Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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