DON QUIXOTE

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injuries, and succour the distressed, and this, as a matter of course, he
makes his business when he takes up the part; a knight-errant was bound
to be intrepid, and so he feels bound to cast fear aside. Of all Byron's
melodious nonsense about Don Quixote, the most nonsensical statement is
that "'t is his virtue makes him mad!" The exact opposite is the truth;
it is his madness makes him virtuous.

In the Second Part, Cervantes repeatedly reminds the reader, as if it was
a point upon which he was anxious there should be no mistake, that his
hero's madness is strictly confined to delusions on the subject of
chivalry, and that on every other subject he is discreto, one, in fact,
whose faculty of discernment is in perfect order. The advantage of this
is that he is enabled to make use of Don Quixote as a mouthpiece for his
own reflections, and so, without seeming to digress, allow himself the
relief of digression when he requires it, as freely as in a commonplace
book.