Note 133 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
Most of the materials for forming a judgment on this point in Cervantes’s character are to be found in Navarrete, (Vida, pp. 457-475), who maintains that Cervantes and Lope were sincere friends, and in Huerta, (Leccion Crítica, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, pp. 33-47), who maintains that Cervantes was an envious rival of Lope. As I cannot adopt either of these results, and think the last particularly unjust, I will venture to add one or two considerations.
Lope was fifteen years younger than Cervantes, and was forty-three years old when the First Part of the Don Quixote was published; but from that time till the death of Cervantes, a period of eleven years, he does not, that I am aware, once allude to him. The five passages in the immense mass of Lope’s works, in which alone, so far as I know, he speaks of Cervantes are,—1. In the “Dorothea,” 1598, twice slightly and without praise. 2. In the Preface to his own Tales, 1621, still more slightly, and even, I think, coldly. 3. In the “Laurel de Apolo,” 1630, where there is a somewhat stiff eulogy of him, fourteen years after his death. 4. In his play, “El Premio del Bien Hablar,” printed in Madrid, 1635, where Cervantes is barely mentioned (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XXI. f. 162). And 5. In “Amar sin Saber á Quien,” (Comedias, Madrid, Tom. XXII., 1635), where (Jornada primera) Leonarda, one of the principal ladies, says to her maid, who had just cited a ballad of Audalla and Xarifa to her,—
Inez, take care; your common reading is, I know, the Ballad-book; and, after all, Your case may prove like that of the poor knight——
to which Inez replies, interrupting her mistress,—
Don Quixote of la Mancha, if you please,— May God Cervantes pardon!—was a knight Of that wild, erring sort the Chronicle So magnifies. For me, I only read The Ballad-book, and find myself from day To day the better for it.
All this looks very reserved; but when we add to it, that there were numberless occasions on which Lope could have gracefully noticed the merit to which he could never have been insensible,—especially when he makes so free a use of Cervantes’s “Trato de Argel” in his own “Esclavos de Argel,” absolutely introducing him by name on the stage, and giving him a prominent part in the action, (Comedias, Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, Tom. XXV. pp. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of those kindly or respectful feelings which it was easy and common to show to friends on the Spanish stage, and which Calderon, for instance, so frequently shows to Cervantes, (e. g. Casa con Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.),—we can hardly doubt that Lope willingly overlooked and neglected Cervantes, at least from the time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605, till after its author’s death, in 1616.
On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the “Canto de Calíope” in the “Galatea,” 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all contemporary doubt or rivalship, was at the head of Spanish literature; and, among other proofs of such elevated and generous feelings, prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Lope’s “Dragontea.” But at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully, there is a dignified reserve and caution in some parts of his remarks about Lope that show he was not impelled by any warm, personal regard; a caution which is so obvious, that Avellaneda, in the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it into envy.
It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion, that the relations between the two great Spanish authors of this period were such as might be expected, where one was, to an extraordinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about the whole matter is the generous justice Cervantes never fails to render to Lope’s merits.