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62Miguel de CervantesSome of them, perhaps, would understand, better than Don Quixoteunderstood, that the full record of his doings, compiled by Cervantes,is both a tribute to the saintly character, and a criticism of it. Theycertainly could not fail to discover the religious kernel of the book, asthe world, in the easy confidence of its own superiority, has failed todiscover it. They would know that whoso loseth his life shall save it;they would not find it difficult to understand how Don Quixote, and,in his own degree, Sancho, was willing to be a fool, that he, and theworld with him, might be made wise. Above all, they would appreciatethe more squalid misadventures of Don Quixote, for, unlike thepublic, which recognizes the saint by his aureole, they would know,none better, that the way they have chosen is the way of contempt,and that Christianity was nursed in a manger.Notes1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, born at Alcalá de Henares,1547; died at Madrid, 23 April 1616.2. The authentic facts concerning the life of Cervantes havebeen collected and stated with admirable scholarly precisionby Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly, in his recent Miguel deCervantes Saavedra, a Memoir (Clarendon Press, 1913). In thisbiography is embodied all that can be learned from the largearray of documents discovered and published within the lasttwenty years by the late Cristobal Pérez Pastor. The resultingaddition to our knowledge will disappoint those who are notaccustomed to the perspective of the law. A man’s small debtsand worries are recorded on parchment; the crucial eventsof his life find no historian but himself. To compile a life ofCervantes from this wilderness of documents is as difficult asit must always be to write the life of a soldier and poet fromthe evidence supplied by his washing-bills and tax-papers.Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly has performed his task modestly andjudiciously.