Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844

“Don Louis nous mena chez un jeune gentilhomme de ses amis, qu’on appeloit don Gabriel de Pedros. Nous y passâmes le reste de la journée; nous y soupâmes même, et nous n’en sortîmes que sur les deux heures après minuit pour nous en retourner au logis. Nous avions peut-être fait la moitié du chemin, lorsque nous rencontrâmes sous nos pieds dans la rue deux hommes étendus par terre. Nous jugeâmes que c’étoient des malheureux qu’on venoit d’assassiner, et nous nous arretâmes pour les secourir, s’il en étoit encore temps. Comme nous cherchions à nous instruire, autant que l’obscurité de la nuit nous le pouvoit permettre, de l’état où ils se trouvoient, la patrouille arriva. Le commandant nous prit d’abord pour des assassins, et nous fit environner par ses gens; mais il eut meilleure opinion de nous lorsqu’il nous eut entendus parler, et qu’à la faveur d’une lanterne sourde, il vit les traits de Mendoce et de Pacheco. Ses archers, par son ordre, examinèrent les deux hommes que nous nous imaginions avoir été tués; et il se trouva que c’étoit un gros licencie avec son valet, tous deux pris de vin, ou plutôt ivres-morts. ‘Messieurs,’ s’écria un des archers, ‘je reconnois ce gros vivant. Eh! c’est le seigneur licencie Guyomar, recteur de notre université. Tel que vous le voyez, c’est un grand personnage, un génie superieur. Il n’y a point de philosophe qu’il ne terrasse dans une dispute; il a un flux de bouche sans pareil. C’est dommage qu’il aime un peu trop de vin, le procès, et la grisette. Il revient de souper de chez son Isabella, où, par malheur, son guide s’est enivre comme lui. Ils sont tombes l’un et l’autre dans le ruisseau. Avant que le bon licencie fut recteur, cela lui arrivoit assez souvent. Les honneurs, comme vous voyez, ne changent pas toujours les mœurs.’ Nous laissâmes ces ivrognes entre les mains de la patrouille, qui eut soin de les porter chez eux. Nous regagnâmes notre hôtel, et chacun ne songea qu’à se reposer.”

Now this story pierces to the heart the theory which M. Neufchateau cites it in order to establish. It is an anecdote incorporated by Le Sage with the rest of the work; and how well it tallies with a Spanish story, and the delineation of Spanish manners, let the reader judge. The rector of the university of Salamanca was required to unite a great variety of qualifications. In the first place, his birth must have been noble for several generations; not perhaps as many as a canon of Strasburg was required to trace, but more than it was possible for the great majority even of well born gentlemen to produce. The situation, indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is considered infamous, and   which none but those who are below the influence of public opinion, and even those but in rare instances, are ever known to practise. To call a man a drunkard in Spain, is considered a worse insult than to call him a thief; and the effect of the story is the same as if a person, pretending to describe English manners, were to represent the Lord Chancellor as often in custody on a charge of shoplifting, and permitted, in consideration of his abilities, still to remain in office and exercise the duties of his station.

The principal topographical errors are the following:—Doña Mencia names to Gil Blas two places on the road near Burgos—these she calls Gofal and Rodillas; the real names are Tardagal and Revilla, (1, 11;) Ponte de Mula is put for Puenta Duro, (1, 13;) Luceno for Luyego; Villardera for Villar del Sa, (5, 1;) Almerim for Almoharia, (5, 1;) Sliva for Chiva, (7, 1;) Obisa for Cobisa, (10, 10;) Sinas for Linas; Mililla for Melilla; Arragon for Aragon. Describing his journey from Madrid to Oviedo, Gil Blas says they slept the first night at Alcala of Henares, and the second at Segovia. Now Alcala is not on the road from Madrid to Segovia, nor is it possible to travel in one day from one of these cities to the other—probably Galapagar was the word mistaken. Penafiel is mentioned as lying on the road from Segovia to Valladolid, (10, 1;) this is for Portillo. Now, if Le Sage had invented the story, and clothed it with names of Spanish cities and villages, taken from printed books, can any one suppose that he could have fallen into all these errors?

