Note 163 — BOOK VI.

Vicente Espinel was born in 1550 and is conjectured to have died between 1624 and 1634. He is said to have added a fifth string to the guitar, and to have introduced espinelas: "perdónesele Dios," is Lope's comment in the Dorotea (act. i. sc. vii.). Espinel's Diversas rimas (1591) are now only known to students; but his picaresque novel, Marcos de Obregón (Madrid, 1618), still finds, and deserves to find, many readers. In the 1775 edition of the Siècle de Louis XIV. Voltaire alleged that Gil Blas was "entièrement pris du roman espagnol La Vidad de lo Escudiero Dom Marcos d'Obrego." It will be observed that, in transcribing the title, Voltaire makes almost as many mistakes as the number of words allows. His statement is a grotesque exaggeration, but it had the merit of suggesting a successful practical joke to José Francisco de Isla. This sly wag translated Gil Blas into Spanish, mischievously pretending that the book was thus "restored to its country and native language by a jealous Spaniard who will not allow his nation to be made fun of." Unluckily, the naughty Jesuit did not live to see the squabbles of the learned critics who fell into the trap that he had baited for them. It is, by the way, a curious and disputed point whether the Comte de Neufchâteau's celebrated Examen de la question de savoir si Lesage est l'auteur de Gil Blas ou s'il l'a pris de l'espagnol (1818) was, or was not, taken word for word from a juvenile essay by Victor Hugo: see Victor Hugo raconté par un témoin de sa vie (Bruxelles and Leipzig, 1863), vol. i., p. 396. In the Adjunta al Parnaso Cervantes calls Espinel "uno de los más antiguos y verdaderos amigos que yo tengo." In his Rimas Espinel had been most complimentary to Cervantes. But Pellicer and Fernández de Navarrete have spoken harshly of him for being (as they imagined) jealous of the success of Don Quixote; and Mr. Henry Edward Watts (op. cit., p. 157, n. 1) asserts that Espinel "took occasion after Cervantes' death to speak of his own Marcos de Obregón ... as superior to Don Quixote." This is not so. There may be authors who suppose that their immortal masterpieces are superior to the ephemeral writings of everybody else: but they seldom say this—at least, in print. Nor did Espinel. It must suffice, for the moment, to note that the above-mentioned fable is mainly based on the fact that the Gongoresque poet and preacher, Hortensio Félix Paravicino y Arteaga, wrote as follows in his Aprobación to Marcos de Obregón: "El Libro del Escudero, que escriuio el Maestro Espinel, y V. M. me manda censurar, he visto, y no hallo en el cosa que se oponga à nuestra santa Fè Catolica Romana, ni ofenda à la piedad de las buenas costumbres della, antes de los libros deste género, que parece de entretenimiento comun, es el que con más razón deue ser impreso, por tener el prouecho tan cerca del deleyte, que sin perjudicar enseña, y sin diuertir entretiene: el estilo, la inuencion, el gusto de las cosas, y la moralidad, que deduze dellas, arguyen bien la pluma que la ha escrito, tan justamente celebrada en todas naciones. A mi alomenos de los libros deste argumento me parece la mejor cosa que nuestra lengua tendrà, y que V.m. deue darle vna aprouacion muy honrada. Guarde nuestro Señor à V. M."

It is Paravicino, not Espinel, who speaks: and the eulogistic phrases which he uses do not exceed the limits of the recognized convention on such occasions.