outset _Don Quixote_ was immensely popular, and from that day to this the author’s reputation has steadily increased—till now he ranks as one of the great immortals. The history of literature shows no more enduring triumph. Cervantes himself tells us that _Don Quixote_ is, ‘from beginning to end, an attack upon the books of chivalry,’ and no doubt he means this assertion to be taken literally. But, as I have said elsewhere, the statement must be interpreted rationally in the light of other facts. It is quite true that books of chivalry had been a public pest, that grave scholars and theologians thundered against them, and that legislation was invoked to prevent their introduction into the blameless American colonies. The mystic Malón de Chaide, writing in 1588, declared that these extravagances were as dangerous as a knife in a madman’s hand; but Malón de Chaide lived sequestered from the world, and was evidently not aware that public taste had changed since he was young. It is a significant fact that no romance of chivalry was printed at Madrid during the reign of Philip II., and the natural conclusion is that such publications were then popular only in country districts. The previous twenty years of Cervantes’s life had been passed in the provinces, and one might be tempted to imagine that he was unaware of what was happening elsewhere. This would be an error: the fact that he mentions his own _Rinconete y Cortadillo_ in _Don Quixote_ proves that he knew there was a demand for picaresque stories, and that he was prepared to satisfy it. The probability is that Cervantes, who lived much in the past, had intended to write a short travesty of a chivalresque novel, and that his original intention remained present in his mind long after he had exceeded it in practice. If any one chooses to insist that Cervantes gave the romances of chivalry their death-blow, we are not concerned to deny it; if he had done nothing more, it would have been an inglorious victory, for they were already at the last extremity: but in truth, though he himself may have been unconscious of it, in writing _Don Quixote_ Cervantes signalised the triumph of the modern spirit over mediævalism.