DON QUIXOTE

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narrative, and the apparent unconsciousness of the author that he is
saying anything ludicrous, anything but the merest commonplace, that give
its peculiar flavour to the humour of Cervantes. His, in fact, is the
exact opposite of the humour of Sterne and the self-conscious humourists.
Even when Uncle Toby is at his best, you are always aware of "the man
Sterne" behind him, watching you over his shoulder to see what effect he
is producing. Cervantes always leaves you alone with Don Quixote and
Sancho. He and Swift and the great humourists always keep themselves out
of sight, or, more properly speaking, never think about themselves at
all, unlike our latter-day school of humourists, who seem to have revived
the old horse-collar method, and try to raise a laugh by some grotesque
assumption of ignorance, imbecility, or bad taste.

It is true that to do full justice to Spanish humour in any other
language is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and a
sonorous stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that make
an absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most