BOOK II.

CHAP. I.

Of what Happened to me at my coming to Madrid as soon as I arrived there,

until Nightfall 143

CHAP. II.

In which the same Subject is pursued, with other

strange Incidents 150

CHAP. III.

The further Proceedings of this Sharping Gang, till they were thrown all

together into Gaol 166

CHAP. IV.

In which the Prison is described and what Happened therein, until the old

Woman was whipped, my Companions exposed to Shame, and myself

let out on Bail 176

CHAP. V.

How I took a Lodging, and the Misfortune that befel me therein 184

CHAP. VI.

In which the same Subject is pursued, with other

strange Incidents 192

CHAP. VII.

In which the Story is continued, with other Incidents

and notable Misfortunes 199

CHAP. VIII.

Of my Cure and other Strange Things 211

CHAP. IX.

In which I turn Player, Poet, and Gallant of Nuns; which Characters are

Daintily Painted 222

CHAP. X.

Of what Happened to me at Seville, till I took

Ship for the Indies 235

COMMENTS ON THE DRAWINGS

OF DANIEL VIERGE BY

IOSEPH PENNELL AND AN

ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND

WRITINGS OF QUEVEDO BY

HENRY EDWARD WATTS

COMMENTS ON THE DRAWINGS OF DANIEL URRABIETA VIERGE.

_And also a Letter from the Artist._

To attempt to introduce Daniel Vierge to the few artists of the world

who are artists, would be, on my part, an impertinence, since his work

is as well known to them as it is to myself. To attempt to introduce him

to the rest of the world would be no less impertinent, since apparently

most men care nothing for the illustrator, though they may, without ever

troubling to know him, delight in his work. But the appearance of _Pablo

de Segovia_, not in French or Spanish, but in English, illustrated by

Vierge's completed series of drawings, is worthy of note and, possibly,

of some comment.

Vierge's first edition of this book was published in Paris in 1882, by

Bonhoure, and the drawings not only made his own name famous throughout

the entire artistic world, but renewed the popularity of Quevedo. The

book--and when I speak of it I refer to the illustrations and not to the

letter-press--was the most brilliant, the most daring, the most original

which had ever appeared. From the head-piece of the first chapter nearly

to the end, almost every page contained a perfect picture which amazed

all who studied it, and delighted all who could appreciate it. These

exquisite little drawings displayed a knowledge of form, of action, of

light and shade, of architecture, expressed with a brilliancy of

handling which has never been surpassed. To make such a statement is to

challenge criticism. But if there have been any more artistic drawings,

or engravings of drawings, produced from the time of Dürer or Bellini,

Rembrandt or of Piranesi, I have yet to find them, though I have gone in

search of them through the chief Museums and Galleries of Europe. In

comparison with Vierge, Dürer knows nothing of light and shade, Bellini

and Vandyke and Holbein are heavy and laboured in their handling, while

Piranesi and Canaletto have but an historical interest. It is true that

to-day in many ways by many men Vierge is nearly approached, but he has

been the inspirer and the master of them all.

The ninety little process blocks in Bonhoure's edition showed the

knowledge of the past, combined with the brilliancy and go of the

present. But after a certain page there came a blank, and the

letter-press dragged on--a libretto without the music. All that one knew

was contained in a short note by the publisher: Vierge had been stricken

with a grave malady, for some years he disappeared as a working artist.

Those years, however, were spent in struggling against an affliction

which would have killed a man less strong, but from which he has emerged

able to complete his most important work. I am sure that Vierge would be

the last, either himself to advertise his frightful misfortune, now

happily over, or to wish to have it advertised by others. It is enough

to say that when his entire right side was paralysed, and he lost the

power of speech, he simply trained himself to work with his left hand,

and to-day, as is proved by the last twenty illustrations in this book,

and the pages of _Le Monde Illustré_ week after week, he is producing

drawings which are unsurpassed.

I hate and abominate the painter who fills columns with the recital of

his misfortunes, telling you how he lost his paint brush, or how he had

never a canvas of the right size, and soulfully lamenting the degeneracy

of an age which knows quite too much to appreciate him. I can almost

worship a man who silently conquers a living death.

Vierge is an artist who, like all great artists, has worked for his

art--and his bread and butter. He is an illustrator, and, though

therefore he has no hope of devoting a gallery to his own glorification,

any Museum which might be so fortunate as to secure the original

drawings from which these reproductions were made, would become for

artists a place of pilgrimage.

[Illustration]

His first publisher thought it enough to state, in the smallest possible

types on the title page, that the story of _Pablo_ was _illustrée de

nombreux dessins par D. Vierge_--many publishers are not even so

generous as this, and ignore the artist-illustrator altogether. To give

the man, to whose genius the whole reason of the new edition was due, a

few lines in a publisher's preface, was, I suppose, very kind and

thoughtful and considerate. But the French Government has since

decorated Vierge with the Legion of Honour, and the French artists have

awarded him a gold medal for these very designs. The charm and

interest of the old illuminated missals lie not in the text, which often

can be gotten elsewhere or is of no account, but in the pictures or

decorations themselves, the work of the illustrators of that day. While

the illuminations are prized, the names of the artists are usually

forgotten. So, too, the work of contemporary illustrators is almost

invariably dismissed by the critic with a sneer or with patronage, if

indeed it be noticed at all. Still, there are some of us who know that

these _great little masters_ of illustration have spent more time and

thought over the production of the _cuts_ which _embellish_ an author,

than the author himself did on the text, and not infrequently knows far

more about the subject. But because the criticism of books is, as a

rule, in the hands of men who know nothing about art, their drawings are

ignored. Or perhaps the degeneracy of modern illustration, and the want

of ability of engravers and reproductive artists, is lamented by men who

could not tell the difference between a process block and an etching,

though they are certain that the old work, the originals of which they

never saw, is much better than that which we are doing to-day and which

they do not want to see.

Fewer people, probably, have seen Vierge's Quevedo since it has been

published, than in a day sit and gape, and yawn in awe-struck ignorance

before the Sistine Madonna; and yet the latter is as blatant a piece of

shoddy commercialism as has ever been produced; the Quevedo is a pure

work of art. Indeed, never in the history of the world were there such

marvellous drawings produced as to-day. But while collectors, dealers,

and directors of Museums squabble over a piece of dirty paper, or throw

public funds and private money away for drawings of which, if Dürer or

Rembrandt, or any painter of distinction, perpetrated them, he should

have been ashamed, none has the wit to spend as many pennies on the

drawings of modern men with no popular reputation, as they do pounds for

the work of others who have a widespread, and possibly justly merited

fame, but no knowledge of the art they practise.

Go through the National Galleries of Germany, and though you will find

tons of miserable scrawls produced by painters, outside of Berlin you

will scarcely come across a drawing by Menzel or Klinger. In the

much-belauded gallery of Munich, you will not find an example of Dietz

or any of the men who to-day are the leaders of German art; if you want

to see them you must go to the publishing offices of _Fliegende

Blätter_. And how many Charles Keenes or Frederick Sandys' does the

British nation possess? Or where, outside of the offices of the _Century

Magazine_ and _Harper's_, can you see a comprehensive collection of the

work of American illustrators? In France, if you wish to study drawings

produced by the cleverest of French draughtsmen, you must go, not to the

Louvre or the Luxembourg, but to the Elysée Montmartre or the Chat Noir.

So long as print sellers and curators have no real knowledge of art, one

may expect the present state of affairs to continue.

Until art be taken as seriously as literature, and be discussed with as

much thought and care and attention by men who understand it practically

as well as theoretically--for the theory of art is or no value, and the

practice is everything--illustration will not find its proper place as

one of the most living and important of the fine arts. But, no

matter--the great illustrator is quite as much of a creator as the great

painter or the great sculptor. If the illustrator print his conception

of an author's meaning upon the same page as the latter's text, this

does not belittle him any more than it increases a painter's greatness

to give his picture the place of honour in a Museum, or the sculptor's

genius to allow him to obstruct the traffic of a street.

The first issue of _Pablo de Segovia_ completely revolutionised the art

of illustration and created a new school of illustrators, the influence

of which is now felt all over the world, even by artists to whom the

name of Vierge is absolutely unknown, and by critics who, in praising

their friends, are really only testifying to the greatness of the master

whose name they never heard. And here I should like to say that I make

no pretension to having discovered Daniel Vierge, although I have been

accused of it; this book discovered him to all artists.

When it came to reproduction, most of the drawings had to be much

reduced. This was beautifully done by Gillot (and it is interesting to

compare the latter's work of ten years ago with that in this volume done

by him to-day), while the printing of Lahure was most careful and

satisfactory; but the appearance of Vierge's work in many cases was

entirely changed, though he himself knew how it would be changed.

Vierge, as anyone can see from these new reproductions, drew openly,

freely, boldly, but most carefully. The reproductions in Bonhoure's

edition gave one the impression of exquisite delicacy, a refinement of

line which did not altogether exist in the original drawings, but was

produced because the artist knew exactly what he wanted, and because the

engraver was able to obtain it.

The drawings were made upon white paper--Bristol board or drawing

paper--with a pen and liquid Indian ink. Vierge uses now a glass pen

like an old stylus, and this, I believe, he prefers to all others. The

drawings were then given to Gillot, the photo-engraver, who, by means of

photography and handwork, produced in a metal block a reproduction of

the original drawing which could be printed with type. It is a

favourite, but fallacious, statement of the art critics that mechanical

reproduction not only ruins the drawing, but is not to be compared to

facsimile woodcutting. This is absolutely untrue if the artist is a

craftsman, and the engraver, who is a craftsman, is also an artist.

