494 ^y'ho wrote Gil Bias ? [Nov. 



secretary to the Conde de Oropeza in his successive viceroyalties of 

 Navarre and Valencia, and was afterwards appointed one of the under 

 secretaries of state in the ministry of Don Luis de Haro, successor to 

 Olivares. If we, therefore, suppose — what is pretty clear from exter- 

 nal evidence — that the last volumes offer a sketch of the personal 

 adventures of the author, it must follow that he must have occupied, at 

 the same time when Solis was in the department of the state, some post 

 of a similar description. It is, therefore, easy to imagine why Solis — 

 if he were, in fact, the author — should not wish to publish at Madrid a 

 novel which describes, in so free a manner, the secret intrigues of the 

 court for thirty years immediately preceding, while Philip the Fourth, 

 and several other persons of high rank, whose characters are drawn with 

 the pencil of a satirist, were still alive. To Philip the Fourth, Solis was 

 under great obligations ; and he could not, Avithout incurring the tax of 

 the basest ingratitude, have put his name to a work which published to 

 the world his intrigues with the actress ^laria Calderon. The residence 

 of the ]Marquis de Lyonne at IMadrid, his taste for this species of litera- 

 ture, his intimacy with Don Luis Mendez de Haro, IMarquis del Car- 

 pio, in whose department Solis was secretary, and from whom it is 

 reasonable to suppose that he may have obtained the j\IS., and if to this we 

 add, that the author makes not the slightest allusion to the ministry of his 

 patron, the IMarquis del Carpio ; — all these facts will present a remark- 

 able chain of presumptive evidence, in favour of the theory which ascribes 

 to Don Antonio de Solis the authorship of this second Don Quixote. 



But, fruitless (deprived as we are of all direct evidence) as may 

 justly be deemed, at this distant period of time, every attempt to dis- 

 cover the real author of the novel of Gil Bias, aU difficulties immediately 

 vanish when the country of his birth becomes the object of our 

 researches. To those acquainted with the language and manners 

 of the people of the Iberian peninsula, neither subtlety of argument or 

 laboured dissertation is necessary, to establish the Spanish origin of the 

 work. But even to those who are not so fortunately circumstanced in 

 this particular, the powerful mass of evidence which, in the course of 

 this paper, we have adduced in favour of the claims of Spain, we flatter 

 ourselves is of a nature to convey to the mind of the most prejudiced, 

 the conviction that this exquisitely finished picture, which pourtrays 

 with such wonderful truth and fidelity all the lights and shadows of 

 Spanish life, could not have been traced by any other hand than that 

 of a Spanish master — and by one, too, who for grandeur of conception, 

 and beauty and variety of detail, must be ranked only second to that 

 great name which, amid the desolation of his country, still excites in the 

 bosom of the Spaniard feelings of pride, enthusiasm, and delight — IMiguel 

 Cervantes de Saavedra ! But while three of the most celebrated cities 

 in Spain lay claim to the honour of being the birth-place of the author 

 of Don Quixote, and while Europe may with justice envy their preten- 

 sions, a veil of impenetrable mystery enshrouds the name of the author 

 of Gil Bias ; or, we should rather say, the authorship of the work has 

 hitherto been erroneously attributed to a Frenchman. And so impenetra- 

 ble is the halo which time sheds round even the existence of error, that, 

 in aU human probability, the mass of mankind — those who skim lightly 

 over the surface of things — will, to the remotest posterity, continue to 

 allow to Renaut Le Sage the authorship, and to the literature of France 

 the undisputed right to the property, of one of the brightest jewels in 

 the magic circlet of romance — the novel of Gil Bias de Santillana. 



