The old soldier of the Spanish Salamis was bent on being the Aeschylus of Spain.

He was to found a great national drama, based on the true principles of art, that was to be the envy of all nations; he was to drive from the stage the silly, childish plays, the "mirrors of nonsense and models of folly" that were in vogue through the cupidity of the managers and shortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and educate the public taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of the Greek drama--like the "Numancia" for instance--and comedies that would not only amuse but improve and instruct.

All this he was to do, could he once get a hearing: there was the initial difficulty.
He shows plainly enough, too, that "Don Quixote" and the demolition of the chivalry romances was not the work that lay next his heart.

He was, indeed, as he says himself in his preface, more a stepfather than a father to "Don Quixote." Never was great work so neglected by its author.
That it was written carelessly, hastily, and by fits and starts, was not always his fault, but it seems clear he never read what he sent to the press.

He knew how the printers had blundered, but he never took the trouble to correct them when the third edition was in progress, as a man who really cared for the child of his brain would have done.