Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra occupies an isolated and unique position among the great ones of Spanish history. As Columbus stands for the genius of discovery, Cervantes, in the mind of the civilised world, is analogous with Spanish literature. Mendoza and Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina or Calderon are but shadows beside the reality of Cervantes as a living force in letters. The record of Spain’s military glory is gemmed with a cluster of such names as those of the Cid and the Duke of Parma, of Boabdil, and Spinola; its sea fame rests upon the records of a long roll of mighty admirals. In art, Velasquez shares precedence with Murillo, and Ribera and Goya are worthy of a place in the same gallery; and while in song there is no national composer to associate Spain with the music of Europe, in the literary firmament the star of Cervantes rises in single splendour, and obscures all lesser luminaries. Viewed in another and more personal light, Cervantes is still found to be “without like or similar;” in himself, as in his work, he retains his peculiar solitariness. He may not rank equal with Shakespeare and Homer, Dante and Milton, Balzac and Molière, among the giants of literature; but as soldier and author he has a double claim upon the admiration and regard of posterity. Edmund Spencer and Walter Raleigh sustained the dual rôle with distinction; but the one is now only known for his poetry, and the other lives only by virtue of his military exploits. If Cervantes had not written _Don Quixote_, his literary worth would never have been recognised; but his name would yet have been preserved to us as “the man of Lepanto” and the captive of Algiers. That he survived his wounds and captivity, his poverty and persecution, to publish in his fifty-ninth year a work which Dr. Johnson esteemed the greatest book in the world after the Iliad, is not less remarkable than the fact that his whole career, with all his varied and unrelieved vicissitudes, was necessary for its composition.