Note 337 — Chapter IV

Voltaire, Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Tom. XX. p. 155. Le Sage, Œuvres, Paris, 1810, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xxxix., where Voltaire is said to have been attacked by Le Sage, in one of his dramas; besides which it is supposed Le Sage ridiculed him under the name of Triaquero, in Gil Blas, Lib. X. c. 5. But the most important and curious discussion concerning the authorship of Gil Blas is the one that was carried on, between 1818 and 1822, by François de Neufchâteau and Antonio de Llorente, the author of the History of the Inquisition. It began with a memoir, by the first, read to the French Academy, (1818,) and an edition of Gil Blas, (Paris, 1820, 3 tom. 8vo,) in both of which he maintains Le Sage to be the true author of that romance. To both Llorente replied by a counter memoir, addressed to the French Academy, and by his “Observations sur Gil Blas,” (Paris, 1822, 12mo,) and his “Observaciones sobre Gil Blas” (Madrid, 1822, 12mo); two works not exactly alike, but substantially so, and equally maintaining that Gil Blas is Spanish in its origin, and probably the work of Solís, the historian, who, as Llorente conjectures, wrote a romance in Spanish, entitled, “El Bachiller de Salamanca,” the manuscript of which coming into the possession of Le Sage, he first plundered from it the materials for his Gil Blas, which he published in 1715-35, and then gave the world the remainder as the “Bachelier de Salamanque,” in 1738. This theory of Llorente is explained, with more skill than is shown in its original framing, by the late accomplished scholar, Mr. A. H. Everett, in an article which first appeared in the North American Review, for October, 1827, when its author was Minister of the United States in Spain, and afterwards in his pleasant “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,” published in Boston, 1845, 12mo.