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 			<p>It is needless to follow in detail the history of the later experiments in the <i xml:lang="es">gusto picaresco</i>. As we approach later times the stories become duller and more respectable. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Marcos de Obregon</i> of Vicente Espinel appeared in 1618. It is a story of adventure abroad rather than of low life at home, not wanting in spirit, and with a more regular construction than most stories of this class, from which Le Sage has stolen very largely and boldly in his <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Gil Blas</i>, even appropriating the name of the hero, and giving it to one of his characters. In 1624 came another of the picaresque brood, called <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos</i> (Alonso, Servant of Many Masters), by one Yanez y Rivera, which deals with the humours of domestic service. We need not occupy ourselves with the long string of lesser works of this character, which are rather romances of real life than picaresque tales⁠—the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book" xml:lang="es">Niña de los Embustes</i> (the Child of Tricks) and the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Garduña de Sevilla</i> (the She-Marten of Seville) of Solorzano; the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Diablo Cojuelo</i> (the Lame Devil) of Guevara, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Estevanillo Gonzalez</i>, attributed to the same author, which is the pretended autobiography of a buffoon, better known by Le Sage’s French version than in the original. Last of all, we come to that which by some is reckoned to be the picaresque novel <i xml:lang="fr">par excellence</i>⁠—the well-known work of Le Sage himself, in collaboration with many others, called <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Gil Blas</i>. This, with all its merits, is no picaresque novel at all, except in an oblique sense as being the work of a “picaroon”⁠—a clever theft by an adept in literary conveyance, the very Autolycus of authors. While the matter is Spanish, the form and, oddly enough, a great deal of the spirit, is French. I will not go into the question of what were the sources from which Le Sage drew his story. That very Spanish and yet curiously French work (“Spanish bricks in French mortar”) is a wonderful piece of literary craft, showing a genius in the art of stealing which is equal to that of original composition, and even more rare. But Gil Blas, when all is said, is not a true picaroon, of the breed of Lazarillo and Rinconete. He is an impostor, but in another than the true sense. He is a fortune-hunter, who looks closely to the main chance, who descends to be respectable, who aims at a social position, like Jerome Paturot. He marries twice, and lives comfortably in a fine house⁠—a prosperous gentleman, after bidding hope and fortune farewell. He is no more a <i xml:lang="es">picaro</i> than Ruy Blas is a Spaniard or Djalma an Indian prince.</p>
 			<p>Of the picaresque novel, which is the special product of Spain⁠—never successfully acclimatized in any other country, and as entirely Spanish as the <i xml:lang="es">olla</i> or the <i xml:lang="es">gazpacho</i>⁠—one of the purest specimens is <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo de Segovia</i> (Paul the Sharper), <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book" xml:lang="es">exemplo de Vagamundos y espejo de Tacaños</i>⁠—pattern of Vagabonds and mirror of rogues. The book is generally known as <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">El Buscón</i>, or <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">El Gran Tacaño</i>. The latter title, which is not Quevedo’s, was made the leading designation of the book after the author’s death, and is still that by which the book is most popular in Spain. <i xml:lang="es">Buscón</i> is from <i xml:lang="es">buscar</i>, to seek, and means a pursuer of fortune, a searcher after the means of life, a cadger. <i xml:lang="es">Tacaño</i> is ingeniously derived by old Covarrubias, in the earliest Spanish dictionary, from the Greek <i xml:lang="el">κακός</i>, being a corruption of <i xml:lang="es">cacaño</i>; or from the Hebrew <i xml:lang="he-Latn">tachach</i>, which is said to mean fraud and deceit. Don Pablo, however his titles may be derived, is generally admitted to be the perfect type of an adventurer of the picaresque school. The book of his exploits, though left, like so many Spanish books, unfinished, is described by Quevedo’s best critic as “of all his writings the freest from affectation, the richest in lively and natural humours, the brightest, simplest, and most perspicuous; in which he comes nearest to the amenity, artlessness, and delightful and delicate style of Don Quixote.” These praises are not undeserved, although the knight of industry, in his quest of adventures, is very far from being of kin to the warrior of chivalry, the gentle and perfect knight of La Mancha. Disfigured as it is by all Quevedo’s faults of style and manner, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> deserves to be rescued from the fate to which its faults of language, rather than its defects of taste or its failure in the moral part, have hitherto consigned it, at least in England. As a picture of low, vagabond life, it necessarily deals with vice, but it cannot be said that the vice is rendered attractive. All the characters are bad, in the sense that they all belong to the class who have failed to achieve a decent life. The company is not select in which we move, but it can hardly be said that there is contamination in it any more than we get from looking at Hogarth’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Gin Lane</i>, or the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Borrachos</i> of Velasquez. From beginning to end Don Pablo’s career is one of undisguised trickery, dissimulation, and lying. All his companions are thieves, or impostors, or rogues, patent or undetected. The scenes are laid almost entirely in the lowest places⁠—in the slums of