As an adjective, the word may mean variously: low, sly, immoral, naughty, mischievous, perverse, shameless; it may be a term of the harshest reprobation, or of the most affectionate reproof.
[2], 16. tío. The Spanish uses of the word are not unlike those of our word uncle; hence some explanation is needed for its application to the miller, in whose case there can be no question of old age, neither of any pejorative adumbration, the two usual suggestions. I think it may be said Tío Lucas was Tío Lucas because he needed some appelation, and was not up to Señor; also because of his friendly disposition. In [29], 10 tía Josefa is evidently pejorative.
[3], 12. las licencias necesarias. The censoring and licensing of books in Spain antedates printing by quite two hundred years. Provision was made for it by Alfonso el Sabio in the Siete Partidas (1256-1263). The function was gradually assumed by the Inquisition, after its establishment in 1480, first tacitly, and with the coöperation of the civil authorities, later, after 1640, independently. From 1550 on no book could be published or circulated in Spain without the aprobación and the other formalities whose sum constituted the licencias necesarias. The general practice went out with the Inquisition, though the Church maintains its Index in Spain as elsewhere. It may be not out of place to remark that the licencias, though doubtless irksome oftentimes to the author and publisher, are at present as useful to the student of literature in the matter of determining dates as is the baptismal certificate to the writer of biography. For various data, see Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. I, pp. 420 sqq.
[3], 15. gracioso. The gracioso, the "droll servant," is the essentially comic character of the Spanish classic drama, as the Clown and the Fool of the English. The first examples of the gracioso are in two plays of Bartolomé Torres Naharro, and the type is constant from Lope de Vega on.
[3], 18. romances de ciego: songs and ballads printed coarsely on loose sheets of paper, and sold about the streets of the larger Spanish towns by the blind beggars.
[3], 21. D. Agustín Durán. A prominent Spanish man of letters, author, editor, and critic, of lasting influence and importance. Son of a court physician, he was born at Madrid in 1793, died 1862. His Romancero General, here referred to, the standard collection of old Spanish songs and ballads, was published in two volumes of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid, Rivadeneyra), in 1849 and 1851, and has been kept in print ever since.
[4], 21. Estebanillo González. The reference is to the closing words of the prólogo to the picaresque novel Vida y Hechos de Estebanillo González, where the author addresses his reader: "Donde, después de haberla leído y héchote más cruces que si hubieras visto al demonio, la tendrás por digna y merecedora de haber salido a luz." Estebanillo González is published in the second volume of Novelistas Posteriores a Cervantes, of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles; the passage quoted is on page 286. Compare also De Haan, op. cit. p. 49; Chandler, op. cit., p. 243 sqq.
[5], 3. después del de (180)4 y antes del de (180)8. Compare 7, 5: [p. 131] supongamos que el de 1805. As a matter of fact, no one of the years suggested (1804-1808) quite meets all the specifications, as the depositions referred to in [5], 8 took place in 1806 and 1807; see the table in note to that line.
[5], 4. Don Carlos IV de Borbón. Charles IV, King of Spain, born at Naples, 1748, succeeded his father, Charles III, in 1788, abdicated March 18th, 1808, died at Rome, 1819.
[5], 8-9.