None of the commonplaces in the history of literature are better established than these: that the _Libros de Caballerías_ were tiresome and absurd; that they appeared in immense numbers, and flooded out all better and more wholesome reading; and that they were killed by _Don Quixote_. Yet there are probably not three worse founded commonplaces. That these books can be tedious, and that the worst of them can be very tedious, is true. But none are more long-winded than the _Golden Epistles_, which had an equally great popularity, or than some well-accepted reading of any generation is apt to look to later times, when fashion has changed. They were certainly neither more tiresome nor more essentially absurd than the _Novela de Pícaros_. Their number was not very great. The whole body is not nearly as numerous as the yearly output of novels to-day in England; and even when their inordinate length is allowed for, their total bulk is not greater, though they were written during a century. As for their supposed predominance, it must be remembered that the great time of the _Libros de Caballerías_ was also the time of the “learned poetry” of Spain, of the growth of the drama, of most of the _romances_, and of some of the best work of the historians and the mystic writers. That _Don Quixote_ destroyed them may seem to be a truth too firmly established to be shaken, and yet the contrary proposition, that it was the waning popularity of the Tales of Knightly Deeds which made _Don Quixote_ possible, is on the whole more consistent with fact. They had been less and less written for a generation before Cervantes produced his famous First Part. The _Novela de Pícaros_ was taking their place. Readers were predisposed to find them laughable, and therefore enjoyed the burlesque. Cervantes’ own half-humorous boast has been taken too seriously. The ridicule of the _Libros de Caballerías_ is the least valuable part of _Don Quixote_, and is not in itself better than much satire which has yet failed to destroy things more deserving of destruction than the family of _Amadis_.