[1] January, 1897, p. 192.

"Early in 1604 the three men, Robert Catesby, John Wright, and Thomas Winter, meeting in a house at Lambeth, resolved on a Powder Plot, though, of course, only in outline. By April they had added to their number Wright's brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire man of respectable family, but actually a soldier of fortune, serving in the Spanish army in the Low Countries, who was specially brought over to England as a capable and resolute man. Later on they enlisted Wright's brother Christopher, Winter's brother Robert, Robert Keyes, and a few more; but all, with the exception of Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, men of family and for the most part of competent fortune, though Keyes is said to have been in straitened circumstances, and Catesby to have been impoverished by a heavy fine levied on him as a recusant.[2]

[2] This is a mistake. The fine of three thousand pounds was imposed for his part in the Essex rebellion.

"Percy, a second cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, then captain of the Gentleman Pensioners, was admitted by him into that body in—it is said—an irregular manner, his relationship to the earl passing in lieu of the usual oath of fidelity. The position gave him some authority and license near the court, and enabled him to hire a house, or part of a house, adjoining the House of Lords. From the cellar of this house they proposed to burrow under the House of Lords; to place there a large quantity of powder, and to blow up the whole when the King and his family were there assembled at the opening of Parliament. On December 11, 1604, they began to dig in the cellar, and after a fortnight's labor, having come to a thick wall, they left off work and separated for Christmas.

"Early in January they began at the wall, which they found to be extremely hard, so that, after working for about two months,[3] they had not got more than half way through it. They then learned that a cellar actually under the House of Lords, and used as a coal cellar, was to be let; and as it was most suitable for their design, Percy hired it as though for his own use. The digging was stopped, and powder, to the amount of thirty-six barrels, was brought into the cellar, where it was stowed under heaps of coal or firewood, and so remained, under the immediate care of Guy Fawkes,[4] till, on the night of November 4, 1605—the opening of Parliament being fixed for the next day—Sir Thomas Knyvet, with a party of men, was ordered to examine the cellar. He met Fawkes coming out of it, arrested him, and on a close search found the powder, of which a mysterious warning had been conveyed to Lord Monteagle a few days before. On the news of this discovery the conspirators scattered, but by different roads rejoined each other in Warwickshire, whence, endeavoring to raise the country, they rode through Worcestershire, and were finally shot or taken prisoners at Holbeche in Staffordshire."

[3] Off and on, a fortnight at the end of January and beginning of February, and then again probably for a very short time in March.

[4] Fawkes was absent part of the time.

It is this story that I now propose to compare with the evidence. First of all, let us restrict ourselves to the story told by Guy Fawkes himself in the five examinations to which he was subjected previously to his being put to the torture on November 9th, and to the letters, proclamations, etc., issued by the Government during the four days commencing with the 5th. From these we learn, not only that Fawkes' account of the matter gradually developed, but that the knowledge of the Government also developed; a fact which fits in very well with the "traditional story," but which is hardly to be expected if the Government account of the affair was cut-and-dried from the first.

Fawkes' first examination took place on November 5th, and was conducted by Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-General Coke. It is true that only a copy has reached us, but it is a copy taken for Coke's use, as is shown by the headings of each paragraph inserted in the margin in his own hand. It is therefore out of the question that Salisbury, if he had been so minded, would have been able to falsify it. Each page has the signature (in copy) of "Jhon Jhonson," the name by which Fawkes chose to be known.

The first part of the examination turns upon Fawkes' movements abroad, showing that the Government had already acquired information that he had been beyond sea. Fawkes showed no reluctance to speak of his own proceedings in the Low Countries, or to give the names of persons he had met there, and who were beyond the reach of his examiners. As to his movements after his return to England, he was explicit enough so far as he was himself concerned, and also about Percy, whose servant he professed himself to be, and whose connection with the hiring of the house could not be concealed.

Fawkes stated that after coming back to England he "came to the lodging near the Upper House of Parliament," and "that Percy hired the house of Whynniard for L12 rent, about a year and a half ago"; that his master, before his own going abroad, i.e., before Easter, 1605, "lay in the house about three or four times." Further, he confessed "that about Christmas last," i.e., Christmas, 1604, "he brought in the night-time gunpowder [to the cellar under the Upper House of Parliament]."[5] Afterward he told how he covered the powder with fagots, intending to blow up the King and the Lords; and, being pressed how he knew that the King would be in the House on the 5th, said he knew it only from general report, and by the making ready of the King's barge; but he would have "blown up the Upper House whensoever the King was there."

[5] The words between brackets are inserted in another hand.

He further acknowledged that there was more than one person concerned in the conspiracy, and said he himself had promised not to reveal it, but denied that he had taken the sacrament on his promise. Where the promise was given he could not remember, except that it was in England. He refused to accuse his partners, saying that he himself had provided the powder, and defrayed the cost of his journey beyond sea, which was only undertaken "to see the country, and to pass away the time." When he went, he locked up the powder and took the key with him, and "one Gibbons' wife, who dwells thereby, had the charge of the residue of the house."

Such is that part of the story told by Fawkes which concerns us at present. It is obvious that Fawkes, who, as subsequent experience shows, was no coward, had made up his mind to shield as far as possible his confederates, and to take the whole of the blame upon himself. He says, for instance, that Percy had only lain in the house for three or four days before Easter, 1605, a statement, as subsequent evidence proved, quite untrue; he pretends not to know, except from rumor and the preparation of the barge, that the King was coming to the House of Lords on the 5th, a statement almost certainly untrue. In order not to criminate others, and especially any priest, he denies having taken the sacrament on his promise, which is also untrue.

What is more noticeable is that he makes no mention of the mine, about which so much was afterward heard, evidently—so at least I read the evidence—because he did not wish to bring upon the stage those who had worked at it. If indeed the passage which I have placed in square brackets be accepted as evidence, Fawkes did more than keep silence upon the mine. He must have made a positive assertion—soon afterward found to be untrue—that the cellar was hired several months before it really was. This passage is, however, inserted in a different hand from the rest of the document. My own belief is that it gives a correct account of a statement made by the prisoner, but omitted by the clerk who made the copy for Coke, and inserted by some other person. Nobody that I can think of had the slightest interest in adding the words, while they are just what Fawkes might be expected to say if he wanted to lead his examiners off the scent. At all events, even if these words be left out of account, it must be admitted that Fawkes said nothing about the existence of a mine.

Though Fawkes kept silence as to the mine, he did not keep silence on the desperate character of the work on which he had been engaged. "And," runs the record, "he confesseth that when the King had come to the Parliament House this present day, and the Upper House had been sitting, he meant to have fired the match and have fled for his own safety before the powder had taken fire, and confesseth that, if he had not been apprehended this last night, he had blown up the Upper House when the King, Lords, Bishops, and others had been there, and saith that he spake for [and provided][6] those bars and crows of iron, some in one place, some in another, in London, lest it should be suspected, and saith that he had some of them in or about Gracious Street."[7] Fawkes here clearly takes the whole terrible design, with the exception of the mine, on his own shoulders.

[6] Inserted in the same hand as that in which the words about the cellar were written. It will be observed that the insertion cannot serve anyone's purpose.

[7] Gracechurch Street.

Commissioners were now appointed to conduct the investigation further. They were: Nottingham, Suffolk, Devonshire, Worcester, Northampton, Salisbury, Mar, and Popham, with Attorney-General Coke in attendance. This was hardly a body of men who would knowingly cover an intrigue of Salisbury's. Worcester is always understood to have been professedly a Catholic; Northampton was certainly one, though he attended the King's service, while Suffolk was friendly toward the Catholics; and Nottingham, if he is no longer to be counted among them,[8] was at least not long afterward a member of the party which favored an alliance with Spain, and therefore a policy of toleration toward the Catholics.

[8] On July 20-30, 1605, Father Creswell writes to Paul V that Nottingham showed him every civility "that could be expected from one who does not profess our holy religion."

