Mr. Watts, who has evidently made a close and scholarly study of the old romances of chivalry which _Don Quixote_ brought into such sudden disfavour, has endeavoured, as I think, with much plausibility, to demonstrate Cervantes’ precise attitude towards this class of literature. Having traced the romantic vein from its genesis to the time when the author of _Galatea_ employed it as his model, and eulogised in high terms such examples of the genre as _Amadis of Gaul_ and _Palmerin of England_, Mr. Watts points out that Cervantes carefully differentiated between the romances of merit and the nautiating imitations; that he was one of the most omniverious readers of such books in that age, and the most deeply-imbued with their spirit. He specially and enthusiastically praises the good volumes among the bad in Don Quixote’s library; he praises again, through the mouth of the Canon of Toledo, the feeling of romances of chivalry, and lays down the rules on which such a history should be written. If he had [Illustration] any other object in composing _Don Quixote_ than to “write out of the fulness of his own heart,” it was to check the perpetration of fatuous and mischievous stories which were bringing into disrepute and ridicule his old and well-loved stories of chivalry and romance. The secret of the enduring success of _Don Quixote_, Mr. Watts concludes, is not to be found in its motive, but in the fact that the romance was drawn from the story of the author’s own life. “The hero himself, the enthusiast, nursed on visions of chivalry, who is ever mocked by fortune; the reviver of the old knighthood, who is buffeted by clowns and made sport of by the baser sort; who, in spite of the frequent blows, jeers, reverses, and indignities he receives, never ceases to command our love and sympathy--who is he but the man of Lepanto himself, whose life is a romance at least as various, eventful, and arduous; as full of hardships, troubles, and sadness; as prolific of surprising adventures and strange accidents as the immortal story he has written? This is the key to _Don Quixote_, which, unless we use, we shall not reach the heart of the mystery.”