Although Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was not only the brightest genius of his age and country, but a man of active life and open manners, and engaged personally in many interesting transactions of his time, there are nevertheless few distinguished men of letters who have left behind them more scanty materials of biography. His literary reputation was not of the highest order till Don Quixote made it so; and ere then he had outlived the friends and companions of his youthful adventures, and withdrawn into a life of comparative privacy and retirement. In the age immediately succeeding his own, abundant exertions were made to discover the scattered and faded traces of his career; but with what