Vierge and Gillot fulfill these conditions. No woodcutter, not even

Whitney, Collins, Gamm or Léveillé (there are, unfortunately, none in

England to be considered) could reproduce any one of these drawings in

the wood a bit better than Gillot has done by the mechanical process.

Many of Vierge's lines are so clear and so pure and so simple, that they

would be comparatively easy to cut in the wood. Other arrangements of

lines are so complex, that no woodcutter could ever follow them, but

would have to suggest them. Gillot has reproduced them perfectly, and

almost altogether by mechanical means. But, granted that the woodcutters

could have made equally good reproductions, unless you could find a

consummate artist, who, for the love of the thing, was willing to give

years of his life to it, it would be much more sensible to do what has

been done--give the work to a mechanical engraver like Gillot. For the

woodcutter would be sure to put some of his own personality into his

block, and for my part I prefer Vierge unadulterated. But it is one of

the art critic's absurd canons of belief that in taking work away from

woodcutters and handing it over to mechanical reproducers you are

ruining the art of wood-engraving. The process man has merely removed

much drudgery from the wood-engraver, and obtained for him the chance to

produce work of his own. In the reproduction of pen drawings like those

of Vierge, nearly as much depends upon the printer as upon anyone else,

and I look forward with much interest to the appearance the book will

present. Even authorities on the subject of illustration continually go

wrong in this matter, by accusing artists, who know perfectly well what

they are about, of being unable to draw for reproduction, when the

engraver's proofs which are sent them are almost perfect, though the

final result is almost invariably ruined, owing in some degree to the

artlessness of printers, who, of course, in a fine book should never be

trusted, but principally to the imperfections of the modern

steam-printing press, and quality of the paper supplied by publishers.

No illustrated book can have full justice done to it unless it is

printed by hand as carefully as an etching. No art critic displays

anything but his small knowledge of the subject when he blames the

artist for what may be due to the incapacity of the engraver or the

imperfections of the press. Though the critic and the public have only

to consider the result--the printed book--in almost every case, the

artist is absolutely helpless, as he is not allowed to have anything to

do with this result. That comparative perfection may be reached has,

however, been shown, on the one hand, by the productions of the

Kelmscott Press in hand-work, and, on the other, by the De Vinne Press

with steam.

Fifty years ago Vierge's illustrations could not have been printed with

type. Because once this could not be done--because until the present

century and the coming of Menzel and Fortuny there never was a man who

could draw like Vierge; are not new styles of reproduction to be

invented for his benefit, and new methods of printing to be employed? No

doubt the early printed books, now the pride of the collector and the

dealer, were sneered at by the illuminator and damned by the critic.

Some day Bonhoure's edition of _Pablo_ will be quite as highly prized as

the most precious Caxton.

I have no intention of going into the analysis of the motives which

prompted Vierge to undertake the illustration of _Pablo de Segovia_. I

have never asked him why he took it up, and most likely if he were asked

it would be impossible for him to suggest any reason, other than that

the book appealed to him. I do not believe that any artist could

definitely explain why he endeavoured to produce a certain work of art.

He merely wanted to do it, and then the opportunity presented itself.

Nor do I think the literary artist would know why he wrote a certain

novel. The idea came to him, and he had to. The literary man can

describe his sensations, and tell you how he actually walked across the

street to see a house, or re-wrote a page which did not please him, or

hunted for months for a character: it is the fashion for him to do so.

The artist experiences the same sensations. He not only has to go across

the street to see the house, but he may probably have to stand before

it, on the side-walk, for a couple of days amidst the crowd and traffic,

working under the most difficult conditions; he too has to search for

his model, and, when he has found him, obtain the actual costumes he

wants, or have them made. The literary man, too, can get almost all his

accessories out of books, or if he has to go to a Museum and cannot send

some one, a glance and a few words are enough. The result, if well done,

is hailed as great literature; but the artist, who probably has worked

quite as long, quite as hard, and put quite as much brains into his

work, is told, if he is told anything, that his drawings are pretty. He

seldom has the opportunity of showing how well and how faithfully he has

done his part. It is more than possible that if he has really studied

his subject carefully the author will not like the result, and the

public will complain because the artist has given them more than the

author was able to make them see for themselves, or else they will

demand a photograph because he has made them look at nature with his

eyes.

However, it cannot any longer be said that the illustrator's life is not

reasonably successful. The Paris Exhibition of 1889 brought the gold

medal, to which I have referred, to Vierge for these very drawings, and

the French nation has since decorated him, and in his case it certainly

was a reward for merit and nothing else. Then, also, in illustrating a

book like _Pablo_, of course a certain amount of latitude was allowable.

The artist could pick and choose his architecture in the most

picturesque spots of Spain, and produce a harmonious whole. Nor did he

have to consider Quevedo's personal whims; in this case the author,

being dead, could not demand that the artist should illustrate exactly

those portions of his work which are not illustratable, or which do not

appeal to him. He could work away at just the time when he wished to;

having no _Salon_ to get ready for, he could make his drawings in

whatever fashion he chose, trying all kinds of methods and experiments,

with no hanging committee to reject him because his originality would

cast their own productions into the shade; he could then have his

drawings joyfully accepted by a publisher, and work sympathetically with

the engraver and printer. But it was just when he thought success within

his grasp, and the book was almost finished, that he was paralysed.

Vierge's case, so far as the first edition of _Pablo_ is concerned, is

one of the most cruel. The relations of artists and publishers that is,

publishers who understand the production of fine books--have usually

been happy. But there are exceptions.

I cannot point out whether these drawings, from the author's point of

view, illustrate the text. I have never read the whole book. But I only

care to consider the illustrations as the most remarkable series of

little pictures in black and white that have been produced. That this

will be admitted I do not believe for a minute. More probably Dürer or

Botticelli will be cited, and the nobility of their composition

extolled, and the purity of their ideals dilated upon, while the

meanness of Vierge's imagination, and the baseness of his ideals, are

exhibited as a painful contrast. I find, however, Vierge's true and

brilliant realism much more interesting than the conventional idealism

of the past. The man who can interest and delight you by the way he

draws an old shoe, or a broken pot, as Vierge has done, is quite as

great as he who must take a heavenly host to produce the same

impression.

And from the point of view of technique Vierge's work is the most

perfect that has been done, and it is this quality alone--that is

technique--which has made the reputation of Rembrandt and Velasquez. It

is not because of its subject that a picture is great, but because of

the manner in which it is worked out. To rank subject above execution,

from which it is absolutely inseparable, is intolerable to the artist,

and is merely a device of the inartistic to palm off their incompetent

productions. Nowhere save among Teutonic nations would it be necessary

to make this explanation. But in a land where _Art_ with a _Mission_,

and a big _A_, has descended upon the people, it cannot be too strongly

insisted upon. It may be well, therefore, to show wherein the greatness

of Vierge's technique lies.

It is most evident in his power of expressing many facts with the fewest

possible lines. Each one of these lines is put down with the thought of

the engraver for ever in his mind. This, however, does not mean that he

is less free in his handling. It merely implies his complete command of

his materials. The art of leaving out, and yet conveying the right

impression, probably is the most difficult in the world. Like all art,

which is most subtle, it appears ridiculously easy. Every line is drawn

with the utmost care--a care so great that it is not apparent. The

figures in the little pictures are worked out with a thorough knowledge

of anatomy. The architecture and landscapes, and especially one or two

drawings of mountains, have been studied and rendered in marvellous

fashion. All these pictures are filled with the sunlight and atmosphere

of the south; and all look so simple and so slight that anyone would

think he could almost do them himself. Possibly he could--almost. For

the boundary between good work and bad is nearly imperceptible; in fact,

it is quite so except to a few artists. And it is really only to those

few artists that a work of art does truly appeal in its entirety.

This, as a whole, is the last and the most important complete work which

Vierge has ever produced. But for a man who probably has so many working

years before him--Vierge cannot be much more than forty--it may be the

first of a long series of masterpieces. I know that he has schemes for

such work in his head, and he has now found the most important person

for an illustrator--a publisher. But even should he never be able to

realise his dreams of illustrating the great authors of his own country,

he has already done more than most men: not only has he produced work

which has delighted the artistic world, work which will live, but he has

created a method and a science of illustration acknowledged by the few

to be hitherto unequalled for brilliancy of execution and adaptability

for the printing press.

JOSEPH PENNELL.