A thread of Spanish history winds through the whole story of Gil Blas, and keeps every circumstance in its place; therefore the date of the hero’s birth may be fixed with the greatest precision. He tells us he was fifty-eight at the death of the Count Duke of Olivarez, that is, 1646; Gil Blas was therefore born 1588, and this corresponds altogether with different allusions, which show that when the romance was written the war between Spain and Portugal was present to the author’s mind, and the subject of his constant animadversion. Portugal, as our readers may recollect, became subject to the Spanish yoke in 1580, the Duke of Braganza was raised to the throne of that kingdom in 1640; and the war to which that event gave rise was not terminated till 1668; when Charles II. acknowledged Alphonso VI. as the legitimate ruler of Portugal. That when the work was written the war between Spain and Portugal continued, may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which were published before 1654, are cited in it—it is not of later date, because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author as an autograph, a sort of “chien de Bassano,” to point out the real date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588; that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated. One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is supposed to relate this story at Madrid   in 1607; in it a king of Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign. Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage’s attention was called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he undertakes to correct in another edition—a promise which he fulfilled by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who singles out with such painful anxiety the error to which we have adverted, suffers others of equal importance to pass altogether unnoticed? For instance, in the twelfth book, eighth chapter, Olivarez speaks of a journey of Philip IV. to Zaragoza; which took place indeed, but not until two years after the disgrace of Olivarez. Cogollos, speaking in 1616, alludes to a circumstance connected with the revolt of Portugal in 1640; Olivarez, sixteen months afterwards, mentions the same circumstance, saying to Cogollos—“Your patron, though related to the Duke of Braganza, had, I am well assured, no share in his revolt.” In 1607, Gil Blas, being the servant of Don Bernardo de Castel Blanco, says, that some suppose his master to be a spy of the king of Portugal, a personage who at that time did not exist. Now, if Le Sage intended to leave to posterity a lasting and unequivocal proof of his plagiarism, how could he do so more effectually than by dwelling on one anachronism as an error which he intended to correct, in a work swarming in every part with others equally flagrant, of which he takes no notice? We have mentioned these mistakes, particularly as being mistakes into which the original author had fallen, and which, as his object was not to give an exact relation of facts, he probably disregarded altogether. And here again we must repeat our remark, that these perpetual allusions indicate a writer not afraid of exposing himself by irretrievable blunders, and certain of being understood by those whom he addressed. A Spaniard writing for Spaniards, would of course take it for granted that his countrymen were acquainted with those very facts and allusions which Le Sage sometimes formally endeavours to explain, and sometimes is unable to detect; while a writer conscious, as the French author was, of a very imperfect acquaintance with the language and usages of Spain, would never indulge in those little circumstantial touches which a Spaniard could not help inserting.

We now come to errors of Le Sage himself. Doña Mencia speaks of her first husband dying in the service of the king of Portugal, five or six years after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Events are described as taking place in the time of Philip II., under the title of Le Mariage de Vengeance, which happened three hundred years before, at the time of the Sicilian Vespers, 1283. Gil Blas, after his release from the tower of Segovia, tells his patron, Alonzo de Leyva, that four months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead; and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the transcriber’s omission of the words “Duke of Uzeda, son of,” which should precede the cardinal duke, &c., and which makes the sentence historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate Le Sage   ’s claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism can ever be said “digito monstrari et dicier hic est,” it is here.

If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances—the travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the “haire and the discipline” mentioned by Molière, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary’s inkstand, the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in which Philip’s mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the minister’s office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spanish, and of others which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we will only here specify that of Cantador for Contador, and the omission of the words “Duc d’Uzeda,” which can alone set right a flagrant anachronism—if we consider the effect of all these circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.

The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute references on which many of Llorente’s arguments are built; but he should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is “one thing to be minute, and another to be precarious;” one thing to be oblique, and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro, and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724, when the third volume of Gil Blas was published, Le Sage annexed to it the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end—

“Inveni portum, spes et fortuna, valete;
Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios.”

