4 ([return])
That Don Quixote could not have been written before 1591 is proved by the mention in chapter vi of a book published in that year. That it must have been written subsequently to 1596 is proved by the reference in chapter xix to an incident which was not ended till September, 1596 (see Navarrete). There are other hints and allusions in the story which, I think, show that it could scarcely have been begun while Philip II was alive.
5 ([return])
From Wilhelm Meister, Lehrjahre, chapter xii, thus Englished by Thomas Carlyle:
"Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping and watching for the morrow,
He knew you not, ye unseen Powers."
6 ([return])
There are two curious pieces of evidence in proof that Don Quixote was known before it was printed. In the first edition of the Picara Justina, composed by Francisco de Ubeda—the license to print which is dated August, 1604—there are some truncated verses, like those in the beginning of Don Quixote, in which Don Quixote is mentioned by name as already famous (Catalogo de Salva, vol. ii, p. 157). Also in a private letter from Lope de Vega to his patron, the Duke of Sessa, there is a malignant allusion to Cervantes, speaking of poets. "There is none so bad as Cervantes, and none so foolish as to praise Don Quixote." The letter is dated August 4, 1604.