NOTE.--At my request, Vierge has furnished the following brief details

of so much of his life and work as he wishes to make public:--

_20 Fevrier, 1892._

_ ...Je suis né le 5 Mars, 1851, des l'âge de 3 ans je commençais à

crayonner, il parait que c'était mon seul amusement d'enfant; mon

pêre me voyant des dispositions serieuses pour le dessin me fit

travailler sans relâche._

_Ma santé jusqu'à 7 ans était délicate; pour ce motif mes parents

ont quetté la ville, pour habiter un endroit, prés de Madrid, nommé

Pinto, et là tout en remettant ma santé du matin au soir je prenais

des croquis d'après nature._

_En 1864 j'entrais à l'école des Beaux Arts de Madrid, J'avais

comme maîtres_, Madrazo, Fédérico, M. de Hatt, Borglini, _etc. En

1865, le 18 Juillet, j'obtonais une mention honorable notée

excelente. En 1866, le 8 Juillet, même récompense; en 1867, le 16

Juin, un diplome d'honneur. C'est à cette époque que j'ai illustré_

"Madrid la Nuit," _écrit par_ Eusebio Blasco; "Les Mystéres de Rome

et du Globe." _A la suite au musée de Madrid, j'ai copié quantité

d'études de peinture d'après_ Velasquez _et_ Gohia. _En 1869

j'arrivais à Paris avec l'espoire de ne faire que de la peinture, à

peine dans cette ville la guerre Franco-Allemande éclata, par cet

incident je me suis trouvé accaparé par_ "Le Monde Illustré" _et

par_ "La Vie Moderne." _A cette même époque j'ai illustré quantité

de livres, entres autres_, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer," "Année

Terrible," "Notre-Dame de Paris" _et d'autres écrits par_ Victor

Hugo; "La Mosaïque," "Le Musée des Familles," "Le Magasin

Pitoresque," "Le Grand Tacagno" _de_ Quevedo, "Les Contes"

_d_'Edgar Poe, _et aussi_ "L'histoire de France et la Revolution"

_de_ Michelet _et quantité d'autres. En 1882 je fus nommé

commandant ordinaire de la Reine d'Espagne Isabelle la Catholique.

Le 29 Septembre, 1889, j'ai reçu la médaille d'or à l'Exposition

Universelle de Paris de 1889, et le 29 Novembre, 1889, ma

décoration de Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur...._

VIERGE.

QUEVEDO AND HIS WORKS:

_With an Essay on the_ Picaresque _Novel_.

Not more unquestioned is Cervantes' claim to be the first of Spanish

humorists than that of Quevedo to be the second. Among his own

countrymen the title, which is generally the more disputable, has been

by a singular consensus of opinion assigned to Quevedo. The author of

_Don Quixote_ apart, who is with the Immortals, there is no greater name

among the writers of Spain than that of the author of _The Visions_, of

_Don Pablo_, of innumerable poems, pamphlets, satires, pieces of wit,

and works serious, moral, sportive, and fanciful. In that Golden Age,

prolific of authors, the hundred years between the birth of Cervantes

and the prime of Calderon, there was no genius so fruitful in every kind

of intellectual product. Poet, politician, humorist, satirist,

theologian, moralist, historian, novelist--Quevedo stands out a prodigy

of learning, wit, and quick and various invention, even among the crowd

of gifted writers who made that period famous in letters. He has been

called the Spanish Juvenal--the Spanish Ovid--the Spanish Lucian. He is

something of all these, and yet is unlike any of them. He wrote lyrics

with the grace, simplicity, and ease of Horace. He is as prodigal of

humour as Rabelais, whom he resembles also in his unfastidiousness, his

obscurity, and his extravagance. He has been likened to our English

Swift, to whom he is akin in the quality of his mordant wit, and almost

approaches in his anti-humanity; but he is lacking in the creative force

of the author of _Gulliver_. Not unlike Swift was Quevedo in fortune as

in genius, for it was disappointed ambition which wore out his heart and

drove him to satire, to visions, and assaults on human folly and vice.

From his earliest years Quevedo was marked for distinction. When

scarcely more than twenty-three he corresponded with the great scholars

of Germany and the Low Countries, the great Lipsius hailing him as

_magnum decus Hispanorum_, and in complimentary epistles urging him to

undertake the vindication of Homer. If we may believe the contemporary

records, Quevedo had by this time acquired all profane knowledge and

human learning. He was versed in all the languages, even Hebrew, Greek,

and Arabic. He began to write early, and continued to write during the

whole of his busy and turbulent life, with an industry, energy, and

fecundity which made him the wonder of his age. The catalogue of his

works embraces every department of authorship, and there appears to be

no species of composition, from an exhortation to a holy life to the

more than ribald canzonet, which he did not attempt. The gayest themes

were as much to his mind as the gravest studies, and from _Paul the

Apostle_ he could pass at will to _Paul the Sharper_, with no apparent

effort of wit or strain of conscience. Some of his works have been lost,

but enough remains to testify to the astonishing vigour, exuberance, and

versatility of his genius. There are religious treatises and biographies

of saints, a _Defence of the Faith_, and a homily on the sacred cradle

and sepulchre. There is a metrical translation of _Epictetus_, and

another of (the false) _Phocylides_. There is a life of _Marcus Brutus_.

There are letters to kings and statesmen, and tracts on the currency.

There are satires in verse and lampoons in prose. There are poems, odes,

ballads, and sonnets innumerable. Even the drama he did not leave

unattempted, though his comedies have perished, together with many other

works, including _Considerations on the New Testament_ and a _Treatise

on the Immortality of the Soul_. Finally, there is the _picaresque_

novel here presented to the English reader under the title of _Don Pablo

de Segovia_, or _Paul the Sharper_.

Francisco de Quevedo, or, to give him his full title, Francisco de Gomez

de Quevedo Villegas, was born at Madrid on the 26th of September, 1580.

He was thus thirty-three years younger than Cervantes, eighteen years

younger than Lope de Vega, and some twenty years older than Calderon.

His father had been a servant to the Emperor Charles V., and his mother

was a lady in attendance upon Philip II.'s fourth wife, Anne of Austria.

The family of Quevedo drew its source from the mountains of Old Castile,

near Burgos. This was a circumstance of which every good Spaniard of the

age was proud, as proving that he was descended from the pure Gothic

race, who maintained their hold of the soil even after the Moorish

invasion, and therefore was an _old Christian_, of blood unmixed with

Moor or Jew. From his parents' position the young Francisco must have

been early trained in the life of the Court and brought into contact

with those who dispensed the power and patronage of the king. He was

educated at the University of Alcalá de Henares, then in the height of

its fame. At fifteen he graduated in theology, and soon afterwards

acquired great distinction for his attainments in the civil and common

law and in the learned languages. That he was early distinguished as a

scholar is proved by his correspondence with Lipsius and other foreign

men of learning, by whom he was addressed as an equal. For some time,

however, Quevedo seems to have lived the usual life of a gay cavalier of

the Court, indulging, as he confesses himself, in the pleasures of his

age and the time, and taking part in those adventures which formed

matter for his lighter works. At twenty-three he was already a poet

distinguished enough to be included in Espinosa's _Flores de Poetas

Ilustres_ (1603). A few years afterwards was published the first

collection of his prose satires, which are better known to the world as

_Visions_--the _Zahurdas de Pluton_ (_Pigstyes of Pluto_), with a

dedication to the Conde de Lemos--a Mæcenas of the period, to whom

afterwards Cervantes dedicated the second part of his _Don Quixote_. The

pieces which are known as _Visions_ are among the most characteristic

and original, as they have been the most popular, of all Quevedo's

works. They bear such titles as _El Sueño de las Calaveras_ (_The Dream

of Skulls_); _El Alguacil Alguacilado_ (_The Catchpole Caught_); _Visita

de los Chistes_ (_Visitation of the Jests_); _El Mundo por de Dentro_

(_The World Inside Out_); _El Entremetido, la Dueña, y el Soplon_ (_The

Intermeddler, the Duenna, and the Informer_); and (the authorship of

which is more doubtful) _La Casa de los Locos de Amor_ (_The House of

the Love-Madmen_). These, which were published at various times, are

satires of a kind then new to the world, or known only in the works of

Lucian; audacious and somewhat extravagant of conception; abounding in

wit, in fancy, and in humour; various in character and in design, but

all intended to ridicule or censure some reigning folly or vice or

abuse. They have been called _Visions_ because most of them are cast in

the form of dreams, in which the author takes us into the world below,

among the Devil and his attendants, who are introduced with many lively

touches of wit and strokes of humour. It is an invention which has been

in favour with poets and satirists of all time, from Lucian to Dante,

and from Dante to Lord Byron.

By these _Visions_ (by himself never so called collectively) the name of

Quevedo has been chiefly made known out of Spain. They are among the

most characteristic of his works, in which his audacious humour and

impetuous fancy found full exercise and a congenial element. They have

been often translated into the various European languages, and were much

read and quoted in the commerce of letters. Besides these, the _Visions_

proper, which are serious satires levelled at the abuses and the evils

of the times, there were numerous other squibs, jests, and pasquinades,

of less solid substance or of lower aim, in rebuke of the fashionable

follies or the vulgar tastes, such as _El Cuento de los Cuentos_ (_The

Tale of Tales_), which is levelled at the excessive use of proverbs; _El

Caballero de la Tenaza_ (_The Knight of the Forceps_), being the apology

of a miser for himself; _La Perinola_ (_The Teetotum_), which is a

personal attack on the fussy and frivolous Perez de Montalvan, one of

Quevedo's favourite butts. There are numerous others, of which the very

titles are so coarse as not to be fit for mention--ephemeral and

obscure, which have died with the occasions which gave them birth.

That at least before 1613 Quevedo was esteemed, by those best capable of

judging, as among the best wits of the time, appears from the very

flattering notice of him which is contained in Cervantes' _Viage del

Parnaso_ (_Voyage to Parnassus_). He is there called _Apollo's son--son

of the Muse Calliope_; and his aid is declared to be absolutely

necessary in the war which the god of poetry is about to wage with the

bad poets. It is true that Cervantes was in the habit of praising almost

everybody, but from the warmth of the terms used, and from other

indications in Quevedo's own works, we may infer that the two greatest

wits of the period had, as great wits rarely have, a just appreciation

of each other. Lope de Vega also, who was of a different order of

genius, as well of a nature dissimilar, ever suspicious of a rival and

jealous of the applause given to another, could bring himself to speak

of Quevedo in his _Laurel de Apolo_ as _prince of the lyric poets_, the

Juvenal of Spanish verse, who might rival Pindar and replace Apollo

himself if the god were to fail.

