has typified in Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza his
esquire, the two component parts of the human mind and shapers of human
character--the imagination and understanding. There is a great deal more
than this; for what is positive and intentional in a truly great book is
often little in comparison with what is accidental and suggested. The
plot is of the meagrest. A country gentleman of La Mancha, living very
much by himself, and continually feeding his fancy with the romances of
chivalry, becomes at last the victim of a monomania on this one subject,
and resolves to revive the order of chivalry in his own proper person.
He persuades a somewhat prosaic neighbor of his to accompany him as
squire. They sally forth, and meet with various adventures, from which
they reap no benefit but the sad experience of plentiful rib-roasting.
Now if this were all of "Don Quixote," it would be simply broad farce,
as it becomes in Butler's parody of it in Sir Hudibras and Ralpho so far
as mere external characteristics are concerned. The latter knight and
his squire are the most glaring absurdities, without any sufficient
reason for their being at all, or for their adventures, except that they
furnished Butler with mouthpieces for his own wit and wisdom. They
represent nothing, and are intended to represent nothing.

I confess that, in my judgment, Don Quixote is the most perfect
character ever drawn. As Sir John Falstaff is, in a certain sense,
always a gentleman,--that is, as he is guilty of no crime that is
technically held to operate in defeasance of his title to that name as a
man of the world,--so is Don Quixote, in everything that does not
concern his monomania, a perfect gentleman and a good Christian besides.
He is not the merely technical gentleman of three descents--but the
_true_ gentleman, such a gentleman as only purity, disinterestedness,
generosity, and fear of God can make. And with what consummate skil