FOOTNOTES:
[54] Act II., Scene 4: "I am dreaming and I wish to act rightly, for
good deeds are not lost, though they be wrought in dreams."
[55] Act III., Scene 10: "Let us aim at the eternal, the glory that does
not wane, where bliss slumbers not and where greatness does not repose."
[56] "Se _les_ muera," y no solo "se muera."
[57] _Trabalhos de Jesus_, part i.
[58] De Musset.
CONCLUSION
DON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY
"A voice crying in the wilderness!"--ISA. xl. 3.
Need is that I bring to a conclusion, for the present at any rate, these
essays that threaten to become like a tale that has no ending. They have
gone straight from my hands to the press in the form of a kind of
improvization upon notes collected during a number of years, and in
writing each essay I have not had before me any of those that preceded
it. And thus they will go forth full of inward contradictions--apparent
contradictions, at any rate--like life and like me myself.
My sin, if any, has been that I have embellished them to excess with
foreign quotations, many of which will appear to have been dragged in
with a certain degree of violence. But I will explain this another time.
A few years after Our Lord Don Quixote had journeyed through Spain,
Jacob Boehme declared in his _Aurora_ (chap xi., Sec. 142) that he did not
write a story or history related to him by others, but that he himself
had had to stand in the battle, which he found to be full of heavy
strivings, and wherein he was often struck down to the ground like all
other men; and a little further on (Sec.
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