But before Quevedo had made his name in letters he was destined to earn

distinction in a public career, which afforded him a rare opportunity

for displaying the versatility of his talents and the soundness of his

judgment. Debarred from the profession of arms by his physical

infirmity--he was lame of both feet from his birth--he was driven to

seek a career in civil employment. An adventure which befell him at

Madrid served to fix his destiny. Being in a church at Madrid during the

Holy Week, he saw a gallant of the Court offer a gross insult to a

modest woman. He interfered to protect her, swords were drawn, and

Quevedo slew the aggressor. The slain man being discovered to be a

person of rank, nearly related to those who had power at Court, Quevedo

was forced to fly the country, taking refuge in Sicily, then a

dependency of Spain. The governor or viceroy of the island was Don Pedro

Tellez Giron, Duke of Osuna, a powerful grandee, of whom it was said

that _nature made him a very little gentleman and his deeds a very great

lord_; a man of mark in the civil and military transactions of Philip

III. Quevedo was made his secretary by the Duke, and employed in many

delicate and important affairs of state, in all of which he is declared

to have proved, on the Duke's own testimony, his prudence, courage, and

ability. The Duke of Osuna was transferred, in 1615, from the government

of Sicily to that of Naples, and thither he was followed by Quevedo, who

was made Minister of Finance. In the interval between his employment in

Sicily and his higher office at Naples, Quevedo was despatched to Madrid

on a confidential mission in connection with the revenues of the island,

and was able to commend himself so greatly to the authorities that the

affair of the fatal duel was condoned and a pension of four hundred

ducats bestowed on him. At Naples Quevedo discharged his duties of

financial secretary with great ability and conspicuous success, so that

we are told that, while he reduced the burdens of the people, he

augmented the revenues of the State. During the years following he seems

to have been employed in various high and secret diplomatic businesses

in connection with the policy of the ambitious and turbulent Duke, his

master, being entrusted with the duties of a plenipotentiary at Rome and

at Venice, and managing them, according to the contemporary historians,

with much address and discretion. In the course of his political

adventures Quevedo was involved, in 1617, in that strange affair among

conspiracies which has since been so great a puzzle to historians, the

so-called _Conjuracion de Venise_, which has furnished St. Real with a

subject for his history, and Otway with characters and a plot for his

tragedy. Whether there really was, on the part of the Spanish Viceroy of

Naples, an attempt to overthrow the government of the Venetian Republic,

or whether, as later historians are inclined to believe, the whole

business was planned by the agents of the Venetian Senate to enable them

to reach certain of their political enemies, is a question which is

still under controversy--a controversy in which we are not concerned to

take a part. Certain it is that Quevedo contrived, as an agent of Spain,

to make himself a person the most ungrateful to the Republic, which

pursued him, for some months afterwards, with a fury of hate and

bitterness of malice, which, though flattering to his character of

political _intriguant_, seem irreconcilable with the theory of his

innocence. He even ran a narrow risk of losing his life when on a visit,

apparently secret and unauthorized, to Venice. He was chased by the

officers of justice, and only escaped, we are told, through the

completeness of his disguise, being habited in the rags of a beggar, and

his perfect command of the Venetian dialect. He had the honour of being

afterwards burnt in effigy, a compliment he returned by pouring a stream

of invective on Venice and her government out of the resources of his

abundant rhetoric. Venice he called _the lumber-house of the world--the

toll-booth of princes--a republic such as cannot be credited and cannot

be forgotten--greater than it is fitting for her to be, and less than

she gives herself out to be; powerful in treaties, and feeble in power;

sumptuous in arsenals, profuse in ships; terrible to those who fear the

hulks of a fleet, where fleet is none--a dominion which exposes the

hollowness of many fears. It is a state the more prone to dissensions of

all that exist, more hurtful to her friends than to her enemies, whose

embrace is a peaceful war_,--with a good deal else, in a tone which

savours of very bitter recollections.

Quevedo had now arrived at the zenith of his fame and fortunes. In 1617

he was in Madrid, where he was received with great honour by the King,

Philip III., and his minister, the all-powerful Duke of Lerma. He was

advanced to the much-coveted distinction of a Knight of the Order of

Santiago. The highest posts seemed to be awaiting him at home, through

favour of the feeble and besotted King, then under the influence of a

corrupt and incapable favourite, who was himself ruled by his minion,

Don Rodrigo Calderon. The ambition of Quevedo, as all his serious works

clearly show, was rather for power as a man of affairs than for fame as

a man of letters. But now he was destined to encounter a sudden change

of fortune. The death of Philip III. brought to the throne, in 1621, his

son, Philip IV., then a lad of seventeen, under the dominion of his

gentleman of the bedchamber, known to history as the Count-Duke

Olivares. All the principal officers of the late administration were

dismissed in disgrace. Even the powerful and able Duke of Osuna, whose

brilliant and successful rule in Naples had shed so much lustre on the

reign of the feeble Philip III., was recalled from his post. His

ministers and secretaries were involved in his fate. Quevedo was

sentenced to exile from Court, and confined to his patrimonial village

of La Torre de Juan Abad, where he was kept in a kind of imprisonment

for more than three years. To a man of his fervid temperament and

aspiring hopes this was a punishment worse than death, which seems for

ever after to have embittered his soul and soured his temper. Writing to

the President of Castile to complain of his miserable state and the

treatment to which he was subjected, he tells him that _he had seen many

men condemned to death, but no one condemned to make away with himself_.

He was ultimately allowed to go free without being told of what charge

there had been against him or any reason given for his detention.

Henceforth Quevedo seems to have abandoned all hopes of preferment at

Court, exhibiting more philosophy and more steadfastness in his resolve

to abstain from further thoughts of political life than other men of

letters have shown, in a similar turn of fate, who have been endowed

with the same taste for the delights of office. He seems to have

recovered some portion of the royal favour. He was offered various high

posts in the State, among others the embassy to Genoa, but he refused

them, and would only accept the honorary title of King's Secretary. He

did not wholly exclude himself from politics, however, but, like Swift,

continued to vex himself with public affairs, showing by his sensibility

to the follies and errors of statesmen where his heart lay, and what was

the secret of the _saeva indignatio_ by which he was tortured. He was

free with his pen in condemnation of crying abuses and defects in the

administration. He was prolific of letters, pamphlets, and satires in

prose and verse, all written with a boldness and freedom to which the

age was unaccustomed, which brought their author frequently into

trouble. He assailed a scheme for the debasement of the coinage with a

courage and a power of wit and sarcasm such as were not excelled even by

the famous Drapier, on the same theme, a hundred years later. He exposed

certain abuses in the distribution of the patronage of the military

order of Santiago with a fearlessness which cost him another period of

banishment from Court. He wrote letters to the King of France (Louis

XIII.) and others, more or less directly impugning the conduct of

affairs then under the worthless favourite, the Count-Duke of Olivares.

In 1634 Quevedo, being in his fifty-fourth year, married--to the

surprise, and somewhat to the amusement, of his friends. His way of life

hitherto had scarcely been such as to proclaim his confidence in the

married state; and a letter which he had written to his friend, the

widowed Duchess of Lerma, on the qualities required of a wife, had

seemed to set his standard of taste so high as to condemn him to

celibacy. His wife died soon after their marriage, leaving Quevedo with

fresh troubles, arising out of his satirical humour, or rather from his

reputation for satire. He had betaken himself, after his wife's death,

to his country retreat at Torre de Juan Abad to seek consolation in

literature; and this was probably his busiest period of production. He

wrote a life of Marcus Brutus, of which the scarcely concealed intention

was to point to the Cæsar who then tyrannized over Spain. He aimed

satires in verse, after the classical model, at the reigning favourite.

He wrote the _Politica de Dios y Gobierno de Cristo_ (_Policy of God and

Government of Christ_), which, under the guise of a religious work, was

a biting satire on the King and the Count-Duke. He wrote other works,

some of which have perished, distinguished by elegance of style and

energy of expression, none of them deserving of more than a passing

mention, and all belonging rather to the political history than to the

literature of Spain. To this period also, probably, are to be referred

the greater part of those satirical works, under the name of _Visions_,

which have chiefly contributed to make the name of Quevedo known to the

nations outside of Spain--those bitter, half-humorous, half-serious, and

all-fantastical inventions, such as _The Dream of Skulls_ and _The World

Inside Out_.