Before five of these commissioners—Nottingham, Suffolk, Devonshire, Northampton, and Salisbury—Fawkes was examined a second time on the forenoon of the 6th. In some way the Government had found out that Percy had had a new door made in the wall leading to the cellar, and they now drew from Fawkes an untrue statement that it was put in about the middle of Lent, that is to say, early in March, 1605.[9] They had also discovered a pair of brewer's slings, by which barrels were usually carried between two men, and they pressed Fawkes hard to say who was his partner in removing the barrels of gunpowder. He began by denying that he had had a partner at all, but finally answered that "he cannot discover the party, but"—i.e., lest—"he shall bring him in question." He also said that he had forgotten where he slept on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday in the week before his arrest.

[9] The "cellar" was not really hired till a little before Easter, March 31st.

Upon this James himself intervened, submitting to the Commissioners a series of questions with the object of drawing out of the prisoner a true account of himself, and of his relations to Percy. A letter had been found on Fawkes when he was taken, directed not to Johnson, but to Fawkes, and this among other things had raised the King's suspicions. In his third examination, on the afternoon of the 6th, in the presence of Northampton, Devonshire, Nottingham, and Salisbury, Fawkes gave a good deal of information, more or less true, about himself; and, while still maintaining that his real name was Johnson, said that the letter, which was written by a Mrs. Bostock in Flanders, was addressed to him by another name "because he called himself Fawkes," that is to say, because he had acquired the name of Fawkes as an alias.

"If he will not otherwise confess," the King had ended by saying, "the gentler tortures are to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur." To us, living in the nineteenth century, these words are simply horrible. As a Scotchman, however, James had long been familiar with the use of torture as an ordinary means of legal investigation, while even in England, though unknown to the law, that is to say, to the practice of the ordinary courts of justice, it had for some generations been used not infrequently by order of the council to extract evidence from a recalcitrant witness, though, according to Bacon, not for the purpose of driving him to incriminate himself. Surely, if the use of torture was admissible at all, this was a case for its employment. The prisoner had informed the government that he had been at the bottom of a plot of the most sanguinary kind, and had acknowledged by implication that there were fellow-conspirators whom he refused to name.

If, indeed, Father Gerard's view of the case, that the government, or at least Salisbury, had for some time known all about the conspiracy, nothing—not even the Gunpowder Plot itself—could be more atrocious than the infliction of torments on a fellow-creature to make him reveal a secret already in their possession. If, however, the evidence I have adduced be worth anything, this was by no means the case. What it shows is that on the afternoon of the 6th all that the members of the government were aware of was that an unknown number of conspirators were at large—they knew not where—and might at that very moment be appealing—they knew not with what effect—to Catholic land-owners and their tenants, who were, without doubt, exasperated by the recent enforcement of the penal laws. We may, if we please, condemn the conduct of the government which had brought the danger of a general Catholic rising within sight. We cannot deny that, at that particular moment, they had real cause of alarm. At all events, no immediate steps were taken to put this part of the King's orders in execution.

Some little information, indeed, was coming in from other witnesses. In his first examination, on November 5th, Fawkes had stated that in his absence he locked up the powder, and "one Gibbons' wife who dwells thereby had the charge of the residue of the house." An examination of her husband on the 5th, however, only elicited that he, being a porter, had with two others carried three thousand billets into the vault. On the 6th, Ellen, the wife of Andrew Bright, stated that Percy's servant had, about the beginning of March, asked her to let the vault to his master, and that she had consented to abandon her tenancy of it if Mrs. Whynniard, from whom she held it, would consent. Mrs. Whynniard's consent having been obtained, Mrs. Bright, or rather Mrs. Skinner—she being a widow remarried subsequently to Andrew Bright—received two pounds for giving up the premises.

The important point in this evidence is that the date of March, 1605, given as that on which Percy entered into possession of the cellar, showed that Fawkes' statement that he had brought powder into the cellar at Christmas, 1604, could not possibly be true. On the 7th Mrs. Whynniard confirmed Mrs. Bright's statement, and also stated that, a year earlier, in March, 1604, "Mr. Percy began to labor very earnestly with this examinate and her husband to have the lodging by the Parliament House, which one Mr. Henry Ferris, of Warwickshire, had long held before, and, having obtained the said Mr. Ferris' good-will to part from it after long suit by himself and great entreaty of Mr. Carleton, Mr. Epsley, and other gentleman belonging to the Earl of Northumberland, affirming him to be a very honest gentleman, and that they could not have a better tenant, her husband and she were contented to let him have the said lodging at the same rent Mr. Ferris paid for it."

Mrs. Whynniard had plainly never heard of the mine; and that the Government was in equal ignorance is shown by the indorsement on the agreement of Ferris—or rather Ferrers—to make over his tenancy to Percy—"The bargain between Ferris and Percy for the bloody cellar, found in Winter's lodging." Winter's name had been under consideration for some little time, and doubtless the discovery of this paper was made on, or more probably before, the 7th. The Government, having as yet nothing but Fawkes' evidence to go upon, connected the hiring of the house with the hiring of the cellar, and at least showed no signs of suspecting anything more.

On the same day, the 7th, something was definitely heard of the proceedings of the other plotters, who had either gathered at Dunchurch for the hunting-match, or had fled from London to join them, and a proclamation was issued for the arrest of Percy, Catesby, Rokewood, Thomas Winter, Edward[10] Grant, John and Christopher Wright, and Catesby's servant, Robert Ashfield. They were charged with assembling in troops in the counties of Warwick and Worcester, breaking into stables and seizing horses. Fawkes, too, was on that day subjected to a fourth examination. Not very much that was new was extracted from him. He acknowledged that his real name was Guy Fawkes, that—which he had denied before—he had received the sacrament not to discover any of the conspirators, and also that there had been at first five persons privy to the plot, and afterward five or six more "were generally acquainted that an action was to be performed for the Catholic cause, and saith that he doth not know that they were acquainted with the whole conspiracy." Being asked whether Catesby, the two Wrights, Winter, or Tresham, were privy, he refused to accuse any one.

[10] Properly "John."

That Fawkes had already been threatened with torture is known, and it may easily be imagined that the threats had been redoubled after this last unsatisfactory acknowledgment. On the morning of the 8th, however, Waad, who was employed to worm out his secrets, reported that little was to be expected. "I find this fellow," he wrote, "who this day is in a most stubborn and perverse humour, as dogged as if he were possessed. Yester-night I had persuaded him to set down a clear narration of all his wicked plots from the first entering to the same, to the end they pretended, with the discourses and projects that were thought upon amongst them, which he undertook [to do] and craved time this night to bethink him the better; but this morning he hath changed his mind and is [so] sullen and obstinate as there is no dealing with him."

The sight of the examiners, together with the sight of the rack,[11] changed Fawkes' mind to some extent. He was resolved that nothing but actual torture should wring from him the names of his fellow-plotters, who so far as was known in London were still at large.[12] He prepared himself, however, to reveal the secrets of the plot so far as was consistent with the concealment of the names of those concerned in it. His fifth examination, on the 8th, the last before the one taken under torture on the 9th, gives to the inquirer into the reality of the plot all that he wants to know.

[11] In The King's Book it is stated that Fawkes was shown the rack, but never racked. Probably the torture used on the 9th was that of the manacles, or hanging up by the wrists or thumbs.

[12] The principal ones were either killed or taken at Holbeche on that very day.

