of the picaresque school, but there is always the radical difference that they seek to interest the reader by the intrigo, as the dramatists of Dryden's time would have said, and not by a truthful picture of real life, manners, or human nature.

The truth is that It is rich in inci

The first genuine gusto picaresco tale after Rinconete y Cortadillo was Marcos de Obregon, by the poet and musician Vicente Espinel, which appeared in 1618. The name will be familiar to most English readers-though, probably, not one in ten thousand has ever read the book -in connection with Gil Blas, which is generally said to have been founded on Espinel's novel. The statement was originally made by Voltaire in a contemptuous notice of Le Sage in the appendix to his Siècle de Louis XIV., in which he says that Gil Blas "est entièrement pris du roman espagnol intitulé La Vidad de lo Escudiero dom Marcos d'Obrego." Never, perhaps, has self-confidence more naïvely committed itself than in this sentence. Not only are there seven mistakes in eight words, but they show that the writer could not have seen the book he quotes, and that he certainly would have been unable to read it if he had seen it. Besides, there is a slight flavour of Portuguese in the title of the " roman espagnol," which argues an ignorance of that language also; so that from these few words we may estimate the value of Voltaire's criticism on the Araucana, which had not been translated, and on the Lusiad, the translation of which he had not seen. As to Marcos de Obregon, the case is very simple. He got the idea from Bruzen de la Martinière, and then "generalised" it in this form. Le Sage did borrow, and freely, from Espinel's tale. dents and episodes of the very sort that suited his purpose, which he took without ceremony; and, whether it was that he fancied himself safe from detection, or, as is more likely, never troubled his head about it, he made no effort to conceal the fact that he had taken them. One of the first acts of the ordinary thief is to remove all names from the stolen goods, but Le Sage, in some instances, left the names in the tales he annexed standing just as he found them. Thus the story of the garçon barbier in the first volume of Gil Blas is merely a rifacimento of the commencement of Marcos de Obregon, retaining both his name and that of Doña Mergelina. In the same manner both the name and story of Camilla, who cheated Gil Blas of his ring, are taken from Marcos. instance Le Sage thought to make an improvement in his original by changing "Dr. Sagredo" into "Dr. Sangrado;" but, seeing that it was the Doctor's patients, and not himself, who were "bled," the alteration cannot be called a happy one. Other examples of his appropriations are to be found in the apologue of the two students in the address to the reader, which is improved out of Espinel's prologue; the story of Don Raphael being carried off by the corsairs and his adventures at Algiers, which are closely copied from the adventures of Marcos himself; and the story of Gil Blas and the flatterer, who supped at his expense at Peñaflor, and of the amorous muleteer a few pages farther on. To these

In one

may be added a few minor touches, like Don Mathias saying it was unreasonable to expect a man who, even for a party of pleasure, would not get up before noon, to rise at six to fight a duel. In fact, it was Le Sage's practice to avail himself of any adaptable joke, incident, or tale, just as Dickens, for example, availed himself of the story over which Dr. Johnson and Beauclerk had their memorable quarrel to expand it into Sam Weller's immortal legend of the man that killed himself on principle; nor is Espinel the only author he borrowed from, for he levied contributions on some of the dramatists also. This is the extent of his obligations to Marcos de Obregon. For structure, form, and local colour he was no doubt indebted to Guzman, the Gran Tacaño, and Estebanillo Gonzalez, but all else in Gil Blas is his own. The scenery, the costumes -in short, all the "properties"—are Spanish; and, as the work of a man who never set foot in Spain, it is a marvel that they are so truly Spanish. But the dramatis persona are all French; and as for Gil Blas himself, he has not a Spanish bone in his body. He is as thorough a Frenchman as Dumas' D'Artagnan or Prevost's Chevalier des Grieux. Certainly Le Sage borrowed nothing in the way of plot or construction from Marcos de Obregon. It opens with an exordium in praise of patience, and we are given to understand that its object is to show the advantages of cultivating that virtue. But it is difficult to see how the tale effects this purpose, unless, indeed, it be through the example of a hermit in whose cell Marcos is detained by a sudden storm and flood, and to whom he relates the history of his youth, a narrative occupying the best part of two days, and considerably more than two-thirds of the book. In justice to Marcos, it must be admitted that the strictly narrative portion and the tales and episodes introduced are told with spirit, but they are over-weighted by the long-winded and prosy discourses with which he seasons them; and most readers will sympathise with the alacrity with which the good hermit, "perhaps," as Marcos candidly owns, "tired of listening so long," points out that the flood has gone down and the bridge become passable.

