In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the mere
continuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface to
it, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditioned man
could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with having lost his
hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless,
accuses him of envy of Lope's success, of petulance and querulousness,
and so on; and it was in this that the sting lay. Avellaneda's reason for
this personal attack is obvious enough. Whoever he may have been, it is
clear that he was one of the dramatists of Lope's school, for he has the
impudence to charge Cervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his
criticism on the drama. His identification has exercised the best critics
and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear
on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes
knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an
invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a
mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language
pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself,
supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an
ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably.
Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he is too dull
to reflect much. "Dull and dirty" will always be, I imagine, the verdict
of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers. He is, at best, a poor
plagiarist; all he can do is to follow slavishly the lead given him by
Cervantes; his only humour lies in making Don Quixote take inns for
castles and fancy himself some legendary or historical personage, and
Sancho mistake words, invert proverbs, and display his gluttony; all
through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has
contrived to introduce two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth
century novellieri and without their sprightliness.
But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget the debt
we owe them. But for them, there can be no doubt, "Don Quixote" would
have come to us a mere torso instead of a complete work. Even if
Cervantes had finished the volume he had in hand, most assuredly he would
have left off with a promise of a Third Part, giving the further
adventures of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza as shepherds. It is
plain that he had at one time an intention of dealing with the pastoral
romances as he had dealt with the books of chivalry, and but for
Avellaneda he would have tried to carry it out. But it is more likely
that, with his plans, and projects, and hopefulness, the volume would
have remained unfinished till his death, and that we should have never
made the acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess, or gone with Sancho to
Barataria.