"He confesseth," so the tale begins, "that a practice was first broken unto him against his majesty for the Catholic cause, and not invented or propounded by himself, and this was first propounded unto him about Easter last was twelvemonth, beyond the seas in the Low Countries, by an English layman,[13] and that Englishman came over with him in his company into England, and they two and three more[14] were the first five mentioned in the former examination. And they five resolving to do somewhat for the Catholic cause (a vow being first taken by all of them for secrecy), one of the other three[15] propounded to perform it with powder, and resolved that the place should be (where this action should be performed and justice done) in or near the place of the sitting of the Parliament, wherein Religion had been unjustly suppressed. This being resolved, the manner of it was as followeth:

"First they hired the house at Westminster, of one Ferres, and having his house they sought then to make a mine under the Upper House of Parliament, and they began to make the mine in or about the 11 of December, and they five first entered into the works, and soone after took an other[16] to them, having first sworn him and taken the sacrament for secrecy; and when they came to the wall (that was about three yards thick) and found it a matter of great difficulty, they took to them an other in like manner, with oath and sacrament as aforesaid;[17] all which seven were gentlemen of name and blood, and not any was employed in or about this action (no, not so much as in digging and mining) that was not a gentleman.

[13] Thomas Winter.

[14] Catesby, Percy, and John Wright.

[15] I.e., Catesby. In a copy forwarded to Edmondes by Salisbury (Stowe MSS. 168, fol. 223) the copyist had originally written "three or four more," which is altered to "three."

[16] Christopher Wright.

[17] Robert Winter.

"And having wrought to the wall before Christmas, they ceased until after the holidays, and the day before Christmas (having a mass of earth that came out of the mine) they carried it into the garden of the said house, and after Christmas they wrought the wall till Candlemas, and wrought the wall half through; and saith that all the time while the other wrought, he stood as sentinel, to decry any man that came near; and when any man came near to the place, upon warning given by him they ceased until they had notice to proceed from him; and sayeth that they seven all lay in the house, and had shot and powder, and they all resolved to die in that place, before they yielded or were taken.

"And, as they were working, they heard a rushing in the cellar, which grew by one Bright's selling of his coals,[18] whereupon this examinant, fearing they had been discovered, went into the cellar and viewed the cellar, and perceiving the commodity thereof for their purpose, and understanding how it would be letten, his master, Mr. Percy, hired the cellar for a year for L4 rent; and confesseth that after Christmas twenty barrels of powder were brought by themselves to a house, which they had on the bank side in hampers, and from that house removed the powder to the said house near the Upper House of Parliament; and, presently, upon hiring the cellar they themselves removed the powder into the cellar, and covered the same with fagots which they had before laid into the cellar.

[18] This is an obvious mistake, as the widow Skinner was not at this time married to Bright, but one just as likely to be made by Fawkes himself as by his examiners.

"After, about Easter, he went into the Low Countries (as he before hath declared in his former examination) and that the true purpose of his going over was, lest, being a dangerous man, he should be known and suspected, and in the mean time he left the key of the cellar with Mr. Percy, who in his absence caused more billets to be laid into the cellar, as in his former examination he confessed, and returned about the end of August, or the beginning of September, and went again to the said house, near to the said cellar, and received the key of the cellar again of one of the five,[19] and then they brought in five or six barrels of powder more into the cellar, which also they covered with billets, saving four little barrels covered with fagots, and then this examinant went into the country about the end of September.

[19] Percy.

"It appeareth the powder was in the cellar placed as it was found the 5 of November, when the Lords came to prorogue the Parliament, and sayeth that he returned again to the said house near the cellar on Wednesday the 30 of October.

"He confesseth he was at the Earl of Montgomery's marriage, but, as he sayeth, with no intention of evil, having a sword about him, and was very near to his Majesty and the Lords there present.[20]

[20] The words in Italics are marked by pen-strokes across them for omission.

"Forasmuch as they knew not well how they should come by the person of the Duke Charles, being near London, where they had no forces (if he had not been also blown up), he confesseth that it was resolved among them that the same day that this detestable act should have been performed, the same day should other of their confederacy have surprised the person of the Lady Elizabeth, and presently have proclaimed her Queen, to which purpose a proclamation was drawn, as well to avow and justify the action, as to have protested against the Union, and in no sort to have meddled with religion therein, and would have protested also against all strangers, and this proclamation should have been made in the name of the Lady Elizabeth.

"Being demanded why they did not surprise the King's person, and draw him to the effecting of their purpose, sayeth that so many must have been acquainted with such an action as it would not have been kept secret.

"He confesseth that if their purpose had taken effect, until they had had power enough, they would not have avowed the deed to be theirs; but if their power (for their defence and safety) had been sufficient, they themselves would then have taken it upon them. They meant also to have sent for the prisoners in the Tower to have come to them, of whom particularly they had some consultation.

"He confesseth that the place of rendezvous was in Warwickshire, and that armour was sent thither, but the particular thereof he knows not.

"He confesseth that they had consultation for the taking of the Lady Mary into their possession, but knew not how to come by her.

"And confesseth that provision was made by some of the conspiracy of some armour of proof this last summer for this action.

"He confesseth that the powder was bought by the common purse of the confederates.

"L. Admiral [Earl of Nottingham] Earl of Salisbury L. Chamberlain [Earl of Suffolk] Earl of Mar Earl of Devonshire Lord Chief Justice [Popham][21] Earl of Northampton "Attended by Mr. Attorney-General [Coke]."

[21] G.P.B., No. 49. In the Stowe copy the names of the commissioners are omitted, and a list of fifteen plotters added. As the paper was enclosed in a letter to Edmondes of the 14th, these might easily be added at any date preceding that.

The 9th, the day on which Fawkes was put to the torture, brought news to the government that the fear of insurrection need no longer be entertained. It had been known before this that Fawkes' confederates had met on the 5th at Dunchurch on the pretext of a hunting-match,[22] and had been breaking open houses in Warwickshire and Worcestershire in order to collect arms. Yet so indefinite was the knowledge of the council that, on the 8th, they offered a reward for the apprehension of Percy alone, without including any of the other conspirators.[23] On the evening of the 9th[24] they received a letter from Sir Richard Walsh, the Sheriff of Worcestershire.

[22] Probably, as Father Gerard suggests, what would now be known as a coursing-match.

[23] Proclamation Book, R.O., p. 117.

[24] A late postscript added to the letter to the ambassadors sent off on the 9th (Winwood, ii. 173) shows that before the end of the day Salisbury had learned even more of the details than were comprised in the sheriff's letter.

"We think fit," he wrote, "with all speed to certify your Lordships of the happy success it hath pleased God to give us against the rebellious assembly in these parts. After such time as they had taken the horses from Warwick upon Tuesday night last,[25] they came to Mr. Robert Winter's house to Huddington upon Wednesday night,[26] where—having entered—[they] armed themselves at all points in open rebellion. They passed from thence upon Thursday morning[27] unto Hewell—the Lord Windsor's house—which they entered and took from thence by force great store of armour, artillery of the said Lord Windsor's, and passed that night into the county of Staffordshire unto the house of one Stephen Littleton, Gentleman, called Holbeche, about two miles distant from Stourbridge, whither we pursued, with the assistance of Sir John Foliot, Knight, Francis Ketelsby, Esquire, Humphrey Salway, Gentleman, Edmund Walsh, and Francis Conyers, Gentlemen, with few other gentlemen and the power and face of the country.

[25] November 5th.

[26] November 6th.

[27] November 7th.

"We made against them upon Thursday morning,[27] and freshly pursued them until the next day,[28] at which time, about twelve or one of the clock in the afternoon, we overtook them at the said Holbeche House—the greatest part of their retinue and some of the better sort being dispersed and fled before our coming, whereupon and after summons and warning first given and proclamation in his Highness's name to yield and submit themselves—who refusing the same, we fired some part of the house and assaulted some part of the rebellious persons left in the said house, in which assault one Mr. Robert Catesby is slain, and three others verily thought wounded to death whose names—as far as we can learn—are Thomas Percy, Gentleman, John Wright, and Christopher Wright, Gentlemen; and these are apprehended and taken: Thomas Winter Gentleman, John Grant Gentleman, Henry Morgan Gentleman, Ambrose Rokewood Gentleman, Thomas Ockley carpenter, Edmund Townsend servant to the said John Grant, Nicholas Pelborrow, servant unto the said Ambrose Rokewood, Edward Ockley carpenter, Richard Townsend servant to the said Robert Winter, Richard Day servant to the said Stephen Littleton, which said prisoners are in safe custody here, and so shall remain until your Honours good pleasures be further known. The rest of that rebellious assembly is dispersed, we have caused to be followed with fresh suite and hope of their speedy apprehension. We have also thought fit to send unto your Honours—according unto our duties—such letters as we have found about the parties apprehended; and so resting in all duty at your Honours' further command, we take leave, from Stourbridge this Saturday morning, being the ixth of this instant November 1605.

