This is the testimony of the most renowned personality in Castilian literature. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616) describes himself as a native of Alcalá de Henares, in a legal document signed at Madrid on December 18, 1580: the long dispute as to his birthplace is thus at last settled. His stock was pure Castilian, its _solar_ being at Cervatos, near Reinosa: the connection with Galicia is no older than the fourteenth century. His family surname of Cervantes probably comes from the castle of San Cervantes, beyond Toledo, which was named after the Christian martyr Servandus. The additional name of Saavedra is not on the title-page of the writer's first book, the _Galatea_. However, Miguel de Cervantes uses the Saavedra in a petition addressed to Pope Gregory XIII. and Felipe II. in October 1578; and, as Cervantes was not then, though it is now, an uncommon name, the addition served to distinguish the author from contemporary clansmen. He was the second (though not, as heretofore believed, the youngest) son of Rodrigo de Cervantes Saavedra and of Leonor Cortinas. Of the mother we know nothing: garrulous as was her famous son, he nowhere alludes to her, nor did he follow the usual Spanish practice by adding her surname to his own. The father was a licentiate—of laws, so it is conjectured. Research only yields two facts concerning him: that he was incurably deaf, and that he was poor. Cervantes' birthday is unknown. He was baptized at the Church of Santa María Mayor, in Alcalá de Henares, on Sunday, October 9, 1547. One Tomás González asserted that he had found Cervantes' name in the matriculation lists of Salamanca University; but the entry has never been verified since, and its report lacks probability. If Cervantes ever studied at any university, we should expect to find him at that of his native town, Alcalá de Henares. His name does not appear in the University calendar. Though he made his knowledge go far, he was anything but learned, and college witlings bantered him for having no degree. No information exists concerning his youth. He is first mentioned in 1569, when a Madrid dominie, Juan López de Hoyos, speaks of him as "our dear and beloved pupil"; and some conjecture that he was an usher in Hoyos' school. His earliest literary performance is discovered (1569) in a collection of verses on the death of Felipe II.'s third wife. The volume, edited by Hoyos, is entitled the _Historia y relación verdadera de la enfermedad, felicísimo tránsito y suntuosas exequias fúnebres de la Serenísima Reina de España, Doña Isabel de Valois_. Cervantes' contributions are an epitaph in sonnet form, five _redondillas_, and an elegy of one hundred and ninety-nine lines: this last being addressed to Cardinal Diego de Espinosa in the name of the whole school—_en nombre de todo el estudio_. These poor pieces are reproduced solely because Cervantes wrote them: it is very doubtful if he ever saw them in print. He is alleged to have been