Note 138 — Chapter XI

Coarse as it is, however, the “Tia Fingida” was found, with “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” and several other tales and miscellanies, in a manuscript collection of stories and trifles made 1606-10, for the amusement of the Archbishop of Seville, D. Fernando Niño de Guevara; and long afterwards carefully preserved by the Jesuits of St. Hermenegild. A castigated copy of it was printed by Arrieta in his “Espíritu de Miguel de Cervantes” (Madrid, 1814, 12mo); but the Prussian ambassador in Spain, if I mistake not, soon afterwards obtained possession of an unaltered copy and sent it to Berlin, where it was published by the famous Greek scholar, F. A. Wolf, first in one of the periodicals of Berlin, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet. (See his Vorbericht to the “Tia Fingida, Novela inédita de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” Berlin, 1818, 8vo.) It has since been printed in Spain with the other tales of Cervantes.

Some of the tales of Cervantes were translated into English as early as 1640; but not into French, I think, till 1768, and not well into that language till Viardot published his translation (Paris, 1838, 2 tom., 8vo). Even he, however, did not venture on the obscure puns and jests of the “Licenciado Vidriera,” a fiction of which Moreto made some use in his play of the same name, representing the Licentiate, however, as a feigned madman and not as a real one, and showing little of the humor of the original conception. (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tom. V. 1653.) Under the name of “Léocadie,” there is a poor abridgment of the “Fuerza de la Sangre,” by Florian. The old English translation by Mabbe (London, 1640, folio) is said by Godwin to be “perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose translation in the English language.” (Lives of E. and J. Phillips, London, 1815, 4to, p. 246.) The praise is excessive, but the translation is certainly very well done. It, however, extends only to six of the tales.