In 1639, when it might have seemed to him that Fortune had already done

her worst to plague him, and he had no more either to hope or fear from

kings or ministers, there happened to Quevedo the worst of all the

calamities which marked his busy and troubled life. A satirical sonnet

was found under the King's napkin at supper, which contained violent

reflections on the Government of the Count-Duke Olivares. Quevedo was

believed to be the author, and, without any inquiry or trial, he was

seized at dead of night, in the Duke of Medina Celi's palace, and

hurried off to a dungeon under the cells of the Royal Convent of San

Marcos at Leon. Here he was kept in strict confinement for nearly four

years, in spite of a pitiful appeal to Olivares, in which, while

protesting his innocence of the offence imputed to him, Quevedo wrote:

_No clemency can add many years to my life; no rigour can take many

away_. He was asked to declare which of the many satires there were

going about were his and which were not, but he returned a proud and

disdainful answer. The real author of the lampoon for which Quevedo was

punished was discovered soon after, but this made little or no

difference in the treatment to which he was subjected. In vain did he

entreat the Count-Duke for justice and relief. He pleaded that he was

blind of the left eye, crippled, and afflicted with ulcers, declaring

that he sought not liberty but change of regimen and of prison, _and

this change, the gospel says, Christ granted to a great number of devils

who besought it of Him_. In vain were all these pleas. They were

probably glad to be able to silence, on any pretext, that bold and

biting tongue, which had already done so much to proclaim to posterity

the iniquities of the Government. It was not until after the fall of the

Count-Duke himself, amidst the rejoicings of the whole nation, that

Quevedo was restored to liberty. But his four years' imprisonment,

during part of which time he had been treated, as he complains, _like a

wild beast_ shut up alone without human intercourse, had ruined his

health and broken his spirits. His estate had been sequestrated, and he

was never able to recover more than a small part of it, so that poverty

was added, for the first time in his life, to his other trials. Worn out

by his infirmities, he died at last, of an imposthume in the chest,

contracted during his imprisonment in a damp cell of the Convent, on the

8th of September, 1645, having previously made his peace with God and

the Church in the usual manner.

More fortunate than his master and great contemporary, Cervantes,

Quevedo survives in canvas and in marble, so that we are able to realize

the external features of the man. His portrait by Velasquez,

representing him with a huge pair of spectacles on his nose and the

cross of Santiago on his left bosom, is that by which he is best known.

There is also a bust of him in the Public Library at Madrid. The first

of his biographers, the Neapolitan Tarsia, has drawn this picture of

him, evidently from recollection, in words: _Quevedo was of middling

stature; his hair black and somewhat frizzled_ (encrespado), _his eyes

very brilliant, but so short of sight that he constantly wore

spectacles; the nose and other features well proportioned; and of a

medium frame well made above, although lame and crippled in both feet,

which were twisted inwards; somewhat bulky without being misshapen; very

fair of countenance, and in the main with all those marks co-existent in

his person which physiognomists commend as indicating a good temperament

and a virtuous disposition_. His biography by Tarsia, published in 1663,

is a dull and tedious piece of work. By far the best account of Quevedo

is that which I have made the basis of this sketch, the biography

attached to the only complete collection of Quevedo's works, by Don

Aureliano Fernandez Guerra y Orbe, which forms three volumes in

Rivadeneyra's _Biblioteca de los Autores Españoles_. The _Essai sur la

Vie et les OEuvres de Quevedo_, by Ernest Merimée (Paris, 1886), is a

careful and painstaking work, of which the materials have been taken

from Guerra y Orbe.

To judge the character of the man is easier for posterity than to

estimate the worth of his products in literature. The greater part of

his writings, those which brought him most fame in his lifetime, men

have ceased to read even in Spain itself. Of the eleven octavo volumes

which constituted the first complete edition of Quevedo's works

(1791-94) it may be said that it would be no loss to the world had

three-fourths shared the doom which their author, on his death-bed,

requested might overtake them all. The orthodox would thus have been

saved much scandal, the expurgators a great deal of trouble, the critics

and the commentators an endless amount of curious inquiry. The theology

and the politics (these in Quevedo are much confused) have already

perished. The satires have been visited by the destiny which invariably

attends the works of wit which are dedicated to passing uses, when

literature stoops to the service of politics.

But while the graver works of Quevedo, those which won him the applause

of the learned and the favour of the great, have perished or are sunk

into oblivion, there have survived enough of those lighter pieces born

of his humour or his fancy, which he could scarcely be got to own in his

lifetime, to keep his name alive and to secure for him a permanent place

in literature. His lyrics are among the best in the language, and still

keep their place in every collection of classic Castilian poetry. Those

written in his early days, which include odes, sonnets, ballads,

_quintillas_, and _redondillas_, mostly cast in a light and graceful

mould, are distinguished for elegance of language, delicacy of fancy,

and simple, tender expression. His burlesque poems (which include some

pieces of a breadth such as excludes them from polite society), written

in the _picaresque_ dialect, of which, like Cervantes, he was a past

master--the _Jácaras_, in which the people, the _gitanos_, the _jaques_,

and the _buzos_, speak the language of _Germania_--the _langue verte_ of

Spain--are said still to be heard in the country, sung to the strumming

of guitars. His regular verse is chiefly satire in the manner of

Juvenal, against the corruption of morals and the evils of

misgovernment. Of his prose writings the best are those which are purely

sportive and fanciful, without serious intention, as the _Visita de los

Chistes_, where he makes pleasant fun of the personages which figure in

the old proverbs and popular sayings, as Mateo Pico, who is enshrined in

the phrase, _No dijerá mas Mateo Pico_; Agrages, the boaster from

_Amadis of Gaul_, who is for ever quoted as saying, _Agora lo verédes_

(see _Don Quixote, passim_); Pero Grullo, the prophet who prophesied

only of what he knew had come to pass; Calainos, of the ballad

_Cabalgaba Calainos_; Don Diego de Noche; Marta, who is for ever

expressing her satisfaction that though she died she died with a

bellyful; and Villadiego, whose breeches have immortalized his name;

with Juan Ramos, and the rest. The fun which Quevedo makes out of this

flimsy material is only to be understood by those who know the proverbs

of Spain, and the great part they play in the national talk and

literature.

Less innocent, perhaps, are some of Quevedo's other burlesque pieces,

which neither gods, men, nor county councillors may allow. In these the

poet sins, however, more from carelessness of humour than grossness of

imagination. It is not his ideas that are nasty so much as his words

which are coarse. He uses words at random, and is reckless of the effect

produced, letting his fancy run away with his pen, to the detriment of

his art. He is wanting in the exquisite simplicity and delicacy of the

master of whose work he was a chief admirer, whose style he followed,

and in whose path he attempted to walk--his friend, Miguel de Cervantes.

So passionate was his love for _Don Quixote_ that we are told he would

throw down the book in an ecstasy and declare that he would gladly burn

all his works to be able to write something like _Don Quixote_. Between

the two wits it is pleasant to record that there was nothing like

jealousy. Cervantes, in the references he makes to Quevedo, seems to

speak with more than his wonted kindliness of the younger man, as

though from personal intimacy. In the _Voyage to Parnassus_ Quevedo is

rallied upon his lameness with a freedom which only a friend might take.

In summing up the roll of the good poets who are to be Apollo's allies

in the winning of Parnassus, the name of Quevedo is last on the list.

But Cervantes interrupts the god-messenger to remind him of Quevedo's

infirmity:--

_Scarce can Francisco de Quevedo be_

_In time, I said. Nay, quoth he, on this cruise_

_I do not go, unless he go with me;_

_He is Apollo's son, son of the Muse_

_Calliope; we cannot, it is clear,_

_Go hence without him; I do not choose;_

_He is the scourge of all the poets drear,_

_And from Parnassus, at the point of wit,_

_Will chase the miscreants we expect and fear!_

_My lord, I said, his pace is most unfit,_

_He'll be a century upon the route!_

_Quoth Mercury: It matters not a whit;_

_For be the poet gentleman to boot,_

_Upon a dappled cloud, and through the air,_

_He shall be borne, his courtly taste to suit!_[1]

In the delightful prose appendix to the same poem, the _Adjunta al

Parnaso_, Don Pancracio de Roncesvalles brings to Cervantes' house a

letter from the god Apollo, dated the 22nd of July, 1614. In this there

is another reference to Quevedo: _If Don Francisco de Quevedo hath not

left for Sicily, where they await him, seize him by the hand and tell

him he must not fail to visit me in a neighbourly way; for his late

sudden departure gave me no time to talk with him._

Quevedo's worldly circumstances, as the owner of a landed estate, and

his rank in the public service under the powerful Duke of Osuna, kept

him, happily, free from that necessity of writing for bread which

oppressed the fine genius but could not stifle the kind heart of the

author of _Don Quixote_. But they did not preserve him from the envy of

his other less fortunate brothers of the pen. With Lope de Vega, with

whom he could have no rivalry, whom he survived ten years, his

relations seem to have been tolerably friendly--that is to say, they

exchanged compliments and commendatory sonnets. With Góngora there was

too much similarity of humour to be much love. They had various tilts at

each other, in which there was too much venom spilt for either to emerge

with honour. When Góngora abandoned his early simplicity of style and

took to that affected and extravagant way of writing which came to be

called after him, _Gongorismo_, which corresponded to the disease called

_Euphuism_ in England and _Marinism_ in Italy--Quevedo took up his lance

against the intruder and in defence of the language, writing a pamphlet,

_La Culta Latiniparla_, in which, under the guise of a catechism for the

instruction of ladies of culture in the new way of speech, he quizzes

his rival and the new invention very happily. A French critic and

student of Spanish letters, M. Germond de Lavigne, in his account of

Quevedo, has shown himself so far lost to the sense of humour as to call

this piece _un discours critique litteraire_; which is as though we

should class Swift's _Argument against the Abolition of Christianity_

among works of devotion. Quevedo's wit had little effect in checking the

depraved fashion of writing; and it is sad to tell that he himself, in

his later years, was infected with the barbarous taste, and Gongorized

like the rest. Góngora bitterly resented the attack upon his style, and

there passed between the two much dyslogistic verse in the shape of

epigram and sonnet. Góngora relieves his feelings by a poem in which he

charges his critic with being no great scholar, and with _wandering slow

with heavy pace_--one who _sleeps in Spanish and dreams in

Greek_--insinuating that he is unsound in his religion. In another

sonnet Góngora sneers at his critic's learning, his limping gait, and

his blindness, laughs at his red cross of Santiago, and his adventures,

calling him _borracho_ (drunkard), _pedante gofo_ (stupid pedant), _muy

crítico y muy lego_, &c. Quevedo retorted with equal spirit and good

taste, reflecting on his rival's origin, and hinting that he was no

better Catholic than he should be:--

_He de untarte mis versos con tocino_

_Porque no me los roas, Gongorilla._

(I have to anoint my verses with bacon fat

That you may not gnaw them, Gongorilla.)

