CELESTINA
Library of Early Novelists
Edited by E. A. BAKER, M.A.
Each with an Introduction by the Editor or another specialist
in early fiction.
Large Crown 8vo, buckram, gilt tops, 6s. net each.
1 Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esquire.
By THOMAS AMORY.
2 Adventures of Don Sylvio de Rosalva. By
C. M. WlELAND.
3 The Heptameron. By MARGUERITE OF NA
VARRE ; translated by A. MACHEN.
4 The Decameron. By BOCCACCIO ; translated
by J. M. RIGG ; with Essay by J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
5 Novels and Novelettes. By Mrs. APHRABEHN.
6 Gesta Romanorum. Translated, with Intro
duction and Notes, by REV. C. SWAN.
7 The Fool of Quality. By HENRY BROOKE.
With KINGSLEY S Introduction, and a new Life of the
Author by E. A. BAKER.
3 Gulliver s Travels (ist edition) and other
writings of JONATHAN SWIFT.
9 The Monk. By M. G. LEWIS.
10 Moll Flanders and Roxana. By DANIEL DEFOE.
11 Early English Prose Romances. Edited by
W. J. THOMS.
12 Arcadia. By SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
13 Chrysal ; or, The Adventures of a Guinea.
The Novels, etc., of DEKKER, GREENE, and BRETON, edited
by OLIPHANT SMEATON, each in one volume, will shortly be
added to the series, as well as a number of other hitherto unobtain
able books.
Picaresque 5ection.
Edited by H. WARNER ALLEN,
late Scholar of University College, Oxford.
1 Celestina, and An Interlude of Calisto and
Melebea, with an Introduction on the Picaresque Novel.
2 Lazarillo de Tormes and Nash s Unfortunate
Traveller (shortly).
CELESTINA
OR THE TRAGI-COMEDT OF GAL1STO
AND MELIBEA
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY
JAMES MABBE, anno 1631
Also
AN INTERLUDE OF CALISTO AND MELEBEA
(For the first time accurately reproduced from
the Original Copy.)
Printed by John Rastell, circa 1530
Edited, with Introduction on the Picaresque
Novel and Appendices by
H. WARNER ALLEN
Late Scholar of University College, Oxford; Taylorian
Scholar in Spanish Language and Literature
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON 6- CO
THOMAS ETHELBERT PAGE
OF
CHARTERHOUSE
Vlll
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM
AND FRANCE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE
SPANISH WORKS.
Celestina or La Tragicomedia de
Calisto y Melibea. Before 1499
Lazarillo de Tormes.
La segunda parte de
Tormes.
Before 1554
Lazarillo de
1555
Crist6bal de Chaves.
la Cdrcel de Sevilla.
Relation de
1585
Mateo Aleman. Primera Parte de
Guzman de Alfarache. 1599
Mateo Luxan de Sayavedra. Se
gunda Parte de la Vida del Picaro
Guzman de Alfarache. 1602
Agustin de Rojas Villandrando. El
Viage Entretenido. 1603
ENGLISH WOBKS.
G. Mery Talys.
1525
Til Howleglas. 1528 (?)
(From the German Til Eulenspiegel.)
John Awdeley. Fraternitye of Vacabondes. 1561
Andrew Borde. The Geystes of Skoggon. 1565-6
Skelton. Merie Tales. 1566-7
Thomas Harman. Caveat or Warening, For
commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones.
1567
XII Mery Jests of the Wyddow Edyth.
1573
Robert Greene.
Thomas Lodge.
Longbeard.
Thomas Nash.
or The Life
Henry Chettle.
Prentiseship.
Cony-catching Pamphlets.
1591, 1592
Life and Death of William
1593
The Unfortunate Traveller
of lacke Wilton. 1594
Piers Plaine s Seven Yeers
1595
John Dickenson. Greene in Conceipt, new raised
from the grave. 1598
Samuel Rowlands. Greenes Ghost Haunting
Conie-catchers. 1602
1 In compiling this scheme, the Editor has received valuable assistance from the bibliographies contained
(2 vols, Constable, 1907).
IX
N THE PROSE FICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND,
5 ICARESQUE NOVEL AND KINDRED WORKS 1
TRANSLATIONS FROM
SPANISH AND FRENCH
INTO ENGLISH.
An Interlude of Calisto
and Melebea. 1530 ?
The marvelus Dedes and
the lyf of Lazaro de
Tormes. Licensed
1568-9
The Pleasaunt Historic of
Lazarillo de Tonnes. . .
Drawen out of Spanish
by David Rouland of
Anglesey. 1576
(Earliest surviving
edition, 1586 ; re
printed 1696, 1624,
1639.)
The . . . Historie of
Lazarillo de Tormes. . .
The second part trans
lated by W. P. 1596
The tragick comedie of
Celestina.
Licensed 1598
FRENCH WORKS.
La vie genereuse des
mercelots, gueuz, et
boesmiens. 1596
John Barclay. Eu-
phormionis Lusinini
Satyricon. 1 603
(Translated into
French from the
original Latin, 1624.)
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH
INTO FRENCH.
Celestine en laquelle est traicte des
deceptions des serviteurs envers
leurs maistres, et des macquer-
elles envers les amoureux. Tr.
anon. 1527
Uhistoire plaisante et facetieuse
du Lazare de Tormes. Tr. Jean
Saugrain. (Parti) 1561
(2nd edition 1594.)
La Celestine fidellement repurgee,
et mise en meilleure forme par
Jacques de Lavardin. 1578
La II. Partie des Faicts Merveilleux
du Lazare de Tormes. Tr. lean
vander Meeren. 1598
Guzman d Alfarache, (Part I).
Tr. G. Chappuys. 1600
La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes,
La Vie de Lazarille de Tormes.
(Spanish and French,) Tr. P. B.
1601
(Other editions, 1609, 1615,
1616.)
Mr. Chandler s Romances of Roguery (Macmillan, 1809), and the same author s Literature of Roguery
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM IN THE PROSE
BY THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
SPANISH WORKS.
Mateo Aleman. Segunda Parte de la
Vida de Guzman de Alfarache. 1605
Francisco de tfbeda. Libro de Entre-
tenimiento de la Picara Justina.
1605
Juan Hidalgo. Romances de Ger-
mania. 1 609
Alonso Geronimo de Salas Barbadillo.
La Hija de Celestina. 1612
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Novelas Exemplares. 1613
Francisco Loubayssin de Lamarca.
Enganos deste Siglo. 1615
Juan Cortes de Tolosa. Discursos
Morales. 1617
Vicente Martinez Espinel. Rela-
ciones de la vida del Escudero
Marcos de Obreg6n. 1618
Historic, de la Monja Alferez.
1618, 1625
Carlos Garcia. La desordenada co-
dicia de los bienes agenos. 1619
Antonio Linan y Verdugo. Guia y
Avisos de forasteros. 1620
Diego Agreda y Vargas. Novelas
Morales. 1620
Juan de Luna. Segunda parte de la
vida de Lazarillo de Tormes. 1620
Alonso Geronimo de Salas Barbadillo.
El Necio bien Afortunado. 1621
ENGLISH WORKS.
Nicholas Breton. Grimello s Fortunes. 1604
Pasquil s Jests. 1604
The Life and Death of Gamaliel Eatsey. 1605
(Representative of the long series of
criminal biographies.)
Thomas Dekker. Belman of London. 1608
Thomas Dekker. Lanthorne and Candle-light.
1608
Samuel Rowlands. Martin Mark-All, Beadle
of Bridewell. 1610
William Fennor. Oompters Commonwealth.
1617
Geffray Mynshul. Essayes and Characters of a
Prison and Prisoners. 1618
XI
ICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATED
ND KINDRED WORKS (continued]
TRANSLATIONS FROM
SPANISH AND FRENCH
INTO ENGLISH.
FRENCH WORKS.
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH
AND ENGLISH INTO FRENCH.
Theodore-Agrippa d
Aubigne. LesAvan-
tures du Baron de
Faeneste. 1617-1620
The Pursuit of the His-
torie of Lazarillo de
Tormes. By Jean de
Luna. 1622
The Rogue or The Life of
Guzman de Alfarache.
Tr. James Mabbe. 1622
(Other editions, 1 630)
1634, 1656, 1656.)
Theophile de Viau.
Fragments d une his-
toire, comigue. 1621
Charles Sorel. His-
toire comiquo de
Francion. 1622-41
Histoire Generale des
Larrons. 1623-36
Les Relations de Marc d Obregon.
Traduites par le Sieur d Au-
diguier. 1618
Les Novvelles de Miguel de Cer
vantes Saavedra. Tr. F. de
Rosset and le Sr. d Audiguier.
1618
Les Abus du monde (Enganos
deste Siglo). Tr. F. de Rosset.
1618
Le Gueux, ou La Vie de Guzman
d ^Z/arac/ie.Tr.J.Chapelain. 1619
Seconde Partie de la vie de Lazar-
ille de Tormes. (Luna s sequel).
Tr. le Sieur d Audiguier. 1620
Le Voleur ou la Vie de Guzman.
(Aleman s Part II). Tr. Chape-
lain. 1620
UAntiquite des Larrons. (La
desordenada Codicia). Tr. le
Sr. d Audiguier. 1621
(Other editions, 1623, 1632).
Nouvelles Morales . . . Tiroes de
1 Espagnol de Don Diego Agre-
da y Vargos. . . Par I. Baudoin.
1621
Xll
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM IN THE PROSE
BY THE PICARESQUE NOVEL AND
SPANISH WORKS.
ENGLISH WORKS.
Geronimo de Alcala Yanez y Ribera.
Alonso Mozo de muchos Amos.
Part I.
Part II.
Gonzalo Cespedes y Meneses.
Fortuna del Soldado Pindar o.
Francisco de Quevedo Villegas.
toria de la Vida del Button.
Suenos.
1624
1626
Varia
1626
His-
1626
1627
Alonso de Castillo Solorzano.
Las Harpias en Madrid. 1631
La Nina de los Embustes. 1632
Aventurae del Bachiller Trapaza. 1634
Nicholas Goodman. Holland s Leaguer : or, an
historical discourse of the Life and Actions of
Dona Britanica Hollandia. 1632
La Garduna de Sevilla.
1634
Luis V6lez de Guevara. El Diablo
Cojuelo. 1641
La Vida i Hechos de Estevanillo
Gonzalez, Compuesto por el mesmo.
1646
Richard Head. The English Rogue Described
in The Life of Meriton Latroon. Part I. 1665
Xlll
FICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATED
KINDRED WORKS (continued]
TRANSLATIONS FROM
SPANISH AND FRENCH
INTO ENGLISH.
The Spanish Bawd, re
presented in Celestina.
Tr. James Mabbe.
1631
The Sonne of the Rogue;
or, the Politick Theefe.
(La desordenada Co-
dicia.) Englished by
W. M. (Reprinted as
Lavernae 1650) 1638
Exemplarie Novells. By
Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra. Tr. James
Mabbe. 1640
(Republished with
title Delight in Several
Shapes. 1654)
Visions, or HeVs King-
dome . . . strangely
displaied by R. C[ro-
shawe]. (Unacknow
ledged version of
Quevedo s Suenos.)
1640
The Extravagant Shep
herd. Tr. J. Davies of
Kidwelly. 1653
(2nd edition 1660.)
The Rogue: or, The Ex
cellence of History Dis
played, In the. . . Life
of Guzman deAlfarache.
Epitomized into English,
by A. S. Gent. (Abridg
ment of Mabbe s trans
lation.) 1655
(Another edition en
titled, The Spanish
Rogue, circa 1690.)
The Comical History of
Francion. Tr. R.
Loveday(?) 1655
The Hypocrites. Tr. from
the French by John
Davies of Kidwelly.
1657
FRENCH WORKS.
Jean de Lannel. Le
Romant Satyr ique.
(Le Roman des Indes.)
1624
Charles Sorel. Le
Berger Extravagant.
1627
Andre" Mareschal.
Chrysolite. 1627
Le Sieur du Verdier.
Le Chevalier Hypo-
condriaque. 1632
Clerville. Le Gascon
Extravagant. 1639
Tristan 1 Hermite.
Page disgracie. 1642
Charles Sorel. Poly-
andre. 1648
Cyrano de Bergerac.
Histoire Comique
des Etats et Empires
delaLune. 1650
Paul Scarron. Le
Romant Comique.
Part I. 1652
Part II. 1657
(Continuations by
Antoine Offray and
the Abb6 Preschac
1678, 1679.)
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH
AND ENGLISH INTO FRENCH.
La Celestine ou Histoire Tragi-
comique de Caliste et de
Melibee. (Spanish text and new
French translation.) 1633
L Avanturier Buscon. Tr. La
Geneste. 1633
Les Visions de don Francisco de
Quevedo Villegas. Tr. La
Geneste. 1633
La Narquoise Justine (La Picara
Justina). Tr. anon. 1635
Les Tromperies de ce Siecle
(Enganos deste Siglo). Tr. Le
Sieur De Ganes de Languedoc.
1639
Les (Euvres de Quevedo. Tr.
Alazert. 1645
Les Hypocrites (La Hija de Celes
tina.) nouvelle de M. Scarron.
1655
0.
XIV
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM IN THE PROSE
BY THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
SPANISH WORKS.
ENGLISH WORKS.
Francisco Santos
Dia y Noche de Madrid.
Periquillo el de las Gallineras.
1663
1668
Francis Kirkman.
The English Rogue. Part II.
1668
Head and Kirkman. The English Rogue.
Parts III and IV. 1671
Francis Kirkman. The Unlucky Citizen. 1673
Richard Head. Proteus Redivivus. 1675
John Bunyan.
Life and Death of Mr. Badman.
