Yet there is no evidence
of any decline in the production of these books up to the date of the
appearance of _Don Quixote_.
It was to do battle with this brood of fabled monsters, against whom the
pulpit and the parliament had preached and legislated in vain, that
Cervantes took up his pen. The adventure was one reserved for his single
arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have
astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted
and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service
performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been
greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim
in _Don Quixote_ was, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste
in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary
consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work.
There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more
serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime
to melancholy souls"[19] in destroying "the authority and influence which
the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he
was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as
such--still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to
purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses--is abundantly
proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his
life.
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