DON QUIXOTE It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favour of thepresent undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that of a newedition of Shelton's "Don Quixote," which has now become a somewhatscarce book. There are some—and I confess myself to be one—for whomShelton's racy old version, with all its defects, has a charm that nomodern translation, however skilful or correct, could possess. Sheltonhad the inestimable advantage of belonging to the same generation asCervantes; "Don Quixote" had to him a vitality that only a contemporarycould feel; it cost him no dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes sawthem; there is no anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish ofCervantes into the English of Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself mostlikely knew the book; he may have carried it home with him in hissaddle-bags to Stratford on one of his last journeys, and under themulberry tree at New Place joined hands with a kindred genius in itspages.
But it was soon made plain to me that to hope for even a moderatepopularity for Shelton was vain. His fine old crusted English would, nodoubt, be relished by a minority, but it would be only by a minority. Hiswarmest admirers must admit that he is not a satisfactory representativeof Cervantes. His translation of the First Part was very hastily made andwas never revised by him. It has all the freshness and vigour, but also afull measure of the faults, of a hasty production. It is often veryliteral—barbarously literal frequently—but just as often very loose. Hehad evidently a good colloquial knowledge of Spanish, but apparently notmuch more. It never seems to occur to him that the same translation of aword will not suit in every case.
It is often said that we have no satisfactory translation of "DonQuixote." To those who are familiar with the original, it savours oftruism or platitude to say so, for in truth there can be no thoroughlysatisfactory translation of "Don Quixote" into English or any otherlanguage. It is not that the Spanish idioms are so utterly unmanageable,or that the untranslatable words, numerous enough no doubt, are sosuperabundant, but rather that the sententious terseness to which thehumour of the book owes its flavour is peculiar to Spanish, and can atbest be only distantly imitated in any other tongue.
The history of our English translations of "Don Quixote" is instructive.Shelton's, the first in any language, was made, apparently, about 1608,but not published till 1612. This of course was only the First Part. Ithas been asserted that the Second, published in 1620, is not the work ofShelton, but there is nothing to support the assertion save the fact thatit has less spirit, less of what we generally understand by "go," aboutit than the first, which would be only natural if the first were the workof a young man writing currente calamo, and the second that of amiddle-aged man writing for a bookseller. On the other hand, it is closerand more literal, the style is the same, the very same translations, ormistranslations, occur in it, and it is extremely unlikely that a newtranslator would, by suppressing his name, have allowed Shelton to carryoff the credit.
In 1687 John Phillips, Milton's nephew, produced a "Don Quixote" "madeEnglish," he says, "according to the humour of our modern language." His"Quixote" is not so much a translation as a travesty, and a travesty thatfor coarseness, vulgarity, and buffoonery is almost unexampled even inthe literature of that day.
Ned Ward's "Life and Notable Adventures of Don Quixote, merrilytranslated into Hudibrastic Verse" (1700), can scarcely be reckoned atranslation, but it serves to show the light in which "Don Quixote"