1680
The Life and\ Death of Young Lazarillo, Heir
Apparent to Old Lazarillo de Tormes. 1688
The Adventures of Covent Garden. 1699
The Compleat Mendicant : or, Unhappy Beggar
(Attributed to Defoe.) 1699
XV
FICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATED
AND KINDRED WORKS (continued)
TRANSLATIONS FROM
SPANISH AND FRENCH
INTO ENGLISH.
The Life and Adventures
of Buscon. Put into
English by a Person of
Honour (J.D.). 1657
(2nd edition, 1670.)
A Scourge for a Denn of
Thieves (reprint of The
Sonne of the Rogue).
? 1659
La Picara. Tr. from La
Fouyne de Seville by
John Davies of Kid-
welly. 1665
The Visions of Quevedo.
Tr. by Sir Roger
L Estrange. 1667
The Fortunate Fool. Tr.
from El Necio bien
Afortunado by Philip
Ayres. 1670
Scarron s Comical Ro
mance : Or, a Facetious
History of a Company of
Strowling Stage-Players
. . . turn d into Eng
lish. 1676
The Famous History of
Auristella . . . with the
Pleasant Story of Paul
of Segovia. Tr. anon.
1683
Select Novels. The first
six written by Miguel
Cervantes. Tr. W.
Pope. 1694
The Life of Donna Rosina
(abridgment of La
Oarduna de Sevilla).
Tr. E. W. c. 1700
The Whole Comical Works
of Monsr. Scarron. . . .
Translated by Mr. Tho.
Brown, Mr. Savage
and Others. 1700
FRENCH WORKS.
Ce sar Oudin de Prefon-
taine. Les Avan-
tures du Chevalier de
la Oaillardise. 1662
Antoine Furetiere. Le
Roman Bourgeois.
1666
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH
AND ENGLISH INTO FRENCH.
Charles Coypeau d As-
soucy. Les Avan-
tures de Monsieur
D Assoucy. 1677
La Fouyne de Seville (La Gar-
duna de Sevilla). Tr. d Ouville.
1661
(Reprinted as Histoir* et
Avantures deDonaRufine 1743.)
Histoire de Vadmirable don Guz
man d 1 Al far ache. Tr. Gabriel
Bremond. 1695
Les Oeuvres de Quevedo. Tr. Le
Sieur Raclots. 1699
Nouvelles Avantures de . . . Don
Quichotte de la Manche. Tr. A.-
R. Lesage from Spanish of
Avellaneda. 1704
XVI
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM IN THE PROSE
BY THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
SPANISH WORKS.
ENGLISH WORKS.
(Captain Alexander Smith. The History of the
Lives of the most Noted Highway -men. 1714
(Reprinted with Additions as, A Compleat
History of the Lives and Robberies Of the
most Notorious Highway-men. . . To
which is prefixed, The Thieves New
Canting -Dictionary, 1719-20.)
Theophilus Lucas. Memoirs of the Lives, In
trigues, and Comical Adventures Of the most
Famous Gamesters. 1714
ENGLISH WORKS.
Daniel Defoe.
i- The King of Pirates, . . . Captain
Avery. 1719
The Life, Adventures and Pyracies
of Captain Singleton. 1720
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of
the Famous Moll Flanders.
The History of Colonel Jack. 1722
The Fortunate Mistress or a History
. . . of the Lady Roxana. 1724
A Narrative of all the Robberies,
Escapes, etc., of John Sheppard.
Written by Himself. 1724
TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH AND SPANISH
INTO ENGLISH.
The Spanish Pole-Cat : or, The Adventures of
Seniora Rufina. Tr. Sir Roger L Estrange
and J. Ozell. 1717
(Reprinted 1727.)
A Select Collection of Novels . . . Written by
the most Celebrated Authors in several Lan
guages . . . New Translated from the Originals,
By several Eminent Hands. 1722
The Life and Adventures of Pedrillo del Campo.
Tr. Ralph Brookes. 1723
XVII
FICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATED
AND KINDRED WORKS (continued}
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH
AND FRENCH INTO ENGLISH.
The Comical Works of Quevedo.
Tr. Captain John Stevens. 1707
The Spanish Libertines or The
Lives of Justina, The Country
Jilt ; Celestina, The Bawd of
Madrid, and Estevanillo Oonzales,
The most Arch and Comical of
Scoundrels. Tr. Captain John
Stevens. 1707
The Life of Guzman d Al far ache
... To which is added, The Cele
brated Tragi-Comedy, Celestina.
By several Hands. 1708
The Jealous Estremaduran. . . done
from the Spanish, By J. Ozell. 1709
Memoirs of the Life and Adventures
of Signor Rozelli. Tr. anon. 1709
(2nd edition, enlarged with
an Appendix of two whole
sheets , 1713.)
FRENCH WORKS.
Alain -Ren 6 Lesage. Le
Diable Boiteux. 1707
Olivier. L infortune
Napolitain, ou Les
Avantures du Seig
neur Rozelli. (2nd
edition). 1708
(4th edition, 1722,
with additions.)
Les Libertins en Cam-
pagne. 1710
Les Tours de Mattre
Oonin. 1714
Alain-Rene Lesage.
Gil Bias. 1715,
1724, 1735
TRANSLATIONS FROM
SPANISH AND ENGLISH
INTO FRENCH.
FRENCH WORKS.
Thibault, Gouverneur de Talmont.
La Vie de Pedrille del Campo :
roman comique dans le goust
espagnol.
1718
Les Avantures de Don Antonio de
Buffalis. Histoire italienne. 1722
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH AND ENGLISH
INTO FRENCH.
XV111
A GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF REALISM IN THE PROSE
BY THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
ENGLISH WORKS.
TRANSLATIONS FROM FRENCH AND SPANISH
INTO ENGLISH.
A Continuation of the Life and Ad
ventures of Signor Rozelli. (At
tributed to Defoe). 1724
(Reprinted the following year
with the translation of 1713.)
Captain Alexander Smith. Memoirs
of the Life and Times of the Famous
Jonathan Wild. 1726
Street Robberies Considered. (At
tributed to Defoe.) 1728
Henry Fielding. Life of the Late
Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. 1743
The Adventures of David Simple. By
a Lady (Sarah Fielding). 1744
Tobias George Smollett. The Ad-
ventures of Roderick Random. 1748
The Life and Adventures of Joe
Thompson. 1750
An Apology for the Life of Bampfylde-
Moore Carew. 1750
(Earlier biography of Carew
1745.)
T. G. Smollett. The Adventures of
Peregrine Pickle. 1751
TheJBListory of Jack Connor. 1752
Thomas Mozeen. Young Scarron.
1752
T. G. Smollett. The Adventures of
Ferdinand Count Fathom. 1753
The Adventures of Dick Hazard. 1755
The Fortunate Imposter: or, the very
Entertaining Adventures of Dick
Hazard. 1759
The History of Tom Fool. 1760
Charles Johnstone. Chrysal, or the
Adventures of a Guinea. By an
Adept. 1760-1765
T. G. Smollett. The Expedition of
Humphrey Clinker. 1771
A Collection of Select Novels, Written Originally
in Castillian by Don Miguel Cervantes Saavedra.
Made English by Harry Bridges Esq. 1728
The History and Adventures of Oil Bias of San-
tillane. Tr. anon. (3rd edition.) 1732
(Later editions, 1737, 1739, 1744.)
The Comical History of Estevanillo Gonzalez . . .
Done out of French. 1735
The Bachelor of Salamanca. Tr. Lookman. 1737
Le Diable Boiteux : or the Devil upon Two Sticks.
(7th edition). Tr. anon, 1741
The History of . . . Signor Rozelli. Trans
lated from the last French edition by Monsieur
D Clue. 1742
(No more than an abridgment of the earlier
translation).
Instructive and Entertaining Novels. Trans
lated from the Original Spanish of the Inimit -
able M. Cervantes. By Thomas Shelton. (Re
print of Mabbe s Exemplarie Novella.) 1742
The Adventures of Robert Chevalier, called de
Beauchene. 1745
The Adventures of Gil Bias de Santillane. Tr.
Tobias Smollett. 1749
A Dialogue between Scipio and Bergansa . . .
To which is annexe d, The Comical History of
Rincon and Cortado. 1767
XIX
FICTION OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND FRANCE, AS ILLUSTRATED
AND KINDRED WORKS (continued)
FBENCH WORKS.
TRANSLATIONS FROM SPANISH AND ENGLISH
INTO FRENCH.
Alain-Ren6 Lesage. Les Avanturea
de M. Robert Chevalier, dit de
Beauchene. 1732
Histoire d Estevanille Gonzales.
1734
Le Bachelier d Salamanque. 1736
La Vie et la> vols du fameux Jean Sheppards
Traduit de VAnglois. 1725
Histoire de Guzman d Alfarache < i . purgee de.
moralites superflues. Par Monsieur Le Sag e.
1732
Les Aventures de Joseph Andrews. Tr. L Abb6
des Fontaines. 1760
Histoire de Tom Jones . . . traduction de
Vanglois ... par M. D[e] L[a] P[lace]. 1750
Histoire et Avantures de sir Williams Pickle.
(Peregrine Pickle.). Tr. anon. 1753
Amelie, roman. Tr. Mme. Riccoboni, 1762
La } Vie et lea Aventures de Joseph Thompson,
Tr. anon.
Histoire de Jonathan Wild le Grand. Tr. anon.
1763
Histoire et Aventures de Eoderik Random. Tr.
1782
anon.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
AN ESSAY IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
The picaresque novel, strictly speaking, purports to be the
biography, generally the autobiography, of a picaro or rogue.
The early history of the Spanish word picaro is very obscure,
but, whatever its derivation, it does not seem to have come
into use much before the middle of the sixteenth century. 1
In the Celestina (1499) 2 and its immediate imitations the
word is not to be found, and curiously enough it does not
occur in the Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), 2 the prototype of
the picaresque novel. It is not till the appearance of Guzman
de Alfarache (1599) that picaro appears to have been accepted
as the generic term for the great army of idle vagabond adven
turers, who justified their existence altruistically by the count
less opportunities they afforded to the charitable of exer
cising their charity and so acquiring merit, and who at the end
of the sixteenth century formed 3 per cent, of the entire
population of Spain. The picaro then is one who, by birth,
choice or misfortune, finds himself on the lowest rung of the
social ladder : perpetually in danger of being trampled out
of existence by his more fortunate fellows, and congenitally
incapable of sustained effort, he endeavours to compensate
for his poverty, weakness and laziness by the exercise of
unscrupulous cunning and dishonesty.
But the picaro stands for much more than this in the history
of the novel ; for not only does the literary rogue provide
us with the same diversity of types as the rogue of real life,
1 v. De Haan, Picaros y Ganapanes in the Homenaje d Menendez y
Pelayo, vol. ii, pp. 149-90.
2 For convenience the dates given are those of the earliest authenti
cated edition ; it is almost certain that neither the 1499 edition of the
Celestina nor any of the 1554 editions of Lazarillo is an editio prin-
ceps, v. Appendix II, and p. xxviii of this Introduction
xxi
xxii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
but he is also the originator and representative of a literary
movement, and it is this movement with which we are chiefly
concerned. Consequently throughout this series the words
picaresque novel will not be used in their strictest sense,
and this title will include those works that played an impor
tant part in the rise of realism in prose fiction, though they
are sometimes neither picaresque nor novels in the
strict sense of the words, such, for instance, as the Celestina.
According to Aristotle the function of art is to make good
the shortcomings of nature : art must take its material from
the purposeless world of fact about us, and from it build up
within us a new world, the world of imagination, which may
embody in itself what Nature is aiming at, but fails to reach.
This maxim brings us face to face at once with the dualism
of the world in which we live, on the one side concrete facts
which we call reality, on the other side thought and imagina
tion. Art implies a fusion of these two opposing elements ;
the artist moulding the material facts of life according to
the dictates of imagination, so that they may receive a form
and meaning, which in themselves they do not possess. But
for one artist who succeeds in this task, a hundred fail ;
some, since they are unable to do more than copy the world
about them, try to find a place for purposeless photographs
of existence in the ordered structure of art, while others
ignoring the world of facts get lost in the clouds of fancy
and people the world of imagination with unsubstantial
abstractions. This conflict of realism and idealism x is the
key to the development of the novel.
The origin of the novel, the epic of modern life , is to be
sought not in the late Latin and Greek novels, such as the
Golden Ass of Apuleius or the Satyricon of Petronius ; for
it was not until after the Renaissance that the writers of
prose fiction became aware of their existence, but in the
legendary romances of the Middle Ages. These romances,
at first simple narratives of great feats of arms, became
in the age of Chivalry more elaborate and less material,
though to the modern reader they have all the charm of primi
tive simplicity, and are clearly the literature of an age to which
1 Throughout this essay the terms realism and idealism, when used
in relation to literature, are to be understood, the former as the analysis
of observation, the latter as the artistic synthesis of the imagination.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxiii
psychology and self-analysis meant nothing. In France and
England, however, the golden age of Chivalry soon passed,
and the chivalrous romances, though they still survived, no
longer expressed the aspirations, and lost all touch with the
life, of a new age, which saw the loosening of the bonds of
feudalism, and ideals of law and patriotism take the place of
the knight- errant, and his code of honour. In Spain, how
ever, the case was different, and as it is to Spain beyond all
countries that the earliest novels are indebted, it is necessary
to consider somewhat more fully the development of the
romance in that country during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
THE CHIVALRESQUE ROMANCE IN SPAIN
During these centuries the condition of Spain differed very
considerably from that of the other Western nations. Her long
struggle with the unbeliever had filled the Spaniard with a
religious fervour, which was elsewhere already an anachron
ism ; for the time of the Crusades had passed away, never
to return. While in England and France chivalry had become
an idle dream, in Spain it was a living force, finding its expres
sion not only in knightly chronicles or romances, but in roman
tic deeds against the Moslem. When in 1492 Granada fell,
the spirit of Chivalry still glowed white-hot in the heart of
the Spanish people, but it was no longer the personal chivalry
of the knight- errant ; under the wise direction of the Catholic
Kings, it had become an enthusiasm of patriotism, the knight-
errantry of a nation. At last unity reigned supreme through
out the Spanish peninsula, unity of religion and unity of
Government, one Church, one Monarch and one Empire.
