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This reference, as Mr. Ormsby noted, "is Cervantes all over in its tone of playful stoicism with a certain quiet self-assertion." Cervantes had, indeed, a special tenderness for the Galatea as being his eldest-born—estas primicias de mi corto ingenio—and this is shown by his constant desire to finish it, his persistent renewal of the promise with which the First Part closes. The history of these promises is instructive. In 1585 Cervantesssss1 publicly pledged himself to bring out a continuation, if the First Part of the Galatea were a success: it was to follow shortly (con brevedad). The work does not seem to have made a great hit; but Cervantes, the only man entitled to an opinion on this particular matter, was satisfied with its reception and, as the Priest's speech shows, in 1605 he held by his intention of publishing the promised sequel. But he dallied and tarried. Con brevedad is, as posterity knows, an expression which Cervantes interprets very liberally. Twenty-eight years after the publication of the Galatea, he used the phrase once more in the preface to the Novelas exemplares: the sequel to Don Quixote, he promises, shall be forthcoming shortly (con brevedad). This announcement caught Avellaneda's eye, and drove him into a grotesque frenzy of disappointment. It seems evident that he took the words—con brevedad—in their literal sense, imagining that Cervantes had nearly finished the Second Part of Don Quixote in 1613, and that its appearance was a question of a few months more or less. Accordingly, meanly determining to be first in the field, he hurried on with his spurious sequel, penned his abusive preface, and rushed into print. It is practically certain that this policy of sharp practice produced precisely the result which he least desired. Perhaps he hoped that Cervantes, discouraged at being thus forestalled, would abandon his own Second Part in disgust. There was never a more complete miscalculation. Stung to the quick by Avellaneda's insolence, Cervantes, in his turn, made what haste he could with the genuine continuation. Had Avellaneda but known how to wait, the chances are that Cervantes would have devoted his best energies to the composition of Las Semanas del Jardín (promised in the dedication of the Novelas exemplares), or of El Engaño á los ojos (promised in the preface to his volume of plays), or of El famoso Bernardo (promised in the dedication of Persiles y Sigismunda). Frittering away his diminishing strength on these various works, and enlarging the design of Don Quixote from time to time—perhaps introducing the Knight, the Squire, the Bachelor and the Priest as shepherds—Cervantes might only too easily have left his masterpiece unfinished, were it not for the unintentional stimulus given by Avellaneda's insults.