The 'Episódios' have had an extensive influence, and have been imitated, under a like title, in the Spanish Americas. The author's tone toward the past is generally severe and disdainful. "Had Spain, perchance, a 'constitution' when she was the foremost nation in the world?" he puts into the mouth of one of his characters, with sardonic intent. He has been called unappreciative, and his attitude towards Spanish antiquity has been protested against by other leading writers, of more conservative feeling, as unwarranted. These romances contain some passages showing aversion to the barbarities of war, but in general they are less humanitarian than those of Erckmann-Chatrian: they are principally devoted to glorifying Spanish fortitude and courage. These books are a great advance upon the two earlier novels; from the first they showed literary workmanship of a high order: they possess ingenuity of plot, sufficient probability, and graphic power of description, movement, and conversation. In the latter respects, indeed, they surpass some of the author's later works that make more serious pretensions.
The wider and more definitely literary reputation of Pérez Galdós rests upon more than a score of other works, in addition to the above. These are distinctly novels, as contrasted with romances; and they treat of contemporary life, in a method that aims to be conscientiously observant and impartial. It is often said, without much reflection, that we see enough of the things close about us, and need our literary recreation in the remote and strange. But it must be recalled that we see those things without the eyes of genius, and he is a true benefactor who poetizes and dignifies life in making evident that all of life is vivid with interest, even that part of it nearest to us, which without such illumination we may have thought devoid of it. The words in which the ostensible narrator of 'Lo Prohibido' (Forbidden Fruit: 1885), explains the purpose of his journal may well enough be taken to exhibit the method of Galdós. It was to set down "my prosaic adventures, events that in no way differ from those that fill and make up the lives of other men. I aspire to no further effects than such as the sincere and unaffected presentation of the truth may produce; and I have no design upon the reader's emotions by means of calculated surprises, frights, or conjurer's tricks, through which things look one way for a time and then turn out in a manner diametrically opposite."
The titles of a number of his principal books, not hitherto given, with dates, are as follows. The dates are those when they were written, and they were generally published shortly after: 'Doña Perfecta,' 1876; 'Gloria,' 1876; 'Torquemada en la Hoguera' (Torquemada at the Stake: 1876); 'Marianela,' 1878; 'La Familia de Leon Roch' (Leon Roch's Family: 1878); 'Los Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis' (The Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis: 1877) of the Episódios; 'Un Faccioso Más' (A Rebel the More: 1879) the completion of the Episódios; 'La Desheredada' (The Disowned: 1881); 'El Amigo Manso' (Friend Mildman: 1882); 'El Doctor Centeno,' 1883; 'Tormento,' 1884; 'La de Bringas' (That Mrs. de Bringas: 1884); 'Fortunata y Jacinta,' 1886; 'Miau,' 1888; 'La Incógnita' (The Unknown: 1889); 'Realidad' (Reality: 1890); 'Angel Guerra,' 1891; 'Torquemada en la Cruz' (Torquemada on the Cross: 1894); 'Torquemada en el Purgatorio' (Torquemada in Purgatory: 1894); 'Torquemada y San Pedro,' 1895; 'Nazarin,' 1895; 'Halma,' 1896.
Even in his new departure, Galdós did not at once enter upon his final manner. 'Doña Perfecta,' 'The Family of Leon Roch,' and 'Gloria' are quite distinctly didactic, or "novels with a purpose"; while 'Marianela' is somewhat cloyingly sentimental, a prose poem after the manner of Ouida. In spite of all this, however, 'Doña Perfecta' has been pronounced by many his best work. It is the one that has obtained greatest celebrity abroad, and it is the one, all things considered, likely to be the most satisfactory example of his work to the English reader. 'La Desheredada' marks the transition to his final period, and he has put it upon record that with this book the real difficulties of his vocation began. It is a poignantly affecting story of a poor girl who was brought up, by a parent half knave and half insane, to believe that she was not his daughter but that of a noble house. After his death she undertakes in all good faith to prosecute her claim, and is thrown into prison as an impostor. Her heart is broken by the disillusionment; she cannot adjust herself to life again without the sweetness of that beguiling belief, and so, in the end, not having the boldness to die, she throws herself upon the street, a social outcast. Both in the person of Isidora and others, the book is a moving treatise on false education. Other leading figures are her brother, a young "hoodlum" and thief, the burden of whose career she has also to bear upon her slender shoulders, and the pampered son of the poor Sastres, who have denied themselves bread that he might have an education and luxuries. He has a hundred fine schemes for getting a living, but never a one of them includes turning his hand to a stroke of honest labor.
'El Amigo Manso' is an extended piece of character-drawing, self-told, in a gently humorous vein. It gives an account of a college instructor, very benevolent, very methodical and prudent, and a trifle conceited and patronizing, who is in love with a pretty governess. By the time he has settled all his judicious pros and cons, the pretty governess, who really cared nothing about him, is engaged to a suitor of a more dashing sort. The scenes of 'Tormento,' 'La de Bringas,' and 'Miau' are laid chiefly among the class of minor office-holders, with whose manners the author shows an exhaustive familiarity, and each has its peculiar tragic situation in itself. 'Realidad,' written once in the form of a novel, and again as a drama, treats of the subject of a wife's infidelity, as it might pass in real life, instead of in the conventional and hackneyed way. Its title seems to propose to adhere even closer to the exact truth than do the others. There come to mind, in its suppressed passion and its calm, intellectual, and bitter philosophy, suggestions both of Ibsen and Suderman. The banker Orozco, a noble and reserved nature, does not slay his wife, does not banish her from him, nor even make her reproaches. Augusta, on her side, wonders if his mind is not giving way. This bitter commentary on life is as near as her smaller mind can approach to a comprehension of his magnanimous conduct. The same Augusta, earlier, has said in conversation, "Real life is the greatest of all inventors; the only one who is ever ready, fresh, and inexhaustible in resource." In these books, however serious, the purpose does not obtrude to the detriment of art; the reader is left free to draw his own conclusions, as from events in actual life; the author ostensibly is neither for nor against, and yet he leaves us in no doubt as to his decision, always a moral and stimulating one.
The favorite scenes of Galdós's books are in Madrid and the small suburban resorts round about it, or at the numerous mineral springs which are so important a feature of Spanish summer life. He himself lives at Madrid, but goes for the season to a summer place he owns on the bold cliffs of the Bay of Biscay, at Santander. There, too he is near to Pereda, between whom and himself a remarkable friendship exists. A friendship so strong, warm, and long continued has been recognized as a notable feature in the careers of both. It is the more remarkable because except in literature, which both set above everything else, he is violently opposed to most of the views of Pereda—a conservative of the conservatives, even to the point of preferring the absolutist pretender Don Carlos for king. Even at Madrid and at Santander, however, Galdós's scenery is mere stage setting; he does not describe nature sympathetically nor aim to render local color in an accurate way. As the action must pass somewhere, he gives it just as much of a setting as will suffice, and seems satisfied with that. The impression of his books, on the whole, is a gloomy one. He who sees life clearly must perchance see it darkly, and few see it more clearly than Galdós. Yet his admirers will not have it that he is pessimistic, because Nature herself is not pessimistic. Even the sadness of nightfall ought not to be considered gloomy, they say, with much show of reason, since it is only the preparation for another day.
