translation, first published in 1843, and re-issued in the Collection Jannet in 1868. It would not be worth while to contradict such an assertion made by an obscure writer, but coming from a distinguished Spanish scholar like M. Germond de Lavigne, and one who, by his translations of Avellaneda and the Celestina, has a claim to rank as an authority on Spanish literature, it deserves something more than a passing notice. All he can show in support of his theory is, that the name of Antonio Perez is mentioned in the account of one Paul's escapades at Alcalá, which proves, he thinks, that Quevedo was writing at the time when Perez was a source of uneasiness to the Spanish Court, i.e. between 1593 and 1597. But in all probability in the hoax in question we have merely a recollection of an incident of Quevedo's own student days (he says expressly that they talk of the joke at Alcalá " to this day"), and that the name of Perez was actually used as described. What could be more natural than that, writing no matter how long afterwards, he should introduce, just as it occurred, a prank in which, perhaps, he had taken part himself? At any rate, the date of a work is not to be settled on evidence like this; besides, there is evidence that the Tacaño was not written till at least after 1605, for Paul speaks of himself as riding from Segovia on a "Rucio de la Mancha," an obvious allusion to Sancho Panza's "Dapple;" and in an earlier chapter one of the characters says he has two plans for taking Ostend, evidently referring to the famous siege of that town by Spinola from 1601 to 1604. Nevertheless, with a curious positiveness, M. Lavigne says, "La première édition fut donc imprimée vers 1596." He does not condescend to say where this edition is to be seen, or by whom it has ever been seen. The earliest in the British Museum is that of Saragossa (1626), which all bibliographers, including Don Aureliano Guerra y Orbc, the learned and industrious editor of Quevedo's works, have always considered, and no doubt rightly, to be the first. No harm would have been done had he been content with this, but unluckily near the end Paul observes that formerly there were "no comedies but those of the good Lope de Vega and Ramon," of which passage M. de Lavigne says that "there are here two errors which I have felt bound to rectify." In the first place, he says at the time when our hero flourished, Lope de Vega could not be called one of the first authors of popular comedies: "l'intention de Quevedo a été, sans nul doute, de citer Lope de Rueda, le père du théâtre espagnol ;" and as to the other, he says, "Ramon m'est complètement inconnu. Il est, sans aucun doute, question de Torres Naharro;" and with true Gallic selfconfidence he makes the corrections in his translation. In fact, having, in his zeal to prove the Tacaño the model of Guzman, invented an impossible date for the book, he alters the text to suit it, and in doing so destroys a valuable piece of testimony on the history of the Spanish drama. For the Ramon who is "completely unknown" to M. de Lavigne happens to be Dr. Alfonso Ramon, a dramatist mentioned with praise by more than one writer of the time, but especially by Cervantes, who, in the prologue to his comedies (1615), speaks of him very much as

Quevedo does here, as one of those to whom, next to Lope, Spanish comedy was most indebted. M. Germond de Lavigne is, indeed, rather given to rash statements. He says Rojas "did not finish the Celestina." Cota may have begun the Celestina, but Rojas certainly finished it. He says that Aleman would not have continued Guzman but for Luxan de Sayavedra, nor Cervantes finished Don Quixote but for Avellaneda. The first statement is wrong, and the second mere assertion. He says Espinel invented a form of guitar, called after him espinela. Espinel added a fifth string to the guitar, and is said to have invented the decima or stanza of ten eight-syllable lines, which is sometimes called espinela. He confounds Morales the actor with Morales el Divino, the painter of Badajoz, and, in short, gives a good deal of information somewhat astonishing to a Spanish student. It is to be regretted, because his translation is a very good one. It is brisk and spirited, and has the neatness and finish characteristic of the workmanship of the French littérateur. It is, besides, generally faithful except where he thinks he can improve upon his author. The difficulties, too, are overcome with real skill and knowledge of the language; and there is no Spanish so difficult as Quevedo's in his humorous works. He had a passion for using words in out-of-the-way senses, and for verbal gymnastics, concerts, and tours de force of every kind; and though he professed to be an enemy of the conceptista school, he was himself as great a sinner as any against simplicity and good taste. And the sin has brought its punishment with it, for the wit and humour, imagination and fancy, that would have made him one of the world's favourites lie hidden away where few care to look for them. Hence Quevedo has been generally unfortunate in his translators. L'Estrange's lively version of the Visions is at least as much L'Estrange as Quevedo, and the two English translations of the Tacaño, that of 1657 under the title of Buscon the Witty Spaniard, and the later one, The Life of Paul the Sharper, which was adopted in the Edinburgh edition of Quevedo's prose works, are rather paraphrases, and poor ones, than translations.