The point of which jest, heightened by the contemptuous diminutive, lies

in the hint that Góngora, then a priest in orders, was no _old

Christian_, but either Jew or Morisco. Another enemy of Quevedo was

Perez de Montalvan, a writer of plays the favourite disciple, parasite,

and bully of Lope de Vega--whom our satirist was fond of assailing in

verse and prose for his dogmatism, his arrogance and his _inscrutable

ignorance_. Montalvan took his revenge in a volume entitled _El Tribunal

de la Justa Venganza_, written under an assumed name, in which Quevedo's

satirical works are tried and condemned for their offences against

religion and morality.

Among the works of Quevedo, that which, perhaps, is most characteristic

of his genius, and most valuable as a picture of contemporary life and

manners, is _Don Pablo de Segovia_, here presented in an English dress,

and, as we venture to believe, in a most appropriate and harmonious

setting, through the art of M. Vierge. _Don Pablo de Segovia_, otherwise

known as _El Gran Tacaño_ (_The Great Sharper_), is a prime sample of

that species of romance which was native of the soil of Spain--there

first engendered at least, and flourishing nowhere else in the same

vigour and luxuriance--the _picaresque_ novel. The _picaro_--from

_picar_, to peck, to nibble at--if he was not a special product of

Spain, throve there in the sixteenth century as he did nowhere else in

the nations. He was not necessarily a rogue, but always a vagabond. He

was one who was at odds with the world--a remnant left over in the

making of society--a survival of the age gone by. Of his order were all

the broken men of the time--a time in which there was much breaking of

men--those who lived by their wits on the witless, the mumpers and

beggars, strolling quacks, sham pilgrims, charm-sellers, discharged or

runaway soldiers, thieves by profession and knaves by necessity,

gypsies, bullies and bravoes, jail-birds, roughs, prisoners, and the

baser sort of parasites--the excrement of life, the scum and draff of

society. In this kind of material, admirable stuff for the humorist and

the painter, Spain was especially rich in the sixteenth century. A

capital sample of the accomplished _picaro_ is Ginés de Pasamonte, the

galley-slave freed by _Don Quixote_, who robbed _Sancho_ of his ass, and

afterwards appeared as _Master Peter_, the puppet-showman. He is the

typical rogue, whose model in youth, in manhood, and in age is to be

found on the canvas of Velasquez and of Murillo. He is a stock figure in

the national drama. He must have been a familiar sight to the Spaniards

of that age, standing at every street corner, every convent door. He was

as common as the poor poet in the market-place. The favourite haunts of

the _picaresque_ gentry, the Bohemian and the Alsatian, are they not

enumerated by the roguish inn-keeper in _Don Quixote_, himself one of

the craft, who plays so deftly upon the knight and his humour?--_the

Fish-Market of Malaga, the Islets of Riarán, the Compass of Seville, the

Aqueduct-Square of Segovia, the Olive Grove of Valencia, the Suburbs of

Granada, the Strand of San Lucar, the Clot-Fountain of Cordova, the

Pot-Houses of Toledo._[2]

The causes of this rank growth of the _picaresque_ element in Spain are

to be sought in the national history. The long series of exhausting wars

in the Netherlands and in Italy; the discovery and development of

America; the monstrous multiplication of monks, priests, and religious

houses during the reigns of Philip and of his successor--these three,

the chief causes of Spain's decadence, may be taken to account for the

poverty, and the vice, and the bitterness of the struggle for existence,

of which the _picaresque_ order, in its extraordinary luxuriance, was

the outgrowth. The cutpurses, the beggars, the professional rogues and

sharpers, were but the product of the unwholesome working of the organs

of life--the remainder ruffianry of that period of diseased energy. The

internal corruption, of which they were the signs, was the consequence

of the fever which shook the frame and the fury which stirred the blood

of Spain during all that period of seeming grandeur but of real disease.

The _picaro_ was the adventurer who had missed his chance in the general

scramble, who did not or could not go to Flanders or to America, or who,

having been, had returned empty. He was the _conquistador_ out of

date--the gold-seeker run to seed. How near he was to the failures of

the Church--the vagabond friar, the religious mendicant--is clearly seen

from this story of _Paul the Sharper_, as well as from the other tales

of the class. The peace of 1609, which secured the independence of

Holland and put an end to the long war in the Low Countries, only

aggravated the evil condition of Spain, by filling the country with a

swarm of needy adventurers and disabled and discharged soldiers, for

whom the State made no provision. How fruitful a source of

demoralization and misery they were we may learn from all the literature

of the period, from _Don Quixote_ downwards. As for America, the

reaction of the tide which brought wealth and new life to Spain had set

in even before the middle of the sixteenth century. The flood which

carried all the men of enterprise and independent spirit to Peru or to

Mexico had left Spain drained of her best life-blood. The sudden influx

of gold tended to sharpen the distinction between rich and poor--to make

it more difficult for the poor to live, while spoiling them for honesty.

The old Castilian simplicity of life was destroyed, and the antique

honour, the legacy left by the heroic age which closed with the fall of

Granada, corrupted. The new rich introduced luxuries and vices which

till then had been alien to the Spanish character. The fortunate

adventurers who came back from the New World were as great a terror to

public morals through their extravagance and their recklessness, as the

unsuccessful through their destitution and despair. The national

inclination to the sins of pride, idleness, and boastfulness--how could

it happen but that it should be enormously fostered and heightened by

the easy conquests in America, following upon the shrinking of the

martial power and the prodigious swelling of the ecclesiastical? With

nearly ten thousand monasteries and nunneries, and more than thirty

thousand monks, of the two orders, Franciscan and Dominican, alone--is

it a wonder that the Spain of Philip III. should be hastening to decay?

The _picaro_ was the fungus which grew out of this mass of corruption.

To these running sores was added the expulsion of the Moriscoes under

Philip III.--an act of cruelty equally base, barbarous, and stupid, of

which the direct consequences were an increase in the cost of life, the

stagnation of trade, and the decline of industry, commerce, and

agriculture. The blow which reduced the forces of national industry by

nearly a million of honest, hardy, thrifty, and skilful workmen, could

not but lead to a great increase of poverty, of vice, and of disorder.

On this waste, and out of this rottenness, fattened and throve

exceedingly the rank weed _picaro_.

The _gusto picaresco_, of which _Don Pablo de Segovia_ is the purest

expression, arose in Spain upon the decay of the so-called romance of

chivalry. Indeed, the first book in that kind, _Lazarillo de Tormes_,

was published when the chivalric romance was in full blast, fifty years

before _Don Quixote_ was written; nor is there any evidence to show that

the author was actuated by a spite against the prevailing fashion. On

the contrary, if the author was, as I presume he was, Diego Hurtado de

Mendoza, we know that he was a fond admirer of _Amadis_, taking only

that book with him and _Celestina_--that curious tragi-comedy, which

was, in some sense, a forerunner of the _picaresque_ novel--when

despatched to the Eternal City as ambassador of Charles V. There was a

close connection between the romantical books of the later period and

the earliest of the _picaresque_ stories. The _picaro_, in fact, is the

direct descendant and the legitimate child of the debased knight-errant.

The public were beginning to get weary of the endless histories of the

knights-adventurers--all equally puissant and valorous--and longed for

common food. It was not the adventurers, however, of which people were

sick, but of the dull and stupid books which pretended to tell of their

exploits. Whatever chivalry there was in Spain had died out before the

blighting influence of the Second Philip--that antithesis incarnate of

all romance. The taste for low life was a natural and to a great extent

a healthy reaction from the unwholesome diet, miscalled romance and of

chivalry, on which the people had fed. The successor of the

knight-errant, the _picaro_, was a good deal like the last of the line

preceding, with much the same features. He was more picturesque than the

knight-errant, and no greater rogue. _Little Lazarus_ and his kin, _Paul

the Sharper_, _Justina_, _Rinconete_, and _Cortadillo_, spoke at least

the language of the people. It was a return to nature--the triumph of

the real over the romantic--a veritable revolution, which doubtless led

the way to a healthier taste and a higher art.

The revolt against the old style was headed by the book which still

stands at the head of _picaresque_ literature, _Lazarillo de

Tormes_--the work, according to the best tradition and authority, of the

famous Castilian statesman, diplomatist, and writer, Diego Hurtado de

Mendoza. I write this with full cognizance of the attempt recently made

by M. Morel-Fatio, in the _Revue de Deux Mondes_, to deprive Mendoza of

that honour. It is contended by M. Morel-Fatio that there is no direct

evidence of Mendoza's being the author of _Lazarillo_; that he never

claimed it as his writing; that it was only attributed to him fifty

years after his death; and that an equal if not superior claim is that

of Father Juan de Ortega, general of the order of Hieronymite monks, to

whom the book is ascribed by a monk of his fraternity, in a work

published in 1605. The arguments by which M. Morel-Fatio maintains his

theory seem to me to be wholly insufficient against Mendoza's claim, and

extravagantly wild and weak in favour of Ortega's. It is true that

Mendoza never declared himself to be the author of _Lazarillo de

Tormes_. There was ample reason why he should not. The book was first

published in 1554; and immediately on its appearance was suppressed by

order of the Inquisition, and put in the _Index Expurgatorius_. But in

1554 Mendoza was at the very climax of his public reputation, having

just returned from Italy with great credit as Charles V.'s ambassador to

the Pope. It was scarcely a time which he would choose to put his name

to a book which had been declared offensive to faith and morals, in

which the abuses of the Church were boldly attacked, and even its

ceremonies ridiculed. The next year Philip II. came to the throne, when

Mendoza found himself in disgrace, and had to retire to his estates. It

was a period still less favourable for his appearing as the author of a

loose and ribald book called _Lazarillo de Tormes_.

