This tardy sequel, which followed the First Part at an interval of ten years, might never have seen the light but for the publication of Avellaneda’s apocryphal _Don Quixote_ with its blustering and malignant preface. Cervantes’s gentle spirit survived unembittered by a heavy burden of trials and humiliations; but the proud humility with which (in the preface to his Second Part) he meets Avellaneda’s attack shows how profoundly he resented it. It would have been well had he preserved this attitude in the text. He was taken by surprise and, goaded out of patience, flung his other work aside, and brought _Don Quixote_ to a hurried close. Was Avellaneda’s insolent intrusion a blessing in disguise, or was it disastrous in effect? It is true that but for Avellaneda we might have lost the true sequel as we have lost the Second Part of the _Galatea_, the _Semanas del Jardin_, and the rest. It is no less true that, but for Avellaneda, the sequel might have been even better than it actually is. Cervantes had steadily refused to be hurried over his masterpiece, and, so long as he followed his own bent, his work is almost flawless. But Avellaneda suddenly forced him to quicken his step, and in the last chapters Cervantes manifestly writes in furious haste. His art suffers in consequence. His bland amenity deserts him; his eyes wander restlessly from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to Avellaneda, whom he belabours out of season. He allows himself to be out-generalled, recasting his plan because his foe had stolen it—as though the plan and not the execution were the main essential! He advances, halts, and harks back, uncertain as to his object; he introduces irrelevant personalities and at least one cynical trait unworthy of him. Obviously he is anxious to have the book off his hands, so as to bring confusion on Avellaneda.