[lit-ideas] Re: "Honesty Is The Best Policy"
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 14 Oct 2004 12:29:40 PDT
Harold wrote:
Looks like a tie. Europae Speculum was also published in 1605. I have
no idea why the OED gives the date of the quotation as 1599, but the
editors/readers were probably working from a 1632 reprint.
------------------
By no means a tie. It's Sandys first, the rest nowhere. The attribution to
Cervantes locates the expression in Book II of El Quijote. Book II wasn't
published until 1616.
In light of JL's research, I'd guess that the English translator copped the
expression from Europae Speculum, and that the translation of DQ was much more
widely disseminated than was Sandy's work, misleading dozens of
quotation-compilers down through the years.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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