Segovia, of Madrid, and of Seville, mostly in prison or in some refuge from the law. The manners of the people, men and women, are as repulsive as their morals; and they talk (which is not unusual) after their natures. When we concede all this we admit the worst which can be said of Quevedo’s work, and impute nothing against the author, either as artist or moralist. It is difficult to imagine any virtue of a texture so frail as to be injured by the reading of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Paul the Sharper</i>. There is no vice in the book, even though it deals exclusively with vicious people. There is nothing hurtful in the character of the complete rogue, nor is he painted in any but his natural colours, as a mean, sordid vagabond, who does or says nothing whatever to gild his trade or to embellish his calling. This is the crowning merit of Quevedo’s book, among those of its class, that there are no shabby tricks played upon the reader, such as other writers of even higher pretensions are guilty of⁠—no attempt to pass off a rogue as though he were a hero in distress⁠—a creature deserving of sympathy, who is only treating the world as the world treated him⁠—a victim of fortune, whose ill-usage by society justifies his attitude towards the social system. There is no sentiment expended over Paul of Segovia. There is no snivelling over his low condition, or railing at his unhappy lot. He is not conscious of his degradation. He is a thief, the son of a thief, with a perfect knowledge of what his mother is; but he makes no secret of his calling, nor indulges in excuses for himself or his family. The other heroes of the picaresque novel make some faint pretence to decent behaviour, but Paul never deviates into respectability. He is <i xml:lang="es">picaro</i> to the fingers’ ends⁠—in either sense. Through all his changes of character and of costume he is still rogue, entire and perfect, without any sprouts of honesty or repinings after a better life. The naivete with which he tells of his exploits, without boasting and without shame, is of the highest art⁠—true to nature, nor offensive to morality. Whether he is cheating a jailer or bilking a landlady, dodging the <i xml:lang="es">alguacil</i> or bamboozling the old poet, or befooling the nun, or tricking the bully, he is always true to himself, without affectation or conceit of being other than he is. There are no asides, where either the hero or the author (as the bad modern custom is) communes with his conscience, or finds excuses for himself, or draws a moral, or in some way or other imparts to the reader how much superior he (the writer) is to his hero, and how conscious he is of the reader’s presence, giving him to understand, in a manner unflattering to his intelligence, how that all that he writes is in joke and not to be taken in bad part. That Quevedo does not do so is his chief point of art in the book, which deserves to be ranked among the best of its class, as a chapter out of the great comedy of human life. The simplicity with which the story is told, without those digressions and interruptions to which the Spanish storyteller is so prone, make it a work almost unique among books of the kind. For once Quevedo has spoken in a language direct and plain, without a riddle or a hidden motive. It is of course a satire, but a satire of the legitimate kind, not upon persons, but upon mankind⁠—against general vice, not against particular sins. The characters of the story, which seems rather to tell itself than to be told, are all such as were the common property of the comic writers of the period, but scarcely anywhere else are they found invested with so much of the breath of life. <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> himself, his companions, his fellow-students, the crazy old poet, the villainous jailer, the braggart <i xml:lang="es">espadachins</i>, the poor hidalgo, the strolling players, the beggars, the gay ladies, the jailbirds, bullies, and thieves⁠—every member of that unclean company, with all their unsavoury surroundings, is a real, living personage.</p>
 			<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo de Segovia</i> was first published in 1626, at Saragossa, and had a great success, several editions being called for before the author’s death. There is reason to believe that it was written some years before, being probably circulated in manuscript among the author’s friends before being printed, as was the custom of the time. In 1624 Quevedo had been lately released from the first of his imprisonments at Torre de San Juan Abad, and had partially recovered the favour of the Court. It was a period when the printers were most busy with his works⁠—when satires, political apologues, religious tracts, visions, burlesque and piquant odes, fantasies, and calls to devotion were being poured forth abundantly out of his fruitful brain. Señor Guerra y Orbe believes that <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> was written in 1608. That it was composed before 1624 is proved, I think, by the character of the book, which is certainly more juvenile than belongs to a man of forty-six, as well as by a piece of evidence to be found within. In chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">VIII</span>, when on the road to Torrejón, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> comes up with a crazy man mounted on a mule, who proves to be a master of the art of fencing, with several extravagant projects in his brain for the good of the kingdom. Among these he has two schemes to propose to the king for the reduction of Ostend. Now the great siege of Ostend, which is doubtless the one referred to, was that which ended, after three years’ fighting in which an extraordinary number were slain on both sides, in September, 1604. It is a reasonable conjecture, therefore, that <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i>, at least as far as chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">VIII</span>, was written prior to this date. The chapters in which the students’ adventures at Alcalá are described seem to me also to bear internal evidence of having been written when the impression of university life was still fresh upon the author. This theory of the date of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> makes the author a young man of twenty-three when the book was composed; and the book itself the third, in order of time, of the picaresque romances, following closely after <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Guzman de Alfarache</i>.</p>