Another book of very much the same character is Alonso, the Servant of many Masters, or, as it came to be called in later editions, El Donado Hablador (The Loquacious Lay Brother), by Geronimo Yanez y Rivera, the first volume of which appeared in 1624, and the second two years later. It is even more awkwardly constructed than Marcos de Obregon, being cast in the form of a dialogue throughout; but it is in other respects much on a par with it. Le Sage, apparently, was not aware of its existence, as he has taken nothing from it, though there is more to suit his purpose than in Espinel's novel. It is far richer in pictures of Spanish life and society, some of which, especially those of university and military life, are very graphic and obviously truthful; and, besides, it abounds with short stories of the jest-book order, one of which, indeed, is actually taken from the great Spanish Joe Miller, the Floresta Española of Melchior de Santa Cruz. It is the tale of the

Franciscan monk who, being barefoot, was persuaded to carry his fellowtraveller, a Dominican, across a river, but halfway over finding the burden heavier than he had bargained for asked the other if he had any money about him, and, on the Dominican replying that he had six reals in his pocket, at once dropped him into the stream, saying, " You should have told me that before: don't you know our Order is forbidden to carry money?" Another, which has a decided smack of the Italian salt, and is quoted by Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, is the story of the magic water with which a lady, complaining of the quarrelsome temper of her husband, was advised to fill her mouth whenever he began to scold, taking care to keep it there as long as he was in the room.

But in the same year (1626) there appeared at Saragossa a much more important book than either of these, or than any of the class except the Lazarillo and the Guzman. This was the Vida del Buscon Don Pablos, Exemplo de Vagamundos y Espejo de Tacaños, by no less an author than Quevedo, who, not content with distinction as a poet, a satirist, a dramatist, a biographer, and a theologian, enrolled himself among the novelists in this way. The book is better known as the Gran Tacaño, which may be roughly translated as "Arch-Rascal," the original title probably proving too clumsy, and not very apt, as "buscon " means rather a petty pilferer than a clever, unscrupulous scoundrel, such as Don Pablos really was. It is a tale somewhat like the Lazarillo and the Guzman, but, as might be expected from a man of Quevedo's original genius, it has a strongly-marked individuality and character of its own. It is the history of a model scamp, whose father was a barber who robbed his customers while shaving them, and whose mother was a practitioner in quackery, a dealer in the black art, and a professional go-between, a character which seems to have had a special attraction for Spanish writers ever since the time of the Archpriest of Hita and of the Celestina. Nevertheless, he ingratiated himself so much with a schoolfellow, the son of a wealthy hidalgo, that when the latter was going to the University of Alcalá he took young Paul with him, partly as a companion, partly as a kind of servant, a relationship which, according to the novelists, was very common in Spain at that time, and to which many a humbly-born youth owed a university education. Their adventures on the road from Segovia to Alcalá are quite in the manner of Le Sage at his best. In fact, in reading the Tacaño the conviction again and again forces itself on the mind that Le Sage must have had the book at his fingers' ends; but there is a gratuitous coarseness at times which the artistic instinct of Le Sage would never have permitted. The same may be said of the descriptions of student life at Alcalá, which are full of broad humour, and are evidently reminiscences of Quevedo's own residence there. The students of his time are not painted in flattering colours. It would be difficult to imagine a more abominable set of young monkeys. Indeed, it is unjust to compare them with monkeys, for they seem to have been far more like Yahoos, and it was their pleasant practice to welcome a newly-arrived freshman in

much the same manner as Captain Gulliver describes himself to have been welcomed by the Yahoos the first time he encountered them.

