name and fame now things of the past, to what he is indebted for being thus embalmed in the "Gallery,"—
"The thing, we know, is neither rich, nor rare."
The answer is,—his pleasing appearance and gentlemanly manner, his reputation as a linguist, his temporary success as a dramatic author and a novelist, his membership of the Garrick Club, his fame as a contributor to the Metropolitan and other magazines, and the prestige which invariably attaches to a well-bred, well-educated foreigner, of assured position, in lion-loving London.
However this may be, Trueba, though fond enough of notoriety, hardly felt grateful for the manner in which it was conferred, and was angry with the artist for handing him down to posterity, absorbed in self-complacency and the solitary performance of his Terpsichorean evolutions. Why should this be?" asks Fraser (August, 1831, p. 20). " All works of art should be consistent; one would not paint a puppy with a lion's head, a goose with the wings and long neck of an ostrich, or a donkey with the head and ears of the bearded pard." This occurs in a short notice of Trueba's novel, Paris and London a trashy, flippant, indecent affair, dedicated to Bulwer, and now quite forgotten. Thus, attitude and occupation alike appropriate—
"The Don, to tune of gay quadrille,
Floats double, Don and shadow,"
and we have Trueba himself before us, an elegant trifler, —
"Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis.'
Let his shade therefore be grateful for his undeserved occupancy of a place in our "Gallery," and the immortality therewith involved.
The mother of Trueba, a lady of fortune, and a staunch Liberal, left Spain on the overthrow of the constitutional party, and took up her residence in Paris. Her son was educated in this country; and thus English was so far his vernacular tongue that, as Maginn wickedly said, "he could no more write Spanish than Lord Palmerston, or Dr. Bowring." He became an author, and wrote several novels,—The Castilian, The Incognito, Salvador the Guerilla, Gomez Arias,—of the merits of which, as I do not chance to have met with one of them, I will not attempt to speak. Besides these, he was author of several farces, which obtained a certain amount of success in their day: such as Call again To-morrow, Mr. and Mrs. Pringle, etc.; also a comedy, The Exquisites, which may still be remembered by octogenarian play-goers, and which was reviewed by Leigh Hunt in The Tatler. Then came another, entitled Men of Pleasure, which was unsuccessfully performed at Drury Lane, in June, 1832; and a third, which appeared with better fate, at the Victoria, in January, 1834, under the title of The Royal Fugitive; or Triumph of Justice. I believe that he also wrote pieces in French, which achieved success on the Parisian stage; and that he is not unknown as a dramatic author,— in spite of the Doctor's assertion that he was innocent of Castilian,—in his own country and language.
In 1829, Trueba wrote for Constable's Miscellany the "Life of Herman Cortes," an able and apparently impartial biography of that extraordinary man; and in the following year, for the same serial, the"History of the
