Note 807 — Chapter IV

The number of editions of the Lazarillo, during the sixteenth century, in the Low Countries, in Italy, and in Spain is great; but those printed in Spain, beginning with the one of Madrid, 1573, 18mo, are expurgated of the passages most offensive to the clergy by an order of the Inquisition; an order renewed in the Index Expurgatorius, 1667. Indeed, I do not know how the chapter on the seller of indulgences could have been written by any but a Protestant, after the Reformation was so far advanced as it then was. Mendoza does not seem ever to have acknowledged himself to be the author of Lazarillo de Tórmes, which, in fact, was sometimes attributed to Juan de Ortega, a monk. Of a translation of Lazarillo into English, reported by Lowndes (art. Lazarillo) as the work of David Rowland, 1586, and probably the same praised in the Retrospective Review, Vol. II. p. 133, above twenty editions are known. Of a translation by James Blakeston, which seems to me better, I have a copy, dated London, 1670, 18mo.