He allows, therefore, that the publication of the fourth volume, eleven years after the third volume of Gil Blas was published, was as far from the original intention of the author as it was on the expectation of the public. 4thly, That, from the introduction of the Duke of Lerma on the stage at the close of the work, the history of Spain is adhered to with exact fidelity. 5thly, He allows that the description of Spanish inns, (10, 12,) is taken from the “Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.” 6thly, He allows that the novel of “Le Mariage de   Vengeance,” related by Doña Elvira, is inconsistent with all the rest of the story of Gil Blas. The anachronisms in which Le Sage is entangled, by applying a story to the seventeenth century that relates to the thirteenth, prove his ignorance of Spanish history. On this M. Neufchateau remarks as usual, that no Spaniard would have fallen into such an error. True; but how does it happen that the person making it is so intimately acquainted with the topography and habits of Spain? and how can this contradiction be solved, but by supposing that Le Sage incorporated a Spanish story which caught his fancy with the manuscript before him? 7thly, He allows that the story of Doña Laura de Guzman is taken from a Spanish comedy entitled, “Todo es enredos amor y el diablo son las mugeres.” 8thly, He allows that the expression, “et je promets de vous faire tirer pied ou aile du premier ministre,”[25 - It occurs, however, in Madame de Sevigné’s letters. But that most charming of letter-writers understood Spanish, which Anne of Austria had probably made a fashionable accomplishment at the court of France. The intrigue for which Vardes was exiled, shows, that to write in Spanish was an attainment common among the courtiers of Louis XIV.] is not French; it is in fact the translation of a Spanish proverb, “Agarrar pata o alon.” 9thly, He admits that the intimate acquaintance with the personal history of the Count Duke, displayed by Le Sage, is astonishing. 10thly, He admits that the stories of—

Doña Mencia de Mosquera, contained in 1st book, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters,

Of the story of Diego de la Fuente, contained in the 2d book, 7th chapter,

—Don Bernardo de Castelblanco, contained in the 2d book, 1st chapter,

–Don Pompeyo de Castro, contained in the 2d book, 7th chapter,

–Doña Aurora de Guzman, contained in the 4th book, 2d, 3d, 5th, and 6th chapters,

–Matrimonio por Venganza, contained in the 4th book, 4th chapter,

–Doña Serafina de Polan and Don Alfonso de Leiva, contained in 10th book,

–Rafael and Lucinda, contained in 5th book, 1st chapter,

–Samuel Simon en Chelva, contained in 6th book, 1st chapter,

–Laura, contained in 7th book, 7th chapter,

–Don Añibal de Chinchilla, contained in 7th book, 12th chapter,

–Valerio de Luna and Inesilla Cantarilla, contained in 8th book, 1st chapter,

–Andres de Tordesillas, Gaston de Cogollos, and Elena de Galisteo, contained in 9th book, 4th, 11th, and 13th chapters,

–Scipio, contained in 10th book, 10th, 11th, and 12th chapters,

–Laura and Lucrecia, contained in 12th book, 1st chapter,

–And the Histories of Lerma and Olivarez, contained in 11th book, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th; and 2d book, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th chapters.

Composing more than two-thirds of Gil Blas—are taken from the Spanish. Such are the admissions of Le Sage’s advocates.

Even after these important deductions, there remains enough to found a brilliant reputation. To this remainder, however, Le Sage is not entitled. It is, we trust, proved to every candid reader, that, with the exception of one anecdote, entertaining in itself, but betraying the greatest   ignorance of Spanish manners, two or three allusions to the current scandal and topics of the day, and the insertion of several novels avowedly translated from other Spanish writers; all the merit of Le Sage consists in dividing a manuscript placed by his friend, the Abbé de Lyonne, in his possession, into two stories—one of which was Gil Blas, and the other, confessed by himself to be a translation and published long after the former, was the Bachelier de Salamanque. To the argument of chronological error, the sole answer which M. Neufchateau condescends to give is, that they are incomprehensible; and on his hypothesis he is right. As to the Spanish words and phrases employed in Gil Blas, the names of villages, towns, and families which occur in it, he observes that these are petty circumstances—so they are, and for that very reason the argument they imply is irresistible. The story of the examination of Gaspar, the servant of Simon, in the Inquisition scene, is gravely urged by M. Neufchateau as a proof that the writer was a Frenchman, as no Spaniard would dare to attack the Inquisition. This is strange confusion. Not a word is uttered against the Inquisition in the scene. Some impostors disguise themselves in the dress of inquisitors to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on the Parliament of Paris? Is the “Beaux’ Stratagem” an attack on our army and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict propriety they now preserve. Some confusion would have been made among them—an error which M. Neufchateau, in the few lines he has written upon the subject, has not been able to avoid. We may add that this whole scene was printed in Spanish, under the eye of the Inquisition, without any interference on the part of that venerable body, who, though tolerably quick-sighted in such matters, were not, it should seem, aware of the attack upon them which M. Neufchateau has been sagacious enough to discover. To the argument drawn from the geographical blunders, M. Neufchateau mutters that they are excusable in a writer who had never been in Spain. The question, how such a writer came wantonly to incur them, he leaves unanswered. M. Neufchateau asserts, that there is in Spanish no proverb that corresponds to the French saying, “A quelque chose le malheur est bon.” But a comedy was written in the time of Philip IV., entitled, “No hay man que por bien no venga.” He argues that Gil Blas is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like Don Quixote, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer The Silent Lady was not written by an Englishman; as there is no allusion to Falstaff in it.

