It is generally agreed that the novels which Cervantes published in 1613, under the title of _Novelas Exemplares_--because “there is not one of them from which some profitable example cannot be drawn”--were written many years before, but there seems equally as good reason for supposing that they were the results of his last seven years residence in Madrid. In variety of subject and manner, in the extraordinary knowledge of life that they reveal, in the mature art with which they are told, they exhibit the hand of the experienced craftsman, and warrant the eulogy of the author, who wrote of them that “had they not been turned out of the workshop of his wit, he might presume to place them by the side of the best ever designed.” After _Don Quixote_, they are reckoned in Spain amongst the best stories of their kind in the language; but they have achieved little popularity out of the Peninsula. Yet they have not been without their fervent admirers in this country, and amongst them Sir Walter Scott must be acknowledged the chief, since Lockhart declares that it was these stories of Cervantes that inspired the author of the Waverley novels to his first essay in fiction. In the following year, 1614, Cervantes published two volumes of his writings, _Viaja del Parnaso_ and a collection of plays. The poem, though based on an ingenious idea, and containing some of the best verse which the poet has given us, justifies the contemporary verdict upon his compositions, which was, as Cervantes himself tells us, that “of his prose much was to be expected, but of his verse nothing.” The _Journey Around Parnassus_ is written in imitation of a poem, now forgotten, by the Italian author, Cesare Caporali, and it serves as a record of the names of a string of Spanish minor poets whom Cervantes praises with more credit to his heart than his discrimination. His own generation allowed the book to fall still-born from the press, and its one interest to modern Cervantists lies in the autobiographical details which are to be found in the prose prefix. We read here that he is residing in the _Calle de las Huertas_, in a house “over against the mansion where the Prince of Morocco used to live;” we are introduced to the beruffled, exquisite, and would-be poet (by the correction of whose verses Cervantes doubtless derived part of his slender income); we learn that his niece paid a _real_ for postage on a letter which contained nothing more valuable than an anonymous, defamatory sonnet upon the author of _Don Quixote_; and, finally, we are told that the writer has in hand a dozen comedies and farces in equal proportions, which, having been rejected of theatre-managers, he proposes to present to the world in book form.