"Your Honours' most humble to be commanded,

"RICH. WALSH."

[28] November 8th.



CERVANTES' "DON QUIXOTE" REFORMS LITERATURE

A.D. 1605

HENRY EDWARD WATTS

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is the most celebrated of Spanish authors; but his fame rests upon a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did, and overthrew the false taste for wordy pomp and emptiness which was characteristic of his times. It was not only Spanish literature that felt the impulse of his warm, frank honesty and insight into life. All Europe was his debtor.

Cervantes was an impoverished nobleman, that too common product of Spain in those days when her American gold fleets had begun to fail her. In his early manhood he was an author and then a soldier of fortune in Italy. He fought as a common soldier on one of the Genoese galleys in the great sea-fight of Lepanto, distinguished himself there by his heroism, and was three times wounded, crippled in one arm for life. Later he was captured by Algerian pirates, and was for five years a slave, ever planning and attempting escapes, a daring, dashing hero, the life and admiration of his fellow-captives.

After his ransom and return to Spain, Cervantes once more took up literature, the amusement of his youth. He became a playwright and romancer. The government gave him a small position as a tax-collector, but with such good-natured carelessness did he handle this uncongenial employ that he had repeatedly to make good from his own pocket the losses he entailed upon the government. Even this unsatisfactory labor failed the impractical author about the period of the death of King Philip II (1598). He was imprisoned for debt, and sank into such abject poverty that he depended on his friends for bread. How much the gloomy Philip II is satirized in Cervantes' masterpiece has always been a disputed question.

The accession of the new King, which had been hailed as "the light after darkness," had little effect on Cervantes' fortunes. Philip III, though he had some taste for letters, and was not without sprouts of kindliness in his heart, had been by education and by an over-strict regimen in youth debased, so that he was even more completely a slave to the priestly influence than his father had been, without any of his father's ability or force of character. The Duke of Lerma was "the Atlas who bore the burden of the monarchy."[1] He was a man, according to Quevedo, "alluring and dexterous rather than intelligent; ruled by the interested cunning of his own creatures but imperious with all others; magnificent, ostentatious; choosing his men only by considerations of his own special policy or from personal friendship." Under such a man, who ruled the King at his will, it was not likely that any portion of the royal benevolence should light on Miguel de Cervantes. Moreover, the crowd of suppliants at court was very great, their appetite stimulated doubtless by the flattering reports of the new King's liberal disposition.

[1] The phrase was probably used by Cervantes in irony. It had been used by others before, and was a common form.

A contemporary writer laments with pathetic zeal and pious indignation the lot of many famous captains and valiant soldiers, who, after serving the King all their lives and being riddled with wounds, were not only pushed aside into corners without any reward, but condemned to see unworthy men without merit loaded with benefits, merely through enjoying the favor of some minister or courtier.[2] The Duke of Lerma, as one who professed a contempt for all letters and learning, was even less likely to be influenced by Cervantes' literary merits than by his services as a soldier—services which had now become an old story. Disappointed in his hopes of preferment, Cervantes had to maintain himself and his family by the exercise of his pen—writing, as we learn, letters and memorials for those who needed them,[3] while busy upon his new book.

[2] Fr. Sepulveda, quoted by Navarrete.

[3] And "employed in various agencies and businesses," says Navarrete, vaguely.

Without the gifts which are in favor at court—unskilled in the arts of solicitation—we can imagine, with a man of Cervantes' temperament, what a special hell it must have been—"in suing long to bide." About this time he seems almost to have dropped out of life. The four years between 1598 and 1602 are the obscurest in his story. We do not know where he lived or what he did. It was the crisis of the struggle with his unrelenting evil destiny. The presumption is that he was still in the South, engaged in his humble occupation of gathering rents, of buying grain for the use of the fleet, with intervals perhaps of social enjoyment among such friends as he had made at Seville; among whom is reckoned the painter Francisco de Pacheco. This was for our hero the darkest hour before the dawn. For already, according to my calculation, he must have begun to write Don Quixote, being now (1602) in his fifty-fifth year.[4] He had duly qualified himself, by personal experience, to tell the story of the adventures of him who sought to revive the spirit of the ancient chivalry. His own romance was ended. The pathetic lines of Goethe might seem to be written for his own case:

"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thraenen ass, Wer nicht die kummervollen Naechte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Maechte."[5]

[4] That Don Quixote could not have been written before 1591 is proved by the mention in chapter vi of a book published in that year. That it must have been written subsequently to 1596 is proved by the reference in chapter xix to an incident which was not ended till September, 1596 (see Navarrete). There are other hints and allusions in the story which, I think, show that it could scarcely have been begun while Philip II was alive.

[5] From Wilhelm Meister, Lehrjahre, chapter xii, thus Englished by Thomas Carlyle:

"Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping and watching for the morrow, He knew you not, ye unseen Powers."

Never had any man of letters to go through a severer ordeal. At last his genius found the true path for which it had been beating about so many years; but not until his prime of life had passed, when even that brave heart must have been chilled and that gay spirit deadened.

In 1601 Philip III, at the instance of the Duke of Lerma, removed the court to the old capital of Castile, Valladolid—by nature far better situated for a metropolis than Madrid, which had been the choice of his grandfather, Charles V. Thither Cervantes repaired, in 1603, doubtless with some hope of gleaning some crumbs of the royal favor. He was no more fortunate with the new King than he had been with the old. Despairing of place or patronage, he turned, with his brave spirit unquenched as by the record sufficiently appears, to completing this new thing among books.

Don Quixote was probably finished by the beginning of 1604, though some further time elapsed, as it seems, before the author had courage to go to print. His genius had lain fallow for twenty years. He was now old, and had written nothing, or at least published nothing, since Galatea. What fame was left to him he had earned as a poet among many poets. As an author, if he was remembered at all, it was in a line wholly different from that which he now essayed. There is reason to believe that the manuscript of the new book was in circulation among those who called themselves the author's friends, as was the custom of the age, before he found a patron and a publisher.[6] The publisher was got at last in Francisco Robles, the King's printer, to whom the copyright was sold for ten years.[7] The patron appeared in the person of the Duque de Bejar, a nobleman described by a writer of that age—Cristobal de Mesa—as himself both a poet and a valiant soldier. The choice was not altogether a happy one, for the Duke of Bejar might be said to have an ancestral claim to be regarded as a patron of books of chivalries. It was to his great-grandfather that one of the silliest and most extravagant of the romances had been dedicated by the author, Feliciano de Silva, who is the writer specially ridiculed by Cervantes—the very book which is the subject of a parody in the opening chapter of Don Quixote.[8] The Duke of Bejar was noted, moreover, for his own uncommon affection for the books of chivalries then in fashion, and it is probable that he at first understood Don Quixote to be one such as he was in the habit of reading. Learning of his mistake, he refused, it is said, the dedication, and withdrew his patronage from the author. Then, according to the pleasant story first told by Vicente de los Rios, was enacted that scene which has been so favorite a subject with modern artists. Cervantes begged of the Duke to give him a hearing before deciding against his book; upon which he was permitted to read a chapter, which the Duke found so much to his taste that he graciously readmitted the author into his favor and consented to receive the dedication. There is another tradition which imputes to the Duke's confessor—an ecclesiastic who must have had a cleaner nose for heterodoxy than most of his fellows—the original rejection of the dedication by the Duke, the alteration in its wording, and the subsequent neglect of the author.[9] The dedication which now does duty at the opening of the First Part of Don Quixote I have shown to have been tampered with by someone bearing no good-will to Cervantes.