Nor was this the only miracle of the times : for to the Spaniards
had been vouchsafed the discovery of the New World, teem
ing with wealth, as they believed, to make them masters of
the Old. Never since the Jews had conquered Canaan had
a nation believed with such conviction that they were the
Chosen People, the Elect of God. High and low alike were
ready to endure all things fearlessly in a great cause, and that
cause they found in the extension of their unity throughout
the world, in the gathering of all the nations into the fold
of the one true Church, and in the subduing of every people
xxiv THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
to the Sword and Empire of Spain. Two lines of Hernando
de Acuna (d. 1580) may be taken as a summary of Spanish
aspirations :
Una grey y un pastor solo en el suelo, . . .
Un monarca, un imperio y una espada. 1
One Fold, one Shepherd only on the earth . . .
One Monarch, one Empire and one Sword.
Self-sacrifice was the spirit of the age, and it seemed
for a moment that this glorious contempt for common-
sense would make Spain mistress of the world. Just
when the rest of Europe was beginning to settle down
and make the best of things as they were, bringing down
the ideals of Christianity and Chivalry from empyrean
impossibility to terrestrial reality, Spain set out in the oppo
site direction and sought to transform the earth into the
world of her dreams, and to remould this sorry scheme of
things to her heart s desire. The enterprise was impossible,
and Spain, after a career of meteoric splendour, failed, leaving
only an example and a warning for those who followed.
The national literature displayed the same extravagant
hatred of compromise between the real and the ideal ; the
Spanish people looked to their literature to aid them in shut
ting their eyes to the incompatibility of the two, and to inspire
them in their struggle against nature. Nor were they dis
appointed. The Spanish genius was naturally inclined to
extravagance and a superfluity of adornment, and the chron
icle of Spain had become already rather the panegyric of
a hero than the chronicle of a nation : history was no more
than the life-story of some great man, in whose glory the
historian spared neither his own invention nor his reader s
credulity. The Celtic tales of Arthur and Lancelot had long
been known in Spain, so that it was an easy step from the
imaginative chronicle to the chivalresque romance with its
marvels and unreality. 2
The origin and early history of Amadis de Gaula, the type
of the extravagant chivalresque romance, is very obscure,
1 Quoted in A History of Spain, by U. R, Burke, edited by M. A. S.
Hume, Vol. II, pp. 88-89.
2 Spanish Influence in English Literature, by M. A. S. Hume.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxv
but at least it is certain that the book became a perfect
craze in Spain during the fifteenth century. The earliest
edition known to us was printed at Saragossa in 1508,
and for a hundred years sequel followed sequel, and imita
tion followed imitation, until Don Quixote rode out upon
his knightly quest and shook down the walls of unreality
with peals of laughter. Each succeeding chivalresque romance
tried to improve upon its predecessor, travelling ever further
from sense and possibility ; the giants grew bigger, the
knights more noble, the ladies more beautiful, but the whole
thing was no more than a convention and all of them were
the same, monotonously the same. In truth Spain had in
the seriousness of her high emprise lost her sense of humour ;
in the words of a French critic, il lui suffisait de sa conscience,
de Dieu et de son epee .
Yet a shrewd sense of humour and satirical observation
had been a characteristic of the Spanish genius and had
inspired their literature from its beginning. The very first
of Spanish chivalresque romances, El Cavallero Cifar (circa
1300), contains in the character of the ribaldo, a rough sketch
of the picaro of a later age. The Amoral tales of the Infante
Juan Manuel (1282-1348), the famous Libro de los Enxiem-
plos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio (Book of En-
samples of Count Lucanor and Patronio), didactic as they
are in their purpose, display a completeness of experience
and acuteness of observation, that make them a very mine
of worldly wisdom, such as Bacon himself would not have
despised. Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita (fl. 1350), with
arch hypocrisy bids the reader of his Libro de Cantares find
therein ensamples of the evil and of the good, that he may
eschew the one and ensue the other, and, if he lingers lovingly
over the evil, it is life as it is that he paints with his merciless
pen, and laughs at with a merry cynicism. While Ruiz found
food for laughter in the frailty of man, Lopez de Ay ala (1332-
1407), the great Chancellor and chronicler of Castille,wrote in his
Rimado del Palacio of the sins and weaknesses of his fellows and
himself with all the satirist s indignation and scourged them
with the severity of a moralist. But just at the time when
Spain was setting out on her wild career, a more important
book appeared than any that had gone before it, a work of
genius, which, in its pitiless pessimism and minute observation,
xxvi THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
showed how an artist might treat the sordid facts of life in
all their ugliness and meaningless cruelty, and yet by the
mystery of his art throw over them the glamour of a romantic
and transcendent passion, and raise them from their nothing
ness, so that they might worthily take their place in the
world of imagination. This book which marks an epoch in
Spanish, indeed in European, literature, is the Celestina, first
published probably before 1499, of which Mabbe s admirable
translation fills the greater part of this volume.
THE CELESTINA
The reader will find in Appendix II (p. 303) a discussion
of the numerous difficulties connected with the bibliography
and authorship of the Comedy, or, as it was called after 1501,
the Tragi-comedy of Calisto and Melibea, popularly known from
its most striking character as the Celestina : what concerns
us now is its influence upon the picaresque novel. Appearing
at the end of the fifteenth century, when the most extravagant
spirit of unreasonable idealism that the world has ever seen
was sweeping across Spain, it seems with its cynical and
merciless realism a warning from a later and decadent age,
reminding the Spanish people, even in the madness of their
enthusiasm, of the fate that ever waits upon
The high that proves too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that leaves the ground to lose itself in the sky.
In ihs Celestina we have a simple story of the tragic loves
of Calisto, a young nobleman with many graceful qualities
richly endowed , and Melibea, a fair maiden of no mean estate,
neither the one nor the other possessing the qualities of a
hero or a saint, but very human in their failings and virtues.
But neither Calisto nor Melibea, who by the mystery of their
love live in a world unattainable to average humanity, is
the protagonist ; it is upon the portrait of a very different
character, the wise bawd Celestina, that the author has
bestowed all the wealth of his genius, and about her he has
grouped the dishonest servants Sempronio and Parmeno
and their lights-of-love, portraits that in convincing truth
and artistic skill yield only to that of Celestina. * See life ,
the author seems to say, not with the false eyes with which
Calisto saw Melibea, but with eyes unblinded by the illusion
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxvii
of ideals and learn that at its best and at its worst it is nothing
but vanity and the shadow of a dream. All things pass after
this manner , says Sempronio, all is forgotten and thrown
behind us as if they had never been. Yet it is easy to lay too
much stress on the cynical realism of the Celestina ; for its
main plot is essentially romantic. It is not, like the picaresque
novel, its acknowledged descendant, a reaction from an exag
gerated idealism, and therefore blind to anything but the
material aspect of human life. The passion of Calisto and
Melibea transcends morality and death itself, much more
those purely selfish motives, which alone influence the picaro.
The Celestina indeed fulfils Aristotle s definition of art, and
anticipates the fusion of the real and the ideal, after which
the novel groped so long in vain, so that as a work of art
it foreshadows the advent of Don Quixote and Tom Jones,
rather than that of Guzman de Alfarache and Gil Bias, which
reproduced only its realistic observation, and passed over
the romantic tragedy of Calisto and Melibea.
The Celestina is written in the form of prose dialogue,
and though not intended for representation its interest
is essentially dramatic ; consequently it exercised an im
mediate influence upon the drama, then just coming into
existence, and Moratin remarks that as Greek tragedy
was composed from the crumbs that fell from Homer s
table, so the Spanish drama owed its earliest forms to the
Celestina? But this influence was short-lived ; the Spanish
playwright sought his themes in the pundonor and heroic
loyalty, conventional and grandiose subjects which demanded
all the sublimity of poetry for their expression and could find
little to borrow in the realism and prose of the Celestina,
or in its romantic conception of human love.
For a time it seemed that despite its popularity the influ
ence of the Celestina would begin and end with the formation
of the Spanish theatre, which, as we have said, soon chose a
more ambitious path, and with a series of more or less servile
imitations. Upon the novel, however, the Celestina was fated to
leave an indelible impression. It appeared, indeed, at a time
when Spanish fiction was not yet ripe for realism, and it could
not check the growing extravagance of the chivalresque
romance, though it might tempt Pedro Manuel de Urrea to
combine its realism with the allegory and chivalresque adven-
xxviii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
tures of the Cdrcel de Amor in his Penitencia de Amor 1 (1514),
and even Feliciano de Silva, indefatigable composer of sequels
to Amadis, to write a Second Comedy of Celestina (1534). A
hundred years later, however, when the national enthusiasm
had worn itself out, and a reaction set in against the unreality
and absurdity of the old romance, a new school of fiction
arose, which sought its inspiration in the characters and scenes
of low life, that the Celestina had painted with such masterly
skill.
If Celestina herself is the prototype of Justina and Moll
Flanders, the lesser characters of Parmeno and Sempronio
are even more truly the originals of Lazaro, Guzman, and
Gil Bias. Servants all, their rule of life is purely selfish,
their philosophy the quintessence of cynicism, and if Guzman
and his fellows do not meet with the same tragic fate as
Parmeno and Sempronio, they richly deserve it. Parmeno
sums up the whole philosophy of the picaro, when he replies
to Sempronio s remark that some devil must have taught
Celestina her cunning, Only necessity and poverty ; for
there is no better mistress in the world than starvation, no
better quickener and awakener of the wits. Necessity and
poverty with their companion starvation are the only springs
of conduct that the picaro can understand.
LAZAEILLO DE TOEMES
It was not, however, for half a century, during which Spain
was too engrossed in attempting the impossible to cultivate
a sense of humour, and the chivalresque romance reigned
supreme, that the first 2 of picaresque novels, the Lazarillo
de Tormes, was published. The three earliest editions known
of this work are dated 1554, but M. Foulche-Delbosc has
proved that they are all derived from a lost edition of earlier
1 Reprinted by M. Foulche-Delbosc in the Bibliotheca Hispanica, vol.
x. v. Revue Hispanique (1902), vol. ix. pp. 200-215.
2 Ticknor, following Clemencin, suspected that the Vida y Hec.hos de
Diego Garcia de Paredes, printed at the end of the Coronica del Gran
Capitdn (1559), and written supposedly by Paredes on his deathbed
in 1533, might be ranked as a picaresque novel, but in point of fact
this autobiography is no more than a plain, and for the most part un
varnished, account of the prowess of a soldier of fortune, and its grim
narrative has little relation to the gusto picaresco.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxix
but uncertain date. 1 The Lazarillo de Tormes is the simple
account of the adversities and fortunes of a poor boy. Little
Lazaro, born on the banks of the Tormes, starts life as a
blind man s leader and after serving various masters, such
as a miserly priest and penniless hidalgo, ends, at the height
of all good fortune , as town crier of Toledo, and, as he hints,
mari complaisant of an Archpriest s mistress. ; Written in
the most debonair and idiomatic Castilian , says Mr. Fitz-
maurice-Kelly in his History of Spanish Literature (1898),
Lazarillo de Tormes condenses into seven short chapters
the cynicism, the wit, and the resource of an observer of
genius.
It is certain that some of the incidents of the Lazarillo
are not original, but drawn from the store of traditional anec
dotes which supplied the material of countless jest-books,
such as the Floresta Espanola de Apotegmas (1574) of Melchior
de Santa Cruz, or in England The Hundred Merry Tales : thus
the story of the buldero is to be found with but slight modifi
cation in the fourth novella of Massuccio s II novellino, and
M. Jusserand has unearthed from a MS. of the fourteenth cen
tury an illustration 2 of a boy cheating a blind man of his wine
by sucking it through a straw, an incident which figures in the
first Tratado of Lazarillo. But in grouping these stories round
a single figure and making a connecting thread of the person
ality of the picaro, the unknown author of the Lazarillo
originated a new form of fiction, which even three and a half
centuries have not exhausted. He had studied the Celestina,
as is clear from several passages, but he made no attempt at
artistic unity as the author of the earlier work had done. He
was content to give a loosely connected series of pictures,
vividly portraying the low life of his age, and even Lazaro,
the only connecting link, save for here and there a happy
touch, is little more than a name. The brevity and con
ciseness of the Lazarillo, its vivid portraiture and mocking
cynicism, blind the reader to its faults of construction, although
its incidents have so little relation one to the other, that the
censor of the Inquisition was able to cut out the whole episode
1 v. Revue Hispanique, vol. vii. p. 81, also Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes,
restitution de la edition principe por E. FoulcM-Ddbosc, Bibliotheca
Hispanica, vol iii.
2 Reproduced in Revue Hispanique, vol. vii.
C. r.
xxx THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
of the buldero without in any way injuring the continuity
of the work. But it is necessary to remark its want of artistic
*/
unity, because it is exactly this fault which the later picar
esque novel inherited without the Lazarillo s merits.
