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And as for what you have said, Señor, regarding your son’s lack of esteem for poetry in the modern languages, it is my understanding that he is mistaken, for this reason: the great Homer did not write in Latin because he was Greek, and Virgil did not write in Greek because he was Latin. In short, all the ancient poets wrote in their mother tongues, and they did not look for foreign languages in order to declare the nobility of their ideas. And this being true, it is reasonable to extend this custom to all nations, and not to despise the German poet because he writes in his own language, or the Castilian, or even the Basque, for writing in his. But I imagine, Señor, that your son does not condemn vernacular poetry but poets who are merely vernacular and do not know other languages or other fields of knowledge, which adorn and awaken and assist their natural impulse; even in this he may be mistaken, because, according to reliable opinion, a poet is born: that is to say, the natural poet is a poet when he comes from his mother’s womb, and with that inclination granted to him by heaven, with no further study or artifice he composes things that prove the truthfulness of the man who said: Est Deus in nobis…2 I also say that the natural poet who makes use of art will be a much better and more accomplished poet than the one who knows only the art and wishes to be a poet; the reason is that art does not surpass nature but perfects it; therefore, when nature is mixed with art, and art with nature, the result is a perfect poet.

Let me conclude by saying, Señor, that you should allow your son to walk the path to which his star calls him; if he is the good student he should be, and if he has already successfully climbed the first essential step, which is languages, with them he will, on his own, mount to the summit of human letters, which are so admirable in a gentleman with his cape and sword, and adorn, honor, and ennoble him, as mitres do bishops, or robes the learned jurists. Your grace should reprimand your son if he writes satires that damage other people’s honor; you should punish him and tear up the poems; but if he composes admonitory sermons in the manner of Horace,3 in which vices in general are elegantly reproved, then praise him, because it is licit for the poet to write against envy, and to criticize the envious in his verses, and to do the same with the other vices, as long as he does not point out a specific person; but there are poets who, for the sake of saying something malicious, would run the risk of being exiled to the Islands of Pontus.4 If the poet is chaste in his habits, he will be chaste in his verses as well; the pen is the tongue of the soul: his writings will be like the concepts engendered there; when kings and princes see the miraculous art of poetry in prudent, virtuous, and serious subjects, they honor, esteem, and enrich them, and even crown them with the leaves of the tree that lightning never strikes,5 as a sign that those whose temples are honored and adorned by such crowns are not to be assaulted by anyone.”

The Gentleman in the Green Coat was so amazed at Don Quixote’s words that he began to change his mind about his having to be a simpleton. But because it was not very much to his liking, in the middle of this speech Sancho had turned off the road to request a little milk from some shepherds who were milking their sheep nearby, and in the meantime, just as the gentleman was about to resume the conversation, satisfied in the extreme as to Don Quixote’s intelligence and good sense, Don Quixote looked up and saw that coming down the road where they had been traveling was a wagon bearing royal banners, and believing that this must be some new adventure, he called to Sancho to bring him his helmet. And Sancho, hearing his shouts, left the shepherds, and spurred his donkey, and rushed to his master, who was about to engage in a terrifying and reckless adventure.

CHAPTER XVII

In which the heights and extremes to which the remarkable courage of Don Quixote could and did go is revealed, along