And so the comedy goes on. One new face after another appears on the scene, among them Captain Hannibal Chinchilla, with monstrous moustache, who has left an eye in Naples, an arm in Lombardy, and a leg in the Low Country; then Count Galiano, who is fonder of his monkey than of his servants. Our hero becomes one of the secretaries of the prime minister, the Duke of Lerma, where he acquires great honor, but for a long time, no pay. Finally he sells his influence, gets into court intrigues, rises step by step, until he is about to marry the daughter of a rich jeweller, when he is arrested and thrown into the tower of Segovia. Here he is found by his faithful valet Scipio, who gets him released. He now determines to renounce the court forever, and his old friend Don Alphonso gives him a small estate at Lirias. But when the new king comes in, Gil Blas is tempted back again, rises rapidly under Count Olivares, and when this minister falls, follows him into retirement. Upon the death of the count, Gil Blas returns to Lirias, where his marriage and his happy life with his wife, Dorothea, close the story.
Many of the personages of the tale reappear at the most unlooked for places and in the most unexpected characters. For instance, the two rascals, Don Raphael and Ambrose, turn up as monks in a convent, where they have led a life of great piety and penitence for over a year. But Don Raphael is the treasurer and Ambrose is the porter of the monastery, and soon these worthy brothers disappear with all the funds. They come to their deserts, however, for the last that is seen of them they are walking with other culprits to an auto da fe, their heads decorated with the carochas or pasteboard caps upon which are painted the flames and devils of eternal punishment.
Another interesting character who comes in at different parts of the story is the schoolmate of Gil Blas, Fabricio, the son of the barber Nunez. At first a valet, he next turns up as a poet, having composed a worthless comedy which was a great success, from which he judged the public was a good milch cow. Some amusing descriptions follow of Fabricio’s opinion as to what constitutes a fine style. He reads a sonnet which Gil Blas cannot understand, but the son of the barber Nunez insists that this shows its excellence—that obscurity is the charm of all works that aim to be sublime, and that it is quite enough if the poet thinks they have a meaning. There are amusing portraits of Fabricio’s friends, who imagine themselves great authors and who dispute and fight at their host’s table over the comparative merits of their wretched productions. Next Fabricio is found in the hospital; he has abandoned the Muses and written an ode to bid them an eternal adieu. But as soon as he is well he is back at his old occupation, and gets a place with a liberal patron, Gómez de Ribera. He writes a play, which, being fortunately hissed and hooted by the populace, gets him a good pension from his patron, who obstinately admires it and says, “Victrix causa Diis placuit sed victa Catoni.” There is an amusing account of a dinner which Fabricio gives to his literary friends, where they discuss the question what constitutes the chief interest in the Iphigenia of Euripides, one of the guests solemnly maintaining that it was not the peril of the heroine, but the wind. “I take the part of the Greeks,” says Melchior de Villegas. “I espouse their purpose. I only wish for the departure of their fleet, and I look with an indifferent eye upon Iphigenia in her peril, since her death is a means of obtaining from the gods a favorable wind.”
Le Sage is almost as hard upon the doctors as Molière. Dr. Sangrado has become a type. He was so expeditious that he did not often give time for any of his patients to call a notary in order to make a will. After they had been bled to death, he always insisted that they died because they had not been bled enough and had not taken enough hot water. The doctor admitted to Gil Blas that he did not often cure his patients, and that if he were not so sure of his principles he might have been tempted to think that his bleeding and hot water had really injured them, but that he could not change his methods because he had published a book! In his last interview with Gil Blas, the good doctor (now retired from practice) deplores the decadence of medicine, but is caught by his own pupil drinking wine in violation of his own precepts.
All through the book stories of the events of their own lives are told by the principal characters. The robbers in the cave, Doña Mencia, Don Alphonso, Don Raphael, Scipio, and others, all give us their histories, which resemble in miniature the principal narrative. The novel is a very long one, and although it is well written everywhere, the latter part contains some incidents which seem like repetitions, and the interest is not held quite up to the standard of the earlier books.
“Gil Blas” is an admirable prose satire, a satire written with the light raillery of Horace rather than the invective of Juvenal. It sparkles everywhere with French wit, and though the scene is laid in Spain (the model for that kind of story being the early Spanish tales like “Lazarillo de Tormes”), yet the style and the characters are essentially French, and many of the latter are taken from the acquaintance of the author himself. The illusion, however, is well maintained, and it is only upon rare occasions (such as the raillery of the petits maîtres) that one notices characteristics which do not seem quite at home in Spain. Near the close of the book there are a number of historical characters (Spanish, of course), but these are by no means the liveliest or best. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether “Gil Blas” has not rather suffered than gained by the introduction of its historical features.
I have noticed that while I can enjoy “Don Quixote” perhaps better in the translation than the original, “Gil Blas,” on the other hand, sounds more natural to me in a Spanish version than in the original French. This may be mere fancy, or perhaps it may be attributed to this, that “Gil Blas,” being a foreign production, seems more natural after having been acclimated, as it were, by translation into the language of the country in which its scenes are laid. “Don Quixote,” on the other hand, being thoroughly Spanish does not lose its national characteristics, no matter what the language in which it is communicated to the reader.
ROBINSON CRUSOE
DANIEL DEFOE
The main feature of this story—an account of the efforts of a castaway to live comfortably without human aid,—is extremely attractive to the young. Many of the scenes are very vivid,—the shipwreck, the lonely island, the birds startled at the sound of the gun, the wildcat that observes the new intruder; his efforts to provide for himself food, clothing, and shelter; the construction of his strange dwelling, the planting of his crops, the care of his goats, the building of his canoe, and most of all, the account of the wild man Friday, whom he secures for his servant,—all these things are ingeniously and attractively described. But the repetitions which occur throughout the book make it in places very tedious. Crusoe tells us in his diary the same story which he has already related in the preceding narrative; he moralizes again and again upon his folly in disregarding the advice of his good father; he computes over and over the evils and the blessings that have befallen him; and tells many times and at great length the story of how he became a Christian and learned to pray. Much of the book is a sermon of Puritan dimensions. This is one of the works where the abridgement is better than the original. The homilies are commonplace, there are few striking passages and the style, though occasionally picturesque, is often dry and involved.
Of course in such a work there can be little portraiture of character. Robinson Crusoe himself is not a specially interesting person. His ingenuity is all that attracts us. In one or two places his jumbled motives are described with unconscious naïveté. For instance, he says, when he saw Friday escaping from the two savages who had intended to make a meal of him: “It came very firmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was the time to get me a servant and perhaps a companion or assistant, and that I was called plainly by Providence to save this poor creature’s life.” So he killed the pursuers and appropriated Friday.