DON QUIXOTE

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with the aquiline features, chestnut hair, smooth untroubled forehead,
and bright cheerful eyes, is the very portrait of a sanguine man. Nothing
that the managers might say could persuade him that the merits of his
plays would not be recognised at last if they were only given a fair
chance. The old soldier of the Spanish Salamis was bent on being the
Aeschylus of Spain. He was to found a great national drama, based on the
true principles of art, that was to be the envy of all nations; he was to
drive from the stage the silly, childish plays, the "mirrors of nonsense
and models of folly" that were in vogue through the cupidity of the
managers and shortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and
educate the public taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of
the Greek drama--like the "Numancia" for instance--and comedies that
would not only amuse but improve and instruct. All this he was to do,
could he once get a hearing: there was the initial difficulty.

He shows plainly enough, too, that "Don Quixote" and the demolition of
the chivalry romances was not the work that lay next his heart. He was,