Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper - Francisco de Quevedo (good summer reads .TXT) 📗

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 naivete 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 storyteller 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 jailbirds, 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 Torrejón, 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