How readily the predominant passion snatches an
interval of liberty, and how fast it expands itself
when the weight of restraint is taken away, I had
lately an opportunity to discover, as I took a journey
into the country in a stage-coach; which, as every
journey is a kind of adventure, may be very properly
related to you, though I can display no such
extraordinary assembly as Cervantes has collected
at Don Quixote's inn[j].
[j] Johnson has made impressive allusion to the immortal
work of Cervantes in his Second Rambler. Every reflecting man
must arise from its perusal with feelings of the deepest
melancholy, with the most tender commiseration for the weakness
and lot of humanity. To such a man its moral must ever be
"profoundly sad." Vulgar minds cannot know it. Hence it has
ever been the favorite with the intellectual class, while Gil
Blas has more generally won the applause of men of the world. An
amusing anecdote of the almost universal admiration for the chef
d 'oeuvre of Le Sage may be found in Butler's Reminiscences.
That bigotted, yet extraordinary man, Alva, predicted, with
prophetic precision, the effects which the satire on Chivalry
would produce in Spain.
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