[6] There are two curious pieces of evidence in proof that Don Quixote was known before it was printed. In the first edition of the Picara Justina, composed by Francisco de Ubeda—the license to print which is dated August, 1604—there are some truncated verses, like those in the beginning of Don Quixote, in which Don Quixote is mentioned by name as already famous (Catalogo de Salva, vol. ii, p. 157). Also in a private letter from Lope de Vega to his patron, the Duke of Sessa, there is a malignant allusion to Cervantes, speaking of poets. "There is none so bad as Cervantes, and none so foolish as to praise Don Quixote." The letter is dated August 4, 1604.

[7] That seems to have been the usual period for which a book was licensed in that age. The sum which Cervantes received for his copyright is not recorded.

[8] The Third Part of Don Florisel de Niquea was dedicated to a former Duque de Bejar. See Salva's Catalogo, vol. ii, p. 14.

[9] Cervantes is supposed to reflect on this meddlesome ecclesiastic in Part II, chap, xxxi, of Don Quixote, where there is a passage against those of the religious profession who "govern the houses of princes," written with a bitterness most unusual in our author.

The privilege of publication is dated September 26th, and the Tasa December 20,1604. The book itself, the First Part of Don Quixote (it was not so called in the first edition, of course), was printed by Juan de la Cuesta during 1604, and published at Madrid in January, 1605.[10] The impression was very carelessly made, and swarms with blunders, typographical and otherwise, showing that it was not corrected or revised by the author. The press-work, however, is quite equal in execution to that of most books of that age.

[10] Those who are fond of dwelling on coincidences may find one here of singular interest. The year during which Don Quixote was being printed was also the year in which, according to the best authorities, Shakespeare was producing his perfected Hamlet. The two noblest works of human wit, their subjects bearing a curious affinity one to another, each the story of a mind disordered by the burden of setting the world right, were thus born in the same year.

The reception which Don Quixote met with on its first appearance was cordial beyond all precedent, and such as must have convinced the author, who was evidently doubtful of his new experiment, that here at last his genius had found its true field of exercise. The persons of culture, indeed, received the book coldly. The half-learned sneered at the title as absurd and at the style as vulgar. Who was this ingenio lego—this lay, unlearned wit—"a poor Latin-less author," which is what they said of Shakespeare—outside of the cultos proper, of no university education—who had dared to parody the tastes of the higher circles? The envy and malice of all his rivals—especially of those who found themselves included in the satire—even the great Lope himself, the phoenix of his age, then at the height of his glory—spoke out, with open mouth, against the author. The chorus of dispraise was swelled by all those, persons chiefly of high station, whose fashion of reading had been ridiculed. A book, professing to be of entertainment, in which knights and knightly exercises were made a jest of—in which peasants, innkeepers, muleteers, and other vulgar people spoke their own language and behaved after their own fashion—was a daring innovation, all the more offensive because the laugh was directed at what was felt to be a national infirmity. Who was the bold man who, being neither courtier nor ecclesiastic, made sport for the world out of the weaknesses of caballeros? An old soldier of Lepanto, indeed! Lepanto was a name outworn. Spain was now in a new world. Crusades against the unbeliever, even those more popular ones which combined the saving of souls with the getting of gold, were long out of fashion. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body—the formidable phalanx of the endowed, with their patrons dependents, and dupes—though they were too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts aimed at obscurantism and superstition, had something more than a suspicion that this book called Don Quixote was a book to be discouraged.

In spite of the frowns and sneers of the quality, however, and the ill-concealed disgust of the learned, Don Quixote was received with unbounded applause by the common people.[11] Those best critics in every age and country, the honest readers, who were neither bourgeois nor genteel, neither learned nor ignorant, welcomed the book with a joyous enthusiasm, as a wholly new delight and source of entertainment. Nothing like it had ever appeared before. It was an epoch-marking book, if ever there was one.

[11] Con general aplauso de las gentes—he says in the Second Part of Don Quixote, speaking through the mouth of the Duchess. The legend, revived in the present age, that Don Quixote hung fire on the first publication, and that the author wrote anonymously a tract called El Buscapie (The Search-foot), in order to explain his story and its object, rests only upon the evidence of one Ruidiaz, and is contradicted by all the facts of the case. No such aid was necessary to push the sale of the book, whose purpose had been sufficiently explained by the author in his preface. The so-called Buscapie, published in 1848 by Adolfo de Castro, is an impudent forgery, which has imposed upon no one. It is the composition of Senor de Castro himself, who is a farceur, of some wit and more effrontery. Ticknor is even too serious in the attention which he bestows on Senor de Castro and his work, which an English publisher has thought worthy of a translation.

The proud and happy author himself spoke of his success with a frank complacency which, in any other man, would savor of vanity. Some seven or eight editions of Don Quixote are supposed to have been printed in the first year, of which six are now extant—two of Madrid, two of Lisbon, and two of Valencia.[12] The number of copies issued from the press in one year was probably in excess of the number reached by any book since the invention of printing.[13] But though all Spain talked of Don Quixote and read Don Quixote, and though the book brought him much fame, some consolation, and a few good friends, it does not appear to have helped to mend the fortunes of Cervantes in any material degree. In accordance with the usual dispensation, the author derived the least benefit from his success. Francisco Robles and Juan de la Cuesta, doubtless, made a good thing of it; but to Miguel de Cervantes there must have come but a small share of the profit. The laws of copyright were, in that age, little regarded; and it may be questioned whether, in a book published in Madrid, they could be enforced outside of Castile. The pirates and the wreckers were busy upon Don Quixote from its very earliest appearance; and its quick and plentiful reproduction in all the chief cities, not only of Spain but of the outside Spanish dominions, though highly flattering to the author, could not have greatly helped to lighten his life of toil and penury.

[12] Senor Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions of 1605 which have wholly perished; one probably at Barcelona, the press of which city was very active in that year; one at Pamplona, and probably one at Saragossa, which were capitals of old kingdoms. See also Senor Asensio's letter to the Ateneo, No. 23, p. 296; and the Bibliography of Don Quixote at the end of this volume.

[13] The ordinary obrada, or impression, of a book at this period, I am told by Senor Gayangos—and there can be no better authority—was 250 copies. But in the case of a popular book like Don Quixote the impression would be larger—probably 500 copies. Supposing 8 editions to have been issued in 1605, there would thus have been printed 4,000 copies in the first year—a number unprecedently large in an age when readers were few and books a luxury.

Taking the object of Don Quixote to be, what Cervantes declared it—"the causing of the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind"—no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest knight of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invincible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not one was written, after the date of the publication of Don Quixote.[14] Such a revolution in taste was never accomplished by any single writer, in any age or country.

[14] The last book of the kind written before Don Quixote, according to Clemencin, was Policisne de Boecia, published in 1602; but La Toledana Discreta, which is a romantic poem in ottava rima, was published in 1604, and a few chap-books and religious romances, of the slighter kind, afterward.

A few words only are here needed, in the discussion of that question which has occupied so largely the ingenuity of writers, native and foreign, as to what was the object of Cervantes in writing Don Quixote. There are those who insist upon seeking in every work of humor or of wit some meaning other and deeper than in the book appears, as though it were impossible that an author should be disinterested or write merely out of the fulness of his heart or pride in his work. With Cervantes' own declaration, more than once repeated, of the purpose of his book the critics will not be content. So good a book must have had a better reason for being than Cervantes' dislike of the fantastic books of the later chivalry. Who, then, was the man—the original of Don Quixote? Against whom was the satire levelled? Of course nothing was then known to the world outside of poor Don Rodrigo de Pacheco, the Argamasillan hidalgo. Some great man Cervantes must have intended to ridicule. It was Charles V, said some. It was his son Philip, cried others—ignoring the absurdity of the Prudent one losing his wits through excessive reading of romances. It was the Duke of Lerma—or the Duke of Osuna—or some other great man, or Cervantes' wife's cousin, who opposed his marriage with Catalina. It was Ignatius Loyola—our own countryman, the good John Bowle, suggested.

