Note 53 — INTRODUCTION TO THE GALATEA.

This seems to follow from the references in the Viaje del Parnaso:

And

These sallies have brought down on Cervantes the displeasure of implacable bibliographers. Salvá y Mallen (op. cit., vol. ii., pp. 19-20, no. 1518) drily observes that, as the book is almost wholly in verse, it does not at all correspond to Cervantes's description of it, and he gives us to understand (what most readers have realised for themselves) that, in criticism of his contemporaries, Cervantes—like the rest of the world—is prone to err.

See also Cervantes vascófilo ó sea Cervantes vindicado de su supuesto antivizcainismo por Julián Apráiz y Sáenz del Burgo, Natural de Vitoria y vizcaino, alavés y guipuzcoano por todos sus abolengos. Nueva edición considerablemente aumentada (Vitoria, 1895), pp. 270-274. In a note (p. 274) to his letter addressed (April 23, 1884), to Sr. D. José Colá y Goiti, Dr. Apráiz—who courageously sets himself to prove that Cervantes, so far from disliking the Basques as has been generally supposed, had in fact the highest opinion of them—points out that Los nueve libros de las Habidas take no more space than a 16mo. volume. "Y una vez leída la obra del poeta navarro insisto, tanto en que no hay más prosa que brevísimos renglones del argumento de la obra, como acerca del mérito que le reconocen Rosell, Gayangos y Vedia, y Gallardo, mucho más habida cuenta de la temprana edad de 20 años que tenía el poeta al escribir su poema, según el mismo dice al dirigirse á la señora (i.e. Doña Adriana de Egues y de Biamonte), á quien lo dedica. Parece que había muerto 3 años antes de la publicación de su poema."

If Arbolanche (or Arbolanches) really died in 1563, it is almost impossible that Cervantes can have had—as has been insinuated—any personal grudge against him. Perhaps he had read the Habidas when he was a lad, was bored, and in his old age exaggerated his impression, without remembering very clearly the contents of the book. Or, it may be, as Dr. Apráiz suggests (op. cit., pp. 273-274), that Cervantes mistook Arbolanche (or Arbolanches) for the author of some dull pastoral whose name escaped him. If this be so, it is exceedingly regrettable that he should twice have made the same blunder: for the consequence has been that the name of Arbolanche (or Arbolanches), a poet of distinct merit, has become—among those who have not read him and who follow Cervantes blindly—a synonym for a ridiculous prose writer. Cp. the lines in the celebrated Sátira contra los malos escritores de su tiempo by Jorge Pitillas (i.e. José Gerardo de Hervás y Cobo de la Torre):—