was the best that Spain could do for her greatest man; worse, a great deal worse, than Henry Fielding's office of magistrate, in which he did some splendid work for London. One of Cervantes's agents, a certain Freire, played the rogue, or went bankrupt, and Cervantes had to pay the piper. He was imprisoned for three months at Seville; Freire, as we may surmise, not being worth powder and shot.

Between 1599 and 1603 (according to the best of his biographers, Mr. H. E. Watts) Cervantes was employed in collecting dues for the Grand Priory of San Juan, a rich military order which held estates or property of some kind in La Mancha. So far as may be known, Cervantes had not until now adventured in this region, which was (and is) wild, uncomely, and unlettered. No system of government sweetens a tax-collector; and with the Manchegans (a people tracing their blood to the Moriscos, and mixed of cunning and a most unlovable simplicity) Cervantes was presently in trouble. A person of local eminence laid him in prison-for no discoverable reason. His prison was the cellar of a house called the House of Medrano. The House of Medrano stands where it did, in the unimposing little town of Argamasilla, and is the shrine of all good Cervantists who can afford to get there. By an irony of fate happy above the common, the cellar-prison of Cervantes

was some years ago transformed into a printingoffice, from which were issued Rivadeneyra's two elegant editions of Don Quixote. But the book, though there, as Mr. Watts conjectures, it may have been conceived, was surely there not written; for Cervantes's confinement in the House of Medrano, albeit the precise duration is unknown, was comparatively brief. This is proved by the narrative of his movements up to 1605, the date of publication of the first part of Don Quixote. Thus vanishes into earth one of the most picturesque and affecting legends in the history of letters.

A revelation, beautiful above the ordinary, of the mind of a prisoner, is afforded us by the gaol memoirs of I. P. Youvatshev, translated by Dr. Rappoport. Youvatshev, condemned at twenty-four for having entered into relations with certain political offenders whom he had never set eyes on, spent some years in the Schluesselburg Fortress, which he calls the Russian Bastille. Here at an early stage of his captivity he was visited by the phantom of insanity, against which he directed all the powers of his mind. "I used," he says, "mentally to deliver lectures to imaginary audiences on my favourite subjects, such as mathematics, physics, and astronomy. I made verses, French and English translations, occupied myself with classical languages, etc." Books

were necessary for this, and the relief of the book, when at last afforded, how great it was!

"If I had had a book I should have liked to read. I should have had to ask the director for it, I thought; he does not seem to think of it himself. But I was wrong. About three hours after dinner the director, unlocking the aperture in my door, handed me a book, an illustrated History of Art, by Lübke. I was overcome with delight, and, as if wishing to overwhelm me with his attentions, he also brought me a Bible, printed by the Lay Press, and a small Prayer Book with a calendar. What riches all at once! In prison one learns how to value things."

While nourishing his intellect, he did not forget the duty he owed to his feelings, and tells us that he used to sing in a scarcely audible whisper arias from some well-known opera, "at the same time imagining various stage decorations." He noticed that solitary confinement stimulated the faculty for reflection. Having no bodily employment, except the trifling exercises he could distract himself with in the cell, brain and heart exerted themselves the more, and his fancy, instead of burying itself in the past, was constantly projected into the future.

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Whenever I fell into deep meditation I grew literally frigid, remaining stock still, afraid

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