Four generations had laughed over "Don Quixote" before it occurred toanyone to ask, who and what manner of man was this Miguel de CervantesSaavedra whose name is on the title-page; and it was too late for asatisfactory answer to the question when it was proposed to add a life ofthe author to the London edition published at Lord Carteret's instance in1738. All traces of the personality of Cervantes had by that timedisappeared. Any floating traditions that may once have existed,transmitted from men who had known him, had long since died out, and ofother record there was none; for the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieswere incurious as to "the men of the time," a reproach against which thenineteenth has, at any rate, secured itself, if it has produced noShakespeare or Cervantes. All that Mayans y Siscar, to whom the task wasentrusted, or any of those who followed him, Rios, Pellicer, orNavarrete, could do was to eke out the few allusions Cervantes makes tohimself in his various prefaces with such pieces of documentary evidencebearing upon his life as they could find.