Surely these various theories are a little far-fetched and not a little grotesque and absurd. What there is in either of the two Spanish monarchs to liken him to the Knight of La Mancha it is difficult to see. Those who have looked upon that wonderful equestrian picture of Titian's in the Museo at Madrid, with its weird, weary, far-off expression, are irresistibly led to think of Don Quixote; but the converse is by no means so clear that on looking at Don Quixote we are tempted to think of that most unromantic of monarchs, Carlos Quinto.[15] His son is still more unlike his supposed portrait. As to the Duke of Lerma, they who can believe, on the faith of the cock-and-bull stories told by the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy and the Jesuit Rapin, that Cervantes satirized the all-powerful minister in revenge for personal injuries suffered at his hands, may be consigned to the same limbo with the believers in the Bacon-Shakespeare. The theory about Loyola, first mooted by Bowle, the English commentator, is of all, perhaps, not the least absurd. The one shred by which it hangs is a passage in Don Quixote where the angry Biscayan, the adversary of Don Quixote, is made a native of Azpeitia—this being the name of the obscure village where Loyola was born.

[15] The question is reopened in the Espana Moderna (1894), by my good friend Asensio, who quotes from one of the histories of Charles V how that as a youth he would draw his sword and lay about him at the figures in the tapestry, and how once he was discovered teasing a caged lion with a stick. This is slender material on which to base the theory of Charles V being the original of Don Quixote.

A sufficient answer to all these theories is that contained in the book itself. Surely no one has read Don Quixote with profit to himself who has been unable to see that the hero is not one whom the author desired to revile or to malign. Never was a satire like this, which leaves us full of love and sympathy for the object. And why cannot we believe the author when he avers that never did his humble pen stoop to satire? He meant, of course, the satire of persons as distinguished from the reprehension and the ridicule of human follies and general vices. As a lampoon, Don Quixote could hardly have endured to this day. The spirit which has given it eternal life is love, and not hate.

To estimate the worth of the service performed by Cervantes—not in abolishing romance, as has been absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as with even a more perverse misconception of his purpose has been suggested, but in purging books of fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and restoring romance to truth and to nature—we have to consider the enormous influence exercised by this pernicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain in the sixteenth century.

The ceaseless wars with the Moors had trained the whole manhood of the nation to soldiership. The trade of fighting was familiar to every man of good birth, so that the word for "knight" (caballero) came to be synonymous with that for "gentleman." The constant exercise in arms made of chivalry, in Spain, a more solemn and serious calling than elsewhere. As a native writer says, with equal point and spirit, there was developed by the chronic war with the Moor a caballerismo—there is none but a Spanish word for a quality purely indigenous—essentially distinct from the gay, fantastic chivalry of the North. It extended to all classes of the people. It was not confined to the aristocracy. "Every Spaniard was a warrior, every warrior a noble, and every noble a knight of his country."[16] They had not to go far to seek for adventures. They had the Paynim at home: Mahound and Termagaunt were at their doors. There was a constant supply at hand of men of the wrong faith and alien habits—the delight in fighting whom was enhanced by the fact that they equally were possessed of the chivalric fervor, and, though Moors and misbelievers, gentlemen still and cavaliers.[17] The long and desperate struggle for existence evolved the highest qualities of the race. And small wonder it was that out of that fruitful soil which had grown the Cid and the warriors of the heroic age, who should be rightly classed as prechivalric, there sprung up that ranker produce, the knights-errant. Of these, the seekers after adventure, the bohemians of the knightly order, Spain, as her native historians boast, was the teeming mother. No other country in that age, or in the previous one, could show the world such a scene as that gravely enacted before King Juan II and his court, when eighty knights ran a-tilt with each other, and incurred serious loss of limb and permanent injury to their persons, in order that one of them might fulfil a fantastic vow made to his mistress.[18]

[16] See the eloquent and judicious prologue to his Romancero General by Don Agustin Duran.

[17] "Caballeros granadinos, Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo."

[18] See the account of the Paso Honroso, held at the instance of Suero de Quinones, before Juan II, in 1434, at the bridge of Orbigo, near Leon, which is contained in Appendix D, vol. i, of my translation of Don Quixote.

Knight-errantry, which was a caprice in France and in England, in Spain was a calling. No other country could afford such a field for it, and to no other society was it so well suited. The grave and wise Fernando de Pulgar, the counsellor and chronicler of Ferdinand and Isabella, speaks with complacency of the noblemen he knew who had gone into foreign countries in search of adventures, "so as to gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant and hardy knights for the gentlemen of Castile"—boasting that there were more Spanish knights of the errant sort than of any other nation.

The romance of chivalry was the natural growth of this fashion of knight-errantry; and, like its parent, flourished nowhere so luxuriantly as in Spain. Amadis Of Gaul and Belianis Of Greece are, in fact, as much "racy of the soil" as Don Quixote itself.

There were some simple or devout enough to take the romance for a gospel, who believed in Amadis as much as in any other hero or saint. In the Arte de Galanteria, written by Francisco de Portugal about the close of the sixteenth century, it is mentioned that a Portuguese poet, Simon de Silveira, once swore upon the Evangelists that he believed the whole of Amadis to be true history. This is capped by another story in the same book of how a certain knight came home from hunting and found his wife and daughters dissolved in tears. Asking them what was the matter—whether any child or relation was dead—they said "No; but Amadis is dead!" They had come to the 174th chapter of Lisuarte of Greece, where the old Amadis finally dies.

The influence of the Palmerins and of the Carlovingian romances, which form a class by themselves, was scarcely inferior to that of Amadis. Palmerin of England himself, the patriarch of the family—that "Palm of England," as Cervantes calls him—may be placed second to his rival in merit. The difference in spirit is great between the two; for Amadis really is, though in its present form of the fifteenth, of the fourteenth century, when chivalry was in its early prime; and Palmerin was not written till the sixteenth century, when the true ideal of knighthood had already been dimmed by the lust of gold-seeking and religious adventure. Southey, perhaps, ranks Palmerin too high in the literary scale by placing it on a level with Amadis, and averring that he knew "no romance and no epic in which suspense is so successfully kept up." Of their successors, the long line of sons, grandsons and nephews, each more valiant and puissant than the last, it must be said that they are as scant of beauty as of grace. In order to keep up the interest of their readers, the authors of the Primaleons and the Polindos—the Florisels and the Florisandos—were compelled to put in wonders on an ascending scale; to pile up adventure upon adventure; to make the dragons fiercer, the giants huger, the fighting more terrible, and the slaughter more bloody. The popular appetite, which craved for more and more excitement with every successive stimulant, could only be fed by inventions so monstrous that it is a wonder the stomach of the readers of romances of chivalry did not reject the nauseous aliment. Yet there is no evidence of any decline in the production of these books up to the date of the appearance of Don Quixote.

It was to do battle with this brood of fabled monsters, against whom the pulpit and the parliament had preached and legislated in vain, that Cervantes took up his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim in Don Quixote was, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work. There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime to melancholy souls"[19] in destroying "the authority and influence which the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as such—still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses—is abundantly proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their spirit.

[19] See the Viaje del Parnaso, chapter iv:

"Y he dado en Don Quixote pasatiempo Al pecho melancolico y mohino En cualquiera sazon, en todo tiempo."

("And I am he in Quixote who has given A pastime for the melancholy soul In every age, and all time and season.")

Why cannot we believe the author, when he thus plainly and candidly avows his purpose?

