Silva de varias lecciones (oratorical tirades on the usual themes: the Golden Age, poverty, ideal government, marriage, the relative excellence of arms and letters, etc.; a repertory of mediæval and humanistic commonplaces).
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If you take away all this stuffing there remains the story of the two travelers—a journey, in short. This motif of the journey brings the Don Quixote into line with the great books of humanity. The most profound and the most popular of those books are narratives of journeys: the Odyssey, the Æneid, the Divine Comedy, Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, the Tales of Sinbad, the Persian Letters, Faust, Dead Souls. For every great book is a timid anticipation of the Last Judgment, and the journey is better adapted than any other device to afford opportunity for the judging of all sorts and conditions of men. The journey means variety and the transcending of limits. Man himself has been represented a thousand times as a pilgrim—a pilgrim with sin for a wallet and death for his goal.
IV
In the midst of this mobile and universal judgment of mankind—goatherds and friars, muleteers and dukes, clodhoppers and gentlemen, lov-