The Tacaño is almost the last of the genuine gusto picaresco novels. Among the numerous fictions which poured from the press during the reign of Philip IV. there were many strongly impregnated with the picaresque flavour. One or two of Salas Barbadillo's tales, such as the Ingeniosa Helena and the Necio bien afortunado, translated into English under the title of The Lucky Idiot, and attributed to Quevedo, are of this sort, as are one or two of those by Santos, like Dia У Noche en Madrid, of which Le Sage made free use in his Diable Boiteux. The same may be said of Castillo Solorzano's tales, the Bachiller Trapaza, and the Garduña de Sevilla, called by L'Estrange and Ozell The Spanish Polecat; and of Don Gregorio Guadaña, by Antonio Henriquez Gomez, which last, indeed, claims expressly to be of the same family as the Tacaño, Justina, and Guzman. But in it, and still more in the others, the essential character of the picaresque fiction is wanting. There are, no doubt, many real-life touches and sketches, but they are

merely introduced incidentally: the aim and purpose of the writers are not those of the picaresque novelists-to present a picture of real life. The love of the drama was the dominant passion, and popular taste began to run in favour of fictions which were little more than stage intrigues and comedies of the capa y espada cast in the form of novels, like those of Doña Maria de Zayas, the Spanish Aphra Behn. Besides this, one of the symptoms of the national decay which was then making rapid progress was the disfavour shown generally to everything eminently national. The noble old ballads were being treated with contempt; the racy proverbs, brimming with sly sagacity, that the older writers quoted with such relish, were coming to be looked upon as fitting garnish for the speech of a boor; the simple, flexible old Spanish measures were giving way before inordinate sonneteering; and the clear, flowing Castilian of Mendoza, Mariana, and Cervantes was becoming an obscure jargon of conceits and affectations. Naturally, therefore, a growth so thoroughly and peculiarly Spanish as the picaresque novel could not long maintain an existence.

There is, however, one remarkable book to be noticed before the list is closed, and that is Estebanillo Gonzalez, Hombre de Buen Humor— "The Good-natured Fellow," as the English translators make it, though in truth it means rather a fellow who does not allow himself to be "put out" by anything. At any rate there is nothing like "good-nature" in Estebanillo's composition, for a more cynically selfish scoundrel is not to be found in the whole range of the picaro heroes. It is the account of the adventures, for the most part in Italy, Germany, and Flanders, at the time of the Thirty Years' War, of a Spaniard of the Guzman de Alfarache type, but blessed with an effrontery which even that master of impudence might have envied. As a rogue, a liar, and a thief, Estebanillo is at least Guzman's equal; but while the latter shows, or affects at times, some sort of contrition, the former invariably recounts his rascality with a chuckle, as if it was the best joke in the world. Nor is this all. Shamelessness generally draws the line at cowardice. However much a man may have cast off all self-respect, he will be unwilling to confess himself utterly wanting in courage. Estebanillo, however, takes a positive delight in giving instances of his own poltroonery, as if they were the most admirable strokes of humour. He always preferred, he says, that people should say of him "here fled" rather than "here fell." At the battle of Nordlingen he describes with the utmost glee how he ran away and took shelter inside the carcase of a dead horse, which he afterwards swore had fallen under him; and at Glogau how he hid in a hayloft, and how he fell off his horse in fright at Thionville. In short, he misses no opportunity of proving that he was in truth what he calls himself, "archigallina de gallinas" (an arch-hen of hens). But the most remarkable thing about the book is that there is no saying with certainty what it is. Of its author nothing is known. It has been attributed to Espinel (who was dead at the time of the events mentioned in it), and to Guevara, the author of the Diablo Cojuelo; but it is plain that it was

