DON QUIXOTE

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that it was; but I must say I doubt it. It was a hard life, a life of
poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, of disappointment, but
Cervantes carried within himself the antidote to all these evils. His was
not one of those light natures that rise above adversity merely by virtue
of their own buoyancy; it was in the fortitude of a high spirit that he
was proof against it. It is impossible to conceive Cervantes giving way
to despondency or prostrated by dejection. As for poverty, it was with
him a thing to be laughed over, and the only sigh he ever allows to
escape him is when he says, "Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of
bread for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself."
Add to all this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless
invention and his sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough
to doubt whether his could have been a very unhappy life. He who could
take Cervantes' distresses together with his apparatus for enduring them
would not make so bad a bargain, perhaps, as far as happiness in life is
concerned.