But it may be said, if Le Sage was so unscrupulous as to appropriate to himself the works of another writer in Gil Blas, how came he to acknowledge the Bachelier de Salamanque as a translation?

This is a fair question, but the answer we can give is satisfactory. The originals of all his translations, except Gil Blas and the Bachelier de Salamanque, were printed; and therefore any attempt at wholesale plagiarism must have been immediately detected. The Bachelier de Salamanque, it is true, was in manuscript; but it had been long in the possession of the Marquis de Lerma and his son, before it became the property of Le Sage; and although tolerably certain that it had never been diligently perused, Le Sage could not be sure that it had not attracted superficial notice, and that the name was not known to many people. Now, by eviscerating the Bachelier de Salamanque of its most entertaining anecdotes, and giving them a different title, and then publishing the mutilated copy of a work, the name of which, with the outline of its story, was known to many people as an acknowledged translation, he took the most obvious means of disarming all suspicion of plagiarism, and setting, as it seems he did, on   a wrong track the curiosity of enquirers. How came the original manuscript not to be printed by its author? Because it could not be printed with impunity within the jurisdiction of the Spanish monarchy: the allusions to the abuses of the court and the favourites of the day are so obvious—the satire upon the imbecility of the Spanish government so keen and biting—the personal descriptions of Philip III. and Philip IV. so exact—the corruption of its ministers of justice, and the abuses practised in its prisons, branded in terms so lively and vehement—the attacks upon the influence of the clergy, their hypocrisy, their ambition, and their avarice, so frequent and severe—that while Philip IV. and Don John of Austria, the fruit of his intrigue with the actress Marie Calderon, so carefully pointed out, were still alive, and before the generation to which it alludes had passed away, its publication, in Spain at least, was impossible. The Bachelier de Salamanque was not published for the same reason; and for the same reason, even in a country with perhaps more pretensions to freedom than Spain possessed, no one has yet acknowledged himself the writer of Junius. But why do you not produce the Spanish manuscript, and set the question at rest? exclaims with much naïveté M. Neufchateau. Does such an argument deserve serious refutation? That is, why do not you Spaniards produce a manuscript given to one Frenchman by another at Paris, in the 18th century, which of course, if our theory be true, he had the strongest temptation to destroy? Rather may the Spaniards ask, why do not you produce the original manuscript of the Bachelier de Salamanque, which would overthrow at least one portion of our hypothesis?

The object of Gil Blas is to exhibit a vivid representation of the follies and vices of the successive administrations of Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez; to point out the actual state of the drama in Spain under the reign of Philip IV., who, indolent as he was, possessed the taste of a true Spaniard for dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages of their violence—in short, to hold up every species of national error, and every weakness of national folly, to public obloquy and derision. In dwelling upon such topics the writer will, of course, describe scenes and characters common to every state of civilized society. The broad and general features of the time-serving courtier, of the servile coxcomb, of the rapacious mistress, of the expecting legatee, the frivolous man of fashion, and the still more frivolous pedant, will be the same, whatever be the country in which the scene is laid, and by whatever names they happen to be distinguished. France had, no doubt, her Sangrados and Ochetos, her Matthias de Silva and Rodrigo, her Lauras and her Archbishops of Granada.

“Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,
Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;
Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
Some flying stroke, alone can hit ’em right.”

Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho’s kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns unexplored by a negligent administration,   in which bandits found a refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious, inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When Gil Blas was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fénélon, and Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of European literature.

Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one were to affirm that the Adelphi of Terence was not a translation from Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for proselytes. Let us see what he might allege—he might urge that Terence had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus as his original—he might insist that Syrus could only have been the slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our notions of a Roman pander, that Æschinus was the picture of a dissolute young patrician—in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed; he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome, at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of what value were such broad and general features common to a species, when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the “Dimidiate Menander” of Cæsar, as a proof of the opinion   entertained of his genius by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who would dispute the position for which he contended.

The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau’s argument is the slight assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius, must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.

According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, Gil Blas might be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero, meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who, having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an historian without research?

The difference between Dr Sangrado and our hydropathists is merely that between hot and cold water, by no means excluding an allusion to the latter, under the veil, as M. Neufchateau has it, of Spanish manners. Would it be quite impossible to find in St James’s Street, or in certain buildings at no great distance from the Thames, the exact counterparts of Don Matthias de Silva and his companions? Gongora, indeed, in spite of his detestable taste, was a man of genius; and therefore to find his type among us would be difficult, if not impossible, unless an excess of the former quality, for which he was conspicuous, might counterbalance a deficiency in the latter. Are our employés less pompous and empty than Gil Blas and his companions? our squires less absurd and ignorant than the hidalgoes of Valencia? Let any one read some of the pamphlets on Archbishop Whately’s Logic, or attend an examination in the schools at Oxford, and then say if the race of those who plume themselves on the discovery, that Greek children cried when they were whipped is extinct? To be sure, as the purseproud insolence of a nouveau riche, and indeed of parvenus generally, is quite unknown among us, nobody could rely on those points of resemblance. But with regard to the other topics, would it not be fair to say, in answer to such an argument—All this is mere commonplace generality; such are the characters of every country where European institutions exist, or European habits are to be found? Something more tangible and specific is requisite to support your claim. You are to prove that the picture is a portrait of a particular person—and you say it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the original?—There is no mention of Crockford’s or of the Missionary Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house commissioners.—Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance at fox-hunters, or game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading at quarter-sessions,[26 - We call ourselves a practical people! A man incurred, a few months ago, an expense of £70, for saying that he was “ready,” instead of saying that he was “ready and willing” to do a certain act. The man’s name was Granger. Another unfortunate creature incurred costs to the amount of £3000, by one of the most ordinary proceedings in our courts, called a motion, of course, and usually settled for a guinea. A clergyman libelled two of his parishioners in a Bishop’s Court. The matter never came to be heard, and the expense of the written proceedings was upwards of £800! Can any system be more abominable than one which leads to such results?] at the technical rigour   of your institutions, at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit, which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of Newton,—and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian reptile into a theme of perennial and ambitious declamation; nothing is said about those discussions on baptismal fonts, those discoveries of trochees for iambics, or the invention of new potatoe boilers, which in the days of Hegel, Berryer, Schlosser, Savigny, and Cousin, are the glory and delight of England; in short, there is nothing to fix the allusions on which you rely on to distinguish them from those which might be applicable to Paris, Vienna, or Madrid.

There are no people less disposed than ourselves to detract from the merit of eminent French writers; they are always clear, elegant, and judicious; often acute, eloquent, and profound. There is no department of prose literature in which they do not equal us; there are many in which they are unquestionably our superiors. Unlike our authors, who, on those subjects which address the heart and reason jointly, adopt the style of a treatise on the differential calculus; and when pure science is their topic, lead us to suppose (if it were not for their disgusting pomposity) they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a tenth-rate novel;—the French write on scientific subjects with simplicity and precision, and on moral, æsthetic, and theoretical questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a question is at issue in which they imagine the literary reputation of their country to be at stake, it is the dexterity of the advocate, rather than the candour of the judge, that we must look for in their dissertations. He who has argued on the guilt of Mary with a Scotchman, or the authenticity of the three witnesses with a newly made archdeacon, and with a squire smarting under an increasing poor-rate or the corn-laws, may form a just conception of the task he will undertake in endeavouring to persuade a French critic that his countrymen are in the wrong. The patient, if he does not, as it has sometimes happened in the cases to which we have referred, become “pugil et medicum urget,” is sure, as in those instances, to triumph over all the proofs which reason can suggest, or that the hellebore of nine Anticyras could furnish him with capacity to understand. Of this the work of M. Neufchateau is a striking proof. Truth is on one side, Le Sage’s claim to originality on the other; and he supports the latter: we do not say that he is willing, rather than abandon his client, to assert a falsehood; but we are sure that, in order to defend him, he is ready to believe absurdities.