But whatever its faults Lazarillo de Tormes was a great
achievement ; for the first time in a Spanish novel the very
unheroic picaro plays the part of hero. For Lazaro is the
first of the noble army of needy adventurers, who in the struggle
for existence have no time to think of honour or honesty ;
indeed if they did, they would starve : all their thoughts are
turned towards escaping the pinch of hunger with the least
possible exertion, and making themselves as comfortable as
they can in an uncomfortable world. The same spirit that
inspired the Spanish soldier to fear no odds, inspires them in
their struggle for a bare livelihood ; never despairing, they
glory in the cunning and ingenuity which prolong an existence
that many would consider worse than death itself ; but
they, true Bohemians as they are, love it for its freedom and
irresponsibility, even when they bewail its hardships.
Lazarillo is the first symptom of reaction against the
chivalresque romance. His life is spent not in rescuing dis
tressed maidens, not in conquering giants and monsters, not
in mystic quest of a phantom ideal, but in stealing food to fill
his empty belly, in cheating his neighbours and masters, and
in evading by lies and subtlety the consequences of his double
dealing. His conception marks the beginning of disillusion
ment. Spain was beginning to flag in her passionate quest
of the ideal, and to realize that all the victories she had won
at so terrible a cost brought her no nearer to its attainment.
Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536),the Spanish Sir Philip Sidney,
was among the first to realize the hopelessness of the struggle,
and in the first flush of Charles V s glorious triumphs he
gave expression to it in the prophetic lines,
I Que se saca de aquesto ? i Alguna gloria ?
I Algunos premios 6 aborrecimiento ?
Sabralo quien leyere nuestra historia ;
Verase alii que, como el humo al viento,
Asi se deshara nuestra fatiga. 1
which may be roughly translated
1 Elegia al duque de Alba (1535).
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxxi
What profit brings our toil ? A moment s fame ?
Renown undying, or contempt and shame ?
He who hereafter reads our nation s story
Will see dispersed, Like wind-blown smoke, our glory.
Already the brute facts of political economy, which they
had cheerfully sacrificed to their ideal, began to press hard
upon them and their empire was crumbling to its fall. The
nation was fast becoming a nation of adventurers, inspired
often with lofty aspirations, but as they began to perceive
the impossibility of attainment, ideals fell into the back
ground, scruples were forgotten, and a mad struggle for exis
tence began. The spirit that under Charles V had carried
the Spanish arms victorious across Europe could find no
outlet in the cautious administration of Philip II, and it is
the chief charm of the Spanish picaro that despite his sordid
selfishness he has still a leaven of the spirit that sustained
the invincible troops of the Gran Capitan.
It would seem then that the first picaresque novel appeared
at a propitious moment, when Spain s dreams of universal
empire were fading, and their enthusiasm for the chivalresque
romance was cooling with their fiery zeal for glory. Moratin
in his list of chivalresque novels names fifty published between
1498 and 1552, while for the rest of the century he mentions
only twenty, and of these several were reprints. Certainly
the Lazarillo was very popular from its first publication,
but the picaresque novel was not yet destined to occupy
the place of honour, until then held by the chivalresque
romance, which was still widely read, and did not become
extinct until Cervantes awoke the Spaniards slumbering
sense of humour and taught them that the days of their
dreams had passed away for ever. Of immediate imitators
the Lazarillo had few or none ; an anonymous sequel was
published at Antwerp in 1555, but the author evidently
considered that his readers had had enough of realism. This
sequel, which is sufficiently amusing, entirely lost the spirit
of the original ; it takes Lazarillo from the world he had
described with such cynical brilliancy and carries him off
metamorphosed into a tunny, to the deep seas, where he dis
ports himself among the finny tribes, and goes through adven
tures that smack not a little of Amadis and his congeners.
The Patranuelo (1566), a collection of short stories by Juan
xxxii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
de Timoneda, shows here and there a touch of the picaresque
spirit, and the Relation de la Cdrcel de Sevilla of Cristobal de
Chaves (1585-1597), an absorbingly interesting account of
the great prison of Seville, needed only a little working up to
become a true rogue novel, and supplied later picaresque
writers with abundant material. But it is not till the very
end of the century that a second picaresque novel was pub
lished. Lazarillo was read and re-read, but no rival picaro
challenged his supremacy.
In 1559 the attention of the ever- watchful Inquisition was
drawn to the freedom with which things ecclesiastical are
treated in its pages, and it was placed upon the Index. But
the book continued to be read surreptitiously, and in 1573
the secretary of Philip II, Juan Lopez de Velasco, prepared
an expurgated version, which, on the whole, treated it very
mercifully. It might seem that the ban of the Holy Office
frightened away possible competitors, and it is true that the
later picaresque novel usually treated the Church with prudent
respect. But in point of fact the Lazarillo de Tormes was
popular not for the novelty of its genre but for its own literary
merits ; there is always a public for a work of genius.
Though time was bringing disillusionment, and their vigour
was slackening, the hopes of the Spanish people were not
yet completely ruined, and the fundamental weakness of
their Empire was not yet fully visible. Though their zeal
was flagging and a sense of weariness was stealing over them,
they could not yet regard the world in the spirit of devil-
may-care cynicism, which characterizes the picaro s outlook
upon life. As they were growing less eager for stories of
superhuman achievements, literature provided a new world
of unreality, in which they could forget the menace of failure
and the need of action.
Just as Garcilaso de la Vega, tomando ora la espada, ora
la pluma (taking now the sword, now the pen), turned from
the vanity of conquest to the melodious melancholy of pastoral
poetry, so his countrymen sought consolation in the pastoral
romance. They had grown weary of enchanted castles and
battles against fearful odds, and turned with relief to another
province of absurdity, where unnatural shepherds bewailed in
grandiloquent language their love for heartless and bejewelled
shepherdesses, and whiled away the magic hours with end-
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxxiii
less narrative, forgetting to watch their flocks, which served
no more useful purpose than the adornment of the landscape.
Theocritus and Virgil had laid the foundations of Arcadia, and
Sannazaro had revived in Italy its unearthly customs, when
Jorje Montemor in Castilian Montemayor wrote his Diana
(? 1558), the first Castilian prose pastoral. The Diana appeared
some few years after the Lazarillo de Tormes, and met with
immediate success, though the scenery of the pastoral was
far more akin to the fat land of Portugal the Diana was
based on the Portuguese Meninae mo$o of Ribeiro (d. ?1524)
than to the lean land of Spain, which knows little of the velvet
lawns and purling brooks that form the landscape of Arcadia.
During the latter half of the sixteenth century numerous
imitations appeared, which slowly but surely ousted the chival
rous romance from its preeminence. Cervantes, though he
administered the coup de grace to the romance of chivalry,
deigned to write a Galatea (1585) himself, and held it not the
least of his works, though in the Coloquio de los perros he
laughs gaily at the pastoral conventions. It was not till the
seventeenth century was well advanced that Lazarillo s suc
cessors drove these rather tedious shepherds into obscurity.
REALISTIC PROSE FICTION IN ENGLAND (1550-1600).
The Spaniard, says Dekker, 1 was so busy in touching
heaven with a lance that our Knight of the Burning Shield
could not get him at so much leisure as to eat a dish of
pilchards with him. While the Spaniard was still tilting
at clouds and windmills, Lazarillo de Tormes travelled from
his native land into England and found the Englishman
ready enough to discuss a dish of pilchards, homely fare
though it was. The Englishman had long been busy about
his own affairs, arranging his own comfort with the prosaic
commonsense and sturdy disregard of other people s feelings
characteristic of the nation, and even the enthusiasm of the
Renaissance could not quite blind him to reality. Lazarillo
in his English guise, it is true, found before long the same
1 News from Hell (1606). As the Knight of the Burning Shield
is the devil s courier the satire is more merciful than appears at
first sight, and the phrase shows a keen appreciation of the Spanish
character.
xxxiv THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
chivalrous knights and Arcadian shepherds as his rivals, but
he found also sturdy allies in a little band of rogues already
acclimatized, such as Keynard the Fox and Robin Hood.
The spirit of chivalry even in Chaucer s time was growing
obsolete : the verray parfit gentle knight , who loved
chivalry, trouthe and honour, freedom and courtesy e , was
already a survival from a bygone age. English commonsense
stigmatized chivalry as windy bombast, and stinted its career
as mercilessly as mine host stinted Chaucer s tale of Sir
Thopas, al of a knight was fair and gent In bataille, and in
tourney ment :
No more of this for goddes dignitee ,
Quod oure hoste ; for thou makest me
So wery of thy verray lewednesse,
That, also wisly god my soule blesse,
Myn eres aken of thy drasty speeche ;
Now swiche a rym the devel I beteche.
The national caution, however, was not proof against the
enthusiasm of the Renaissance ; the awakening of a slumber
ing curiosity l drew Englishmen from their insular isolation,
and in the literatures of Greece and Rome, of France, Italy
and Spain, they found a new world, whose existence they had
scarcely suspected, the world of imagination. The printing
press played its part in this discovery. A new life 5 , says
M. Jusserand, was infused into old legendary heroes, and
they began again, impelled not by the genius of new writers,
but simply by the printer s skill, their never-ending journeys
over the world. During the sixteenth century the mediaeval
romance was the staple reading of the people, and in 1575
we find that even a mason could possess a small library of
romances, such as King Arthur s Book, The Four Sons of
Aymon, Huon of Bordeaux. These romances 2 were for the
most part of the primitive type, very different from the
conventional artificiality of the later chivalresque romance,
and the best of them in their self-restraint and archaic
simplicity, and the worst of them in their crude brutality,
1 English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, by J. J. Jusserand,
tr. E. Lee (1890).
2 Specimens of these will be found in Early Prose Romances, selected
by W. J. Thorns, Routledge s series of Early Novelists .
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxxv
were far nearer life and reality than their successors of the
Amadis type. With the exception of Lord Berner s popular
translation (1540) of the Cdrcel de Amor, and Paynel s un
successful Treasurie of Amadis of Fraunce (1568), the old
mediaeval romances had no rivals in the field of prose fiction,
when Lazarillo de Tormes, translated by David Rouland of
Anglesey, was published in 1576. l The Celestina had already
been adapted for the English stage in the form of an Interlude
(circa 1530), reprinted in this volume after Mabbe s transla
tion, and we have evidence that during the last years of the
sixteenth century, just when Elizabethan realistic fiction was
at its zenith, the Spanish tragi-comedy was better known in
England than it is to-day. Lazarillo was reprinted in 1586
and 1596, and in the latter year there also appeared a trans
lation of the anonymous sequel. In 1580 we have a reference
to the tragical Comedie of Calistus\ unmistakably a new
stage version of the Celestina, while in 1591 Lacelestina, comedia
in Spanishe, and in 1598 The tragick comedy e of Celestina,
a translation apparently of the whole work, were licensed for
publication. 2 Certainly there was no lack of interest in
foreign realistic fiction, and the Elizabethan realists were not
without models, if they cared to use them.
In 1579 the publication of Lyly s Euphues marks the begin
ning of the Elizabethan novel. The life of the Renaissance
was too rich and too complex to be expressed by the sim
plicity and self-restraint of Malory and his fellows : a new
medium of expression was required and this medium Lyly
attempted to supply. His Euphues sought to please and
for a time succeeded by its carefully elaborated style, a
balanced alliterative arrangement of erudite similes and far
fetched antitheses,
Talking of stones, stars, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similies
Euphuism achieved in England an immediate, if short
lived, popularity ; its outlandish absurdities had an invincible
attraction for a people who had just awakened to the marvels
1 Rouland s translation was licensed 1568-9, and was certainly
published in 1576, though no copy of this edition is known to exist.
2 v. Appendix III, p. 337.
xxxvi THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
of existence, and were insatiate in their search for the extra
ordinary.
This extravagance of style was followed by a riot of imagi
nation. Lyly s successors, Greene and his school, grafted
on the stock of Euphuism amazing tales of love and adventure,
as impossible and as popular as the Spanish chivalresque
novel. To these productions, mainly in the Italian manner,
one of Lyly s imitators, Anthony Munday, added a series of
translations of the Amadis romances, which were widely read
during the first years of the following century. Nor was the
pastoral wanting to complete the world of unreality : Sir
Philip Sidney s Arcadia, published after his death and
contrary to his wishes in 1590, was followed by Young s
translation (1598) of the Diana, the Arcadia s model, and
Arcadianism became as popular as Euphuism had been.
But even when the cult of unreality was at its height,
English writers did not entirely forget the imperfect world
in which they lived. The mediaeval stories of Reynard the
Fox, more truly a picaro than Cervantes Berganza, of Robin
Hood and other romantic rogues were not the only allies of
Lazarillo : stories of real life, coarse jests and practical jokes
for the most part, had been handed down for generations,
and, as is the way with such stories, they became grouped
round the name of some celebrated buffoon. The earliest
collections of these stories came from Germany, such as
Murner s Til Eulenspiegel (1519), translated into English as
Til Howleglas (? 1528). About the middle of the sixteenth
century these jest-books had a considerable vogue, and they
prepared the way for the Rogue Pamphlets of Greene and
Dekker.
More serious, but no less akin to picaresque fiction, is the
curious series of Beggar Books, of which more will be said
in a later preface. These studies of the lowest orders of
society, or rather of social outcasts, who formed, and still
form, a rival society, with their own customs, language, and
code of morality, take their origin from the Liber Vagatorum,
published in Germany in the first years of the sixteenth cen
tury and re- edited by Martin Luther in 1528. John Awdeley s
Fraternitye of Vacabonds (1561) and Thomas Harman s Caveat
for Commen Cursetors (1567) are the first English Beggar Books ;
they consist of a brief study of thieves and beggars slang and
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxxvii
an exposure of their tricks and impostures, undertaken with
the extremely practical purpose of putting honest men,
especially magistrates, on their guard against them. Abound
ing in amusing anecdotes, they only needed a little working
up and setting in novel form to produce the picaresque novel
proper, and later writers took full advantage of their possi
bilities in this respect.
