Note 190 — Chapter XII

The concluding passages of the work, for instance, are in this tone; and this is the tone of his criticism on Avellaneda. I do not count in the same sense the passage, in the Second Part, c. 16, in which Don Quixote is made to boast that thirty thousand copies had been printed of the First Part, and that thirty thousand thousands would follow; for this is intended as the mere rhodomontade of the hero’s folly; but I confess I think Cervantes is somewhat in earnest when he makes Sancho say to his master, “I will lay a wager, that, before long, there will not be a two-penny eating-house, a hedge tavern, or a poor inn, or barber’s shop, where the history of what we have done shall not be painted and stuck up.” Parte II. c. 71.