DON QUIXOTE

Back Forward Menu

death. So large a number naturally supplied the demand for some time, but
by 1634 it appears to have been exhausted; and from that time down to the
present day the stream of editions has continued to flow rapidly and
regularly. The translations show still more clearly in what request the
book has been from the very outset. In seven years from the completion of
the work it had been translated into the four leading languages of
Europe. Except the Bible, in fact, no book has been so widely diffused as
"Don Quixote." The "Imitatio Christi" may have been translated into as
many different languages, and perhaps "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Vicar of
Wakefield" into nearly as many, but in multiplicity of translations and
editions "Don Quixote" leaves them all far behind.

Still more remarkable is the character of this wide diffusion. "Don
Quixote" has been thoroughly naturalised among people whose ideas about
knight-errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest, who had
never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could not possibly feel
the humour of the burlesque or sympathise with the author's purpose.