saw almost as many issues within twelve years of its first appearance as Part I of Don Quixote, which was printed eleven times from 1605 to 1617. Master Valdiviesso had unquestionably diagnosed his times well, recognizing the taste then in vogue among readers of romance; and the public, for its part, could do nothing but accept into the body of current literature a novel so thoroughly in keeping with it as the fanciful experiences of Persiles and Sigismunda. For in its imaginative and frequently irrational character this remarkable "Story of the North" was either on a par with, or far superior to, most of the tales which could have been found on the shelves of the aficionados. To realize that this is the truth, we need but examine not only such romances of a purely irrational type as the Pastoral novels, but also such tales as were meant ostensibly to reproduce the everyday life in the peninsula, namely the Peregrino en su patria or the Novelas by Lope, or the tales of Montalban incorporated in his Para Todos. That even the latter class are frequently a tissue of extravagances and impossibilities would be difficult to deny. As regards the popularity of the Persiles, however— whether justified or not will be seen later-there is some evidence, at least, that it was still a favorite book about the middle of the eighteenth century. There exists a valuable list of entertaining stories (made up by one Alonso de Padilla), of which a reprint was considered opportune. The Persiles stands among the first, and it is certain that a bookseller who knew his market. would issue only books of which a profitable sale seemed assured.' Now, in 1728 an edition of the Persiles had already been printed by Alonso de (sic) Padilla in Madrid, which would indicate that the prospectus of forthcoming books had been compiled but a few years previous. The large demand for the romance must

1 My copy of the list is printed in a volume entitled Historias peregrinas y exemplares, etc., por Don Gonzalo de Cespedes y Meneses (Madrid, 1733), and occupies two introductory leaves. The list is called: "Indice de libros entretenidos de Novelas, Patrañas, Cuentos, Historias, y Casos tragicos, para divertir la ociosidad, hecho por Don Pedro Joseph Alonso y Padilla, Librero de Camara de su Magestad, quien desea dar noticia a los Aficionados, y con el tiempo los irà reimprimiendo muchos de los que aqui van anotados, que no los ay, y muchos no tienen noticia de ellos por el transcurso de el tiempo." Then follows the list which was probably prefixed to all the books issued from Alonso y Padilla's press at about this time. Cf. also the prologue al lector of Lope de Vega's Romacero Espiritual (Madrid, 1720) (written by Alonso y Padilla); printed in Barrera's Nueva Biografia de Lope de Vega, p. 392.

have justified still another edition, for in 1734 the Persiles was published again in Barcelona. Moreover, in the important edition of Don Quixote published in London in 1738 (4 vols. printed by J. & R. Tonson), to which was prefixed the first scholarly life of Cervantes (dated 1737), by D. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, the latter does not hesitate to give Persiles y Sigismunda the preference over Don Quixote. This is an eloquent testimony to the high position which the former held at the time.' As late as

