Note 39 — LIFE OF CERVANTES.

Everyone who has read Don Quixote in Spanish must be sensible of the peculiar charm of the diction of Cervantes. On this subject, the critic above quoted observes, “It is the style of the old romances of chivalry improved and applied in a totally original way; and only in the dialogue passages is each person found to speak as he might be expected really to do, in his own character.” The speech of the shepherdess Marcella is, by the same high authority, pronounced to be, “in the true prose style of Cicero, and altogether a composition which has seldom been equalled in any modern language.”