Again, it is contended that Mendoza, a grave and haughty noble, of the

proudest family in Spain, who aspired to high place and power at Court,

could hardly have written such a story, dealing with low life and vulgar

people. But Mendoza was a man of varied accomplishments, of wide

knowledge of life, unencumbered with the prejudices of caste and of

singular literary gifts, who might have been one of the great authors of

Spain had he not been content to be a great statesman. He had been

trained for the Church, had been a student at Salamanca, and had served

in the Spanish armies in Italy. He was thus thoroughly well equipped

with all that was required to qualify him for loose literature.

Moreover, as one who had been intended for the priesthood--a calling

which he abandoned for soldiership--he could be no friend to the cloth,

and was precisely the man to ridicule, as he has done, the abuses of the

Church and the vices of the priests, even to caricature the _bulero_ and

the hawker of indulgences. Lastly, there is this further circumstance in

support of his claim that he was known to be a lover of popular

literature, and had shown precisely the same literary talent, humour,

and idiomatic grace which are characteristic of _Lazarillo_, in some

acknowledged letters, still extant, in which he satirizes, with ample

knowledge of their tricks and way of life, the _catariberas_--the needy

adventurers and greedy office-seekers of the period. As to Ortega, whose

claim, first put forth only as a piece of rumour--and, in such a case,

of scandal--in 1605, and never since by any Spanish authority

repeated--is it necessary to dwell on the absurdity of an ecclesiastic

of his eminence writing a book against the vices of his own caste and

assailing his own order--a book dealing with the lives of rogues and

vagabonds--which had to be suppressed by the Church as soon as it

appeared? Nor has M. Morel-Fatio been able to produce any scrap of

Ortega's writing, of character and style like _Lazarillo_. Priests and

monks have, indeed, in that age and in every other, produced much loose

literature. It was a priest who wrote _La Picara Justina_, the dirtiest

of its class. It was a Dominican monk who is charged with the authorship

of the false Second Part of _Don Quixote_. Without occupying any more of

my space on this subject, it is enough to repeat that the weight of

testimony since the days of Nicolas Antonio, the learned and accurate

author of the _Bibliotheca Hispana Nova_, to the present time, is in

favour of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza as the author of _Lazarillo de

Tormes_.

Of the _picaresque_ stories, _Lazarillo de Tormes_, though imperfect and

without a proper conclusion, must still be regarded as the first in

merit as it was the first in time. It has been the model for all its

numerous successors, just as the _Amadis of Gaul_ of the previous

fashion had been the model for the romances of chivalry. For gaiety of

humour, the easy and natural tone of life and simplicity of colouring,

it has been held in great favour ever since its appearance; by no one

relished more than by the author of _Don Quixote_. The next in date was

_Guzman de Alfarache_, by Mateo Aleman, a native of Seville, of which

the first part was published in 1599. This, though almost as popular as

its predecessor, and even more frequently reprinted and translated, has

been much over-praised. It is, in truth, a somewhat arid and tedious

performance, written in a poor style. The hero is less interesting than

his class, for he is not only a rogue but a hypocrite, who pretends to

deceive himself as much as he deceives others, and aspires to be good

and pious, which makes him less picturesque and more immoral than if he

were a _picaro_ proper and true. Next to follow in that line was the

_Picara Justina_, published in 1605, the work of a Dominican whose real

name was Andrés Perez. For the better prevention of scandal, Father

Perez, being likewise the author of divers devotional books, assumed the

name of Lopez de Ubeda. Justina has nothing to recommend her, not even

her viciousness. She is false, affected, and silly, and worthy to end,

as she does, by becoming the wife of Guzman de Alfarache. The book is

perhaps the worst of its class, in art as in ethics, being made

additionally nauseous by the moral warnings and tags of virtuous

sentiment with which the chapters conclude. Perhaps anterior to both

_Guzman de Alfarache_ and _Picara Justina_, though not published till

1613, were Cervantes' two sketches of _picaresque_ life, _Rinconete y

Cortadillo_ and _Los Perros de Mahudes_, the scene of which is laid in

the Triana, the suburb of Seville, then, as now, the favourite home and

head-quarters of the _picaresque_ gentry. There is internal evidence to

show that both these stories, which are clearly drawn from real life and

actual experience, were written before the death of Philip II., in 1598.

Cervantes resided at Seville with his family between 1588 and 1598, and

there is little doubt that the picture he draws of Seville low life is

of this period. _Rinconete y Cortadillo_, in all the qualities of the

higher art, must be placed at the head of this species of literature.

Although only a sketch, it is brimful of humour, wit, and life, drawn

with the same delicate and masterly hand which has given us _Don

Quixote_. What is admirable in the picture is the skill with which a

repulsive subject is treated, so that, while preserving all its truth,

it is redeemed from grossness. There is not a word which is offensive

to taste; yet the thieves, the bullies, the _bona robas_, and the other

delightful but most improper people, move and breathe and talk as _full

of life as if they lived indeed_. In others of his books, Cervantes has

shown his wide and profound knowledge--doubtless born of actual

experience--of this lower order of humanity, as in his _Rufian Dichoso_,

the _Fortunate Bully_, and in some of his plays and interludes.

It is needless to follow in detail the history of the later experiments

in the _gusto picaresco_. As we approach later times the stories become

duller and more respectable. The _Marcos de Obregon_ of Vicente Espinel

appeared in 1618. It is a story of adventure abroad rather than of low

life at home, not wanting in spirit, and with a more regular

construction than most stories of this class, from which Le Sage has

stolen very largely and boldly in his _Gil Blas_, even appropriating the

name of the hero, and giving it to one of his characters. In 1624 came

another of the _picaresque_ brood, called _Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos_

(_Alonso, Servant of Many Masters_), by one Yanez y Rivera, which deals

with the humours of domestic service. We need not occupy ourselves with

the long string of lesser works of this character, which are rather

romances of real life than _picaresque_ tales--the _Niña de los

Embustes_ (the _Child of Tricks_) and the _Garduña de Sevilla_ (the

_She-Marten of Seville_) of Solorzano; the _Diablo Cojuelo_ (the _Lame

Devil_) of Guevara, and _Estevanillo Gonzalez_, attributed to the same

author, which is the pretended autobiography of a buffoon, better known

by Le Sage's French version than in the original. Last of all, we come

to that which by some is reckoned to be the _picaresque_ novel _par

excellence_--the well-known work of Le Sage himself, in collaboration

with many others, called _Gil Blas_. This, with all its merits, is no

_picaresque_ novel at all, except in an oblique sense as being the work

of a _picaroon_--a clever theft by an adept in literary conveyance, the

very Autolycus of authors. While the matter is Spanish, the form and,

oddly enough, a great deal of the spirit, is French. I will not go into

the question of what were the sources from which Le Sage drew his story.

That very Spanish and yet curiously French work (_Spanish bricks in

French mortar_) is a wonderful piece of literary craft, showing a genius

in the art of stealing which is equal to that of original composition,

and even more rare. But _Gil Blas_, when all is said, is not a true

_picaroon_, of the breed of _Lazarillo_ and _Rinconete_. He is an

impostor, but in another than the true sense. He is a fortune-hunter,

who looks closely to the main chance, who descends to be respectable,

who aims at a social position, like _Jerome Paturot_. He marries twice,

and lives comfortably in a fine house--a prosperous gentleman, after

bidding hope and fortune farewell. He is no more a _picaro_ than _Ruy

Blas_ is a Spaniard or Djalma an Indian prince.

Of the _picaresque_ novel, which is the special product of Spain--never

successfully acclimatized in any other country, and as entirely Spanish

as the _olla_ or the _gazpacho_--one of the purest specimens is _Don

Pablo de Segovia (Paul the Sharper), exemplo de Vagamundos y espejo de

Tacaños--pattern of Vagabonds and mirror of rogues_. The book is

generally known as _El Buscon_, or _El Gran Tacaño_. The latter title,

which is not Quevedo's, was made the leading designation of the book

after the author's death, and is still that by which the book is most

popular in Spain. _Buscon_ is from _buscar_, to seek, and means a

pursuer of fortune, a searcher after the means of life, a _cadger_.