1 Cf. p. 101 of the Vida de Cervantes; seeing that this first important judgment passed upon the romance is inaccessible to most students, I quote from it the following, much of which has been so frequently repeated, but without any reference to the source: "Cervantes dijo, que su Persiles y Sigismunda se atrevía a competir con Heliodoro. La mayor alabanza que podemos darle, es decir, que es cierto. Los amores que refiere son castisimos, la fecundidad de la invencion maravillosa; en tanto grado, que pródigo su ingenio, excedid en la multitud de Episodios. Los sucesos son muchos i mui varios. En unos se descubre la imitacion de Heliodoro, i de otros, mui mejorada; en los demàs campea la novedad. Todos están dispuestos con arte, i bien explicados, con circunstancias casi siempre verosimiles. Quanto mas se interna el Letor en esta Obra, tanto es mayor el gusto de leerla, siendo el Tercero i Quarto Libro mucho mejores que el Primero i Segundo. Los continuos trabajos llevados en paciencia acaban en descanso, sin máquina alguna: porque un hombre como Cervantes, sería milagro que acabasse con algun milagro, para manifestar la felicidad de su raro ingenio. En las descripciones excediò a Heliodoro. Las deste suelen ser sobrado frequentes, i mui pomposas. Las de Cervantes a su tiempo, i mui naturales. Aventajóle tambien en el estilo; porque aunque el de Heliodoro es elegantisimo, es algo afectado, demasiamente figurado, i mas Poetico de lo que permite la Prosa. ... Pero el de Cervantes es propio, proporcionadamente sublime, modestamente figurado, i templadamente Poetico en tal qual descripcion. En suma, esta Obra es de mayor invencion, artificio, i de estilo mas sublime que la de Don Quijote de la Mancha. Pero no ha tenido igual acetacion: porque la invencion de la Historia de Don Quijote es mas popular, i contiene Personas mas graciosas; i como son menos en numero, el Letor retiene mejor la memoria de las costumbres, hechos i caracteres de cada una. Fuera de esso el estilo es mas natural, i tanto mas descansado, quanto menos sublime." Cf. also Clemencin's edition of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1894), Vol. I, p. liv. The favorable opinion of Mayans y Siscar probably became known in England chiefly through The Life and Exploits of . . . . Don Quixote . . . . translated. . . . by Charles Jarvis (London, 1742). Vol. I contains the life of Cervantes by Mayans y Siscar, translated by Ozell. Subsequent editions of Jarvis' translation, however, substituted another biography of Cervantes. The testimony of this upon the standing of the Persiles during the latter half of the eighteenth century is of interest. "[The Persiles] is a romance of the grave sort written after the manner of Heliodorus' Ethiopics with which Cervantes says it dared to vie. It is in such esteem with the Spaniards, that they generally prefer it to Don Quixote, which can only be owing to their not being sufficiently cured of their fondness for romance." (From ed. London, 1821, Vol. I, p. xlviii.) Smollett, in his translation, 1755 (cf. prefatory life of Cervantes), merely copies from the Spanish biography of Mayans y Siscar, when he speaks of the elegance of diction, entertaining incidents, and fecundity of invention to be noted in the Persiles (p. xxvi of Life of Cervantes, Vol. I, 2d ed., London, 1761). J. G. Lockhart, in the biography of Cervantes which he prefixed to his edition of Motteux's translation of Don Quixote, 1822, stands at the parting of the ways. What he says of the Persiles combines the appreciation of the eighteenth century with the indifference of the nineteenth. He says: "This performance [the Persiles] is an elegant and elaborate imitation of the style and manner of Heliodorus. It displays felicity of invention and power of description, and has always been considered as one of the purest specimens of Castilian writing; nevertheless, it has not preserved any very distinguished popu. larity nor been classed (except in regard to style) by any intelligent critic of more recent times with the best of Cervantes' works." (P. xxx of Life, Edin., 1879.) Coleridge, in a

1811 Sismondi felt justified in telling hearers of the lectures which he delivered at Geneva, that the Spaniards rated the story of Persiles as the equal of Don Quixote.' He unfortunately does not say from what evidence he reaches this conclusion, but it is not likely that the large number of the editions of the Persiles which were published during the eighteenth century was sufficient to account for such a view; Sismondi, no doubt, was familiar with the high regard in which the Persiles was held by several contemporary Spanish writers. On the other hand, a search among German men of letters, especially such as were under the influence of the Romantic movement at the time, reveals an enthusiasm for the last work of Cervantes which, while limited to those in sympathy with the peculiar tenets of a school of fiction, was apparently unqualified.'

lecture on Don Quixote and Cervantes, says the latter "was the inventor of novels for the Spaniards, and in his Persiles and Sigismunda the English may find the germ of their Robinson Crusoe" (p. 274, Vol. IV, of Complete Works [New York, 1871]). It is too bad that Coleridge did not enlarge upon this rather vague assertion.

