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For his more solid education, we are told, he went to Salao de Cervantes, as very poor, should have sent his son to a

university a hundred and fifty miles ahen he had one at his own

door, would be a puzzle, if we had any reason for supposing that he did

so The only evidence is a vague statement by Professor Tomas Gonzalez,

that he once saw an old entry of the uel de

Cervantes This does not appear to have been ever seen again; but even if

it had, and if the date corresponded, it would prove nothing, as there

were at least two other Miguels born about the middle of the century; one

of them, moreover, a Cervantes Saavedra, a cousin, no doubt, as a

source of great eraphers

That he was a student neither at Salamanca nor at Alcala is best proved

by his oorks No ely upon experience than he did,

and he has nowhere left a single reida," if it be his, is not one--nothing, not even "a college

joke," to show that he remembered days that most men remember best All

that we know positively about his education is that Juan Lopez de Hoyos,

a professor of humanities and belles-lettres of some eminence, calls him

his "dear and beloved pupil" This was in a little collection of verses

by different hands on the death of Isabel de Valois, second queen of

Philip II, published by the professor in 1569, to which Cervantes

contributed four pieces, including an elegy, and an epitaph in the form

of a sonnet It is only by a rare chance that a "Lycidas" finds its way

into a volume of this sort, and Cervantes was no Milton His verses are

no worse than such things usually are; so much, at least, may be said for

them