But apart from jest and beggar books, there was every
reason that the Elizabethan romances should show a ten
dency towards the picaresque. The coterie of literary men,
who endeavoured to make a livelihood by their pens, lived
just such a life as the picaro ; debauchery, debt, starvation,
imprisonment : debt and deadly sin , says Nash cheerfully,
4 who is not subject to ? First and chief among them was
Eobert Greene, Master of Arts, author of plays and penner
of love pamphlets ; though by nature a Puritan, he was
thrown by accident, by success, and weakness of will into a
wild Bohemian life, in which wine, women, and repentance
played an equal part. To a moral reaction from the vanity
of his plays and love pamphlets and still more from the
dissipation of his life, we owe some of the most interesting of
Greene s works, the cony-catching pamphlets, in which he
made full use of his unrivalled knowledge of the criminals
and courtesans of Troynovant (London). With puritanic
materialism he sought to atone for his sins by betraying the
secrets of his associates the sister of Cutting Ball, a famous
cutpurse, had once been his mistress for the benefit of the
cony their victim, the respectable member of society, such
as Greene himself should have been. The earlier cony-catch
ing pamphlets, A Notable Discovery of Coosnage, Second Part
of Conny -catching (1591), Thirde and last part of Conny-catching
(1592), follow Awdeley and Harman pretty closely, inasmuch as
they are no more than matter of fact investigations of the slang
and tricks of thieves and card sharpers : yet though there is no
attempt to write a low-life novel, there is a greater liveliness
of anecdote and a certain appreciation of the cunning of his
cony-catchers, which suggest that Greene intended these
pamphlets to amuse as well as to warn, and that his motive
in writing them was not entirely altruistic. In the Disputa
tion between a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny -catcher,
attributed to Greene, and in his Black Booke s Messenger (1592),
xxxviii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
we have something more than studies in rogue life. The
first is in dialogue form and to some extent we hear the cony-
catcher s point of view ; while the anecdotes are connected
by the names of the two interlocutors, with the result that
the Disputation is a distinct step in the direction of the
picaresque novel. In the Black Bookers Messenger the resem
blance is even more striking ; Black Ned on the point of being
hanged, makes his confessions, which are, as a matter of fact,
a picaresque novel in brief. The success of these pamphlets
drew from Cuthbert Gunny-catcher , who claimed to be a pro
fessor of the art of cony- catching, and to have graduated in
Whittington College (Newgate), an amusing work, The
Defence of Conny -catching, in which he would prove that he
and his fellows are no worse than your respectable citizen,
who keeps on the right side of the law ; its form is the same
as Greene s earlier pamphlets, but its half jocular sympathy
with the rogue and his cunning is characteristic of the best
types of the picaresque novel in every country, though in
Spa;n it is too often overlaid with commonplace moralizing.
There seems no reason to suppose that Greene was in any
way influenced by the Lazarillo de Tormes. Although he
had travelled in Spain, he appears to have been ignorant of
Spanish. None the less we have evidence that Lazarillo,
first published in English in 1568 or 1576, was known and
read. In the only surviving copy of Til Howleglas, preserved
in the Bodleian, Gabriel Harvey, its first owner, has written 1 :
* This Howlesglas, with Skoggin 2 , Skelton 3 , and Lazarillo , given
me at London, of Mr Spensar, XX December 1578.
It is in the work of Thomas Nash, Harvey s merciless enemy,
1 Gabriel Harvey s inscription is much injured apparently by the
binder s paste. So far as I can decypher it, it runs as follows : This
Howlesglass, with Skoggin, Skelton, and Lazarillo, given me at London,
of Mr. Spensar xx December /78, on condition (three words illegible)
by reading of them ouer before the first of January, ymmediately
ensuing : otherwise to forfeit unto him my Lucian in fower uolumes.
Whereupon j was y e rather jnduced to trifle away so many howers,
as were jdely overpassed jn running thorough the (word illegible)
foolish books ; wherein methowght yt not all fower togither seemed
comparable for (word illegible) and crafty (?) feates with Joe Miller
whose witty shiftes, and practises are ...ted amongst Skelton s
Tales.
*-Geystes of Skoggon (1565) by Andrew Borde. Borde died in 1549.
Skelton s Merie Tales (1567).
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xxxix
that we find by far the closest approximation to the Spanish
picaresque novel. Thomas Nash, born at Lowestoft, 1567, pos
sessed all the good qualities and some of the vices of the typical
picaro, but he added to them an exuberant gaiety and a cer
tain surprising vein of seriousness, which distinguishes his work
from that of any earlier picaresque writer. Reckless and
extravagant, neither penury nor prison could cloud his high
spirits ; unlike Greene, his friend, he never suffered the
agonies of repentance, but a good friend and a good hater he
laughed his short life away good-humouredly, for all that he
was a satirist Young Juvenal, Dekker called him and to
defend himself or his friends could steep his pen in vitriol.
All his works abound in brilliant picaresque touches, but it
is in The Unfortunate Traveller ; or, The Life of Jack Wilton
(1594), that, as M. Jusserand was the first to point out, we
have the earliest example of the English picaresque novel.
How far Nash may have been directly influenced by Rou-
land s translation of the Lazarillo de Tormes cannot be decided
finally ; the reader, however, will have an opportunity of
comparing the two works in the second volume of this series.
Nash was certainly possessed of definite literary theories,
which might well dispose him to welcome the realism of
Lazarillo. The mediaeval romances were to him feigned
nowhere acts , the fantastical dreams of those exiled Abbey-
lubbers (monks) , who to no Commonwealth commodity
toss over their troubled imaginations to have the praise of
learning which they lack . Euphuism again he held of little
worth, though he is not so guiltless of it as he would have
us believe. Consequently it is in no way surprising that
his only novel is in strong contrast to the extravagant fiction
of his time.
Yet the Unfortunate Traveller is far from being a typical
picaresque novel. It is written indeed in autobiographical
form, and has no more artistic unity than Lazarillo. It
opens in the best picaresque vein, though the pranks of
Jack Wilton are conceived in a spirit of impish mischief,
very different from the grim cynicism of its Spanish pre
decessor. But Nash soon wearied of his picaro s roguery,
and his natural exuberance of spirits and wealth of vocabulary
carried him beyond the limits of realism into the extravagance
of burlesque, thus anticipating the rowan comique of the
xl THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
following century. To burlesque lie added an idealized love-
story, the history of a terrible vendetta and more than a
touch of melodrama. Yet despite these incongruous elements
the book remained the first and best specimen of the English
picaresque romance, until Defoe gave fresh life to the genre
and laid the foundations of the modern novel. Unfortu
nately Jack Wilton was not a success, and Nash never repeated
the experiment : he took up the cudgels against the Har-
veys again, wrote his admirable panegyric of the Eed Her
ring, Lenten Stufje ( 1599), and then vanishes from our sight.
Other attempts in this style are not numerous ; Chettle s
Piers Plainness Seaven Yeres Prentiship (1595),an extraordinary
jumble of the chivalresque, pastoral and picaresque, Dick-
enson s Greene in Conceipt, new raised from his grave (1598),
a description of a London courtesan s life, Breton s Miseries
of Mavillia (1599), and Grimello s Fortunes (1604), pretty well
complete the list. Dekker and Samuel Kowlands carried on
into the seventeenth century the rogue pamphlets which
Greene had popularized. Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson s
enemy, was a contemporary and friend of Greene and Nash,
though unlike them he lived to a good old age, dying prob
ably in 1641. His Belman of London (1608) and Lanthorne
and Candle-light (1608), cony-catching pamphlets, met with
considerable popularity, though, like Rowlands rival pam
phlet, Martin Mark- All, Beadle of Bridewell (1610), they
were mainly based on the works of his predecessors.
The Discoveries made by Cock Wat, the Walking Spirit
of Newgate, to some extent anticipates the supernatural
setting of El Diable Cojuelo and its more famous imi
tation, Le Diable Boiteux of Lesage, while its description of
Newgate may be compared with La Relacionde la Cdrcel de
Sevilla. The Wonderful Year (1603) is noteworthy for several
well-drawn picaresque scenes and seems to have been read
by Defoe before he wrote his Journal of the Plague Year.
But Dekker s most characteristic prose work is the Gull s
Hornbook (1609), an adaptation of the Latin poem Grobianus
(1549). Grobianism consists in a series of ironical counsels,
recommending such conduct as should be avoided and prais
ing that which should be blamed. This genre, though it has
no plot or connecting characters has a certain similarity to
the picaresque ; thus in the GuWs Hornbook we find a series
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xli
of satirical portraits of everyday life, and though the picaro
is no longer the intermediary, the result is much the same.
But the realistic fiction of the early seventeenth century
was only a survival : the novel was crushed by the supremacy
of the drama, which in its turn succumbed to the fanaticism
of the Puritans.
THE SPANISH PICARESQUE NOVEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
As we have said, the immediate influence of Lazarillo de
Tormes upon Spanish fiction was insignificant ; the nation
was not yet prepared to turn from its gorgeous dreams to
the bare reality of life. It was not until after the death of
Philip II in 1598 that the spirit of exaltation utterly gave
way to weariness and disillusionment, and the Spaniard began
to regard idealism as an ignis fatuus that bewitches, and leads
men into pools and ditches : the inspiration of chivalry was
of no avail, and there was no comfort in Arcadia, and he was
glad to turn from the feigned nowhere acts of knights
and shepherds to the cynical realism of the picaro. Since
the writers of novels could no longer obtain success by elabora
ting and extending the mediaeval romances, they sought a
new model, and found it in the Lazarillo de Tormes. As was
to be expected, they exaggerated the faults of their original ;
the revolt from artificiality engendered a distrust in art, and
from this distrust sprang the two besetting sins of the picaresque
novel, lack of connection and artistic unity of plot. The
whole problem depended on the characterization of the picaro,
the connecting link between the incidents, in whose career
these incidents could alone find artistic unity. The author
of the Lazarillo made no attempt to solve this problem ; the
surpassing brilliancy and truth of his picture of life blinded
the reader to its faults of construction : but in the hands of
a smaller artist these faults became glaring, and the effort
to correct them eventually produced the modern novel.
The first to profit by the change of national feeling was
Mateo Aleman (d.1609), who published in 1599 the first part of
Guzman de Alfarache. Aleman was a worthy treasury official,
who considered his work as a Watch tower of Human Life ,
a phrase that betrays his blameless intentions, although to
his annoyance his readers insisted on calling it The Eogue .
xlii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
He was no cynic like the author of Lazarillo ; the latter regards
human life as a non-moral absurdity, and does not trouble
to consider his hero s actions from the standpoint of morality ;
they follow naturally not from any weakness in Lazarillo,
but from the vicious constitution of the universe. Aleman,
on the other hand, intends his Guzman to be a terrible example :
he is, as he confesses, his own worst enemy, and if he could
only conquer himself, might aspire to a life of honest respec
tability. It is this optimistic view of life that wearies the
reader with pious commonplaces and interminable moraliz-
ings ; when Aleman sticks to his story, and forgets for a time
his high moral purpose, he is amusing and observant.
Guzman s adventures are more varied than those of Lazarillo,
as indeed was necessary from the length of the book, and they
carry him into ranks of society to which the blindman s
leader did not aspire. Moreover Aleman s fluency allowed
him to attempt a fuller description of Guzman s character,
though unfortunately his respectability has almost obliterated
his efforts at character-drawing. His impertinent sermons
would be more tolerable, at least more easily omitted, if he
were content to moralize in parenthesis and in his own person,
but unhappily he was bound, since his novel was in the form
of memoirs, to put them all into the mouth of Guzman, who
thus becomes a composite monster, at one moment the re
spectable Aleman himself, at the next the embodiment of all
that shocks him.
This didacticism, regrettably tedious to the modern reader
increased rather than diminished the popularity of Guzman de
Alfarache ; it was in its time by far the most popular of all pic
aresque novels, and in 1605 we are told that twenty-six editions
and 50,000 copies had already been sold, and there is reason
to suppose that this estimate is not very grossly exaggerated.
As this vice of moralizing, so foreign to modern taste, is con
tinually cropping up in picaresque fiction, where it seems
most out of place, it is necessary to warn the reader unac
quainted with Spanish literature against passing too severe
a judgment upon it. In the first place, it served the useful
and obvious purpose of protecting the book from the censor
ship of the Inquisition ; in the second place, the traditional
form of Spanish prose fiction was the didactic apologue, and
it was impossible for any but the most original writer to
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xliii
escape its influence. The reader expected moralizing and
liked it : the Gelestina and Lazarillo, works of art as they
are without the slightest pretension to morality, profess in
their prefaces a moral purpose, just as the immoral Arch-
priest of Hita, with his tongue in his cheek perhaps, yet with a
touch of underlying seriousness, bade his readers learn from
his book, 4 To know good and evil, and choose the better .
But Aleman had a third and better excuse for his moralites
superflues, as Lesage called them. It was not merely a
literary convention that adorned the rogue with the trappings
of respectability ; an external piety and wordy morality
was as characteristic of the picaro of the sixteenth or seven
teenth century as it was of his more respectable contem
poraries. It was not hypocrisy ; for religion had entirely
lost touch with conduct. Gonzalo de Berceo, who flourished
during the first half of the thirteenth century, tells in The
Miracles of our Lady, a story of a wicked robber, who pre
ferred stealing to going to church ; this robber, however,
had one saving virtue ; whenever in the pursuit of his nefarious
designs he passed an image of the Virgin, he did humble
reverence to it. Caught in the act, he was condemned to the
gallows, but the Virgin had pity on him and wrought a miracle
on his behalf, so that he received a free pardon and lived a
happy and godly life ever after. Just such a man was the
picaro, scrupulous in the observance of religious forms, but
in conduct totally unscrupulous, cheerfully swindling his
master with the praises of honesty and righteousness upon
his lips, and yet no hypocrite. The fact that he was a parasite
upon society did not trouble his religious tranquillity ; he
was as useful a member of it as the monk, with whom he had
much in common. He is never weary of repeating his favour
ite text, It is more blessed to give than to receive ; God ,
says Guzman, did not so much make the rich man for the
sake of the poor, as the poor for the sake of the rich. So in
receiving alms he confers a favour, for the charitable, thanks
to us, gain heaven by their charity, while we lose it for their
sake .
