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

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 tragicomedy, 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,