After Gil Blas’s promotion, he says that his haughty colleague treated him with more respect; and this is expressed in such a way as to show that Le Sage was ignorant of Spanish etiquette, and did not understand thoroughly the meaning of what he transcribed. “Il Don Rodrigo de Calderone ne m’appela plus que Seigneur de Santillane, lui qui jusqu’alors ne m’avoit traité que de vous, sans jamais se servir du terme de seigneurie,” supposing the meaning equivalent—whereas, in fact, though Gil Blas might complain of not being addressed in the third person, which would draw with it the use of señor, and was a common form of civility—it would have been ridiculous to represent him as addressed by a name, señoria, to which none but people of high station and illustrious rank were entitled. But Le Sage supposed that every one addressed as señor, might also be spoken of by the term señoria; a mistake against which a very moderate knowledge of Spanish usages would have guarded him. We may illustrate this by a quotation from Navarete:—
“En este estado enviaron a decir a Magallanes.... Que si se queria avenir a lo que cumpliese, al servicio de S. M. estarian a lo que les mandase, y que si hasta entonces le dieron tratamiento de merced, en adelante se lo darian de senoria, y le besarian pies y manos.”
This was intended as a proof of the greatest reverence by the mutineers, whom, notwithstanding this submission, Magallanes took an early opportunity to destroy.
Gil Blas relates the absurd resolution of the Conde Duque D’Olivarez, to adopt the son of a person with whom he, among others, had intrigued as his own. This anecdote was well known in Spain. The supposed father of this youth was an alcalde de corte, called Valcancel; and he had been rivaled by an alguazil. The son was called in the early part of his life Julian Valcancel. When adopted by Olivarez, he took the name of Eurique Felipe de Guzman, which the people said ought to be exchanged for that of Del Alguazil del Alcalde de Corte. Olivarez divorced him from the woman to whom he was certainly married, and obliged him to marry the daughter of the Duca de Frias. He was called by the people of Madrid a man with two names, the son of three fathers, and the husband of two wives. Le Sage, by substituting the name of Valdeasar for that of Valcancel, proves that he was ignorant of the whole transaction. In the auto da fé which Gil Blas sees at Toledo, and in which his old friends terminate their adventures in so tragical a manner—some of the guilty are represented as wearing carochas on their heads. This is a word altogether without meaning; the real word was corozas, a cap worn by criminals as a badge of degradation.
Another mistake deserves attention, as supplying the strongest proof of an inaccurate transcriber. “J’espère,” says Maître Joachim to his master, “que je vous servirai tantôt un ragout digne d’un cantador mayor.” The word was not “cantador,” but “contador mayor,” the “ministro de hacienda,” or chancellor of the exchequer; a situation under a despotic government of the highest dignity and opulence. So Don Annibal de Chinchilla exclaims—“Me croit-elle un contador mayor,” when repelling a demand of a rapacious prostitute. But Le Sage mistook the o of his manuscript for an a, and turned a phrase very intelligible into nonsense. We now come to the passage which M. Neufchateau quotes as decisive in favour of Le Sage’s claims. It certainly was to be found in no Spanish manuscript.
“Don Louis nous mena chez un jeune gentilhomme de ses amis, qu’on appeloit don Gabriel de Pedros. Nous y passâmes le reste de la journée; nous y soupâmes même, et nous n’en sortîmes que sur les deux heures après minuit pour nous en retourner au logis. Nous avions peut-être fait la moitié du chemin, lorsque nous rencontrâmes sous nos pieds dans la rue deux hommes étendus par terre. Nous jugeâmes que c’étoient des malheureux qu’on venoit d’assassiner, et nous nous arretâmes pour les secourir, s’il en étoit encore temps. Comme nous cherchions à nous instruire, autant que l’obscurité de la nuit nous le pouvoit permettre, de l’état où ils se trouvoient, la patrouille arriva. Le commandant nous prit d’abord pour des assassins, et nous fit environner par ses gens; mais il eut meilleure opinion de nous lorsqu’il nous eut entendus parler, et qu’à la faveur d’une lanterne sourde, il vit les traits de Mendoce et de Pacheco. Ses archers, par son ordre, examinèrent les deux hommes que nous nous imaginions avoir été tués; et il se trouva que c’étoit un gros licencie avec son valet, tous deux pris de vin, ou plutôt ivres-morts. ‘Messieurs,’ s’écria un des archers, ‘je reconnois ce gros vivant. Eh! c’est le seigneur licencie Guyomar, recteur de notre université. Tel que vous le voyez, c’est un grand personnage, un génie superieur. Il n’y a point de philosophe qu’il ne terrasse dans une dispute; il a un flux de bouche sans pareil. C’est dommage qu’il aime un peu trop de vin, le procès, et la grisette. Il revient de souper de chez son Isabella, où, par malheur, son guide s’est enivre comme lui. Ils sont tombes l’un et l’autre dans le ruisseau. Avant que le bon licencie fut recteur, cela lui arrivoit assez souvent. Les honneurs, comme vous voyez, ne changent pas toujours les mœurs.’ Nous laissâmes ces ivrognes entre les mains de la patrouille, qui eut soin de les porter chez eux. Nous regagnâmes notre hôtel, et chacun ne songea qu’à se reposer.”
