When the Knight Was Ridiculed
January 28, 2022
Rembrandt, Man in Armor
FROM The Broad Stone of Honour; or, Rules for the Gentlemen of England by Kenelm Henry Digby (Rivington, London; 1823):
No man will be so hardy or so insensible as to deny the genius and the inimitable humour evinced by the author of Don Quixote, but with respect to the moral tendency of that work as affecting the ordinary class of mankind, in this or in any age, there will arise quite a legitimate subject for discussion. Many are the men of reflection who think with me that it is a book never to be read without receiving melancholy impressions, without feelings of deep commiseration for the weakness and for the lot of human nature.
What is the character of the hero in this history?
It is that of a man possessing genius, virtue, imagination and sensibility, all the generous qualities which distinguish an elevated soul, with all the amiable features of a disinterested and affectionate heart. Brave, equal to all that history has recorded of the most valiant warriors: loyal and faithful, never hesitating on the fulfilment of his promise; disinterested as he is brave, he contends but for virtue and for glory; if he desires to win kingdoms it is only to bestow them upon Sancho Panza; a faithful lover, a humane and generous warrior, a kind and affectionate master, a gallant and accomplished gentleman — and this is the man whom Cervantes has represented as the subject of constant ridicule and of occasional reproach.
Without doubt there is an important lesson to be derived from the whole, the lesson which teaches the necessity of prudence and good sense, of moderation and respect for the institutions of society, of guarding the imagination from excess of exercise, and the feelings from an over excitement. But this is a lesson to be gently hinted to men of virtue, not to be proclaimed to the profane amidst the mockery of the world. This is not the lesson which the ordinary class of mankind will derive from it; and if it were, this is not the lesson of which it stands in need.
…. There is no danger in this enlightened age, as it is termed, of men becoming too heroic, too generous, too zealous in the defense of innocence, too violent in hatred of baseness and crime, too disinterested and too active in the cause of virtue and truth: the danger is quite on the other side: there is much to be apprehended from the ridicule which is cast upon sentiment, from the importance which attaches to personal convenience, from substituting laws for virtue, and prudence for devotion, from the calculating spirit of the commercial system, from the epicurean principles of enjoyment which are proclaimed by the modern philosophists. Cervantes exposed the knight errant to the ridicule of the world, but did he stop when he had done this? … Cervantes in exposing what he conceived to be the danger and absurdity of chivalrous sentiment, held up to mockery not alone the excess and the abuse, but the very reality of virtue.
[This excerpt has been divided into additional paragraphs.]
