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.
THE HISTORY OF THE
LIFE OF THE SHARPER
CALLED DON PABLO
THE P A T T E R N OF
V A G A B O N D S AND
MIRROR OF ROGUES.