The good nature and bad luck which at all times militated against the success of Cervantes, thwarted his civil aspirations; but his first incarceration, which occurred in 1592, arose from an excess of zeal on behalf of the Royal Treasury. He overlooked the important fact that the clergy were exempt from taxation, and for the heinous offence of laying an embargo on wheat belonging to a priest, he served a term of three months in the prison of Castro del Rio, of Ecija. In 1595 he won the prize of three silver spoons for the best set of verses written in honour of San Jacinto on the occasion of his canonisation at Zaragoza; and in the following year he was again thrown into prison, this time through the defalcation of an agent, by whom he remitted a sum of 7,400 _reals_ from Seville to Madrid. As his official salary was only 3,000 _reals_ a year, such a liability must have appeared to him to be practically indischargeable. But by the recovery of 2,600 _reals_ [Illustration] from the estate of his defaulting agent, Cervantes obtained his liberty; and although he was re-arrested at a later period for delay in his repayments of the balance, his personal rectitude was in no way impugned. But while his days were full of petty duties and financial troubles, he appeared to have found leisure for literary exercises, and there can be no doubt but that during these dead years he wrote the majority of his novels. If, however, he attempted to find a publisher for his work his efforts were ineffectual, and his fortunes fell to such a low ebb that he was dependant at times upon the benevolence of his friends for the necessities of life. Two sonnets, which he wrote about this period, are considered the best examples of his skill in this style of composition that have come down to us. In the one he ridicules the incredible delay of the great Duke of Medina Sidonia in coming to the relief of Cadiz after that city had been destroyed by the English, under Lord Howard of Effingham and the Earl of Essex, and in the other he satirises the extravagant splendour and “profane magnificence” which was lavished on the catafalque of Philip II. in Seville.