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

Pedros is used for Pedroga, (the name of a noble family.)

Moyades for Miagades, (a village.)

Zendero for Zenzano, (do.)

Salceda for Salcedo, (do.)

Calderone for Calderon.

Oliguera for Lahiguera.

Niebles for Niebla.

Jutella for Antella.

Leiva for Chiva.

After Gil Blas’s promotion, he says that his haughty colleague treated him with more respect; and this is expressed in such a way as to show that Le Sage was ignorant of Spanish etiquette, and did not understand thoroughly the meaning of what he transcribed. “Il Don Rodrigo de Calderone ne m’appela plus que Seigneur de Santillane, lui qui jusqu’alors ne m’avoit traité que de vous, sans jamais se servir du terme de seigneurie,” supposing the meaning equivalent—whereas, in fact, though Gil Blas might complain of not being addressed in the third person, which would draw with it the use of señor, and was a common form of civility—it would have been ridiculous to represent him as addressed by a name, señoria, to which none but people of high station and illustrious rank were entitled. But Le Sage supposed that every one addressed as señor, might also be spoken of by the term señoria; a mistake against which a very moderate knowledge of Spanish usages would have guarded him. We may illustrate this by a quotation from Navarete:—

“En este estado enviaron a decir a Magallanes.... Que si se queria avenir a lo que cumpliese, al servicio de S. M. estarian a lo que les mandase, y que si hasta entonces le dieron tratamiento de merced, en adelante se lo darian de senoria, y le besarian pies y manos.”

This was intended as a proof of the greatest reverence by the mutineers, whom, notwithstanding this submission, Magallanes took an early opportunity to destroy.

Gil Blas relates the absurd resolution of the Conde Duque D’Olivarez, to adopt the son of a person with whom he, among others, had intrigued as his own. This anecdote was well known in Spain. The supposed father of this youth was an alcalde de corte, called Valcancel; and he had been rivaled by an alguazil. The son was called in the early part of his life Julian Valcancel. When adopted by Olivarez, he took the name of Eurique Felipe de Guzman, which the people said ought to be exchanged for that of Del Alguazil del Alcalde de Corte. Olivarez divorced him from the woman to whom he was certainly married, and obliged him to marry the daughter of the Duca de Frias. He was called by the people of Madrid a man with two names, the son of three   fathers, and the husband of two wives. Le Sage, by substituting the name of Valdeasar for that of Valcancel, proves that he was ignorant of the whole transaction. In the auto da fé which Gil Blas sees at Toledo, and in which his old friends terminate their adventures in so tragical a manner—some of the guilty are represented as wearing carochas on their heads. This is a word altogether without meaning; the real word was corozas, a cap worn by criminals as a badge of degradation.

Another mistake deserves attention, as supplying the strongest proof of an inaccurate transcriber. “J’espère,” says Maître Joachim to his master, “que je vous servirai tantôt un ragout digne d’un cantador mayor.” The word was not “cantador,” but “contador mayor,” the “ministro de hacienda,” or chancellor of the exchequer; a situation under a despotic government of the highest dignity and opulence. So Don Annibal de Chinchilla exclaims—“Me croit-elle un contador mayor,” when repelling a demand of a rapacious prostitute. But Le Sage mistook the o of his manuscript for an a, and turned a phrase very intelligible into nonsense. We now come to the passage which M. Neufchateau quotes as decisive in favour of Le Sage’s claims. It certainly was to be found in no Spanish manuscript.

“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 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.