gold he found in the portmanteau in the Sierra Morena, for there is not
a word said of them more; and many people have a great mind to know
what he did with them, and how he spent them; which is one of the most
material points in which the work is defective."

How amusingly Sancho is made to clear up the obscurities thus alluded
to by the Bachelor Carrasco--no reader can have forgotten; but there
remained enough of similar _lacunas_, inadvertencies, and mistakes,
to exercise the ingenuity of those Spanish critics, who were too wise
in their own conceit to profit by the good-natured and modest apology
of this immortal author.

There can be no doubt, that if Cervantes had deigned to use it, he
might have pleaded also the apology of indifferent health, under which
he certainly laboured while finishing the second part of "Don Quixote."
It must be too obvious that the intervals of such a malady as then
affected Cervantes, could not be the most favourable in the world for
revising lighter compositions, and correcting, at least, those grosser
errors and imperfections which each author should, if it were but for
shame's sake, remove from his work, before bringing it forth into the
broad light of day, where they will never fail to be distinctly seen,
nor lack ingenious persons, who will be too happy in discharging the
office of pointing them out.

It is more than time to explain with what purpose we have called thus
fully to memory the many venial errors of the inimitable Cervantes, and
those passages in which he has rather defied his adversaries than
pleaded his own justification; for I suppose it will be readily granted,
that the difference is too wide betwixt that great wit of Spain and
ourselves, to permit us to use a buckler which was rendered