The degree of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected with our subject, and upon which we enter with regret.

Lessing accused Wieland of having destroyed a palace, that he might build a cottage with its materials. However highly we may think of the original, we can hardly suppose such an expression applicable to Gil Blas. Of the name of the author whose toil Le Sage thus appropriated, charity   obliges us to suppose that he was ignorant; but we should not forget that the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland did with his copy of Rowe’s Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes, he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we hasten to close these reflections, which tenderness to the friend and companion of our boyhood, and gratitude to him who has enlivened many an hour, and added so much to our stock of intellectual happiness, forbid us to prolong. Let those who feel that they could spurn the temptation, in comparison with which every other that besets our miserable nature is as dross—the praise yielded by a polished and fastidious nation to rare and acknowledged genius—denounce as they will the infirmity of Le Sage. But let them be quite sure, that instead of being above a motive to which none but minds of some refinement are accessible, they are not below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity, and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining “the last infirmity of noble minds,” would not sink if exposed to the ordeal of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For ourselves we will only say, “Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.”

For these reasons, then, which depend on the nature of the thing, and which no testimony can alter—reasons which we cannot reject without abandoning all those principles which carry with them the most certain instruction, and are the surest guides of human life—we think the main fact contended for by M. Llorente, that is, the Spanish origin of Gil Blas, undeniable; and the subordinate and collateral points of his system invested with a high degree of probability; the falsehood of a conclusion fairly drawn from such premises as we have pointed out would be nearer akin to a metaphysical impossibility; and so long as the light of every other gem that glitters in a nation’s diadem is faint and feeble when compared with the splendour of intellectual glory, Spain will owe a debt of gratitude to him among her sons who has placed upon her brow the jewel which France (as if aggression for more material objects could not fill up the measure of her injustice towards that unhappy land) has kept so long, and worn so ostentatiously.

MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS

Few of the events of our life afford us greater pride than revisiting a well-known and celebrated city after many years’ absence. The pleasure derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit—or a third, as the case may be—all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of the Turkish post-horse, or the encumbrance on the back of the camel which may happen to convey us, with something softer than swandown. Time soon brings the demon of discontent to our society. The city and its inhabitants appear changed—rarely for the better, always less to our taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece, and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.

I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years’ absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained and scattered fire of musketry. The sight was heartbreaking, but grand. The Turkish cavalry came sweeping down to the beach, until arrested by the fire of the ships. Lord Cochrane and his aide-de-camp, Dr Goss, themselves had been compelled to plunge more than knee-deep in the Ægean ere they could gain their boat. On the hill of the Phalerum I had heard General Gueheneuc criticise the manœuvres of the commander-in-chief, and General Heideck disparage the quality of his coffee. As the Austrian steamer which conveyed me entered the Piræus, my mind reverted to the innumerable events which had been crowded into my life in Greece. A new town rose out of the water before my eyes as if by enchantment; but I felt indignant that the lines of Colonel Gordon, and the tambouria of Karaiskaki, should be effaced by modern houses and a dusty road. As soon as I landed, I resolved to climb the Phalerum, and brood over visions of the past. But I had not proceeded many steps from the quay, lost in my sentimental reverie, ere I found that reflection ought not to begin too soon at the Piræus. I was suddenly surrounded by about a dozen individuals who seemed determined to prevent me from continuing my walk. On surveying them, they appeared dressed for a costume ball of ragamuffins. Europe, Asia, and Africa had furnished their wardrobe. The most prominent figure among them was a tall Arab, in the nizam of Mehemet Ali, terminated with a Maltese straw hat. His companions exhibited as singular a taste in dress as himself. Some wore sallow Albanian petticoats, carelessly tied over the wide and dusky nether garments of Hydriots, their upper man adorned by sailors’ jackets and glazed hats; others were tightly buttoned up in European garments, with their heads lost in the enormous fez of Constantinople. This antiquarian society of garments, fit representatives to a stranger of the Bavaro-Hellenic kingdom of Otho the gleaner, and the three donative powers, informed me that it consisted of charioteers. Each member of the society speaking on his own account, and all at the same time—a circumstance I afterwards found not uncommon in other antiquarian and literary societies at Athens—asked me if I was going to Athens: εἰς Ἀθήνας was the phrase. The Arab and a couple of Maltese alone said “Ees teen Atheena.” Entrapped into   a reply by the classic sound, I unwittingly exclaimed “Malista—Verily I am.”