The first part of Guzman de Alfarache inspired one Juan
Marti to publish a sequel under the pseudonym of Mateo
Lujan de Sayavedra. This sequel is even more discursive
than the original and its appearance forced Aleman in self-
xliv THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
defence to publish his second part in 1605, just as Avellaneda
drew from Cervantes the second part of Don Quixote. Ale-
man, however, unlike Cervantes, treated his plagiarist with
wonderful forbearance ; he contented himself with admiring
his rival s wit, borrowing his best ideas, and including him in
his story as a subordinate picaro, who dies raving mad under
the delusion that he is Guzman de Alfarache.
Space will not permit more than a reference to El Viaje
Entretenido (The Entertaining Journey) (1603), which is
in part a minute description of the life of a strolling
comedian, told with all the convincing charm of truth
ful observation. Its author, Agustin de Rojas Villandrando,
known for his recklessness and good fortune as el cab-
allero del milagro, was himself a picaro of picaros, and his
book, though never translated from its native language,
has the credit of inspiring Scarron with the idea of his Roman
Comique. The Picara Justina of Francisco Lopez de tlbeda,
published in the same year as Aleman s sequel, substitutes for
the picaro the rogue heroine ; but apart from the fact that
the author consigned some of his moral comments to the end
of the chapters, where they serve to accentuate his cynical
outlook on life, he added little of value to the conception of
the picaresque novel : indeed he has been hailed as the first
corrupter of the Spanish tongue. He confesses to imitating
Antonio de Guevara (d. 1545) the author of the Reloj de Prin-
cipes, who has been accused of inspiring the English Eu-
phuists, and exaggerated Guevara s worst defects ; his style is
affected, pedantic and difficult, comparing very badly with
the easy fluency of Aleman or the monumental conciseness
of Lazarillo.
Modern history has a strong bias towards a fatalism, which
relentlessly eliminates the great man and his achievements,
and regards the affairs of nations merely as the unstable
equilibrium of so many abstract tendencies, each the resultant
of countless conflicting wills. The history of literature,
however, cannot disregard so conveniently the work of genius,
which no formula can express : for it is as impossible to express
a great work of art in terms of its component tendencies, as
to produce it by rule of three.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), indefatigable
observer of human life and character, no less indefatigable
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xlv
reader of chivalresque romances, gave to the world in 1605,
after a life of many vicissitudes, the first part of Don Quixote.
The artistic formula that Aleman and his Spanish successors
sought and never found, came naturally to Cervantes, and
by the accident of genius an attack on an ephemeral form of
literature became a masterpiece of literary art, a complete
expression of the tragi-comedy of human life. It is as the
fusion of the chivalresque and picaresque genres, of imagination
and experience, that Don Quixote concerns us in the present
study, though it is far more than this : never Amadis more
chivalrous, never picaro more real than Don Quixote ; in
him perhaps unknowingly Cervantes immortalized Spain s
glorious and impossible enthusiasms, and bade men laugh at
their absurdity and weep that they were doomed to failure.
He brought chivalry down from the skies to walk upon the
earth, and preserved for posterity all that was best in the
dying chivalresque romance. But though Don Quixote is
rich in picaresque detail, and though it attains the object at
which the romance was aiming all unconsciously, the expres
sion of the real in terms of the ideal, it cannot be called a
picaresque novel ; it is as the author of the most perfect
example of the picaresque short story that we must now
consider Cervantes.
The Novelets Exemplares (1613) are instinct with that sym
pathy for the superhuman idealism of chivalry, and with
that love of all things human, which gave immortality to Don
Quixote. We are concerned with the six novelets there
are twelve in all which have more or less claim to the title
picaresque. Of these three may be dismissed in a few words.
El Licenciado Vidriera takes its interest and title not from
the picaresque wanderings of Tomas Kodaja, but from the
wit and wisdom of his sayings, when he imagines himself
made of glass. La Gitanilla gives a detailed picture of gipsy
life, but Preciosa the heroine is as little affected by the wander
ing life she has led, as her complexion by the sun and wind ;
she is a character of pure romance, scarcely in keeping with
her environment. La Ilustre Fregona starts out in true picar
esque style : two youths of noble family leave their homes
on the pretext of studying at Salamanca, but intending really
to run away to the tunny-fisheries of Zahara, the picaro s
Paradise, in quest of liberty and adventure. But with the
c. d
xliv THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
defence to publish his second part in 1605, just as Avellaneda
drew from Cervantes the second part of Don Quixote. Ale-
man, however, unlike Cervantes, treated his plagiarist with
wonderful forbearance ; he contented himself with admiring
his rival s wit, borrowing his best ideas, and including him in
his story as a subordinate picaro, who dies raving mad under
the delusion that he is Guzman de Alfarache.
Space will not permit more than a reference to El Viaje
Entretenido (The Entertaining Journey) (1603), which is
in part a minute description of the life of a strolling
comedian, told with all the convincing charm of truth
ful observation. Its author, Agustin de Rojas Villandrando,
known for his recklessness and good fortune as el cab-
allero del milagro, was himself a picaro of picaros, and his
book, though never translated from its native language,
has the credit of inspiring Scarron with the idea of his Roman
Comique. The Picara Justina of Francisco Lopez de Ubeda,
published in the same year as Aleman s sequel, substitutes for
the picaro the rogue heroine ; but apart from the fact that
the author consigned some of his moral comments to the end
of the chapters, where they serve to accentuate his cynical
outlook on life, he added little of value to the conception of
the picaresque novel : indeed he has been hailed as the first
corrupter of the Spanish tongue. He confesses to imitating
Antonio de Guevara (d. 1545) the author of the Reloj de Prin-
cipes, who has been accused of inspiring the English Eu-
phuists, and exaggerated Guevara s worst defects ; his style is
affected, pedantic and difficult, comparing very badly with
the easy fluency of Aleman or the monumental conciseness
of Lazarillo.
Modern history has a strong bias towards a fatalism, which
relentlessly eliminates the great man and his achievements,
and regards the affairs of nations merely as the unstable
equilibrium of so many abstract tendencies, each the resultant
of countless conflicting wills. The history of literature,
however, cannot disregard so conveniently the work of genius,
which no formula can express : for it is as impossible to express
a great work of art in terms of its component tendencies, as
to produce it by rule of three.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), indefatigable
observer of human life and character, no less indefatigable
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xlv
reader of chivalresque romances, gave to the world in 1605,
after a life of many vicissitudes, the first part of Don Quixote.
The artistic formula that Aleman and his Spanish successors
sought and never found, came naturally to Cervantes, and
by the accident of genius an attack on an ephemeral form of
literature became a masterpiece of literary art, a complete
expression of the tragi-comedy of human life. It is as the
fusion of the chivalresque and picaresque genres, of imagination
and experience, that Don Quixote concerns us in the present
study, though it is far more than this : never Amadis more
chivalrous, never picaro more real than Don Quixote ; in
him perhaps unknowingly Cervantes immortalized Spain s
glorious and impossible enthusiasms, and bade men laugh at
their absurdity and weep that they were doomed to failure.
He brought chivalry down from the skies to walk upon the
earth, and preserved for posterity all that was best in the
dying chivalresque romance. But though Don Quixote is
rich in picaresque detail, and though it attains the object at
which the romance was aiming all unconsciously, the expres
sion of the real in terms of the ideal, it cannot be called a
picaresque novel ; it is as the author of the most perfect
example of the picaresque short story that we must now
consider Cervantes.
The Novelas Exemplares (1613) are instinct with that sym
pathy for the superhuman idealism of chivalry, and with
that love of all things human, which gave immortality to Don
Quixote. We are concerned with the six novelas there
are twelve in all which have more or less claim to the title
picaresque. Of these three may be dismissed in a few words.
El Licenciado Vidriera takes its interest and title not from
the picaresque wanderings of Tomas Eodaja, but from the
wit and wisdom of his sayings, when he imagines himself
made of glass. La Gitanilla gives a detailed picture of gipsy
life, but Preciosa the heroine is as little affected by the wander
ing life she has led, as her complexion by the sun and wind ;
she is a character of pure romance, scarcely in keeping with
her environment. La Ilustre Fregona starts out in true picar
esque style : two youths of noble family leave their homes
on the pretext of studying at Salamanca, but intending really
to run away to the tunny-fisheries of Zahara, the picaro s
Paradise, in quest of liberty and adventure. But with the
c. d
xlvi THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
illustrious scullery-maid we find ourselves in the regions of
romance, and her perfections prepare us for the inevitable
discovery that she is not what she seems. But with El Colo-
quio de los Perros (The Dialogue of the Dogs), El Casamiento
Enganoso, Rinconete y Cortadillo, we are in the Spain that
Lazarillo and Guzman have made familiar to us. The con
versation of the wise dog Berganza and his comrade Scipion
has all the best qualities of the picaresque novel, as -well as
the infinite sympathy and humour of Cervantes. El Casa
miento Enganoso (The Deceptive Marriage], a brilliant, if not
exemplary, novela, tells with admirable directness and force,
how the picaro seeking an heiress married the picara seeking
a wealthy husband. But of all picaresque novelas none can
surpass Rinconete y Cortadillo. This admirable story was
written before the first part of Don Quixote, as we know from
a reference in the forty-seventh chapter ; doubtless Cervantes
collected the material for it in 1597, when he himself was con
fined in the famous jail and had only too much opportunity
and leisure to study the hampa, the rogue-society of Seville.
Cervantes is content to rely for his interest not upon amusing
incidents and ingenious tricks, but upon his living presentment
of the thieves school of Monipodio and of the life of the
countless scoundrels of Seville, and still more upon his unsur
passed mastery of character-drawing. Aleman s tedious
and well-meant moralizing becomes in Cervantes hands
concise, and spiced with malicious irony and wit :*Ganchuelo,
one of Monipodio s promising pupils, asked if he is a thief,
replies, Si, para servir a Dios y a la buena gente (Yes, in the
service of God and honest folk), and goes on to explain that
every one can exercise his calling, no matter what it may be, to
the glory of God. Rinconete and Cortadillo, the two most
engaging young rogues of picaresque fiction, Monipodio,
a Spanish and more sympathetic precursor of Fagin, the
Senora Pipota, the devout receiver of stolen goods, the two
bullies and their courtesans, are all of them instinct with life,
flesh and blood as only Cervantes could draw them. Never
was the cheerful insouciance of the picaro expressed more
truthfully, and that restless spirit, which drove Lope de Vega
from school to seek the liberty of the picaro s life, the natu
ral reaction of disappointed patriotism and unrewarded
self-sacrifice which was sweeping across the whole country.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xlvii
One can only regret that Cervantes never fulfilled his promise
of a fuller account of the life and miracles of Binconete and
Cortadillo and their master Monipodio : it might well have
been that the picaresque novel, which had its origin in Spain,
would in Spain have attained its highest development. Unfor
tunately Cervantes was inimitable, and his novelas had little
influence upon the development of the picaresque romance,
which was groping as blindly as ever after artistic expression.
Very different from the work of Cervantes is La Vida del
Buscon, commonly known as El Gran Tacano, of Francisco
Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645), written probably
about 1608, though not published till 1626. If Pablos, the hero,
is something more of a character than Guzmdn, it is only that
he tells his story straightforwardly without a word of moraliz
ing. Nor does Quevedo make any attempt at artistic unity ;
his episodes jostle one another with all the purposelessness
of reality, and we end in mediis rebus ; for when he is weary
of his story, he packs Pablos off to the Indies to begin again
the nightmare of his existence. The impression left upon the
reader is one of unredeemed brutality, heightened by the
author s brilliant talent. We find even in the cynicism
of Lazarillo a touch of sympathy for the penniless hidalgo,
and Alemdn is never weary of telling us that honesty is
the best policy : there is none of this in Quevedo ; every
thing is ugly, sordid and cruel, and he gloats over human suffer
ing with an inhuman leer, as though he were watching the
writhings of a grotesque ape, tied by Fate upon the rack.
It may be that his bitterness is due to his physical defects;
he was half-blind and club-footed according to his own con
fession, though, curiously enough, he was one of the most noted
duellists of his time : certain it is that he realized the failure
of his country, and he repeated Garcilaso s lament over the
vanity of conquest with even greater conviction :
Y es mas f acil j oh Espana ! en nmchos modos
Que lo que a todos les quitaste sola,
Te puedan a ti sola quitar todos. 1
Easier is it, Spain, by far, that what thou alone didst take
from all, all shall take back from thee alone.
1 Sonnet LXVIII, quoted by Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly in his Litterature
espagnole, Paris, 1904.
xlviii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
After the appearance of the first part of Don Quixote in
1605 no new chivalresque novel was published and only one
reprinted ; Cervantes gave the coup de grace to a dying fashion,
or rather he filled its place with something infinitely better,
which was an expression of the reality of his own age. The
pastoral still survived, but even in the hands of Cervantes
and Lope de Vega, it could not compete in popularity with
Guzman de Alfarache and his successors. Publishers and
authors followed the public taste and for about a quarter
of a century the picaresque novel reigned supreme.