1" Le jugement des Espagnols place en effet ce roman à côté de Don Quichotte, au dessus de tout le reste de ce qu'a écrit Cervantes." (Printed in Vol. III, p. 419, of De la littérature du midi de l'Europe, par J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi [Paris, 1813]).

2 D. Vicente de los Rios (1780) and D. Juan A. Pellicer (1797) say nothing worthy of note in the introductory matter to their respective editions of Don Quixote. In the prologue to Sancha's excellent edition of the Persiles, however (Madrid, 1802), may be found an expres. sion of the opinion then current in Spain: "No son pocos los sabios, que, no obstante el notorio mérito de todas las obras del famoso Español Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, y sin embargo de los repetidos elogios prodigados principalmente á la Vida y Hechos de Don Quixote de la Mancha, que ha corrido siempre con la primera estimacion, dan la preferencia sobre todas ellas á los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda," etc. Then the editor goes on to praise, as others had done, the excellence in style and plan of the work ("Prologo del Editor"). Sismondi must have known this edition. Only a few years later Navarrete, in his Vida de Cervantes which was prefixed to the Spanish Academy's fourth edition of Don Quixote (1819), says of the Persiles: "El [estilo] de este [Cervantes] es siempre propio con igualdad, y sublime con templanza y proporcion . . . . De aqui resulta que esta obra de Cervantes sea de mayor invencion y artificio, y de estilo mas igual y elevado que el Quixote, pues corrigió en ella las faltas de lenguaje y construccion," etc. (p. 190). Thus it may be seen how writers who came after Mayans y Siscar did little more than adopt his view (cf. p. 4, n. 1), and even his words.

3 As an excellent example, the words of so noted a Spanish scholar as Fried. Wilh. Val. Schmidt may be cited; they might have been written by Aug. Wilh. or Fried. Schlegel: "Das letzte Werk des grossen Cervantes, Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, scheint überall ungebürlich wenig bekannt. Und dennoch kennen wir keinen geistlichen Roman, der sich mit diesem vergleichen dürfte. Die himmlische Liebe, vermählt mit der zartesten irdischen, durch tausendfache Noth geläutert, immer wie der Karfunkel strahlend durch die Nacht der gemeinen Umgebung, endlich zum Schauen des langersehnten gelangend, das ist die Axe um welche herum die verschiedensten Erscheinungen des Lebens, Bestrebungen und Gesinnungen sich schwingen." Cf. Beiträge zur Geschichte der romantischen Poesie. (Berlin, 1818; [small] 8vo), p. 179. The interest which August W. Schlegel took in the Persiles was apparently limited chiefly to the romantic or poetic features of the novel, as

In the face of this highly commendatory attitude toward the Persiles in the past, what adequate, or even tentative, appreciation can we turn to in our own times? Could this creation by Cervantes have been treated with greater indifference if it had been turned out by some unremembered literary drudge? What correspondingly important productions by the world's truly great writers—even though they be classed among their "minor works" -have been so consistently laid upon the shelf by either literary critic and historian, or by the modern analytic scholar? In this connection it will be necessary to summarize the verdicts passed on Persiles y Sigismunda during the nineteenth century, inadequate and repetitional though they be.

The first criticism worthy of consideration is naturally that of the German scholar, Friedrich Bouterwek, whose history of Spanish literature' is the earliest systematic presentation of the subject in German.' Bouterwek's judgment is of interest because

