It would be interesting to know the exact stages of composition of _Don Quixote_, but that is hopeless. We cannot be sure as to when Cervantes began the book, but we may hazard a conjecture. Bernardo de la Vega’s _Pastor de Iberia_, one of the books in Don Quixote’s library, was published in 1591, and this goes to prove that the sixth chapter was written after this date—probably a good deal later, for this pastoral was a failure, and therefore not likely to come at once into the hands of a busy, roving tax-gatherer. You all remember the incident of Sancho Panza’s being tossed in a blanket, and there is a very similar episode in the Third Book of _Guzmán de Alfarache_. Is there any relation between the two? Is it a case of unconscious reminiscence, or is it simple coincidence? It would be absurd to suppose that Cervantes deliberately took such a trifling incident from a book published six years before his own. Where Cervantes is imitative is in the dedication of the First Part of _Don Quixote_, which is pieced together from Herrera’s dedication of his edition of Garcilaso to the Marqués de Ayamonte, and from Francisco de Medina’s prologue to the same edition. If the tossing of Sancho Panza were suggested by _Guzmán de Alfarache_, it would follow that the seventeenth chapter of _Don Quixote_ was written in 1599, or later, and a remark dropped by Ginés de Pasamonte seems to show that Cervantes had read Mateo Alemán’s book without any excessive admiration. But the point is scarcely worth labouring. My own impression is that _Don Quixote_ was progressing, but was not yet finished, in 1602.