Nor is this to be set down as mere novelist's exaggeration, for the truth of the picture is vouched for by more than one contemporary, and in the Donado Hablador we have a very similar account of the ways of the students at the sister university of Salamanca. Among these youths Paul, by force of character, soon came to be a leading spirit and prime mover in every enterprise against the peace and property of the townsfolk of Alcalá. His studies were, however, interrupted by a letter from his uncle, the hangman of Segovia, announcing the death of his father. "He died," said the letter, "with as much fortitude as any man ever did; you may take my word for it, for I hanged him myself. The convict's jacket fitted him as if it had been made for him. He mounted the ladder, not running up like a cat, nor yet too slowly; and observing one of the rounds broken, he pointed it out to the sheriff, and begged him to have it mended against the next occasion. In fact, I cannot tell you how he pleased everybody. I quartered him afterwards, and God knows it grieves me to see him furnishing an ordinary to the crows." The letter goes on to say that, as for his mother, though she is not exactly dead, she is the next thing to it, as the Inquisition has got hold of her for practising witchcraft; so that, upon the whole, Paul may as well consider himself an orphan, and come and take possession of the family property; in addition to which the affectionate uncle proposes to make him his heir, adding, "With your knowledge of Latin and rhetoric you will make a rare hangman." The last sentence illustrates the difficulty of translating Spanish humour. It is quite impossible to do full justice to the pompous gravity of "sereis singular en el arte de verdugo." The whole letter is a good specimen of Quevedo's peculiar humour. He has been called the Spanish Voltaire, and no doubt in the turn of his mind he bears a certain resemblance to the great Frenchman. But an English reader will be far oftener reminded of Swift than of Voltaire in Quevedo's humorous and satirical passages. He had what Voltaire had not, or at least had only in a limited degree, and what especially characterised Swift's humour-the gift of perfect gravity while laying some preposterous absurdity before the reader. You can always catch Voltaire's grin and the twinkle of his eye in the background, but Swift and Quevedo never betray the slightest consciousness of saying anything ludicrous or anything that is not the merest and most obvious matter of fact.

Paul, however, had no mind to become his uncle's successor; and possessing himself of the money his father had left, he slipped out of Segovia and made for Madrid. On the road he overtakes a pauper hidalgo, whose portrait may serve as a companion to that of the squire in Lazarillo de Tormes, but Quevedo's treatment of the character is far harder and more unsympathetic than Mendoza's. By this worthy he is instructed in the arts of life at the capital, and introduced to a kind of boarding-house frequented by rogues, vagabonds, and adventurers of various sorts, who, with their straits, shifts, and contrivances, furnish a

subject that Quevedo's humour revels in, and one that his curious knowledge of Madrid low life, as shown in his slang ballads, enabled him to depict accurately and fully. At length a clumsily-executed theft brings the authorities down on the establishment, and the whole "college," as he calls it, is consigned to prison. Here again Quevedo is in his element. Poor fellow! in the course of his own troubled life he had more than one opportunity of studying in person the humours of a Spanish gaol, and had no necessity to draw on his imagination for his details; but if we had any doubt of the truth of his sketches we have only to compare them with those of Borrow in The Bible in Spain to see how little the novelist has added, and how little Madrid prisons have changed in two centuries. Paul being a man of property, compared with his comrades, found little difficulty in obtaining his release by a judicious investment of his father's ducats, which he had providently secreted, and was soon restored to Madrid society, in which he endeavoured to cut a figure, and for some time succeeded, until an unlucky meeting with his old master and college companion of Alcalá led to an exposure and a not unmerited beating. All this part is so entirely in the style of Gil Blas that it seems more than likely that Le Sage was largely indebted to it, though he has not adopted any particular adventure, incident, or character. Paul's money being now gone and his pretensions exposed, he sought a livelihood for a while by begging as a cripple, and afterwards, in conjunction with another impostor, by stealing children and then restoring them with a trumped up story of having rescued them from under the wheels of a coach. He next joined a company of strolling players, and became an actor and dramatist, a portion of his adventures which has a special interest, as it is full of curious details relating to the drama and stage customs and practices at about the period when Lope and his school had just gained the ascendency over the popular taste which they so long held. This career was brought to a close by the arrest for debt of the manager, and after a few amatory and gambling adventures Paul takes leave of the reader at Seville, where he is about to embark for the Indies.

If it is inferior in true humour to the Lazarillo and Rinconete y Cortadillo, in knowledge of life, wit, and satire, this novel of Quevedo's is unsurpassed by any of the picaresque school, and this makes all the more absurd the attempt of M. Germond de Lavigne to assign its composition to the period of Quevedo's boyhood. Quevedo was undoubtedly precocious. He was a graduate in theology at fifteen, a brilliant Greek, Latin, and Hebrew scholar at an unusually early age; and he had hardly attained manhood when the great Lipsius called him the "glory of Spain." But learning of this sort is a very different thing from the kind of learning that shows itself in every page of the Gran Tacaño; no amount of precocity will give knowledge of life, and men, and manners, and it is inconceivable how anybody with a fair share of the critical faculty, and with the book before him, could believe it to have been written by a boy in his sixteenth year. Yet this is what M. Germond de Lavigne most dogmatically asserts in the preface and notes to his