FOOTNOTES:
[309] In fact it has been said, and may be said again, that Lesage is one of the prophets who have never had so much justice done them in their own countries as abroad.
[310] The first part of Gil Blas appeared in 1715; and nearly twenty years later gossip said that the fourth was not ready, though the author had been paid in advance for it six or seven years earlier.
[311] I have never read it in the original, being, though a great admirer of Spanish, but slightly versed therein.
[312] This, which is a sort of Appendix to the Diable Boiteux, is much the best of these opera minora.
[313] He had a temper of the most Breton-Bretonnant type—not ill-natured but sturdy and independent, recalcitrant alike to ill-treatment and to patronage. He got on neither at the Bar, his first profession, nor with the regular actors, and he took vengeance in his books on both; while at least one famous anecdote shows his way of treating a patron—indeed, as it happened, a patroness—who presumed.
[314] Asmodeus, according to his usual station in the infernal hierarchy, is démon de la luxure: but any fears or hopes which may be aroused by this description, and the circumstances of the action, will be disappointed. Lesage has plenty of risky situations, but his language is strictly "proper."
[315] Against this may be cited his equally anecdotic acceptance of Regnard, who was also "run" against Molière. But Regnard was a "classic" and orthodox in his way; Lesage was a free-lance, and even a Romantic before Romanticism. Boileau knew that evil, as evil seemed to him, had come from Spain; he saw more coming in this, and if he anticipated more still in the future, 1830 proved him no false prophet.
[316] In other words, there is a unity of personality in the attitude which the hero takes to and in them.
[317] And in it too, of course; as well as in Spain's remarkable but too soon re-enslaved criticism.