CHAPTER XXXIV.
Romances in the Style of Rogues. — State of Manners that produced them. — Mendoza’s Lazarillo de Tormes. — Aleman’s Guzman de Alfarache, with the Spurious Continuation of it by Sayavedra and the True One by Aleman. — Perez. — Espinel and his Marcos de Obregon. — Yañez. — Quevedo. — Solorzano. — Enriquez Gomez. — Estevanillo Gonzalez.
The next form of prose fiction produced in Spain, and the one which, from its greater truth, has enjoyed a more permanent regard than the last, is found in those stories that have commonly gone under the name of “tales in the gusto picaresco,” or tales in the style of rogues. Taken as a class, they constitute a singular exhibition of character, and are, in fact, as separate and national in their air as any thing in the whole body of modern literature.
Their origin is obvious, and the more so from what is most singular in their character. They sprang directly from the condition of some portions of society in Spain when they appeared;—a condition, it should be added, which has existed there ever since, and contributed to preserve for the stories that bear its impress no little of the favor they have always enjoyed. Before speaking of them in detail, we must, therefore, notice the peculiar circumstances of the country, and the peculiar state of manners that gave them birth.
The wars of the opposing races and religions, that had constituted so much of the business of life, and so long engrossed the thoughts of men, in Spain, had, indeed, nearly ceased from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. But the state of character they had produced in the Spanish people had by no means ceased with them. On the contrary, it had been kept in the freshest activity by those vast enterprises which Charles the Fifth had pushed forward in Italy, France, and Germany, with such success, that the Spanish nation, always marked by a sanguine enthusiasm, had become fully persuaded that it was destined to achieve an empire which, covering the whole of the New World and whatever was most desirable in the Old, should surpass in glory and power the empire of the Cæsars in the days of its palmiest supremacy.
This magnificent result was a matter of such general faith, that men often felt a desire to contribute their personal exertions to accomplish it. Not only the high nobility of Spain, therefore, but all cavaliers and men of honor who sought distinction, saw, with the exception of places in the civil administration of affairs or in the Church, no road open before them on which they were so much tempted to enter as that of military enterprise. Laborious occupation in the business of common life and practical and productive industry were, in consequence, discountenanced, or held in contempt, while the armies were thronged, and multitudes of gentlemen and men of culture, like Cervantes and Lope de Vega, gladly served in them as simple soldiers.
But large as were the armies of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, all who desired it could not be soldiers. Many persons of decent condition, therefore, remained idle, because they found no occupation which was not deemed below their rank in society; while others, having made an experiment of military life sufficient to disgust them with its hardships, returned home unfitted for every thing else. These two sorts of persons formed a class of idlers that hung loose upon society in the principal cities of Spain, thriving at best by flattery and low intrigue, and sometimes driven for subsistence to crime. Their number was by no means small. They were known and marked wherever they went; and their characters, represented with much spirit, and often with great faithfulness, are still to be recognized in the proud, starving cavaliers of Mendoza and Quevedo, who stalk about the streets upon adventure, or crowd the antechamber of the minister, and weary his patience with their abject supplications for the meanest places it is in his power to bestow.
But there was yet another body of persons in Spain, nearly akin to the last in spirit, though differing from them in their original position, who figure no less in this peculiar form of fiction. They were the active, the shrewd, and the unscrupulous of the lower portions of society;—men who were able to perceive that the resources and power of the country, with all the advantages they desired to reach, were already in possession of an aristocratic caste, who looked to them for nothing but a sincere and faithful loyalty. During a long period,—the period of danger and trouble at home,—the fidelity of this class had been complete and unhesitating; bringing with it little feeling of wrong, and perhaps no sense of degradation; for such men, in such times, claimed from their superiors only protection, and, receiving this, asked for nothing else.
At last, however, other prospects opened upon them. Peace came gradually, as the Moors were driven out; and with it came a sense of independence and personal rights, which sometimes expressed itself in social restlessness, as in the frequent troubles at the universities; and sometimes, as in the wars of the Comuneros, in open rebellion. Contemporary, too, with these upward struggles of the masses of the people, which were always successfully rebuked and repressed, came the conquests in America, pouring such floods of wealth as the world had never before seen upon a country that had for ages been one of the poorest and most suffering in Europe. The easily got treasure—which was at first only in the hands of military adventurers or of those who had obtained grants of office and territory in the New World—was scattered as lightly as it was won. The shrewd and unprincipled of the less favored classes, therefore, soon learned to gather round its possessors, as they came home with their tempting burdens, and found ready means to profit by the golden shower that fell on all sides, with a profusion which carried an unhealthy action through every division of society. Little, however, could be obtained by men so humble and in a position so false, except by the arts of cunning and flattery. Cunning and flattery, therefore, were soon called forth among them in great abundance. The wealth of the Indies was a rich compost, that brought up parasites and rogues with other noxious weeds; and Paul, the son of a barber, and nephew of a hangman; Cortadillo, a young thief, whose father was a village tailor; and Little Lazarus, who could never settle his genealogy to his own satisfaction, became, in the literature of their country, the permanent representatives of their class;—a class well known under the degrading name of the Catariberas,[92] or the gayer one of Pícaros.
The first instance of a fiction founded on this state of things was, as we have already seen, the “Lazarillo de Tórmes” of Mendoza, which was published as early as 1554; a bold, unfinished sketch of the life of a rogue, from the very lowest condition in society. This was followed, forty-five years afterwards, by the “Guzman de Alfarache” of Mateo Aleman, the most ample portraiture of the class to which it belongs that is to be found in Spanish literature. What induced Aleman to write it we do not know. Indeed, we know little about him, except that he was a native of Seville, and wrote three or four other works of less consequence than this tale; that he was long employed in the treasury department of the government, and subjected to a vexatious suit at law in consequence of it; and that at last, retiring of his own choice to private life, he visited Mexico in 1609, and devoted the remainder of his days, either there or in Spain, to letters.[93] He may, at some period, have been a soldier; for one of his friends, in a eulogium prefixed to the second part of “Guzman de Alfarache,” sums up his character by saying that “never soldier had a poorer purse or a richer heart, or a life more unquiet and full of trouble, than his was; and all because he accounted it a greater honor to be a poor philosopher than a rich flatterer.”