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By Root 663 0

lived with for all the time I have known you, for I always considered you perceptive and prudent in everything you do. But now I see that you are as far from having those qualities as heaven is from earth. How is it possible that things so trivial and so easy to remedy can have the power to perplex and absorb an intelligence as mature as yours, and one so ready to demolish and pass over much greater difficulties? By my faith, this does not have its origins in lack of skill but in an excess of laziness and a paucity of reasoning. Do you want to see if what I say is true? Then listen carefully and you will see how in the blink of an eye I confound all your difficulties and remedy all the problems that you say bewilder you and make you fearful to bring to light the history of your famous Don Quixote, the paragon and model of all knights errant.”

“Tell me,” I replied, listening to what he was saying. “How do you intend to fill the void of my fear and bring clarity to the chaos of my confusion?”

To which he said:

“First, to solve the question of the sonnets, epigrams, or laudatory poems by distinguished and titled people, which you need at the beginning, you must make a certain effort and write them yourself, and then you can baptize them with any name you want, attributing them to Prester John of the Indies3 or to the emperor of Trebizond,4 both of whom, I have heard, were famous poets; and if they were not, and certain pedants and university graduates backbite and gossip about the truth of the attributions, you should not give two maravedís5 for what they say, because even if they prove the lie, they won’t cut off the hand you used to write with. As for citing in the margins the books and authors that were the source of the sayings and maxims you put into your history, all you have to do is insert some appropriate maxims or phrases in Latin, ones that you know by heart or, at least, that won’t cost you too much trouble to look up, so that if you speak of freedom and captivity, you can say:

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro. 6

And then, in the margin, you cite Horace or whoever it was who said it. If the subject is the power of death, you can use:

Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres. 7

If it’s the friendship and love that God commands us to have for our enemies, you turn right to Holy Scripture, which you can do with a minimum of effort, and say the words of God Himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros.8 If you mention evil thoughts, go to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae.9 If the topic is the fickleness of friends, Cato’s there, ready with his couplet:

Done eris felix, multos numerabis amicos, Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris. 10

And with these little Latin phrases and others like them, people will think you are a grammarian; being one is no small honor and advantage these days. As for putting annotations at the end of the book, certainly you can do it this way: if you name some giant in your book, make him the giant Goliath, and just by doing that, which is almost no trouble at all, you have a nice long annotation, because then you can write: The giant Goliath, or Goliat, was a Philistine whom the shepherd David slew with a stone in the valley of Terebint, as recounted in the Book of Kings, and you can easily find the chapter. After this, to show that you are a scholar in humane letters and a cosmographer, be sure to mention the Tajo River in your history, and you’ll have another worthy annotation if you write: The Tajo River received its name from a king of all the Spains; it is born in that place and dies in the Ocean Sea, kissing the walls of the famous city of Lisbon, and it is thought that its sands are of gold, etc. If you mention thieves, I will tell you the history of Cacus, which I know by heart; if the subject is prostitutes, there’s the Bishop of Mondoñedo, who will provide you with Lamia, Laida, and Flora, and citing him will be a credit to you;11 if you refer to cruelty, Ovid will give you Medea; enchanters and sorcerers, and you