482 Who wrote Gil Bias ? ['Nov. 



ship of Le Sage, still they prove, in no ordinary degree, that such a 

 report was circulated in the literary circles of France. But no formal 

 disquisition, we believe, had been published on the subject until the 

 appearance of the Spanish translation by the Padre Isla — a Jesuit, and, 

 as he styles himself in the title-page, " Hu7n Espanol Zeloso qui no soff'rc 

 que se hiirlen dc su nacion." This translation was preceded by a preli- 

 minary discourse, in which the reverend disciple of Loyola denounces 

 Le Sage in the most unmeasured terms as a literary pirate. 



It must, however, be candidly confessed that the dissertation of the 

 reverend padre contains assertion without proof, and, in some instances, 

 violent strictures, without either temper or moderation. His chief 

 objection to the claim of Le Sage rests on the authority of the French 

 " Dictionnaire Historique," which is quoted by him in ti'iumphant 

 illustration, but which, in fact, amounts to nothing ; for it is perfectly 

 evident that the compilers had treated the subject loosely, possessed no 

 precise information upon it, and had, m.oreover, no intention of discus- 

 sing it as a questionable point. Isla's system may, therefore, be con- 

 sidered as utterly baseless, and in no way substantiating the claims of 

 his country to the authorship of the novel in question. The Jesuit was 

 also inadequate to the task he had undertaken, and, in the course of his 

 dissertation, displays a lamentable ignorance not only of the history and 

 topography of his country, but of many peculiarities in its manners and 

 customs. The outlines of his theory as to the manner in which Le Sage be- 

 came possessed of the Spanish manuscript, are as follows : — He mentions a 

 report that he had been for some years attached to the French embassy 

 at Madrid, and that, during that time, he formed an acquaintance with \ 

 an Andalusian lawyer, who confided to him this and several other manu-i 

 scripts, which were too free in their political observations for the despotic 

 atmosphere of Spain. The first of these facts, if true, would rather serve ^ 

 to refute than to establish upon a solid basis the system of Padre Isla ; 

 since a long residence in Spain, under such circumstances, would furnish 

 the most plausible indications of the manner in which a foreign 

 writer might have obtained the rich mass of Spanish materials em- 

 ployed in this novel. But the story of the Andalusian advogado and 

 his manuscripts is too vague to mei'it attention. So far from Le Sage 

 having been an attache to the French embassy at IMadrid, it will be 

 presently proved that he was never, at any period of his life, in Spain. 



The sensation produced by Padre Isla's work was transient. The 

 public mind, both in France and Spain, was too deeply engrossed by 

 collisions of a sterner nature, to examine critically the pretensions of the 

 Jesuit. The dispute languished till the year 1818, when Count Fran- 

 cois de Neufchateau, minister of the interior under the republic, read to 

 the French Academy a memoir entitled, " An Investigation of the 

 Question, whether Le Sage was the original Author of Gil Bias, or whe- 

 ther he borrowed it from the Spanish ?" In this paper, which was 

 printed in the following year, the count warmly sustains the claims 

 of France ; and, in the year 1820, he published in Paris a new edition 

 of Gil Bias, with copious notes, in which he defends his original posi- 

 tion. Don Juan Antonio Llorente, the ex-secretary of the inquisition, 

 was at that time residing in Paris, and deeply engaged in his history of 

 that formidable tribunal, and other literary labours of a grave and 

 important character. The patriotism of the Spaniard was aroused by 

 the attack on tlie literary fame of his country ; and, abandoning for a 

 time his more serious compositions, he produced his " Observations 



