Читать книгу Galatea онлайн

33 страница из 118

ssss1 See the Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in Tonson's reprint of Don Quixote (Londres, 1738), vol. i., p. 6. This edition is generally described as Lord Carteret's edition; but, though Carteret certainly commissioned Mayáns to write the biography of Cervantes, and though he may have patronized Tonson's venture, it does not seem so sure that he paid for printing the text (which, as regards the First Part, is merely a mechanical reproduction of the 1607 Brussels edition). The usual version of the story is that Carteret, on looking over the library of Queen Caroline, wife of George II., missed Don Quixote from the shelves, and ordered the sumptuous Tonson edition with a view to making the Queen a present of the most delightful book in the world. It may be so. Carteret appears to have been interested in Spanish literature, and we know that Harry Bridges's translation (Bristol, 1728) of some of the Novelas exemplares was brought out "under the Protection of His Excellency." But, with regard to Carteret's defraying the entire cost of Tonson's reprint of Don Quixote, there are some circumstances which cause one to hesitate before accepting the report as true. So far as can be gathered, the first mention of Carteret in this connexion is found in Juan Antonio Mayáns's preface to the sixth edition (Valencia, 1792) of Luis Gálvez de Montalvo's Pastor de Fílida:—