at the author's genius was not essentially dramatic. In
February 1584 he obtained a licence to print a pastoral novel entitled
_Primera parte de la Galatea_, the copyright of which he sold on the
14th of June to Blas de Robles, a bookseller at Alcala de Henares, for
1336 _reales_. On the 12th of December he married Catalina de Palacios
Salazar y Vozmediano of Esquivias, eighteen years his junior. The
_Galatea_ was published in the spring of 1585, and is frequently said to
relate the story of Cervantes' courtship, and to introduce various
distinguished writers under pastoral names. These assertions must be
received with great reserve. The birth of an illegitimate daughter,
borne to Cervantes by a certain Ana Francisca de Rojas, is referred to
1584, and earlier in that same year the _Galatea_ had passed the censor;
with few exceptions, the identifications of the characters in the book
with personages in real life are purely conjectural. These
circumstances, together with the internal evidence of the work, point to
the conclusion that the _Galatea_ was begun and completed before 1583.
It was only twice reprinted--once at Lisbon (1590), and once at Paris
(1611)--during the author's lifetime; but it won him a measure of
repute, it was his favourite among his books, and during the thirty
years that remained to him he repeatedly announced the second part which
is promised conditionally in the text. However, it is not greatly to be
regretted that the continuation was never published; though the
_Galatea_ is interesting as the first deliberate bid for fame on the
part of a great genius, it is an exercise in the pseudo-classic
literature introduced into Italy by Sannazaro, and transplanted to Spain
by the Portuguese Montemor; and, ingenious or eloquent as the
Renaissance prose-pastoral may be, its innate artificiality stifles
Cervantes' rich and glowing realism. He himself recognized its defects;
with all his weakness for the _Galatea_, he ruefully allows that "it
proposes something and concludes nothing." Its comparative failure was
a serious matter for Cervantes who had no other resource but his pen;
his plays were probably less successful than his account of them would
imply, and at any rate play-writing was not at this time a lucrative
occupation in Spain. No doubt the death of his father on the 13th of
June 1585 increased the burden of Cervantes' responsibilities; and the
dowry of his wife, as appears from a document dated the