We may pass quickly over those works that did no more
than carry on the tradition of amusing and slightly connected
stories, such as Lazarillo de Manzanares (1620) and Alonso,
mozo de muchos amos (Part I, 1624; Part II, 1626), though
Borrow with his usual eccentricity declared that Gil Bias
was immeasurably inferior to the Alonso. Juan de Luna s
sequel to Lazarillo de Tormes, published at Paris in 1620,
affords us by comparison with its original .; an excellent
test of the progress made by picaresque fiction since the
publication of Lazarillo. The interest has to a great extent
been transferred from the characters whom fate throws in
Lazaro s way we have no blind beggar, no penniless hidalgo,
no ingenious seller of indulgences in the new Lazarillo to
the figure of the picaro himself. Luna s psychology, how
ever, is too primitive to make the sequel more than a pale
shadow of the original.
The Spanish picaresque novels that we have so far con
sidered, have been (with the exception of the Viaje Entre-
tenido) the work of men who were not picaros themselves, and
though autobiographical in form, they are inclined to regard
rogue life from the standpoint of respectability. It was
not, however, long before the picaros, who made up a consider
able proportion of the population 1 , encouraged by the success
of Guzman, began to write of their own experiences with such
embellishments as their imagination could afford. Such are
the life-stories of the Captain Alonso de Contreras, of Diego
Duque de Estrada, and the Monja Alferez, the original of
De Quincey s Spanish Military Nun (1847). The absolute
1 Afe the end of the sixteenth century over 3 per cent, of the entire
population of Spain were vagabonds and beggars and their numbers
were yearly increasing. De Haan, Picaros y Oanapanes.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL xlix
formlessness of the Vida y Hechos de Estevanillo de Gonzalez
(1646) bears out its contention that it .is a true relation ,
though undoubtedly the author, who held the exalted post
of jester to Octavio Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi, borrowed
from previous picaresque novels and from his own imagi
nation, when it suited him. The Relaciones de la Vida
del Escudero Marcos de Obregon (1618) is another of this
class, but though it is to some extent founded on fact,
its author, Vicente Martinez Espinel, had a certain sense
of form, as befitted a poet and musician, the friend of
Cervantes and Lope de Vega, and when in his old age he
tried his hand at the picaresque novel, basing it upon the
experience of his own adventurous existence, he endeavoured
to give it some appearance of artistic unity. Though he was
by no means successful in this attempt, he knew how to tell
a story, and the Escudero is still an amusing book, and
far more edifying .than its author s life, who, even after
taking orders, led an existence that scandalized his neigh
bours.
The studies of the life and language of beggars, thieves
and the like had, apart from the picaresque novel, less vogue
in Spain than the beggar books and rogue pamphlets in
England. We have already mentioned La Relation de la
Cdrcel de Sevilla, to which the author half promised to add
a vocabulary of thieves slang, but he did not carry out his
intention, and it was not till 1609 that Juan Hidalgo published
at the end of his Romances de Germania the first Spanish slang
vocabulary. In 1619 Dr. Carlos Garcia published the Desor-
denada Codicia de los Bienes agenos (Inordinate Covetousness
of others Goods) which combines a distinct rogue fiction with
a study of rogue life and language ; abroad this book met
with some success, being translated into French as UAntiquite
des Larrons in 1621, and into English as The Sonne of the
Rogue in 1638.
Various attempts were made to introduce fresh elements
into the Spanish picaresque novel. Luis Velez de Guevara
(1579-1644) made an ingenious use of the supernatural in
his Diablo Cojuelo (1641), a device of which Lesage availed
himself in Le Diable boiteux. Guevara s work is a vigorous
and humorous satire, which deserves to be remembered for its
vivid presentment of Spanish life, as well as for the central idea,
1 THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
which was all that the more famous French book borrowed.
Quevedo s Cartas del Caballero de la Tenaza (Letters of the Knight
of the Forceps) delineate the character of a miser, who is, as
Mr. Chandler points out, the passive version of the acquisitive
picaro, and the same author in his Suenos (Visions) (1627) made
use of picaresque realism to satirize the vices and follies of his
age. The tendency to combine a romantic interest with
the prosaic facts of the rogue s existence showed itself as
early as Guzman de Al far ache, in which Aleman diversified
the cheats and sermons of his hero with two episodic romantic
novelas. These episodes, though to the modern reader they
break the continuity of the story in most annoying fashion,
were very popular in those days of more leisurely reading,
and were continually imitated. Gonzalo de Cespedes y
Meneses made some attempt in his Soldado Pindaro (1626)
to connect the romantic episodes with the main plot, his
picaro becoming a soldier-adventurer, whose life combined
the vicissitudes of a Guzman with the most romantic of love
adventures. Of Cervantes successors in the picaresque
novelas perhaps the best was Antonio Lilian y Verdugo, whose
Guia y Avisos deForasteros (1620) has fallen into an oblivion
that the power and subtle observation of its author do not
deserve. It is sufficient to mention the Dia y Noche de
Madrid (1663) of Francisco Santos with its interesting
vignettes of Spanish life.
Two authors, however, in whose hands the picaresque
novel tended towards the form that it ultimately assumed
in France and England, require a rather fuller notice. Alonso
Geronimo Salas de Barbadillo (? 1580-1635) published in 1612
La Hija deCelestina (The Daughter of Celestina). This work
combines an amusing story with a unity of plot unparalleled
in its predecessors, which is largely due to the fact that the
greater part of the story is not in autobiographical form, but
told in the third person. This novel was adapted into French,
as Les Hypocrites, nouvelle de M. Scarron (1655), and from
the French was translated into English by John Davies of
Kidwelly (1657). The same author was scarcely so successful
in El Necio bien Afortunado (The Fortunate Fool) (1621),
which was, however, well translated in 1670 by Philip Ayres.
Another of his works, Don Diego de Noche (1623), was trans
lated into English anonymously as a novel of Quevedo in
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL li
1671. 1 One of the best of his works, El curioso y sabio Alejan
dro (1634), a series of lively and satirical portraits, approaches
very nearly those collections of characters which were so
popular in France and England during the seventeenth
century. Though not strictly picaresque, the satire and
minute observation is the direct legacy of the picaresque
romance.
It was, however, in the hands of Alonso de Castillo Sol6r-
zano (? 1589-71650) that the Spanish rogue novel attained
its highest development in point of form and came nearest
to the modern low-life novel. Castillo Solorzano s first
picaresque novel, Las Harpias de Madrid (1631), is a series of
amusing novelas loosely grouped about the history of a stolen
coach. In the Nina de los Embustes (1632) and the Aventuras
del bachiller Trapaza (1634) he attempted the longer picaresque
novel, but neither of these was remarkably successful ; the
author retained the old autobiographical form and did not
avail himself of Salas Barbadillo s example of telling his
story in the third person, a device which, apart from a psycho
logical study of the principal figure, offered to the skilful
writer the surest means of producing an artistic plot. In
the Garduna de Sevilla (The Weasel of Seville) (1634), however,
he resorted to this plan, with the result that it is, not indeed
a work of genius, but technically the best worked out of
Spanish picaresque novels. If it lacks the vivid portraiture
of Lazarillo, the pitiless cynicism of Quevedo, and still more
the genius of Cervantes, it remains a diverting and spirited
story of roguery, which still amuses the modern reader by
the ingenuity of its intrigues, quite apart from its historical
or archaeological interest.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL IN FRANCE BEFORE LESAGE
The picaro in Spain was, as we have said, not only a literary
reaction against the unreality of the chivalresque romance,
but also a natural and necessary expression of the decadence
of the national spirit. In France he appears at the end of
the sixteenth century, as the champion of a particular literary
movement, and as the representative of that spirit of gauloi-
serie, which inspired the fabliaux, Villon and Rabelais, a
1 A copy of this translation is preserved in the Bodleian : it is not
mentioned in the bibliography of Mr. Chandler s Romances of Roguery.
Hi THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
spirit instinct in the nation, which, however, seemed on
the point of being smothered under the refinements of the
Hotel de Rambouillet.
It was in the middle of the sixteenth century that Amadis
de Gaula and its sequels were first translated into French, and
their numerous editions prove their popularity. In 1574
the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor was translated by
Nicole Colin, again in 1582 by Gabriel Chappuys, and in 1603
by Pavilion. The romantic idealism and unreality of these
novels was well suited to the exaggerated refinement and poli-
tesse mondaine towards which French literature was tending.
For some time, however, the French reader was content
with translations, and it was not till 1610 that the pastoral
and chivalresque romances were naturalized in France by
the Astree of Honore d Urfe.
The Astree, the first of French novels, is based in conception
upon the Diana Enamorada. We have the usual love-lorn
shepherds of the pastoral, and the usual extravagant adven
tures of the chivalresque romance. But it was just in this
form that the aspirations of d Urfe s contemporaries could
be expressed, and the Astree, telling of love too pure for
passion, too noble for humanity, in a charming and graceful
style, was greeted with the refined acclamations of that society,
which for so long controlled the fortunes of its country s
literature, as a complete expression of its ideals. Yet as
M. Morillot says, Au fond de tout Francais, il y a toujours
eu a la fois un troubadour sentimental et un incorrigible
railleur. 4 So it is that d Urfe has added to his ever-faithful
and ever- unhappy shepherds, Hylas, the inconstant cynic, the
sceptic and materialist, who prefers the body to the soul,
and changes his mistresses as readily as the picaro his masters,
a very picaro of love.
It was not only the chivalresque and pastoral romances
that French translators had introduced from Spain. An
anonymous version of the Celestina was published in 1527,
and reprinted in 1529 and 1542 : a new and to some extent
expurgated translation by Jacques de Lavardin appeared in
1578 and was reprinted the same year. Contemporary
with the Amadis and Diana translations we have Sau-
grain s version of Lazarillo de Tormes, Part I (1561). Less
popular than its rivals, the French version of the first picar-
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL liii
esque novel went through several editions and revisions, and
perhaps we may trace its influence in La Vie Genereuse des
mercelots, gueuz, et boesmiens (1596), which tells of a boy s
experiences among pedlars, beggars and gipsies. UHistoire
plaisante et facetieuse du Lazare de Tormes was joined in 1600
by Guzman d Alfarache, translated by Chappuys, the trans
lator of the Diana, and the two stand at the head of the
romans comiques, which expressed the true French spirit of
raillery, and from time to time rose in revolt against the
fadeur langoureuse of the pastoral and the tedious absurdities
of its successor, the heroic novel.
Consequently the Astree and its imitations, despite an
immense popularity, did not reign unrivalled in the affections
of the French public. In 1618 Cervantes Novelas Exemplares,
the Enganos desto Siglo of Loubayssin de Lamarca, and
the Escudero, Marcos de Obregon were translated from the
Spanish, while in 1619 and 1620 Chapelain produced new
versions of Guzman de Alfarache. The old esprit gaulois, renewed
by the Spanish picaresque influence, showed itself clearly
enough in the Euphormionis Lusinini Satyricon (1603), the Latin
satire of John Barclay, in the Aventures du Baron Faeneste x
(1617), of Theodore Agrippa d Aubigne, the story of a
swaggering Gascon braggart, and in the Fragments d une
Histoire comique (1621) of Theophile Viau. The first,
however, to imitate deliberately the picaresque romance
that came from beyond the Pyrenees was Charles Sorel,
who in 1623 published his Histoire comique de Francion.
Sorel replaced the vague structure of the picaresque novel
by a complicated and logical plot, which culminated in the
marriage of Francion with the lady who appears to have had
the greatest share of his widely-distributed affections, and
his consequent reformation. He amused his readers with
more than a little obscenity that Spanish taste would not
permit, and hurried his hero through a portrait- gallery
of adventurers, courtesans, lawyers, thieves , vagabonds, and
the like, whose characters are wittily but roughly
sketched. Francion is an adventurer not a whit more
scrupulous than his Spanish relations, although he comes
1 Faeneste ( = (pdiveo-Oai seeming) is opposed to the worthy Enay
( = IIVO.L being), but despite this metaphysical allegory, he is a picaro
of the Miles Gloriosus type.
liv THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
of a noble family, and not a few of his experiences are
derived from theirs, although erotic intrigues lend a greater
variety to his existence. The Francion met with great
success, and indeed it is one of the best of picaresque novels :
at least forty editions [and translations of [the seventeenth
century survive, so that the Astree and its successors could
by no means boast a complete victory over realism.
In 1627 Sorel made a more direct attack upon the pastoral
in Le Berger Extravagant, a burlesque imitation of Don Quixote,
which lacks entirely the idealism of Cervantes genius. Where
Cervantes interwove idealism and reality, tears and laughter,
Sorel has only the coarse jeering sneer of the materialist.
He has no sympathy with the pastoral or chivalresque ideals,
and is only bent on making his bourgeois hero, whose study
of pastorals has turned his brain, ridiculous. Not content
with attacking the extravagance of the pastorals with the
extravagance of burlesque, he must needs jeer at poetry,
and imagination to boot, and the Nemesis of oblivion has
fallen upon his work. ISHistoire Generate des Larrons (1623-
1636), consisting of rogue biographies gathered from all quarters
shows that picaresque tales could command an audience,
though it is in form a reversion to the primitive type, being
merely a collection of amusing stories without connection or
unity.
