ances was not the work that lay next his heart. He was,
indeed, as he says himself in his preface, more a stepfather than a
father to "Don Quixote." Never was great work so neglected by its author.
That it was written carelessly, hastily, and by fits and starts, was not
always his fault, but it seems clear he never read what he sent to the
press. He knew how the printers had blundered, but he never took the
trouble to correct them when the third edition was in progress, as a man
who really cared for the child of his brain would have done. He appears
to have regarded the book as little more than a mere libro de
entretenimiento, an amusing book, a thing, as he says in the "Viaje," "to
divert the melancholy moody heart at any time or season." No doubt he had
an affection for his hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would
have been strange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorous
creation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success
of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete with which he
shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. But it was not
the success he coveted. In all probability he would have given all the
success of "Don Quixote," nay, would have seen every copy of "Don
Quixote" burned in the Plaza Mayor, for one such success as Lope de Vega
was enjoying on an average once a week.

And so he went on, dawdling over "Don Quixote," adding a chapter now and
again, and putting it aside to turn to "Persiles and Sigismunda"--which,
as we know, was to be the most entertaining book in the language, and the
rival of "Theagenes and Chariclea"--or finishing off one of his darling
comedies; and if Robles asked when "Don Quixote" would be ready, the
answer no doubt was: En breve-shortly, there was time enough for that. At
sixty-eight he was as full of life and hope and plans for the future as a
boy of eighteen.

Nemesis was coming, however. He had got as far as Chapter LIX, which at
his leisurely pace he could hardly have reached before October or
November 1614, when there was put into his hand a small octave lately
printed at Tarragona, and calling itself "Second Volume of the Ingenious
Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licentiate Alonso Fernandez de
Avellaneda of Tordesillas." The last half of Chapter LIX and most of the
following chapters of the Second Part give us some idea of the effect
produced upon him, and his irritation was not likely to be le