It was with considerable reluctance that I abandoned in favour of the present undertaking what had long been a favourite project: that of a new edition of Shelton’s Don Quixote, which has now become a somewhat scarce book. There are some and I confess myself to be one for whom Shelton’s racy old version, with all its defects, has a charm that no modern translation, however skilful or correct, could 
possess. Shelton had the inestimable advantage of belonging to the same generation as Cervantes; Don Quixote had to him a vitality that only a contemporary could feel; it cost him no dramatic effort to see things as Cervantes saw them; there is no anachronism in his language; he put the Spanish of Cervantes into the English of Shakespeare.