the woman of the family no longer needed to take in the sewing from the Marques de Villafranca”; and, in another place, he refers to the “supererogatory folly” which misled him in Valladolid. He bases this supposition on the evidence on a MS., entitled, _Memorias de Valladolid_, now in the British Museum, in which the name of Cervantes is put into the mouth of a woman in a gambling house. As the author was not the only bearer of the name of Cervantes in Spain in that day, and as none of his candid friends refer to his vices or immoralities, either in prose or verse, one might, I think, regard this piece of evidence with more than usual suspicion. Mr. Watts dismisses the charge as unworthy of any credence, and most Cervantists will, doubtless, treat the imputation in the same fashion. Between his retirement from the Army and the publication of the first, and only published part, of the _Galatea_, Cervantes, on the evidence of his petition to the King, conveyed letters and advices from Mostagan, a Spanish possession on the Coast of Barbary, to Philip, and was sent by His Majesty to Oran, where he was employed in affairs of the fleet, under the orders of Antonio de Guevara. But the nature and duration of his employment are matters of conjecture, and we must turn to 1584 for the next authentic details of his career. In that year our author married a wife, and published the _Galatea_. The _Galatea_, which was not translated into English until 1867, has enjoyed less vogue in this country than in France, where Florian’s translation is still in demand. In Spain, at least half-a-dozen editions were called for during the lifetime of the author, and so great was the esteem in which it was held at the time, that gentlemen from France, affected to letters, had their _Galatea_ by heart. Cervantes’ _Eclogue_, or, as we should style it, pastoral romance, was not a literary experiment, being an exercise in the manner of Montemayor’s _Diana_, and having its inspiration in the fashion of the period. This “firstfruits of his poor wit,” as the author calls it in his preface, is concerned with shepherds and shepherdesses, their loves, their longings, and their lassitudes. The fable is artificial, the language is stilted, the passion false, and the whole, to modern eyes and ears, is tedious, and not a little ridiculous. That it appealed to the current fancy in poetry and fiction is its excuse; that it was at least equal in merit, if not superior, to any contemporary effort of the same class, is its only substantial merit. Some personal interest the pastoral has in the introduction of real persons under romantic names. Cervantes’ own love story is rehearsed in the prologue, the poet masquerades as Elicio, and his wife as Galatea, while Tirsi, Timbrio, Damon, and Erasteso are all friends of the author. Twenty years later Cervantes made merry over this class of literature, when in _Don Quixote_ he makes the Knight,