written by one who was an eye-witness of most if not all of the scenes described. He represents himself as having been eventually taken into the service of Octavio Piccolomini as a jester, and to him he dedicates this history of "his life and achievements." The question, then, remains whether the book is a novel, or in truth what it pretends to be, an autobiography. If it is a novel, it is one into which the author has with consummate skill interwoven an unusual amount of his own personal experiences. If it is an autobiography, the writer has unquestionably indulged a literary leaning to fiction. The style is detestable. It seems to be an object with the author to give the reader as much trouble as possible in making out his meaning. When Estebanillo says "bread " he may mean a sword, or he may mean a treaty of peace; the only thing that is certain is that he does not mean bread. This, so far as it goes, is an argument in favour of the idea that the book is a fiction founded upon fact, not a narrative of fact spiced with fiction, for the style is precisely that which was in vogue with the Spanish littérateurs of the period when they aimed at brilliancy. In either case the book is a curiosity of literature. If it be a novel, then the novelist had in no small degree Defoe's power of giving an air of verisimilitude to his inventions. If it be a personal narrative, then the narrator was a raconteur, whose gifts were very like those of Le Sage; and no definition, analysis, or description could convey a clearer idea of the true character and purpose of the picaresque novels of Spain than this fact, that the work with which every account of them must be closed is a narrative of which we cannot tell whether it is the bona fide memoir of a flesh and blood adventurer or the story of a creature of some novelist's brain.

Spain, as has been already observed, is the only country that has ever produced a distinct class of fictions of this sort. There are, indeed, instances of picaresque tales in other languages, such as the French Pedrille del Campo and The English Rogue, Meriton Latroon, but they are professedly imitations of the Spanish style. A doubtful exception is the German tale of Simplicissimus, by Christoph Grimmelshausen, in which all the gusto picaresco features are as strongly marked as in any of the family. It may possibly have been written in imitation of the Spanish novels, just as a contemporary work, the Visions of Philander von Sittewald, imitated the Visions of Quevedo; but if so, it is no servile imitation. Simplicius, the hero, is as genuine a picaro as Guzman or Pablos, but he is as German as they are Spanish, and the humour is as original as that of Jean Paul himself. Another exception is the latest and greatest of picaresque novels, Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, though even there a Spanish origin may be traced through Fielding. Gil Blas is certainly an imitation, and a very close one, but it is also a great deal more than an imitation. Le Sage's merit does not lie in having imitated the Spanish novel or transplanted it successfully into French soil. He is like some far-seeing traveller, who has perceived in some outlandish herb or root virtues of which the natives who gather it are unaware, and which, by proper cultivation, may be indefinitely

increased; and to his instinct we owe it that this queer wild product of Spanish genius has not remained a mere curiosity for bookworms, but has been made to yield fruit for the amusement of mankind. Not that he himself was fully aware of its capabilities. He did not contemplate, apparently, anything more than an improved and refined picaresque novel, with the crudities removed and the piquant natural flavour preserved, and even heightened, by judicious cultivation.

It is curious to note how gradual was the development of fictions of real life. Outwardly Gil Blas differs but slightly from the Spanish novels Le Sage took as his models, but the differences are suggestive. Gil Blas himself is an undoubted scamp, but he is a very much more decorous, decent, and self-respecting scamp than his prototypes, the picaros. Then the whole interest is not centered in the knaveries, adventures, and mishaps of the hero, but other personages are connected with him, and personally introduced to the reader, which in itself indicates a great step in advance towards our modern novels of real life, as it clears the way for the introduction of character. Then the potent agency of love, in a very rudimentary form it is true, makes its appearance, and exerts an influence ignored by the older novelists. In the same way Roderick Random, the lineal descendant of Gil Blas, shows the working of the process. His morals are very far from strict, but they indicate a far greater deference to public opinion than those of his predecessor; and Peregrine Pickle and Tom Jones, though perhaps really little better than Random, decidedly stand more in awe of the general censor, Society. In short, the discovery was only made by comparatively slow degrees that, picturesque as disreputable life may be, it is not the only real life worth painting; and that it is quite possible to construct a novel, true to nature, and at the same time entertaining, without making the hero a ruffian, a scoundrel, or a scamp. To us, accustomed as we are to regard novels as perhaps the most elaborate and complex products of literary art, it is not easy to realise so remote a stage in their development, any more than it is easy to realise that the ancestors of Society lived in caves like bears, or in lake dwellings like beavers. Nevertheless, that they did pass through such a stage is brought home to us now and then in more ways than one. How, for instance, are we to account for the occasional appearance in fashionable fiction of cynical ruffians and muscular scoundrels of the Guy Livingstone type except on the theory of "reversion," as the evolutionists would call it? What are they but features of the original savage stock reappearing after ages of civilisation in the modified offspring, just as in one of our most useful domestic animals we sometimes see traces of the markings of the parent zebra or quagga ? The picaros of Spanish fiction are not, perhaps, an ancestry to be proud of, but our novels are in this respect only in the same position as many other things. The stage began with a cart; the alchemists were the forefathers of Davy, Faraday, and Liebig; Rome itself rose from a gathering of vagabonds; and the modern novel may be content with an origin much like that of Rome.