How far is this view of the probabilities confirmed, or refuted, by what occurred in the case of the _Galatea_? The Second Part of that novel, like the Second Part of _Don Quixote_, had been promised _con brevedad_. Ten years passed, and still the sequel to the pastoral did not appear. Ticknor[83] records the tradition that Cervantes "wrote the _Galatea_ to win the favour of his lady," Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, and cynically adds that the new Pygmalion's "success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it." The explanation suggested is not particularly creditable to Cervantes, nor is it credible in itself. Cervantes's intention, so often expressed, was excellent, and it is simple justice to remember that, for the best part of the dozen years which immediately followed the publication of the _Galatea_, he was earning his bread as a tax-collector or tithe-proctor. This left him little time for literature. Twenty years went by, and still the promised _Galatea_ was not issued. One can well understand it. Cervantes had been discharged from the public service: he was close on sixty and seemed to have shot his bolt: his repute and fortune were at the lowest point. His own belief in the _Galatea_ might be unbounded; but it was not very likely that he would succeed in persuading my businesslike bookseller to issue the Second Part of a pastoral novel which had (more or less) failed nearly a quarter of a century earlier. He struck out a line for himself and, in a happy hour for the world, he found a publisher for _Don Quixote_. It was the daring venture of a broken man with nothing to lose, and its immense success completely changed his position. Henceforward he was an author of established reputation, and publishers were ready enough to take his prose and pay for it. As the reference in _Don Quixote_ shows, Cervantes had never, in his most hopeless moment, given up his idea of publishing his sequel to the _Galatea_. His original promise in 1585 was explicit, if conditional: and manifestly in 1605 he held that the condition had been fulfilled. In the latter year he was much less explicit as to his intention of publishing a continuation of _Don Quixote_, and, in the concluding quotation adapted from _Orlando Furioso_, he almost invited some other writer to finish the book. Probably no contemporary reader would have been surprised if the sequel to the _Galatea_ had appeared before the sequel to _Don Quixote_.[84] Still it must be acknowledged that the instant triumph of _Don Quixote_ altered the situation radically. In these circumstances, which he could not possibly have foreseen when he vaguely suggested that another hand might write the further adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes was perfectly justified in deciding to finish the later work before printing the earlier one. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for an ordinary man