clergy; in the second part the hero is presented as a devout youth
transformed into a tunny at the intercession of the Virgin Mary,
who thus saved him from death; after many extravagant experiences
in this form he is restored to human shape, and proposes
to teach the submarine language at the university of Salamanca.
This dull performance naturally failed to please and, meanwhile,
many surreptitious copies of the first part were introduced into
Spain, the Inquisition finally gave up the attempt to suppress it,
and in 1573, an expurgated edition was authorized. With this
mutilated version the Spanish public was forced to be content
during the remaining fifteen years of Philip II.’s reign. Upon
the death of this sombre monarch society relaxed its hypocritical
pose of austerity, and in 1599 Mateo Alemán (q.v.) published the
Primera parte de Guzmán de Alfarache. It is modelled upon
Lazarillo de Tormes, being the autobiography of the son of a
ruined Genoese money-lender, but the writer indulges in a
tedious series of moralizing. This contrasts sharply with the
laconic cynicism of Lazarillo de Tormes, but Guzmán de Alfarache
is richer in invention, in variety of episode and in the presentation
of character. Its extraordinary popularity tempted a Valencian
lawyer named Juan José Marti to publish a Segunda parte de la
vida del pícaro Guzmán de Alfarache (1602) under the pseudonym
of Mateo Lujan de Sayavedra. Though partly plagiarized from
the manuscript of the genuine second part to which Marti had
somehow obtained access, the continuation was coldly received,
in 1604 Aleman brought out the true continuation, and revenged
himself by introducing into the narrative a brother of Martí—a
crazy picaroon of the lowest morality who ultimately commits
suicide in disgust at his own turpitude. In Lazarillo de Tormes,
and still more in Guzman de Alfarache, it is difficult to distinguish
between the invented episodes and the personal reminiscences
of the authors The Viage entretenido (1603) of Agustin de Rojas
is a realistic account of the writer’s experiences as a strolling
actor and playwright, and, apart from its considerable literary
merits, it is an invaluable contribution to the history of the
Spanish stage as well as a graphic record of contemporary low
life, the chief character in the book is called the caballero del
milagro, an expression which recurs in Spanish literature as the
equivalent of a chevalier d’industrie.
The next in chronological order of the Spanish picaresque tales is La Pícara Justina (1605), the history of a Woman picaroon, which it has long been customary to ascribe to Andrés Pérez, a Dominican monk. there is, however, no good reason to suppose that the name of Francisco López de Úbeda on the title-page is a pseudonym. The Pícara Justina has wrongly acquired a reputation for indecency; its real defects are an affected diction and a want of originality. The writer frankly admits that he has taken material from the Celestina, from Lazarillo de Tormes, from Guevara, Timoneda and Aleman, and he boastfully asserts that “there is nothing good in ballad, play or Spanish poet, but that its quintessence is given here.” Unluckily he has not the talent to utilize these stolen goods. The Pioara Jnstina was thrice reprinted during the seventeenth century, this is the only basis for the untenable theory that it is the source of the culteranismo which reaches its climax in Gracian’s treatises. The Pícara Justina is now read solely by philologists in quest of verbal eccentricities. Ginés de Pasamonte, one of the secondary figures in Don Quixote (1605–1615), is a singularly vivid sketch of the Spanish rogue, and in the comedy entitled Pedro de Urdemalas Cervantes again presents a brilliant panorama of picaresque existence. He returns to the subject in Rinconete y Cortadillo and in the Coloquio de los perros, two of the best stories in the Novelas ejemplares (1613). The attraction of picaresque life was felt by pious and learned critics, and expounded in print In the Viage del mundo (1614) the zealous missionary Pedro de Cevallos interpolates amusing tales of what befell him in the slums of Andalusia before he fled from justice to America, where he lived as a sinful soldier till his spiritual conversion was accomplished Cristóbal Suarez de Figueroa, a caustic critic of his contemporaries and an arbiter of taste, did not think it beneath his dignity to show a disconcerting acquaintance with the ways of professional rogues, and in El Pasagero (1617) he fills in the sketch of the knavish inn-keeper already outlined by Cervantes in Don Quixote. Evidence of the widely diffused taste for picaresque literature is found in Enriquez de Castro (1617), an interminable story Written in Spanish by a Frenchman named Francois Loubayssin de Lamarca, who brought out his book at Paris, two years previously Loubayssin had introduced some clever but risky picaresque episodes in his Engaños deste siglo y historia sucedida en nuestros tiempos. But his attempt to fill a larger canvas is a complete failure.
