Composing more than two-thirds of Gil Blas—are taken from the Spanish. Such are the admissions of Le Sage’s advocates.
Even after these important deductions, there remains enough to found a brilliant reputation. To this remainder, however, Le Sage is not entitled. It is, we trust, proved to every candid reader, that, with the exception of one anecdote, entertaining in itself, but betraying the greatest ignorance of Spanish manners, two or three allusions to the current scandal and topics of the day, and the insertion of several novels avowedly translated from other Spanish writers; all the merit of Le Sage consists in dividing a manuscript placed by his friend, the Abbé de Lyonne, in his possession, into two stories—one of which was Gil Blas, and the other, confessed by himself to be a translation and published long after the former, was the Bachelier de Salamanque. To the argument of chronological error, the sole answer which M. Neufchateau condescends to give is, that they are incomprehensible; and on his hypothesis he is right. As to the Spanish words and phrases employed in Gil Blas, the names of villages, towns, and families which occur in it, he observes that these are petty circumstances—so they are, and for that very reason the argument they imply is irresistible. The story of the examination of Gaspar, the servant of Simon, in the Inquisition scene, is gravely urged by M. Neufchateau as a proof that the writer was a Frenchman, as no Spaniard would dare to attack the Inquisition. This is strange confusion. Not a word is uttered against the Inquisition in the scene. Some impostors disguise themselves in the dress of inquisitors to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on the Parliament of Paris? Is the “Beaux’ Stratagem” an attack on our army and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict propriety they now preserve. Some confusion would have been made among them—an error which M. Neufchateau, in the few lines he has written upon the subject, has not been able to avoid. We may add that this whole scene was printed in Spanish, under the eye of the Inquisition, without any interference on the part of that venerable body, who, though tolerably quick-sighted in such matters, were not, it should seem, aware of the attack upon them which M. Neufchateau has been sagacious enough to discover. To the argument drawn from the geographical blunders, M. Neufchateau mutters that they are excusable in a writer who had never been in Spain. The question, how such a writer came wantonly to incur them, he leaves unanswered. M. Neufchateau asserts, that there is in Spanish no proverb that corresponds to the French saying, “A quelque chose le malheur est bon.” But a comedy was written in the time of Philip IV., entitled, “No hay man que por bien no venga.” He argues that Gil Blas is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like Don Quixote, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer The Silent Lady was not written by an Englishman; as there is no allusion to Falstaff in it.
But it may be said, if Le Sage was so unscrupulous as to appropriate to himself the works of another writer in Gil Blas, how came he to acknowledge the Bachelier de Salamanque as a translation?
This is a fair question, but the answer we can give is satisfactory. The originals of all his translations, except Gil Blas and the Bachelier de Salamanque, were printed; and therefore any attempt at wholesale plagiarism must have been immediately detected. The Bachelier de Salamanque, it is true, was in manuscript; but it had been long in the possession of the Marquis de Lerma and his son, before it became the property of Le Sage; and although tolerably certain that it had never been diligently perused, Le Sage could not be sure that it had not attracted superficial notice, and that the name was not known to many people. Now, by eviscerating the Bachelier de Salamanque of its most entertaining anecdotes, and giving them a different title, and then publishing the mutilated copy of a work, the name of which, with the outline of its story, was known to many people as an acknowledged translation, he took the most obvious means of disarming all suspicion of plagiarism, and setting, as it seems he did, on a wrong track the curiosity of enquirers. How came the original manuscript not to be printed by its author? Because it could not be printed with impunity within the jurisdiction of the Spanish monarchy: the allusions to the abuses of the court and the favourites of the day are so obvious—the satire upon the imbecility of the Spanish government so keen and biting—the personal descriptions of Philip III. and Philip IV. so exact—the corruption of its ministers of justice, and the abuses practised in its prisons, branded in terms so lively and vehement—the attacks upon the influence of the clergy, their hypocrisy, their ambition, and their avarice, so frequent and severe—that while Philip IV. and Don John of Austria, the fruit of his intrigue with the actress Marie Calderon, so carefully pointed out, were still alive, and before the generation to which it alludes had passed away, its publication, in Spain at least, was impossible. The Bachelier de Salamanque was not published for the same reason; and for the same reason, even in a country with perhaps more pretensions to freedom than Spain possessed, no one has yet acknowledged himself the writer of Junius. But why do you not produce the Spanish manuscript, and set the question at rest? exclaims with much naïveté M. Neufchateau. Does such an argument deserve serious refutation? That is, why do not you Spaniards produce a manuscript given to one Frenchman by another at Paris, in the 18th century, which of course, if our theory be true, he had the strongest temptation to destroy? Rather may the Spaniards ask, why do not you produce the original manuscript of the Bachelier de Salamanque, which would overthrow at least one portion of our hypothesis?
The object of Gil Blas is to exhibit a vivid representation of the follies and vices of the successive administrations of Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez; to point out the actual state of the drama in Spain under the reign of Philip IV., who, indolent as he was, possessed the taste of a true Spaniard for dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages of their violence—in short, to hold up every species of national error, and every weakness of national folly, to public obloquy and derision. In dwelling upon such topics the writer will, of course, describe scenes and characters common to every state of civilized society. The broad and general features of the time-serving courtier, of the servile coxcomb, of the rapacious mistress, of the expecting legatee, the frivolous man of fashion, and the still more frivolous pedant, will be the same, whatever be the country in which the scene is laid, and by whatever names they happen to be distinguished. France had, no doubt, her Sangrados and Ochetos, her Matthias de Silva and Rodrigo, her Lauras and her Archbishops of Granada.
“Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,
Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;
Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
Some flying stroke, alone can hit ’em right.”
Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho’s kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns unexplored by a negligent administration, in which bandits found a refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious, inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When Gil Blas was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fénélon, and Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of European literature.
Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one were to affirm that the Adelphi of Terence was not a translation from Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for proselytes. Let us see what he might allege—he might urge that Terence had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus as his original—he might insist that Syrus could only have been the slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our notions of a Roman pander, that Æschinus was the picture of a dissolute young patrician—in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed; he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome, at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of what value were such broad and general features common to a species, when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the “Dimidiate Menander” of Cæsar, as a proof of the opinion entertained of his genius by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who would dispute the position for which he contended.
The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau’s argument is the slight assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius, must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.
According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, Gil Blas might be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero, meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who, having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an historian without research?