DON QUIXOTE

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The novels were published in the summer of 1613, with a dedication to the
Conde de Lemos, the Maecenas of the day, and with one of those chatty
confidential prefaces Cervantes was so fond of. In this, eight years and
a half after the First Part of "Don Quixote" had appeared, we get the
first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "You shall see shortly," he
says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza."
His idea of "shortly" was a somewhat elastic one, for, as we know by the
date to Sancho's letter, he had barely one-half of the book completed
that time twelvemonth.

But more than poems, or pastorals, or novels, it was his dramatic
ambition that engrossed his thoughts. The same indomitable spirit that
kept him from despair in the bagnios of Algiers, and prompted him to
attempt the escape of himself and his comrades again and again, made him
persevere in spite of failure and discouragement in his efforts to win
the ear of the public as a dramatist. The temperament of Cervantes was
essentially sanguine. The portrait he draws in the preface to the novels,