The opinion of an acute Spanish writer, Don Vicente de Salva, on this point we hold to be a very sensible one—"Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalries, but only to purge away their follies and impossibilities." What is Don Quixote itself, it is shrewdly added, but a romance of chivalry, "which has ruined the fortunes of its predecessors by being so immensely in advance of them"?[20] What was Cervantes' own last book, as we shall presently show, but in some kind a romance of chivalry—not free, alas! from some of the very errors he had himself burlesqued? Nay, what was Cervantes' own life but a romance of chivalry?

[20] See the essay of Salva's in Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, vol. ii, pp. 723-740. I know one great Spanish scholar who has never forgiven Cervantes for destroying the books of chivalries. But his anger is rather that of the bibliographer than of the critic or patriot. He has the best collection of those evil books in Europe.

That, after all, the overthrow of the books of chivalries was but a small part of the good work which Cervantes performed in Don Quixote is only to say that, like all great writers, he "builded better than he knew." The pen of the genius, as Heine says, is ever greater than the man himself. Rejecting all the many subtle and ingenious theories as to what was Cervantes' object in writing his book; that it was a crusade against enthusiasm, as even Heine seems to suspect; that it was a missionary tract, intended to destroy popery and throw down antichrist, as some, even bearded men, have dared to suggest; that it was a programme of advanced liberalism artfully veiled under a mask of levity, and, indeed, the forerunner of that gospel of sentimental cosmopolitanism since preached by other eminent persons supposed to resemble Cervantes in their characters or Don Quixote in their careers—I hold that the author wrote but out of the fulness of his own heart, giving us, by a happy impulse, a fable in which are transparently figured his own character, his own experiences, and his own sufferings. What is the key but this to the mystery which makes this book, on a purely local subject of passing interest, the book of humanity for all time—as popular out of Spain as among Spaniards? A mere burlesque would have died with the books which it killed. A satire survives only so long as the person or the thing satirized is remembered. But Don Quixote lives, and, by a miracle of genius, keeps Amadis and Palmerin alive.

The invention is the most simple, as it is the most original, in literature. From Don Quixote dates an epoch in the art of fiction. For once Cervantes was happy in his opportunity. And what is the secret of his success? It is that this "child of his sterile, ill-cultured wit" is no creature of pure fancy, but fashioned in the very likeness of its parent, drawn out of his life, shaped after his pattern—an image of its creator. How could Cervantes' romance fail of holding the field against all the romances? It was his own life from which he drew—that life which had been a true knight-errantry. The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy—who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents, as the immortal story he has written? This is the key to Don Quixote, which, unless we use, we shall not reach to the heart of the mystery.



EARLIEST POSITIVE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA

A.D. 1606

LOUIS BECKE AND WALTER JEFFERY

As shown by the authors of the following account, there is no lack of evidence that it was belief in a great southern land which led early geographers and sailors to belief in the existence of the Australian continent. Notwithstanding this, it is held by some students of the subject to be doubtful whether the first navigators who reached the shores of Australia set out with any expectation of discovering a great land in the south.

Whether this was the case or not, it is argued that the earliest achievements in that quarter were either of no definite consequence or were imperfectly estimated by those who made or promoted the discoveries in connection with which not even their names have been preserved.

The narrative of Becke and Jeffery, with its references to other leading authorities, furnishes the completest and most recent information on this subject available within the compass of a reasonably brief survey.

Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence had been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been asserted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spanish and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland; and the eastern coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it.

Early Voyages to Australia, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts, and contains the soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably written books have since been published, the industrious authors have added little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected by Major. The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew gradually and naturally out of a belief in a great southern land. G.B. Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian history, traces this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote:

"Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firm land, lying under and about the south pole, being in many places a fruitful soil, and is not yet thoroughly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge thereof by the travel of the Portiugales and Spaniards in their voyages to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a parallel, passing at 40 degrees in south latitude, yet in some places it reacheth into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropic Capricornus. Only these parts are best known, as over against Capo d'buona Speranza (where the Portiugales see popinjayes commonly of a wonderful greatness), and again it is known at the south side of the Straight of Magellanies, and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thought this south land, about the pole Antarctic, is far bigger than the north land about the pole Arctic; but whether it be so or not, we have no certain knowledge, for we have no particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and about the north pole."

Then Purchas, in 1578, says: "This land about the Straits is not perfectly discovered, whether it be continent or islands. Some take it for continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's experience toward those islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southern Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and the first in greatness in the division and parting of the Whole World."

The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three ships. One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after, the ships commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge. He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands—now called the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British possession of New Guinea—which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward, and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney's Voyages:

"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the latitude 2-1/2 degrees, which brought us into 9 degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from 3 to 9 fathoms, which extends along the coast to 7-1/2 south latitude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth to 11 degrees south latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands, without number, by which we passed; and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to your Majesty. They give (us) much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south latitude and ten leagues from the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north."

The "very large islands" seen by Torres were, no doubt, the hills of Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously, had passed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila; and when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is now well known as the dangerous passage dividing New Guinea from Australia. De Quiros, in his ship, made no further discovery. He arrived on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce Philip III of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success.

Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter is available. Major sums up the case in these words: "The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century—the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries—there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with no written documents to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is documentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the documents immediately describing these voyages have not been found."

The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk ships and spend time and money upon scientific voyages.

In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this document an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman, in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator also discovered New Zealand, passed round the east side of Australia without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern shore of New Guinea.

But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht Duyphen made two exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip, the commander, after coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus unconsciously—for he thought himself still on the west coast of New Guinea—making the first authenticated discovery of the continent.

Dirk Hartog, in command of the Endragt, while on his way from Holland to the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterward called Shark's Bay, and on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25, 1616. The plate was afterward found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by another, which, in its turn, was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain Hamelin, of the Naturaliste, on the well-known French voyage in search of the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and nailed the plate to a post, with another recording his own voyage. These inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and deposited in the museum of the Institute of Paris. Hartog ran along the coast a few degrees, naming the land after his ship, and was followed by many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year 1727, from which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery.

During the one hundred twenty-two years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account, yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the ships were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had touched at intervals the whole coast line.

But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that, either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve brief mention. In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the northern territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts Pesa and Arnhem. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the massacre of the master of the Arnhem and eight of his crew by the natives while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the Gulde Zeepard, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the ship on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to Japan as ambassador from Holland.

In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these ships was the Batavia, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4, 1629, the Batavia was driven ashore on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier—probably by the commander of the Leeuwin, who discovered and named after his ship the cape at the southwest point of the continent. The Batavia, which carried a number of chests of silver money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the ship managed to land upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without water. Pelsart, in one of the ship's boats, spent a couple of weeks in exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighborhood, in the hope of discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to attempt to make Batavia and from there bring succor to his ship's company. On July 3d he fell in with a Dutch ship off Java and was taken on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot's Recueil de Voyages curieux, and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted:

"While Pelsart is soliciting assistance, I will return to those of the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the ship and take her to Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the shore. He even passed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and, having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the assistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterward to cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party; but before inbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to another. The entire crew was divided (living upon) between three islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of Batavia, was the greatest number of men.

"One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a search of twenty days he made the preconcerted signal by lighting three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they joined together, and, going in search of Weybehays, informed him of the horrible massacre that had taken place.

"Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard, and to defend himself from their assassins if they should make an attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned, which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with Weybehays' company, and in the mean while broke open the chests of merchandise which had been saved from the vessel. Jerome Cornelis caused clothing to be made for his company out of the rich stuffs which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one of the daughters of the minister to a principal member of his party, abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain rules for the future conduct of his men.

"After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected captain-general by a document which he compelled all his companions to sign. He afterward sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire, although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the ends of which were armed with spikes.

"Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company, offering to each a sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this assistance he might easily compass his design. His letters, which were without effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the attack, but with little success.

"Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate Sardam. As he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a circumstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four, informed him of the massacre, and advised him to return as speedily as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning been at close quarters with them. Pelsart perceived at the time the two shallops coming toward him, and had scarcely got on board his vessel before they came alongside.

"He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold and silver, and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into the sea or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled to submit, they threw away their weapons, and, being ordered on board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or assisted in the assassination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays brought his prisoner on board.

"On September 18th the captain and the master pilot, taking with them ten men of Weybehays' company, passed over in boats to the island of Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."

Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavoring to recover some of the Batavia's treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the Sardam, and all but two were executed before the ship left the scene of their awful crime. The two men who were not hanged were put on shore on the mainland, and were probably the first Europeans to end their lives upon the continent. Dutch vessels for many years afterward sought for traces of the marooned seamen, but none was ever discovered.

The 1644 voyage of Tasman was made expressly for the purpose of exploring the north and northwestern shores of the continent, and to prove the existence or otherwise of straits separating it from New Guinea. Tasman's instructions show this, and prove that while the existence of the straits was suspected, and although Torres had unconsciously passed through them, they were not known. Tasman explored a long length of coast line, establishing its continuity from the extreme northwestern point, Arnhem Land, as far as the twenty-second degree of south latitude, Exmouth Gulf. He failed to prove the existence of Torres Straits; but to him, it is generally agreed, is due the discovery and naming of the Gulf of Carpentaria—Carpenter, in Tasman's time, being president at Amsterdam of the Dutch East India Company—and the naming of a part of North Australia, as he had previously named the island to the south, after Van Diemen. From this voyage dates the name "New Holland." The great stretch of coast lines embracing his discoveries became known to his countrymen as Hollandia Nova, a name which, in its English form, was adopted for the whole continent, and remained until it was succeeded by the more euphonious name of Australia. Tasman continued doing good service for the Dutch East India Company until his death, about 1659, at Batavia.



SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA

CHARTER UNDER WHICH AMERICA WAS COLONIZED

A.D. 1607

R. R. HOWISON

As the first of the original English colonies in North America, Virginia enjoys a primacy in our history which, however other sectional claims may be contested, is beyond dispute. The name Virginia, which in 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh gave to his settlement on the Carolina coast, at first covered an indefinite extent of the great central territory of the continent.

After the failure and disappearance of Raleigh's colony, no further attempts were made to settle the region until 1606, when new interest in American colonization had been aroused in England. The credit for awakening this interest is given to Bartholomew Gosnold, an English navigator who, in 1602, sailed directly west and in May reached Cape Cod. Then, coasting along New England, he found and named Martha's Vineyard, and in July returned to England.

English adventurers were so much impressed with his enthusiastic reports and his arguments in favor of new endeavors to occupy western lands, that they began to urge a fresh undertaking. Gosnold's views were strongly supported by the geographer Richard Hakluyt, "to whom America owes a heavy debt of gratitude." There were numerous offers of money and service, and when application was made to King James I he was quite ready to sanction the project. He is said to have thought of the profits that might return to him and also of the satisfaction to be found in being rid of the "turbulent spirits" sure to be drawn into the enterprise.

On April 10, 1606, James I issued a patent to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and others with them associated, under which they proposed to embark upon their eagerly sought scheme. This royal grant deserves our close attention, as it will explain the nature of the enterprise and the powers originally enjoyed by those who entered upon it.

Selecting for the scene of operations the beautiful belt of country lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of north latitude, the King certainly provided an ample field for the success of the patentees. This tract extends from Cape Fear to Halifax, and embraces all the lands between its boundaries in North America, except perhaps the French settlement in Arcadia, which had already been so far matured as to come under the excluding clause of the patent. For colonizing this extensive region the King appointed two companies of adventurers—the first consisting of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and others in and about the city of London, which, through all its subsequent modifications, was known by the title of the London Company; the other consisted of knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others in and about the town of Plymouth, and was known as the Plymouth Company, though its operations were never extensive and were at last utterly fruitless.

To the London adventurers was granted exclusive right to all the territory lying between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels and running from the ocean to an indefinite extent westward into the wilds of America, even to the waters of the Pacific. They were also allowed all the islands, fisheries, and other marine treasures within one hundred miles directly eastward from their shores and within fifty miles from their most northern and most southern settlements, following the coast to the northeast or southwest, as might be necessary. Within these limits ample jurisdiction was conferred upon them. To the Plymouth Company were granted in like manner the land and appurtenances between the forty-first and forty-fifth parallels. Thus the whole region between thirty-eight and forty-one was left open to the enterprise of both companies; but to render angry collision impossible, the charter contained the judicious clause above noted, by which each colony might claim exclusive right fifty miles north or south of its extreme settlements, and thus neither could approach within one hundred miles of the other.

The hope of gold and silver from America was yet clinging with tenacity to the English mind. James grants to the companies unlimited right to dig and obtain the precious and other metals, but reserves to himself one-fifth of all the gold and silver and one-fifteenth of all the copper that might be discovered. Immediately after this clause we find a section granting to the councils for the colonies authority to coin money and use it among the settlers and natives. This permission may excite some surprise when we remember that the right to coin has been always guarded with peculiar jealousy by English monarchs, and that this constituted one serious charge against the Massachusetts colony in the unjust proceedings by which her charter was wrested from her in subsequent years.

To the companies was given power to carry settlers to Virginia and plant them upon her soil, and no restriction was annexed to this authority except that none should be taken from the realm upon whom the King should lay his injunction to remain. The colonists were permitted to have arms and to resist and repel all intruders from foreign states; and it was provided that none should trade and traffic within the colonies unless they should pay or agree to pay to the treasurers of the companies 21/2 per cent, on their stock in trade if they were English subjects, and 5 per cent, if they were aliens. The sums so paid were to be appropriated to the company for twenty-one years from the date of the patent, and afterward were transferred to the crown. James never forgot a prospect for gain, and could not permit the colonists to enjoy forever the customs which, as consumers of foreign goods, they must necessarily have paid from their resources.

The jealous policy which at this time forbade the exportation, without license, of English products to foreign countries, has left its impress upon this charter. The colonists were, indeed, allowed to import all "sufficient shipping and furniture of armour, weapons, ordinance, powder, victual, and all other things necessary," without burdensome restraint; but it was provided that if any goods should be shipped from England or her dependencies "with pretence" to carry them to Virginia, and should afterward be conveyed to foreign ports, the goods there conveyed and the vessel containing them should be absolutely forfeited to his majesty, his heirs and successors.

The lands held in the colonies were to be possessed by their holders under the most favorable species of tenure known to the laws of the mother-country. King James had never admired the military tenure entailed upon England by the feudal system, and he had made a praiseworthy though unsuccessful effort to reduce them all to the form of "free and common soccage," a mode of holding land afterward carried into full effect under Charles II, and which, if less pervaded by the knightly spirit of feudal ages, was more favorable to the holder and more congenial with the freedom of the English constitution. This easy tenure was expressly provided for the lands of the new country; and it is a happy circumstance that America has been little affected even by the softened bonds thus early imposed upon her.

But how shall these colonial subjects be governed? and from whom shall they derive their laws? These were questions to which the vanity and the arbitrary principles of the King soon found a reply. Two councils were to be provided, one for each colony, and each consisting of thirteen members. They were to govern the colonists according to such laws, ordinances, and instructions as should afterward be given by the King himself, under his sign manual and the privy seal of the realm of England; and the members of the council were to be "ordained, made, and removed from time to time," as the same instructions should direct. In addition to these provincial bodies a council of thirteen, likewise appointed by the King, was to be created in England, to which was committed the general duty of superintending the affairs of both colonies.

And to prove the pious designs of a monarch whose religion neither checked the bigotry of his spirit nor the profaneness of his language it was recited in the preamble of this charter that one leading object of the enterprise was the propagation of Christianity among "such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and might in time be brought to human civility and to a settled and quiet government."