The roving instinct of Vicente Martínez Espinel (q.v.) had led him into strange and dangerous company before and after his ordination as a priest, and a great part of his Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618) is manifestly the confession of one who has regretfully outlived his pleasant vices. The baffling compound of fact with fiction and the lucid style of which Espinel was a master would suffice to win for Marcos de Obregon a permanent place in the history of Spanish literature, the fact that it was largely utilized by Le Sage in Gil Blas has won for it a place in the history of comparative literature. Within five months of its publication at Madrid a fragmentary French version by the Sieur d’Audiguier was issued at Paris, and at Paris also there appeared a Spanish picaresque story entitled La Desordenada codicia de los bienes ajenos (1619), ascribed conjecturally to a certain Dr Carlos Garcia, who reports his conversation with a garrulous gaol-bird, and appends a glossary of slang terms used by the confraternity of thieves, he was not, however, the first worker in this field, for a key to their gross jargon had been given ten years previously by Juan Hidalgo in his Romances de germania (1609), a series of gipsy ballads. Every kind of picaroon is portrayed with intelligent sympathy by Alonso Jeronimo de Salas Barbadillo, who is always described as a picaresque novelist; yet he so constantly neglects the recognized conventions of the Spanish school that his right to the title is disputable. Thus in La Hija de Celestina (1612) he abandons the autobiographical form, in El Subtil cordobés Pedro de Urdenialos (1620) he alternates between dialogue and verse, and in El Necio bien afortunado (1621) the chief character is rather a cunning dolt than a successful scoundrel. The pretence of warning newcomers against the innumerable occasions of sin in the capital is solemnly kept up by Antonio Lifian y Verdugo in his Guia y avisos de forasteros que vienen á la corte (1620), but in most of his tales there is more entertainment than decorum.
The profession of a serious moral purpose on the part of many picaresque writers is often a transparent excuse for the introduction of unsavoury incident. There is, however, no ground for doubting the sincerity of the physician Jerónimo de Alcala Yañez y Ribera, who at one time thought of taking holy orders, and studied theology under St John of the Cross. An unusual gravity of intention is visible in Alonso, mozo de muchos amos (1624–1626), in which the repentant picaro Alonso, now a lay brother, tells the story of his past life to the superior of the monastery in which he has taken refuge. It abounds with pointed anecdotes and with curious information concerning the Spanish gipsies, and this last characteristic explains George Borrow’s hyperbolical praise of the work as competing with Don Quixote in grave humour, and as unequalled “for knowledge of the human mind and acute observation.”
At about this time there lived in Spain an ex-nun named Catalina de Erauso, who fled from her convent, dressed herself in men’s clothes, enlisted, was promoted ensign, and saw more of life than any other nun in history. Broadsides relating the story of this picaresque amazon Were circulated during her lifetime, and the details of her adventures arrested the attention of De Quincey, who would seem to have read them in a Spanish original which has been admirably translated since then by the French poet José Maria de Heredia. The Spanish original, in its existing form, was issued no earlier than 1829 by Joaquin Maria de Ferrer, whose character is not a satisfactory guarantee of the work’s authenticity; but its interest is unquestionable. No such suspicion attaches to the Vida of Alonso de Contreras, first published in 1899; this out-at-elbows soldier faithfully records how he became a knight of the Order of Santiago, how he
