Don Quixote de in Mancha. By Miguel de Cervantes. A
new translation by Samuel Putnam. (Cassell. 2 vols. 63s.) THE new Don Quixote, which appeared about five years ago in America, is very finely produced and at a rather high price. The late Samuel Putnam made his version in contemporary English, which reads very smoothly,. and never descends into slang. At times he takes serious liberties with Cervantes' syntax, but never with the spirit of the book. As one who was going over the same ground in the same years," find some of his solutions of minor problems most interesting. The village priest remains for him the Curate, as he s did to the old translators, for Mr. Putnam thinks that he is too familiar to English readers under that name to justify a change. Sancho's mule, on the other hand, loses the name of Dapple, which was coined for him by Jarvis. Mr. Putnam's judgements on his predecessors are also most amusing to anyone who has intimate knowledge of the book and its history in English. He gives high praise to Jarvis for his comparative accuracy, and is rather lukewarm towards Shelton, Cervantes' con- temporary and first translator, whose tremendous command of his own language is surely ample compensation for his defective Spanish. This latest version is certainly superior to all the early ones for accuracy and ease of reading.
The Three Exemplary Novels which Mr. Putnam lived to complete are Rinconete and Cortadillo, The Man of Glass and The Colloquy of the Dogs, which are three of the raciest. The illustrations seem
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