Not till he was fifty-eight years old did he give to the world his master-piece, and thus immortalizes La Mancha, in return for his inhospitable and cruel treatment. "Don Quixote" was licensed at Valladolid in 1604, and printed at Madrid in 1605. Its success was so great that, during his lifetime, thirty thousand volumes were printed, which in that day was little short of marvellous. Four editions were published the first year, two at Madrid, one at Valencia, and one at Lisbon. Byron says: "Cervantes laugh'd Spain's chivalry away!" So popular was it, that a spurious second part, under the fictitious authorship of Avellanada was published. Cervantes was furious, and called him a blockhead; but Germond de Lavigue, the distinguished Spanish scholar, rashly asserts that but for this Avellanada, he would never have finished "Don Quixote." Even before it was printed, jealousy evidently existed in the hearts of rival writers, for in one of Lope's letters he refers to it, and spitefully hints that no poet could be found to write commendatory verses on it.
He recognized the fact of universal selfishness when he makes Sancho Panza refuse to learn the Don's love-letter and say, "Write it, your worship, for it's sheer nonsense to trust anything to my memory."
Spain is so full of rich material for romance that from it his mature mind seemed to inaugurate a new age in Spanish literature. After the gloomy intolerance of Philip II., the advent of Philip III. added much to the literary freedom of Spain, which still belonged to the "Age of Chivalry," and to this day the true Spaniard nourishes the lofty and romantic qualities which, combined with a tone of sentiment and gravity and nobility of conversation, embellishes the legitimate grandee. Sismondi de Sismondi says the style of "Don Quixote" is inimitable. Montesquieu says: "It is written to prove all others useless." To some it is an allegory, to some a tragedy, to some a parable, and to others a satire. As a satirist we think him unrivalled, and this spirit found a choice opportunity for vent when the troops of Don Carlos I. marched upon Rome, taking Pope Clement VII. prisoner, while at the same time the king was having prayers said in the churches of Madrid for the deliverance of the Pope, on the plea that "he was obliged to make war against the _temporal_ sovereign of Rome, but not upon the spiritual head of the Church!" No wonder the king, after proving himself so good a Catholic, should end his days in a monastery, or that he should mortify himself by lying in a coffin, wrapped in a shroud, while funeral services were performed over him. What, again, could have appealed more to his sense of the ridiculous than the contest between the priests and the authorities over the funeral obsequies of Philip II., so intolerant a tyrant that he caused every Spaniard to breathe more freely as he ceased so to do. He used his people as