He never quite lost his connection with literature. A few commendatory verses in the books of friends, and other slight traces, remain to show that in the intervals of the work by which he lived he endeavoured to keep a place among the poets and dramatists of the time. During these years he wrote the first part of _Don Quixote_. It appeared in 1605, but, according to the usual practice, had been shown to friends in manuscript. His last years were spent in Madrid. How he lived must remain a mystery. The _Don Quixote_ was popular, but copyrights were then not lucrative, even if they could be said to exist. He again tried the stage, and was again unsuccessful. In 1613 he published the _Novelas Ejemplares_, a collection of short stories, partly on the picaresque, partly on an Italian, model. During the following year he brought out the _Voyage to Parnassus_, a verse review of the poets of his time, a common form of literary exercise, and not a good specimen of its kind. In 1614 he was provoked by the false second part of _Don Quixote_. This was a form of literary meanness from which Mateo Aleman had already suffered, but Cervantes had particular cause to be angry. The continuer of _Guzman de Alfarache_ appears to have been only an impudent plagiarist, but the writer who continued _Don Quixote_ was obviously animated by personal hostility. He descended to a grovelling sneer at Cervantes’ wounded hand. It has been guessed that this is another chapter in the miserable history of the quarrels of authors. Avellaneda, as the author of the false second part called himself, is supposed to have acted on the instigation of Lope de Vega, who is known to have had no friendly feelings for Cervantes. The trick, which was as clumsy as it was spiteful, probably hastened the appearance of the genuine second part. It undoubtedly had some influence on the form, for it induced Cervantes to alter the course of the story, in order to make the two as unlike as possible. Perhaps it decided the author to kill the hero lest another should murder him. The second part was printed in 1615. Cervantes died in the next year. Cheerful and hopeful to the end, even when “his foot was in stirrup” for the last journey, he had prepared his _Persiles y Sigismunda_ for the press before he died. This was meant to be a model of what a tale of adventure might be, and was written with more care in the formal and mechanical parts than he gave to _Don Quixote_; but, like almost all he is known to have done with deliberate literary intentions, it is dull and lifeless. [SN: _Don Quixote._]