Avellaneda had charged him with disparaging the innumerable “stupendous comedies” of Lope de Vega, and of persecuting the Inquisition. Cervantes straightly denies both these imputations, declaring that he “adores Vega’s genius, and admires his works continuous and virtuous,” and protests that he is not likely to persecute any ecclesiastic--above all, if he is a familiar of the Holy Office to boot. “But,” he writes in this dedication to the Conde de Lemos, “that which I cannot help feeling is that he charges me with being old and maimed, as though it had been in my power to stop time from passing over me, or as though my deformity had been produced in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion which ages past and present have seen, or those to come can hope to see. If my wounds do not shine in the eyes of him who looks on them, they are at least honoured in the estimation of those who know where they were acquired; for the soldier looks better dead in battle than alive in flight. And so much I am of this opinion that if now I could devise and bring about the impossible, I would rather be present again in that wonderful action than now be whole of my wounds, without having taken part therein.” With this manly and characteristic protest we may, I think, close the volume of this scandal, and press forward to the near close of Cervantes’ career. [Illustration: SANCHO’S DILIGENCE IN ENCHANTING DULCINEA. _London, 1858._ _47th Edition._] In this same dedication there is the intimation that _Don Quixote_ is “waiting in the Second Part, booted and spurred, to do homage” to the Conde de Lemos, and before the end of the year (1615) the completion of the great work was published. The book was printed by Juan de la Cuesta, who had printed the First Part, and Francisco de Robles was again associated with Cervantes as publisher. The public received the new volume with the same enthusiasm that they had extended to its predecessor, and although posthumous criticism has in some instances refused to regard it as equal in merit to the first instalment--Charles Lamb went out of his way to refer to it as “that unfortunate Second Part”--the general reading public of successive generations have agreed in regarding it as the most diverting half of the novel. Cervantes himself has declared, through the mouth of the scholar, Samson Carrasco, that second parts are never good, but this rule found a striking exception in the case of his own work. With increasing years the author betrayed no sign of flagging vivacity; experience had lent him a surer hand in the development of character; and while the Knight of La Mancha’s adventures take on a less fantastic guise, and his reflections increase in wisdom, the wit of Sancho Panza broadens and ripens, and the humanity of the immortal comrades acquires a deeper note. Lamb wrote of “that unworthy Duke,” and he condemned the Duchess as “most comtemptible.” Many readers of Cervantes must at times have rebelled