Book Description

Excerpt from The Ingenious Gentleman, Vol. 1 of 2: Don Quixote of La Mancha It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favor of the present undertaking what had long been a favorite project, that of a new edition of Shelton's "Don Quixote," which has now become a somewhat scarce book. There are some - and I confess myself to be one - for whom Shelton's racy old version, with all its defects, has a charm that no modern translation, however skilful or correct, could possess. Shelton had the inestimable advantage of belonging to the same generation as Cervantes; "Don Quixote" had to him a vitality that only a contemporary could feel; it cost him no dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes saw them; there is no anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish of Cervantes into the English of Shakespeare. Shakespeare himself most likely knew the book; he may have carried it home with him in his saddle-bags to Stratford on one of his last journeys, and under the mulberry tree at New Place joined hands with a kindred genius in its pages. But it was soon made plain to me that to hope for even a moderate popularity for Shelton was vain. His fine old crusted English would, no doubt, be relished by a minority, but it would be only by a minority. His version has strong claims on sentimental grounds, but on sentimental grounds only. His warmest admirers must admit that he is not a satisfactory representative of Cervantes. His translation of the First Part was very hastily made - in forty days he says in his dedication - and, as his marginal notes show, never revised by him. It has all the freshness and vigor, but also a full measure of the faults, of a hasty production. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.