_Tacaño_ is ingeniously derived by old Covarrubias, in the earliest

Spanish dictionary, from the Greek [Greek: kakós], being a corruption of

_cacaño_; or from the Hebrew _tachach_, which is said to mean fraud and

deceit. _Don Pablo_, however his titles may be derived, is generally

admitted to be the perfect type of an adventurer of the _picaresque_

school. The book of his exploits, though left, like so many Spanish

books, unfinished, is described by Quevedo's best critic as _of all his

writings the freest from affectation, the richest in lively and natural

humours, the brightest, simplest, and most perspicuous; in which he

comes nearest to the amenity, artlessness, and delightful and delicate

style of Don Quixote_. These praises are not undeserved, although the

knight of industry, in his quest of adventures, is very far from being

of kin to the warrior of chivalry, the gentle and perfect knight of La

Mancha. Disfigured as it is by all Quevedo's faults of style and manner,

_Don Pablo_ deserves to be rescued from the fate to which its faults of

language, rather than its defects of taste or its failure in the moral

part, have hitherto consigned it, at least in England. As a picture of

low, vagabond life, it necessarily deals with vice, but it cannot be

said that the vice is rendered attractive. All the characters are bad,

in the sense that they all belong to the class who have failed to

achieve a decent life. The company is not select in which we move, but

it can hardly be said that there is contamination in it any more than we

get from looking at Hogarth's _Gin Lane_, or the _Borrachos_ of

Velasquez. From beginning to end _Don Pablo's_ career is one of

undisguised trickery, dissimulation, and lying. All his companions are

thieves, or impostors, or rogues, patent or undetected. The scenes are

laid almost entirely in the lowest places--in the slums of Segovia, of

Madrid, and of Seville, mostly in prison or in some refuge from the law.

The manners of the people, men and women, are as repulsive as their

morals; and they talk (which is not unusual) after their natures. When

we concede all this we admit the worst which can be said of Quevedo's

work, and impute nothing against the author, either as artist or

moralist. It is difficult to imagine any virtue of a texture so frail as

to be injured by the reading of _Paul the Sharper_. There is no vice in

the book, even though it deals exclusively with vicious people. There is

nothing hurtful in the character of the complete rogue, nor is he

painted in any but his natural colours, as a mean, sordid vagabond, who

does or says nothing whatever to gild his trade or to embellish his

calling. This is the crowning merit of Quevedo's book, among those of

its class, that there are no shabby tricks played upon the reader, such

as other writers of even higher pretensions are guilty of--no attempt to

pass off a rogue as though he were a hero in distress--a creature

deserving of sympathy, who is only treating the world as the world

treated him--a victim of fortune, whose ill-usage by society justifies

his attitude towards the social system. There is no sentiment expended

over _Paul of Segovia_. There is no snivelling over his low condition,

or railing at his unhappy lot. He is not conscious of his degradation.

He is a thief, the son of a thief, with a perfect knowledge of what his

mother is; but he makes no secret of his calling, nor indulges in

excuses for himself or his family. The other heroes of the _picaresque_

novel make some faint pretence to decent behaviour, but _Paul_ never

deviates into respectability. He is _picaro_ to the fingers' ends--in

either sense. Through all his changes of character and of costume he is

still rogue, entire and perfect, without any sprouts of honesty or

repinings after a better life. The _naïveté_ with which he tells of his

exploits, without boasting and without shame, is of the highest

art--true to nature, nor offensive to morality. Whether he is cheating a

jailer or bilking a landlady, dodging the _alguacil_ or bamboozling the

old poet, or befooling the nun, or tricking the bully, he is always true

to himself, without affectation or conceit of being other than he is.

There are no asides, where either the hero or the author (as the bad

modern custom is) communes with his conscience, or finds excuses for

himself, or draws a moral, or in some way or other imparts to the reader

how much superior he (the writer) is to his hero, and how conscious he

is of the reader's presence, giving him to understand, in a manner

unflattering to his intelligence, how that all that he writes is in joke

and not to be taken in bad part. That Quevedo does not do so is his

chief point of art in the book, which deserves to be ranked among the

best of its class, as a chapter out of the great comedy of human life.

The simplicity with which the story is told, without those digressions

and interruptions to which the Spanish story-teller is so prone, make it

a work almost unique among books of the kind. For once Quevedo has

spoken in a language direct and plain, without a riddle or a hidden

motive. It is of course a satire, but a satire of the legitimate kind,

not upon persons, but upon mankind--against general vice, not against

particular sins. The characters of the story, which seems rather to tell

itself than to be told, are all such as were the common property of the

comic writers of the period, but scarcely anywhere else are they found

invested with so much of the breath of life. _Don Pablo_ himself, his

companions, his fellow-students, the crazy old poet, the villainous

jailer, the braggart _espadachins_, the poor _hidalgo_, the strolling

players, the beggars, the gay ladies, the jail-birds, bullies, and

thieves--every member of that unclean company, with all their unsavoury

surroundings, is a real, living personage.

_Don Pablo de Segovia_ was first published in 1626, at Saragossa, and

had a great success, several editions being called for before the

author's death. There is reason to believe that it was written some

years before, being probably circulated in manuscript among the

author's friends before being printed, as was the custom of the time. In

1624 Quevedo had been lately released from the first of his

imprisonments at Torre de San Juan Abad, and had partially recovered the

favour of the Court. It was a period when the printers were most busy

with his works--when satires, political apologues, religious tracts,

visions, burlesque and piquant odes, fantasies, and calls to devotion

were being poured forth abundantly out of his fruitful brain. Señor

Guerra y Orbe believes that _Don Pablo_ was written in 1608. That it was

composed before 1624 is proved, I think, by the character of the book,

which is certainly more juvenile than belongs to a man of forty-six, as

well as by a piece of evidence to be found within. In chapter viii.,

when on the road to Torrejon, _Don Pablo_ comes up with a crazy man

mounted on a mule, who proves to be a master of the art of fencing, with

several extravagant projects in his brain for the good of the kingdom.

Among these he has two schemes to propose to the king for the reduction

of Ostend. Now the great siege of Ostend, which is doubtless the one

referred to, was that which ended, after three years' fighting in which

an extraordinary number were slain on both sides, in September, 1604. It

is a reasonable conjecture, therefore, that _Don Pablo_, at least as far

as chapter viii., was written prior to this date. The chapters in which

the students' adventures at Alcalá are described seem to me also to bear

internal evidence of having been written when the impression of

university life was still fresh upon the author. This theory of the date

of _Don Pablo_ makes the author a young man of twenty-three when the

book was composed; and the book itself the third, in order of time, of

the _picaresque_ romances, following closely after _Guzman de

Alfarache_.

_Don Pablo de Segovia_ has been always popular in its native country,

and has been frequently translated into other languages. Señor Guerra y

Orbe notes more than forty editions of the original in Spain and in the

Spanish dominions. An Italian translation, by Juan Pedro Franco,

appeared in 1634 at Venice. A French version, by Geneste, was included

among the burlesque works of Quevedo, translated into that language in

1641. Other early French versions are those of Lyons and of Brussels.

In 1842 M. Germond de Lavigne brought out his translation of _Don Pablo_

which is spirited and readable, but a good deal changed from the

original. Portions of other works by Quevedo are inserted in the text, a

prologue borrowed from the _Hora de Todos_, and a conclusion added from

out of the manufactory of M. Lavigne himself. In M. Lavigne's latest

edition of 1882 appeared the first of M. Vierge's admirably spirited and

characteristic sketches.

_Don Pablo_ was early introduced into the English tongue, though it is

perhaps the least known of Quevedo's works. The _Visions_, translated by

the indefatigable Sir Roger L'Estrange, first appeared in 1688, and went

through many editions in that and the succeeding century. The English

version has the merit, which belongs to all L'Estrange's work, of being

in good, sound, and vigorous language, lively and not inelegant, but it

is far from faithful to the original, the translator taking great

liberties with his author in the attempt to bring him up to the level of

the _humour of the times_. The _Visions_ were much read and often quoted

by English writers of the last century. The _Buscon_, shorn of much of

his stature, was Englished by _a person of quality_ so early as 1657,

with a dedication to a lady. It was still further reduced in 1683, both

in size and art, though most of the grossness was left untouched. The

well-known Captain John Stevens, who translated Mariana's _History_ and

professed (without warrant) to improve and correct Shelton's _Don

Quixote_ (which he did not do to any appreciable extent), also took

Quevedo in hand, translating _Don Pablo_, among other _comical pieces_,

in 1707. A new translation was given to the world in 1734 by Don Pedro

Pineda, a teacher of the Spanish language, then resident in London.

Pineda it was who revised the Spanish text of the splendid edition of

_Don Quixote_, published at the charge of Lord Carteret in 1734, four

handsome quarto volumes--the first in which print and paper did full

justice to Cervantes' masterpiece. Though a person of little humour, who

fell a victim to Cervantes' irony in the matter of the poet Lofraso and

his _Fortuna de Amor_, Pineda was a competent Spanish scholar, at least

for that age. How far his English was his own we have no means of

knowing, but his _perfect knowledge of the language of the original_

recommended him to the editors of the edition of _Quevedo's Works_,

published at Edinburgh in 1798, as a person fit to revise and correct

the version of Mr. Stevens. That version, though not satisfactory in all

respects, is still the best we have in English. It is almost too

faithful to the original in respect that it retains many expressions,

phrases, and words, of the kind in which Quevedo loved to indulge,

which, however appropriate in the mouths of the speakers in a thieves'

den or a convict prison, are scarcely delicate enough for the taste of

the modern English public, or necessary to bring out the full humour of

the story.

The text of the English translation of 1798, corrected and revised, is

that which has been followed in the present publication, of which the

immediate object is less to rescue Quevedo's story from oblivion than to

bring to the notice of the public the singular merit of his countryman,

M. Vierge (Daniel Urrabieta), as an artist in black and white.

H. E. WATTS.

[Illustration]

THE HISTORY OF THE

LIFE OF THE SHARPER

CALLED DON PABLO

THE PATTERN OF

VAGABONDS AND

MIRROR OF ROGUES.

[Illustration]