-			<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo de Segovia</i> has been always popular in its native country, and has been frequently translated into other languages. Señor Guerra y Orbe notes more than forty editions of the original in Spain and in the Spanish dominions. An Italian translation, by Juan Pedro Franco, appeared in 1634 at Venice. A French version, by Geneste, was included among the burlesque works of Quevedo, translated into that language in 1641. Other early French versions are those of Lyons and of Brussels. In 1842 M. Germond de Lavigne brought out his translation of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> which is spirited and readable, but a good deal changed from the original. Portions of other works by Quevedo are inserted in the text, a prologue borrowed from the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Hora de Todos</i>, and a conclusion added from out of the manufactory of <abbr>M.</abbr> Lavigne himself. In <abbr>M.</abbr> Lavigne’s latest edition of 1882 appeared the first of <abbr>M.</abbr> Vierge’s admirably spirited and characteristic sketches.</p>
+			<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo de Segovia</i> has been always popular in its native country, and has been frequently translated into other languages. Señor Guerra y Orbe notes more than forty editions of the original in Spain and in the Spanish dominions. An Italian translation, by Juan Pedro Franco, appeared in 1634 at Venice. A French version, by Geneste, was included among the burlesque works of Quevedo, translated into that language in 1641. Other early French versions are those of Lyons and of Brussels. In 1842 <abbr>M.</abbr> Germond de Lavigne brought out his translation of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> which is spirited and readable, but a good deal changed from the original. Portions of other works by Quevedo are inserted in the text, a prologue borrowed from the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Hora de Todos</i>, and a conclusion added from out of the manufactory of <abbr>M.</abbr> Lavigne himself. In <abbr>M.</abbr> Lavigne’s latest edition of 1882 appeared the first of <abbr>M.</abbr> Vierge’s admirably spirited and characteristic sketches.</p>
 			<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i> was early introduced into the English tongue, though it is perhaps the least known of Quevedo’s works. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Visions</i>, translated by the indefatigable Sir Roger L’Estrange, first appeared in 1688, and went through many editions in that and the succeeding century. The English version has the merit, which belongs to all L’Estrange’s work, of being in good, sound, and vigorous language, lively and not inelegant, but it is far from faithful to the original, the translator taking great liberties with his author in the attempt to bring him up to the level of the “humour of the times.” The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Visions</i> were much read and often quoted by English writers of the last century. The <i xml:lang="es">Buscón</i>, shorn of much of his stature, was Englished by “a person of quality” so early as 1657, with a dedication to a lady. It was still further reduced in 1683, both in size and art, though most of the grossness was left untouched. The well-known Captain John Stevens, who translated Mariana’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">History</i> and professed (without warrant) to improve and correct Shelton’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Quixote</i> (which he did not do to any appreciable extent), also took Quevedo in hand, translating <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Pablo</i>, among other comical pieces, in 1707. A new translation was given to the world in 1734 by Don Pedro Pineda, a teacher of the Spanish language, then resident in London. Pineda it was who revised the Spanish text of the splendid edition of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Don Quixote</i>, published at the charge of Lord Carteret in 1734, four handsome quarto volumes⁠—the first in which print and paper did full justice to Cervantes’ masterpiece. Though a person of little humour, who fell a victim to Cervantes’ irony in the matter of the poet Lofraso and his <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Fortuna de Amor</i>, Pineda was a competent Spanish scholar, at least for that age. How far his English was his own we have no means of knowing, but his <em>perfect knowledge of the language of the original</em> recommended him to the editors of the edition of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Quevedo’s Works</i>, published at Edinburgh in 1798, as a person fit to revise and correct the version of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Stevens. That version, though not satisfactory in all respects, is still the best we have in English. It is almost too faithful to the original in respect that it retains many expressions, phrases, and words, of the kind in which Quevedo loved to indulge, which, however appropriate in the mouths of the speakers in a thieves’ den or a convict prison, are scarcely delicate enough for the taste of the modern English public, or necessary to bring out the full humour of the story.</p>
 			<p>The text of the English translation of 1798, corrected and revised, is that which has been followed in the present publication, of which the immediate object is less to rescue Quevedo’s story from oblivion than to bring to the notice of the public the singular merit of his countryman, <abbr>M.</abbr> Vierge (Daniel Urrabieta), as an artist in black and white.</p>
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