When the cloth had been removed, grace said and their hands washed, Don Quixote earnestly pressed Don Lorenzo to repeat to him his verses for the poetical tournament, to which he replied, “Not to be like those poets who, when they are asked to recite their verses, refuse, and when they are not asked for them vomit them up, I will repeat my gloss, for which I do not expect any prize, having composed it merely as an exercise of ingenuity.”
“A discerning friend of mine,” said Don Quixote, “was of opinion that no one ought to waste labour in glossing verses; and the reason he gave was that the gloss can never come up to the text, and that often or most frequently it wanders away from the meaning and purpose aimed at in the glossed lines; and besides, that the laws of the gloss were too strict, as they did not allow interrogations, nor ‘said he,’ nor ‘I say,’ nor turning verbs into nouns, or altering the construction, not to speak of other restrictions and limitations that fetter gloss-writers, as you no doubt know.”
“Verily, Señor Don Quixote,” said Don Lorenzo, “I wish I could catch your worship tripping at a stretch, but I cannot, for you slip through my fingers like an eel.”
“I don’t understand what you say, or mean by slipping,” said Don Quixote.
“I will explain myself another time,” said Don Lorenzo; “for the present pray attend to the glossed verses and the gloss, which run thus:
“Could ‘was’ become an ‘is’ for me, Then would I ask no more than this; Or could, for me, the time that is Become the time that is to be!—
“Dame Fortune once upon a day To me was bountiful and kind; But all things change; she changed her mind, And