And such, in fact, it was, for we have
abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in
Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm
to the more judicious....
To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the
character of all classes of men, to break up the only reading which
at that time could be considered widely popular and fashionable, was
certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than
a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to
be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes
succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was
written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same
date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or
two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted; so that, from that time to
the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now
among the rarest of literary curiosities--a solitary instance of the
power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire
department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the
literature of a great and proud nation.
The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without,
perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results,
was simple as well as original.
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