488 Who wrote Gil Bias ? [Nov. 



blood, or at least a distinguished member of the Arragonese noblesse. 

 The quarrel subsisted yet in 1592^ when they assassinated the Castilian 

 viceroy, Don Inigo de Mendoza, and appointed in his room an Arra- 

 gonese nobleman, Don Michel Martinez de Luna. Le Sage, who pos- 

 sessed but a superficial knowledge of Spanish history, was unable to 

 comprehend the force of the historical allusion conveyed by the worda^ 

 of the minister Olivares. • 



The description of the tower of Segovia, its little court-yard, narrow- 

 staircase, the window of the tower overlooking the river Erema, are all 

 given with a minuteness of detail which supposes the writer to have beenr 

 an eye-witness of the scene he describes. The minor details of this' 

 picture of social life are equally conformable to the truth. It is remark- 

 ably displayed in the description of the inkhorn, which Gil Bias and his 

 companions purchased when they were preparing to enact the part of 

 inquisitors at the expence of the Jew, Samuel Simon. " It consisted of 

 two pieces of horn attached to each other by a cord — one to hold the 

 ink, and the other to contain the pens." This is correct description of 

 the inkhorns used to this day in Spain by the notaries, and which they 

 always carry about with them. 



There is another example which demands particular attention — it is 

 the description of La Dame Jacintha, the housekeeper of the Licentiate 

 Sedillo. — " She wore a long woollen robe of the coarsest material, with 

 a wide leather girdle, from one side of which hung a large bunch of 

 keys, and from the other a chaplet of large beads." This is a faithful 

 portrait of the class of women in Spain, known under the name of bealas i 

 (devotees). The manners of all courts have a certain degree of resem-< 

 blance ; but a foreign writer, who had never been in Spain, we repeat, 

 could scarcely have been acquainted with certain customs, the names of 

 streets and churches, not existing in large and populous towns, but in 

 insignificant villages. There are several remarkable examples of this 

 kind in the course of the work. Thus Scipio, in relating what hap- 

 pened to him at Toledo, speaks of the church De los Reyes. Now there 

 exists to this day a little church at Toledo, named San Juan de los Reyes 

 — a fact of which Le Sage must have been ignorant, and which again 

 supports the theory of the Spanish origin of the work. 



We have already observed that the novel of Gil Bias may be considered 

 the moral and political history of the Spanish monarchy, from the end , 

 of the reign of Philip the Second till the year 1646. All the episodes « 

 introduced in the course of the narrative have their own peculiar chro- 

 nology ; and, between them and the adventures of the hero of the story, , 

 we find several remarkable anachronisms, which could scarely have \ 

 crept in had Le Sage been the original writer of the work. 



Gil Bias relates that when he made his escape from the cavern of the 

 robbers, between Astorga and Cacabellos, he was between four and five- 

 and-twenty years of age. This event took place in 1606, which would 

 have brought the year of his birth to " 1581." Portugal, at that period, 

 was under the dominion of the Spanish crown, and continued so until 

 the revolt of the Duke of Braganza in " 1640." Yet Dona IMencia, in 

 relating her history to Gil Bias, states that her father, Don Jlartin, was 

 killed in Portugal at the head of his regiment. Now supposing, with 

 Gil Bias, Dona Mencia to have been five-and-twenty, her father must 

 have been killed in 1580 — at which period no war existed between the 

 two states. She again relates that her husband was killed in Africa, in a 

 the battle in which Don Sebastian lost his life and crown — another inipos- •.. 



