Note 93 — Chapter XXXIV

Antonio, Bib. Nova, Article Matthæus Aleman; and Salvá, Repertorio Americano, 1827, Tom. III. p. 65. For his troubles with the government, see Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” 1819, p. 441. He seems to have been old when he went to Mexico; and Don Adolfo de Castro, at the end of the “Buscapié,” 1848, gives us a letter, dated at Seville, April 20th, 1607, from Aleman to Cervantes, of whose origin or discovery we receive no account whatever, and into which its author seems to have thrust all the proverbs and allusions he could collect;—none, however, so obscure that the curious learning of Don Adolfo cannot elucidate them. The whole letter is a complaint of Aleman’s own hard fortune, and a prediction of that of Cervantes, ending with a declaration of the purpose of its writer to go to Mexico. It does not seem to me to be genuine; but if it is, it gives the coup de grace to Clemencin’s conjectures, in his notes to both the first and second part of Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 22, and Parte II. c. 4,) that Cervantes intended to speak slightingly of the “Guzman de Alfarache”;—a conjecture not to be sustained, if the relations of Cervantes with Aleman were as friendly as this letter, published by Don Adolfo de Castro, implies.