can be inferred from the three translations which he made of two sonnets and an ode to be found therein (pp. 665, 633, 583 of the Persiles, which is the order in which Schlegel's translations are printed, p. 189, Vol. IV, of Aug. Wilh. Schlegel's Sämmtliche Werke [Leipzig, 1846]). An unimportant work by Edmund Dorer, entitled Cervantes und seine Werke nach deutschen Urtheilen (Leipzig, 1881), contains a collection of opinions expressed by German novelists, poets, and philosophers, whose verdicts are, for the most part, imbued with the spirit of the Romantic School of Germany, and are consequently highly appreciative of all of the writings of Cervantes. For, in accordance with the theories proclaimed by the school, he had become one of their standards of excellence in fiction. Many of the opinions have rather the interest of a novel point of view than the value of critical discrimination. But Dorer's book deserves to be cited, if only because it adduces further evidence that the Persiles was one of the hobbies of almost every one of the noted writers of the Romantic School. Among the most important opinions is that of Ludwig Tieck (p. 45), taken from his introduction to Dorothea Tieck's translation of the Persiles (Leipzig, 1837). He says: "Dieses bunte, seltsame Werk, Reiseabenteuer zweier Liebenden, ist wie eine Abzweigung jener prosaischen Ritterpoesie, oder jener steifen und unwahrscheinlichen Heldenromane anzusehen. Cervantes führt die wunderbare Geschichte in die vertrauliche Nähe seiner Leser; Spanien, das Vaterland, wird geschildert, berühmte Namen werden genannt und merkwürdige Begebenheiten angedeutet. . . . Die Erfindung ist oft so seltsam, dass es der launige Cervantes nicht unterlassen kann, sein Gedicht selbst ironisch zu betrachten und über die Unmöglichkeit der Begebenheit zu scherzen Ton und Sprache sind höchst mannigfaltig, etc." From the pen of A. W. Schlegel there is a sonnet (p. 55) extolling the excellence of the Persiles, while the opinion of Friedr. Schlegel might be taken to voice the enthusiasm of the whole school (p. 60): "Es ist die späteste, fast zu reife, aber doch noch frisch und gewürzhaft duftende Frucht dieses liebenswürdigen Geistes [i. e. Cervantes] der noch im letzten Hauch Poesie und ewige Jugend athmete."

1 Geschichte der schönen Wissenschaften (with subtitle), "Geschichte der spanischen und portugiesischen Poesie und Beredsamkeit." Von Fried. Bouterwek (1804). Being Vol. III of a work entitled: Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1801-19).

2 Cf. Ferd. Wolf, Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen und portugiesischen NationalLitteratur (Berlin, 1859), p. 1.

it contains in a nutshell practically all that has been said of the romance since his day. He regards the Persiles as "ein interessanter Nachtrag zu seinen [i. e., Cervantes'] übrigen Werken;" and he adds:

Sprache und Darstellung haben in diesem Roman besonders, bei der reinsten Simplicität, eine seltene Präcision und Politur. Aber die Idee eines solchen Romans war keiner neuen Ausführung werth. Cervantes wollte am Ende seiner glorreichen Laufbahn noch den Heliodor nachahmen.1

Bouterwek sums up the work as a romantic description of fearful adventures with a sustained interest in the situations, but an absurd mixture of the real and fabulous, while the last half, where the scene is Spain and Italy, does not harmonize with the spirit of the first.

To what extent Bouterwek was influenced by Mayans y Siscar and subsequent critics of the eighteenth century, when he commends especially the simplicity of composition as well as the excellence in style of the Persiles, cannot be determined, and is unimportant. But this criticism, such as it is, has constituted the chief, if not the only, praise which the work has met with since his day. In stating his opinion, however, that the idea of the romance was old and did not deserve to be reproduced in a new manner, that Cervantes had taken it into his head to imitate Heliodorus, Bouterwek made a most insufficient and misleading statement. He has become responsible for the sweeping generalities patterned after his own by other writers, by not making it clear that the Persiles, though it is but an old theme in a new form, has none the less the merits of an original creation, just as does a new play though it be based upon an old plot. As regards the imitation of Heliodorus, what follows later will show how few are the reminiscences of the Greek romance, especially in substance, when compared with the rest of the material gleaned from the storehouse of Cervantes' reading. The remainder of Bouterwek's judgment is fair and to the point, but, being unfavorable to the Persiles, it could not have made the book attractive to the ordinary reader.

1 Bouterwek, p. 359; cf. also the English translation of Thomasina Ross, History of Spanish Literature, by Frederick Bouterwek (London, 1847), p. 252.