It was clear that neither the pastoral nor the chivalresque
genres could do more than hold their own against the mocking
laughter of realism ; they endeavoured to obtain fresh allies
by adapting themselves still further to the spirit of contem
porary society. It was essentially a cultured society inter
ested in a dilettante fashion in ancient history, geography,
and generally such knowledge as could be assimilated without
undue fatigue or pedantic application. It was, moreover,
an heroic age, and eager to read of heroic deeds. The heroism
of the chivalresque romance was too crude, for the ideal hero
of the time was essentially courtly and polite. It was no
longer sufficient that a knight should overcome giants of
incredible size, he must conquer the world and scale the heights
of heaven itself to dry his ladylove s unnecessary tears or
win her unwilling smile. The novel was swift as ever to
mark the desires of its readers. It only required patience
and a little imagination to weave into the fabric of the work
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL Iv
a dissertation on the habits of crocodiles or a detailed descrip
tion of Senegal. Again nothing was easier than to take an
historical subject, and embellish it with a few artful inven
tions, ascribing everything to the all-pervading motive of
love, and in fact to apply to history a more or less probable
imagination.
But there was a subject that interested society far more
deeply than history, geography, and all the learning of past
and future ages, and that subject was itself, its life,
its loves and its transcendent virtues. Even in ancient
history it must see a reproduction of itself ; Clovis
must be bewigged and perfumed like a French monarch of
the seventeenth century, and Horatius Codes must talk
with the sentiment and refinement of the Hotel de Rambouillet.
The new novel added to the chivalresque romance a certain
verisimilitude by the use of familiar historical names ; but
a new device x was found to give an inner reality to the adven
tures of ancient warriors and emperors. It was that of the
roman d clef. The magnificent heroes and heroines were
only the reader s contemporaries masquerading under ancient
names, and the author took care that the disguise should be
a thin one, for it pleased the reader to see, in the ever-
victorious Cyrus, for instance, the great Conde, the hero of
Rocroy. Such was the development of the chivalresque
romance in the hands of De Gomberville, La Calprenede and
Madeleine Scuderi, more complex, more artificial, and more
voluminous.
Yet even the heroic roman d clef, designed so carefully to
suit the reader s taste, could not silence the realists. Sorel s
Berger Extravagant was followed by the Chevalier Hipocondri-
aque (1632) of Du Verdier and the Gascon Extravagant (1639)
of Clerville, while Sorel published in 1648 his unfinished Poly-
andre Histoire Comique, which in its description of petites
avantures de Paris and middle- class life prepares the way for
Furetiere s Roman Bourgeois. In 1642 Tristan 1 Hermite pub
lished his Page Disgracie, the autobiography of his youth, de
scribing his experiences as a page at the Louvre, in England,
in Scotland, and again in France, with just such vivid pic-
1 This device had been used by Sorel with a satirical intent in his
FrancAon, thus the pedant Hortensius is said to represent Balzac,
ivi THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
tures of society as distinguished the Spanish picaresque novel.
In 1650 and 1655 Cyrano de Bergerac wrote his Comic
Histories of the Moon and Sun, delightful miscellanies of
science, satire and bizarre fancies, which though they cannot
be classified with either the heroic or comic romance are
certainly more akin to the latter than the former.
But the real answer to the long- winded historico-geographico-
heroic novel came from the pen of Paul Scarron (1610-1660),
the founder of the burlesque school in France. Transformed
by the irony of fate from a handsome and dashing young abbe
into a crippled caricature of humanity, it was small wonder
that he had no sympathy with the high-flown optimism of the
grand style, and set himself to combat their absurdities.
In 1651 he published the first part of his Roman Comique,
followed by the second part in 1657. He had already in
his plays shown himself an industrious borrower from
the Spanish, and it was only natural, that, writing a novel
of real life, he should turn for inspiration to the Spanish
picaresque romance, of which he was particularly fond, once
even in a letter signing himself Lazarillo de Tormes. It
was in the Viaje Entretenido of Agustin de KojasVillandrando
that he found this inspiration. Scarron s own theatrical
experiences, however, had provided him with ample material,
and he only borrowed from the Viaje Entretenido its idea
and loose plot. Like Rojas, he described the adventures of
a band of strolling comedians, but the incidents are his own, 1
and indeed a great part of them actually occurred in the
neighbourhood of Mans about the year 1635, while most of
the characters presented are studies from real life. To
the structure of the picaresque novel Scarron contributed
nothing ; he accepted the formless confusion characteristic
of the genre, and indeed deliberately added to it, confessing
with an insouciance partly real, partly affected, that he for
gets what he has said and is not certain what he is going
to say. It is usual to compare the Viaje Entretenido unfavour
ably with the Roman Comiquc, and certainly by abolishing
the dialogue-form and the interpolated loas, Scarron has
made his story easier to read. Yet with all its gaiety and
observation the Roman Comiquc never quite equals the best
1 With the exception of the episodic tales, derived from the Spanish.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL Ivii
parts of the Viaje Entretenido ; there is a tendency to extrava
gance and burlesque, which does not vitiate Rojas observa
tion of reality, and it was this very fault that Scarron s
successors chose to imitate. It was only to be expected that
an exaggeration of the heroic should lead by reaction to an
exaggeration of the ridiculous, which was equally faulty and
equally untrue.
In the continuations of the Roman Comique by Offray
and Preshac, in the Aventures du Chevalier de la Gail-
lardise (1662), in the Aventures de Monsieur d Assoucy
(1677), this extravagance is more pronounced, unchecked
by Scarron s humour, commonsense, and keen observa
tion. Both the roman hero ique and the roman comique
alike left truth and reality, though in different directions,
and both were doomed to perish. It was Boileau who admin
istered the coup de grace to the heroic novel. The Precieuses
Ridicules appeared in 1659, and some five or six years later
Boileau s Dialogue des Heros de Roman, circulated in MS.
form, finished what the burlesque had begun, and the roman
heroique was laughed out of court. The roman comique,
which existed only as a satire and parody, perished with
its rival.
One more novel there is to chronicle in this period, the
work of Furetiere, the friend of Boileau, Moliere, Racine and
La Fontaine, and it may well be that the Roman Bourgeois
was written with the approval of this illustrious coterie.
The Roman Bourgeois steers a mid course between the burlesque
and the heroic ; it is a plain record of everyday life, dealing
neither with heroes nor picaros, neither with the sublime nor
the supremely ridiculous. But the old fault of the picaresque
novel is conspicuous ; in M. Morillot s words, the connecting
thread of the novel is the thread of the binding . It is a
gallery of portraits, sharply defined and amusing, but it
leads nowhither ; there is no attempt at artistic unity. With
the Roman Bourgeois and the advent of the Classical school
the first period of the French novel closes. Novels were still
written and read, but their supremacy was passed. The
extravagance of idealism and the extravagance of burlesque
discredited for the time that department of literature, and
even the moderation of Furetiere could not restore its popu
larity, since his work was essentially a satire, and did not
Iviii THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
touch what was at the root of the matter, an artistic observa
tion of reality, combined with an artistic unity of plot.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL IN ENGLAND (1600-1700).
During the seventeenth century the English novel made
little or no advance. The romantic tales of the Elizabethan
period, such as Ford s Parismus, were widely read, and the
industrious Munday s translations of Amadis and its sequels
met with an equal success. Nash s effort at the picaresque
novel, The Unfortunate Traveller, was forgotten, although
the tradition of Greene s cony-catching pamphlets was
carried on by the tracts of Dekker and Rowlands. These
low-life pamphlets were still very popular and Dekker s
Belman of London (1608) went through three editions in a
single year, although it was, as Rowlands showed in his
Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell (1610), to a great extent
plagiarized from the old Caveat for Common Cursetors by
Thomas Harman.
Another form of literary composition offered ample oppor
tunity for picaresque observation ; namely, the collections of
characters which were so popular during this century. It
is interesting to compare such a work asTheEssayes and Char
acters of a Prison, by G. Mynshull (1618), with the Relacion
de la Carcel de Sevilla or Harman s Caveat. Mynshull is far
less interested in the customs of the prison and in the life
and manners of its inmates, than in its moral aspect and in
the feelings and characters of the prisoners. The books of
characters were preparing the way for the modern romande
mceurs, with its problems of psychology and morality, and
its subordination of plot to psychological study. They were
collecting, as it were, rough material for the novel of the future,
or rather they pointed out the direction in which it was to
develop.
The second quarter of the seventeenth century is marked
by the translation of several Spanish picaresque novels, a
movement which might have proved more fruitful, but for
the political troubles of the time. Up to 1620 Lazarillo
was the only foreign picaro who had been naturalized in
England. In that year a translation appeared of Juan de
Luna s fairly successful sequel, published in Paris, 1620, while
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL lix
James Mabbe produced the first of his classic translations
from the Spanish, The Rogue ; or, TheLife of Guzman deAlfarache.
They both went through several editions, and Guzman became,
like Lazarillo, a familiar character, witness the pamphlet,
The English Gusman ; or, the History of that Unparalleled Thief,
James Hind, by G. Fpdge], 1652. In 1631 the Celestina
followed in Mabbe s translation, entitled The Spanish Bawd, in
1638 La Desordenada Codicia de los Bienes agenos, with the
title The Sonne of the Rogue ; in 1640 Mabbe s translation of
Cervantes Novelas Exemplares, in 1657 an anonymous version
of Quevedo s Buscon, popularly known as El Gran Tacano ;
in the same year John Davies of Kidwelly translated
Les Hypocrites, Scarron s version of La Hija de Celes
tina, and in 1665 La Garduna de Sevilla with the title of
La Picara ; in 1670 Barbadillo s El Necio bien Afortunado
was translated by Philip Ayres, and his Don Diego de Noche
appeared anonymously in 1671 1 as a novel of Quevedo.
The idealistic novel was, however, even more popular. Just
as the Spanish had found recreation and refreshment from
their struggles towards world- empire in the chivalresque and
pastoral romance, so the English sought relief in their time
of stress from the roman heroique, that was in France approach
ing its downfall. The novels of d Urfe, La Calprenede,
Scuderi and the rest were translated into English and found,
even when Puritanism was predominant, at least as many
readers as the romantic love-stories of Greene and his school.
Nor was the roman comique, the French burlesque equivalent
of the picaresque novel, forgotten, though it did not exercise
in England the salutary effect that it had in France : for
even in Addison s time we learn that the ponderous heroic
romance still kept its place upon the shelves. Francion
was translated by a person of quality , probably R. Loveday,
in 1655, two years after Le Berger Extravagant, and Scarron s
Roman Comique in 1676.
The heroic romance found imitators in Roger Boyle, Earl
of Orrery, Sir George Mackenzie and John Crowne, while
the translations of the picaresque novels and the romans
comiques inspired nothing better than The English Rogue.
Richard Head, a professional bookmaker, published the first
1 v. note, p. li.
Ix THE PICARESQUE NOVEL
part of this astounding work in 1665. He boasts com
placently that Rabelais, Lazaro, Guzman, El Gran Tacano
and Francion must lower their diminished heads :
Henceforth, Translations, pack away, begone ;
No rogue so well writ as our English one.
Unhappily the book is one of the worst picaresque novels
ever written ; it is exceedingly coarse and obscene, and,
though the author declares with pride that his English rogue
is a copy of men not books I skimmed not off the Cream
of other men s Wits . . . from the dictation of my own
Genius, I have exprest quicquid in buccam venerit,
what came next, without much premeditation or study
it is exactly what its author declares it is not * crambem bis
coctam , though we can well believe that he studied its
composition no more carefully than he selected his Latin tags :
it is simply a jumble of stories stolen from all sorts and con
ditions of beggar books and rogue novels. The three con
tinuations, the first by Francis Kirkman, who confesses that
his chiefest design in writing it was to gain ready money, the
two last by Head and Kirkman in collaboration, are more
despicable than the original. Kirkman s Unlucky Citizen
(1673) and Head s Proteus Redivivus (1675) are even less
meritorious compositions than The English Rogue.
In 1688 another feeble attempt was made to compose
an English picaresque romance. At the end of a rifacimento
of the Lazarillo and Luna s sequel, was added The Life and
Death of Young Lazarillo, Heir Apparent to Lazarillo de Tormes.
But the additions were all borrowed some even from The
English Rogue, and the work is quite devoid of interest. John
Bunyan s Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) was written
with a stern moral purpose that in truth removes it from the
ranks of fiction, though it must rank as a forerunner of the
modern novel.
The last year of this century saw the publication of The
Adventures of Covent Garden, an imitation of Furetiere s Roman
Bourgeois, though the author ascribes the City Romance
he is following to Scarron, doubtless as a name better known
to the English public. Formless as its original, its vignettes
of London life still retain an interest.
THE PICARESQUE NOVEL Ixi
GIL BLAS
After the Roman Bourgeois (1666) the novel sank into a
secondary place, and not even such a masterpiece as La
Princesse de Cleves (1678) could at once rehabilitate it. The
roman heroique had succumbed to the attacks of the classical
school, and with it perished its rival, the roman comique, which
existed only as a burlesque and parody. The novel had come
to a standstill, and before it could resume its development a
fresh inspiration was needed. There was nothing inspiring
in the few picaresque novels that appeared at the beginning
of the eighteenth century ; they were little more than degen
erate descendants of the roman comique, and they endeavoured
to replace the burlesque of their predecessors by a satiric
purpose, an exaggeration of the implied satire of mankind
in general, which in the best forms of the picaresque novel
added an incidental savour to the observation of reality.
In this class it is sufficient to mention L lnfortune Napolitain
(1708) by the Abbe Olivier, which maintained the traditional
form, and was honoured by a translation (several times re
printed) and two sequels in English. Of greater interest
are the memoirs of gentlemen-adventurers, more or less
true to life. The Memoires de M. d Artagnan (1700) by
Courtilz de Sandras present Dumas memorable hero less
in the light of a champion de capa y espada, than in that
of a chevalier d industrie. The best of the memoirs of this
period are the Memoires du Comte de Gramont (1713) by his
brother-in-law, Anthony Hamilton, which provide us with a
study of rascality in high life, to which th
