The reputation he attained awakened the enmity of rivals and critics. When Cervantes published "Don Quixote," in 1605, Lope was risen high in popular estimation; he was generally applauded--almost adored. The abundance and facility of his verses, and the amiableness of his character, were in part the occasion of this; but the eminent cause was his theatre, which we delay considering, not too much to interrupt the thread of his history, but whose originality, novelty, vivacity, and adaptation to the Spanish taste, secured unparalleled success. Cervantes did not feel the merits of his innovations, and he considered himself also the unacknowledged originator of many of the improvements attributed to Lope. We have seen in what Cervantes's dramatic pretensions consisted--high wrought and impassioned scenes connected, not by the intricacies of a methodical plot, but by the simple texture of their causes and effects, such as we find in life itself. He felt that he had written well; he was unwilling to acknowledge that Lope wrote better, nor did he, as a master of the human heart, and as presenting more affecting situations; but he did, as comprehending and representing more to the life the manners and feelings of his day. Cervantes easily perceived the faults of his rival; he discovered his incongruities, and noted the vanity or cupidity which made him more abundant than correct, and the currying to the depraved taste of the times, through a desire of popularity. In short, Lope was not perfect, but he had something that while he lived stood in the stead of perfection--he hit the public taste; he supplied it with ever fresh and ever delightful food; he pleased, he interested, he fascinated. To act posterity, and judge coolly of his works, was an invidious task; and though it was natural that a man so profound and sagacious as Cervantes should be impelled so to do, yet, by attacking him and proving him in the wrong, he could not weaken his influence, while he made an enemy. There is a sonnet against Lope attributed to him, of which the point is not acute; but it displays contempt for his pastorals and epics, and sarcastically alludes to his superabundant fertility. However, it is more than probable that Cervantes did not write this sonnet; for he wrote in praise of Lope in other works, and it was unlike the noble disposition of that single-hearted and excellent man to have contradicted himself. Still less likely is it that Lope wrote the answer. It is vulgarly abusive and ridiculously assuming: he calls Cervantes the horse to Lope's carriage; bids him do Lope honour, or evil will betide him; and sums up by saying that "Don Quixote" went about the world in wrappers to parcels of spices. It looks more like the spurt of an over-zealous disciple than of a man of Lope's judgment and character.[97] His war with Gongora was of a more grave description, and we defer farther mention of it till in the life of Gongora we give some account of his poetic system.