The plays written at Algiers are lost; but there survive two sonnets of the same period dedicated to Rufino de Chamberí (1577). A rhymed epistle to the Secretary of State, Mateo Vázquez, also belongs to this time. We must suppose Cervantes to have written copiously on regaining his liberty, since Gálvez de Montalvo speaks of him as a poet of repute in the _Pastor de Fílida_ (1582); but the earliest signs of him in Spain are his eulogistic sonnets in Padilla's _Romancero_ and Rufo Gutiérrez' _Austriada_, both published in 1583. Padilla repaid the debt by classing the sonneteer among "the most famous poets of Castile." In December 1584, Cervantes married Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, a native of Esquivias, eighteen years younger than himself. It is often said that he wrote the _Galatea_ as a means of furthering his suit. It may be so. But the book was not printed by Juan Gracián of Alcalá de Henares till March 1585, though the _aprobación_ and the privilege are dated February 1 and February 22, 1584. In the year after his marriage, Cervantes' illegitimate daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, was born. We shall have occasion to refer to her later. Our immediate concern is with the _Primera Parte de Galatea_, an unfinished pastoral novel in six books, for which Cervantes received 1336 _reales_ from Blas de Robles; a sum which, with his wife's small dowry, enabled him to start housekeeping.[17] As a financial speculation the _Galatea_ failed: only two later editions appeared during the writer's lifetime, one at Lisbon in 1590, the other at Paris in 1611. Neither could have brought him money; but the book, if it did nothing else, served to make him known. He trimmed his sails to the popular breeze. Montemôr had started the pastoral fashion, Pérez and Gaspar Gil Polo had followed, and Gálvez de Montalvo maintained the tradition. Later in life, in the _Coloquio de los Perros_ (Dialogue of the Dogs), Cervantes made his Berganza say that all pastorals are "vain imaginings, void of truth, written to amuse the idle"; yet it may be doubted if Cervantes ever lost the pastoral taste, though his sense of humour forced him to see the absurdity of the convention. It is very certain that he had a special fondness for the _Galatea_: he spared it at the burning of Don Quixote's library, praised its invention, and made the Priest exhort the Barber to await the sequel which is foreshadowed in the _Galatea's_ text. This is again promised in the Dedication of the volume of plays (1615), in the Prologue to the Second Part of _Don Quixote_ (1615), and in the Letter Dedicatory of _Persiles y Sigismunda_, signed on the writer's deathbed, April 19, 1616. For thirty-one years Cervantes held out the promise of the _Galatea's_ Second Part: five times did he repeat it. It is plain that he thought well of the First, and that his liking for the _genre_ was incorrigible.