XLIV

How Sancho Panza was conducted to his government, and of the strange adventure that befell Don Quixote in the castle.

It is stated, they say, in the true original of this history, that when Cide Hamete came to write this chapter, his interpreter did not translate it as he wrote it 807 ⁠—that is, as a kind of complaint the Moor made against himself for having taken in hand a story so dry and of so little variety as this of Don Quixote, for he found himself forced to speak perpetually of him and Sancho, without venturing to indulge in digressions and episodes more serious and more interesting. He said, too, that to go on, mind, hand, pen always restricted to writing upon one single subject, and speaking through the mouths of a few characters, was intolerable drudgery, the result of which was never equal to the author’s labour, and that to avoid this he had in the First Part availed himself of the device of novels, like The Ill-Advised Curiosity , and The Captive Captain

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