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Those who study the humanities are continually reminded that great events do not always find historians of commensurate stature to record and interpret them. In this respect, however, Spain's Golden Age was exceptionally privileged. Names such as Pulgar, López de Gómara, Zurita, Mariana, Sandoval, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza recall an era of diligent, conscientious historical scholarship combined with elegance and grace of expression. Publications in Spain once more have directed attention to this outstanding period of historiography. It will be recalled that in this field the pioneer investigations of Irving, Prescott, and Ticknor have been amply developed by Armstrong, H. Baumgarten, Konrad Häbler, Roger Bigelow Merriman, as well as other American and European scholars. A typical Golden Age historian is Pero (Pedro) de Mexía (1497?-1551), whose historical works are the object of new research.

N SCANNING a bibliography of Cervantes studies, one discovers under the head of foreign influence a fairly balanced proportion of monographs and articles devoted to the writer's entire ceuvre and of those restricted to Don Quixote. To the distress of Cervantes' devotees, even works of such accomplished artistry, picturesqueness of setting, and broad appeal as the Exemplary Novels have not, except for brief intermittent spells, reached any sizable audience in more than three long centuries. In no case would the restriction of a comparative study to the work which public response has almost unanimously acclaimed as Cervantes' outstanding masterpiece be more advisable than in an investigation of the reaction of Russian readers to distant Spain's best-known novelist. In planning such a study, one could, conceivably, have focused attention on the hero of the novel alone; however much critics insist on Cervantes' equal accomplishment in portraying the knight and the squire, it is pre-eminently the figure of Don Quixote that has impressed itself on foreign readers. The more removed in space and time readers are from the reality of the Spanish seventeenth-century countryside which Sancho's personage was devised to evoke, the more his racy figure is overshadowed by that of his master-of greater human warmth, more loosely tied up with its environment, hence readily understandable by those who are unprepared to appreciate the subtle local color of the literature of the Spanish Golden Age. To few groups do these limitations apply more properly than to Russian intellectuals of the nineteenth century (in particular, of its second half), who were relatively little concerned with literary techniques and artistic structure, yet keenly sensitive to new ideas and, specifically, interested in the vexing problem of the individual's place in changing patterns of society. To these readers Cervantes as the towering personality torn between mutually exclusive careers and conflicting artistic loyalties hardly existed; nor did the full content of his multilevel novel, as presented to us by Paul Hazard, occupy the focus of interest nearly so much as its "philosophic" implications.

painter brought distinction to themselves by creating, each in his own medium, a work of art in which the central theme revolves around the world of dreams. Although much has been written about Calder6n's place in Spanish thought and letters, little has been said about Ribera, whose frank, unadorned realism conceals a transcendent world as eternally Spanish as the world of Segismundo.In the following remarks I shall attempt to show, through an analysis of Ribera's Jacob, how closely this canvas is related not only to the main artistic and philosophical currents of the Spanish Golden Age but also to the more universal problem of the yo interno and the yo histdrico as presented by Miguel de Unamuno. The latter's obsession with sleep, which he sees as a window opening inward (ladentro!)2 on the eternal soul, forms a striking parallel with Ribera's interpretation of the sleeping Jacob. The painting with which we are concerned now hangs in the Prado where it impresses the viewer less, perhaps, for its monumental size than for its sheer ugliness. We wonder, indeed, how a picture so drab in tone, so completely lacking in any reference to a dream, and whose central figure is so thoroughly unprepossessing, can claim our attention at all. Yet there is a haunting fascination about this stark picture, and we are drawn to it again and again, perhaps hoping to discover with each new visit the mystery of its strange appeal. The Biblical Jacob is depicted lying on a large, flat rock, apparently asleep. He is wrapped in a homely cloak, and his head is resting on his left hand. Although his eyes are closed, there is no clear indication of whether or not he is having a dream. The upper half of the painting consists of a threatening, gray sky, relieved only by a pale, yellow shaft of light descending from the upper right-hand corner and touching Jacob's head. The sole sign of life, other than the sleeping figure, is a brownish, half-dead tree on the left which forms an unbroken projection of the sleeper's body. The lower portion of Jacob's cloak continues the brown of the tree. The upper part is black, as are his hair and beard. The rock on which he lies is a rusty brown and underscores the total effect of gloomy desolation. There can be little doubt that Ribera, to the extent that he has caught the mood of the "dreadful place" described in Genesis (28: 10-22), has been faithful to the scriptures. But what of the dream? Where is the famous ladder? Where are the angels of God "ascending and descending?" WVVhere, in short, is the "gate of heaven?" These are legitimate questions, particularly since the picture purports to deal with what Jacob dreamed while on his journey eastward, toward Haran, in quest of a wife. Is Ribera's omission of the dream inten

Cervantes' intimate acquaintance with the doctrinales de principes that flourished during the Spanish Golden Age is revealed in the sage advice he gives Sancho when the escudero is on his way to assume the governorship of Barataria. The political concepts uttered by Don Quijote constitute, in essence, a realistic, miniature version of the literature de regimine principum which had its roots in the Middle Ages. Through an analysis of the observations Don Quijote made to Sancho on running the affairs of government (chapters XLII and XLIII of Part II), the author's vital awareness and utilization of contemporary Spanish political literature will be underscored.' Significantly enough, Cervantes logically placed these two chapters back to back, for together they have a palpable unity of purpose. The importance of their content is singularly heightened, since they commence the second part of the stay of the knight and his squire with the duke and duchess; in addition, while chapters XLII and XLIII encompass one theme, the chapters that immediately follow fall into a pattern in which the adventures of Don Quijote and Sancho alternate. The presentation and overall structure of the Manchegan's good counsel to the untutored new governor reflect the author's close adherence to the traditional modes exhibited in the works