Note 112 — Chapter XXXIV

“Marcos de Obregon” has been occasionally a good deal discussed, both by those who have read it and those who have not, from the use Le Sage has been supposed to have made of it in the composition of Gil Blas. The charge was first announced by Voltaire, who had personal reasons to dislike Le Sage, and who, in his “Siècle de Louis XIV.,” (1752,) said, boldly enough, that “The Gil Blas is taken entirely from the Spanish romance entitled ‘La Vidad de lo Escudiero Dom Marcos d’Obrego.’” (Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo, Tom. XX. p. 155.) This is one of the remarks Voltaire sometimes hazarded, with little knowledge of the matter he was discussing, and it is not true. That Le Sage had seen the “Marcos de Obregon” there can be no doubt; and none that he made some use of it in the composition of the Gil Blas. This is apparent at once by the story which constitutes its Preface, and which is taken from a similar story in the Prólogo to the Spanish romance; and it is no less plain frequently afterwards, in the body of the work, where the trick played on the vanity of Gil Blas, as he is going to Salamanca, (Lib. I. c. 2,) is substantially the same with that played on Marcos, (Relacion I. Desc. 9,)—where the stories of Camilla (Gil Blas, Liv. I. c. 16, Marcos, Rel. III. Desc. 8) and of Mergellina (Gil Blas, Liv. II. c. 7, Marcos, Rel. I. Desc. 3), with many other matters of less consequence, correspond in a manner not to be mistaken. But this was the way with Le Sage, who has used Estevanillo Gonzalez, Guevara, Roxas, Antonio de Mendoza, and others, with no more ceremony. He seemed, too, to care very little about concealment, for one of the personages in his Gil Blas is called Marcos de Obregon. But the idea that the Gil Blas was taken entirely from the Marcos de Obregon of Espinel, or was very seriously indebted to that work, is absurd. See the next Period, Chap. IV., note on Father Isla.