The shouts my new friends uttered on hearing me speak Greek cannot be described. Their volubility was suddenly increased a hundredfold; and had all the various owners of the multitudinous garments before me arisen to reclaim their respective habiliments, it could hardly have been greater. I could not have believed it possible that nine Greeks, aided by two Maltese and a single Arab, could have created such a din. The speakers soon perceived that it was utterly impossible for me to hear their eloquent addresses, as they could no longer distinguish the sounds of their own voices; so with one accord they disappeared, and ere I had proceeded many steps again surrounded me, rushing forward with their respective vehicles, into which they eagerly invited me to mount. If their habiliments consisted of costumes run mad, their chariots were not less varied, and afforded an historical study in locomotion. Distant capitals and a portion of the last century must have contributed their representatives to the motley assemblage. The tall Arab drove a superb fiacre of the days of hoops, a vehicle for six insides; phaetons, chariots, droschkies, and britskas, Strong’s omnibus, and Rudhart’s stuhlwagen, gigs, cars, tilburies, cabriolets, and dogcarts, were all there, and each pushing to get exactly before me. Lord Palmerston’s kingdom is doubtless a Whig satire on monarchy; the scene before me appeared a Romaic satire on the Olympic games. I forgot my melancholy sentiment, and resolved to join the fun, by attempting to dodge my persecutors round the corners of the isolated houses and deep lime-pits which King Otho courteously terms streets. I forgot that barbarians were excluded from the Olympic games, not on account of the jealousy of the Greeks, but because no barbarian could display the requisite skill. The charioteers and their horses knew the ground so much better than I did, that they blockaded me at every turn; so, in order to gain the rocky ground, I started off towards the hill of the Phalerum pursued by the pancosmium of vehicles. On the first precipitous elevation I turned to laugh at my pursuers, when, to my horror, I saw Strong’s omnibus lumbering along in the distance, surrounded by a considerable crowd, and I distinguished the loud shouts of the mob:—Ποῦ εἶναι ὁ τρελός ὁ Ἄγγλος; “Where is the mad Englishman?” So my melancholy was conducting me to madness.

My alarm dispelled all my reminiscences of Lord Cochrane, and my visions of the Olympic games. I sprang into the droschky of a Greek sailor, who drove over the rocks as if he only expected his new profession to endure for a single day. We were soon on the Piræus road, which I well knew runs along the foundations of one of the long walls; but I was too glad to escape, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, unscathed from the imbroglio I had created, to honour even Themistocles with a single thought. My charioteer was a far better specimen of the present, than foundations of long walls, ruined temples, and statues without noses, can possibly be of the past. He informed me he was a sailor: by so doing, he did not prove to me that he estimated my discernment very highly, for that fact required no announcement. He added, however, what was more instructive; to wit, that he had received the droschky with the horses, that morning, from a Russian captain, in payment of a bad debt. He had resolved to improviso the coachman, though he had never driven a horse before in his life—εὔκολον εἶναι—“it is an easy matter;” and he drove like Jehu, shouted like Stentor, and laughed like the Afrite of Caliph Vathek. He ran over nobody, in spite of his vehemence. Perhaps his horses were wiser than himself: indeed I have remarked, that the populace of Greece is universally more sagacious than its rulers. In taking leave of this worthy tar at the Hotel de Londres, I asked him gravely if he thought that, in case Russia, England, or France should one day take Greece in payment of a bad debt, they would act wisely to drive her as hard as he drove his horses? He opened his eyes at me as if he was about to unskin his head, and began to reflect in silence; so, perceiving that he entertained a very high opinion of my wisdom, I availed myself of the opportunity   to advise him to moderate his pace a little in future, if he wished his horses to survive the week.

During my stay at Athens, King Otho was absent from his capital; so that, though I lost the pleasure of beholding the beautiful and graceful queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war; while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before my arrival.

On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, “Voila des rues qui ont bien peu de logique!” After returning two or three times to the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who bears the same name.

In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk himself—strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution of the singular enigma from my friend’s own mouth; so, joining a party of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus, and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure sky of Attica.