Now this story pierces to the heart the theory which M. Neufchateau cites it in order to establish. It is an anecdote incorporated by Le Sage with the rest of the work; and how well it tallies with a Spanish story, and the delineation of Spanish manners, let the reader judge. The rector of the university of Salamanca was required to unite a great variety of qualifications. In the first place, his birth must have been noble for several generations; not perhaps as many as a canon of Strasburg was required to trace, but more than it was possible for the great majority even of well born gentlemen to produce. The situation, indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is considered infamous, and which none but those who are below the influence of public opinion, and even those but in rare instances, are ever known to practise. To call a man a drunkard in Spain, is considered a worse insult than to call him a thief; and the effect of the story is the same as if a person, pretending to describe English manners, were to represent the Lord Chancellor as often in custody on a charge of shoplifting, and permitted, in consideration of his abilities, still to remain in office and exercise the duties of his station.
The principal topographical errors are the following:—Doña Mencia names to Gil Blas two places on the road near Burgos—these she calls Gofal and Rodillas; the real names are Tardagal and Revilla, (1, 11;) Ponte de Mula is put for Puenta Duro, (1, 13;) Luceno for Luyego; Villardera for Villar del Sa, (5, 1;) Almerim for Almoharia, (5, 1;) Sliva for Chiva, (7, 1;) Obisa for Cobisa, (10, 10;) Sinas for Linas; Mililla for Melilla; Arragon for Aragon. Describing his journey from Madrid to Oviedo, Gil Blas says they slept the first night at Alcala of Henares, and the second at Segovia. Now Alcala is not on the road from Madrid to Segovia, nor is it possible to travel in one day from one of these cities to the other—probably Galapagar was the word mistaken. Penafiel is mentioned as lying on the road from Segovia to Valladolid, (10, 1;) this is for Portillo. Now, if Le Sage had invented the story, and clothed it with names of Spanish cities and villages, taken from printed books, can any one suppose that he could have fallen into all these errors?
A thread of Spanish history winds through the whole story of Gil Blas, and keeps every circumstance in its place; therefore the date of the hero’s birth may be fixed with the greatest precision. He tells us he was fifty-eight at the death of the Count Duke of Olivarez, that is, 1646; Gil Blas was therefore born 1588, and this corresponds altogether with different allusions, which show that when the romance was written the war between Spain and Portugal was present to the author’s mind, and the subject of his constant animadversion. Portugal, as our readers may recollect, became subject to the Spanish yoke in 1580, the Duke of Braganza was raised to the throne of that kingdom in 1640; and the war to which that event gave rise was not terminated till 1668; when Charles II. acknowledged Alphonso VI. as the legitimate ruler of Portugal. That when the work was written the war between Spain and Portugal continued, may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which were published before 1654, are cited in it—it is not of later date, because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author as an autograph, a sort of “chien de Bassano,” to point out the real date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588; that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated. One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is supposed to relate this story at Madrid in 1607; in it a king of Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign. Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage’s attention was called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he undertakes to correct in another edition—a promise which he fulfilled by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who singles out with such painful anxiety the error to which we have adverted, suffers others of equal importance to pass altogether unnoticed? For instance, in the twelfth book, eighth chapter, Olivarez speaks of a journey of Philip IV. to Zaragoza; which took place indeed, but not until two years after the disgrace of Olivarez. Cogollos, speaking in 1616, alludes to a circumstance connected with the revolt of Portugal in 1640; Olivarez, sixteen months afterwards, mentions the same circumstance, saying to Cogollos—“Your patron, though related to the Duke of Braganza, had, I am well assured, no share in his revolt.” In 1607, Gil Blas, being the servant of Don Bernardo de Castel Blanco, says, that some suppose his master to be a spy of the king of Portugal, a personage who at that time did not exist. Now, if Le Sage intended to leave to posterity a lasting and unequivocal proof of his plagiarism, how could he do so more effectually than by dwelling on one anachronism as an error which he intended to correct, in a work swarming in every part with others equally flagrant, of which he takes no notice? We have mentioned these mistakes, particularly as being mistakes into which the original author had fallen, and which, as his object was not to give an exact relation of facts, he probably disregarded altogether. And here again we must repeat our remark, that these perpetual allusions indicate a writer not afraid of exposing himself by irretrievable blunders, and certain of being understood by those whom he addressed. A Spaniard writing for Spaniards, would of course take it for granted that his countrymen were acquainted with those very facts and allusions which Le Sage sometimes formally endeavours to explain, and sometimes is unable to detect; while a writer conscious, as the French author was, of a very imperfect acquaintance with the language and usages of Spain, would never indulge in those little circumstantial touches which a Spaniard could not help inserting.
We now come to errors of Le Sage himself. Doña Mencia speaks of her first husband dying in the service of the king of Portugal, five or six years after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Events are described as taking place in the time of Philip II., under the title of Le Mariage de Vengeance, which happened three hundred years before, at the time of the Sicilian Vespers, 1283. Gil Blas, after his release from the tower of Segovia, tells his patron, Alonzo de Leyva, that four months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead; and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the transcriber’s omission of the words “Duke of Uzeda, son of,” which should precede the cardinal duke, &c., and which makes the sentence historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate Le Sage ’s claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism can ever be said “digito monstrari et dicier hic est,” it is here.