DON QUIXOTE

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the great majority of the artists who illustrated "Don Quixote" knew
nothing whatever of Spain. To them a venta conveyed no idea but the
abstract one of a roadside inn, and they could not therefore do full
justice to the humour of Don Quixote's misconception in taking it for a
castle, or perceive the remoteness of all its realities from his ideal.
But even when better informed they seem to have no apprehension of the
full force of the discrepancy. Take, for instance, Gustave Dore's drawing
of Don Quixote watching his armour in the inn-yard. Whether or not the
Venta de Quesada on the Seville road is, as tradition maintains, the inn
described in "Don Quixote," beyond all question it was just such an
inn-yard as the one behind it that Cervantes had in his mind's eye, and
it was on just such a rude stone trough as that beside the primitive
draw-well in the corner that he meant Don Quixote to deposit his armour.
Gustave Dore makes it an elaborate fountain such as no arriero ever
watered his mules at in the corral of any venta in Spain, and thereby
entirely misses the point aimed at by Cervantes. It is the mean, prosaic,
commonplace character of all the surroundings and circumstances that