not its best, certainly its most popular writers, are those distinguished for their wit and drollery. Fielding and Smollett are more read though less praised than Milton and Pope; "the Rejected Addresses" will outlive many of the grave authors they parodied; and our comic hebdomadal visitor "Punch," rivals the circulation of " the Times," and his cuts and comicalities never grow old in the public estimation, whilst many a diurnal sheet of great news,' and "important intelligence," is in the course of " a little month" already antiquated.

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Bearing this fact in mind, we assert that there is no light literature of any country equal to that of Spain, in its rich humour, its pure wit, its quaint and sometimes exaggerated comicality, carrying burlesque frequently to extravagance. The fault to be found is, that the Spanish wits are too witty, their "flashes of merriment" do not merely dazzle you with their brilliancy, but they sometimes confuse the senses by their blinding brightness. When once the Spanish novelist is fairly engaged with a favourite theme, he gives free scope to his fancy, and does not care to place the slightest check on the thoughts that seem to hurry him along.

An illustration of these remarks will be found in the following extract. It is Quevedo's description of a penurious schoolmaster.

"It was on the first Sunday after Lent, that we entered the habitation of the Licentiate Cabra, a person who undertook the duties of boarding and teaching young gentlemen. When we had passed the threshold, we found that we had fallen into a den of famine, for the economy of its arrangements was not mere thriftiness, but the very acme of niggardliness. The proprietor of this establishment was an ordained pop-gun-a thing that superabounded in nothing but length-a man with a little head, and that little head covered with a shock of hair, and that hair red, and that red being a colour which the proverb prewarns us is so indicative of evil in its wearer, that we should have neither cat nor dog of the same hue. As to the man's eyes, they seemed to have run away from his forehead, and hidden themselves in the nape of his neck; to look at them, they seemed to lie at the bottom of two baskets, and they were so dark, so obscure, and so devoid of the light of day, that they appeared best suited for a roguish mercer's windows; his nose was something between a hook and a cock, with the disadvantage of the bridge being frost-bitten; as to his beard, it seemed to have grown pale from fear of being always so close to his lips, and as if it were animated with a constant dread of being clean eaten up by

his mouth; for the mouth itself looked as if it were in a constant state of madness from hunger. And then his teeth, most of them had left him; some I suppose had dropped off in order that they might enjoy the happiness of quitting him, and others I imagine he had himself got rid of as idle vagabonds who had nothing to do. As to his throat, it was as long and thin as that of an ostrich, and the apple of the throat was so prominent, that it looked as if from sheer necessity, it was on the point of starting away from him to seek for something to eat. His arms were dry, and his hands were not hands, but thin twigs tied on to his wrists. To look at him from the waist downward, he seemed to be a moving table fork or compass, so wide did he straddle when he attempted to walk on his weak, withered, long, and shapeless legs. He seldom attempted to run on the self-same legs, and whenever he did so, his bones rattled like dice in a box. Even his very voice was in a consumption; but then his beard was burly, simply because he would not cut it, and he would not cut it, because he did not like to part with any thing. He had, to be sure, an excuse for this, that he had such a horror of seeing a barber's hands on his face, that he had rather be shot than shorn. It must however be admitted, that he let some one else's servant boy occasionally clip the hair of his head, because he could get that done for nothing. He had a cap to wear on sunny days, and this cap was gnawed with a thousand rat-holes; its only garnishing was grease, and it was nothing more than a composition of cloth and dandruff. As to his cassock, it was not merely a curious thing, but some went so far as to affirm that it was a miracle, because no one could ever venture to affirm either what it was made of, nor what was its colour. A few indeed, who observed that it was absolutely napless, maintained that it was made of frogs' skins; others as boldly declared that it was a complete and perfect illusion, for when you saw it near you, you would swear it was black, and at a distance, you might be equally positive it was a sky-blue. Whatever it was, he always wore it unbound by a girdle, and unrelieved by a neck-band or wrist-band. To look at him in his long hair, and with this short and miserable cassock, he might well be mistaken for the lackey of death, whilst he walked in shoes, each of which was wide enough to serve for the tomb of a Philistian.

"As to this man's room, there was not as much as a spider's web in it, whilst the rats were spell-bound upon approaching it, and dare not penetrate within the charmed precincts where a few crumbs were to be found, which he kept guarded with lock and key. His bed was on the ground, and he always slept on one side when he was in bed, for fear of wearing the sheets. In fine, he was archpoor and proto-penurious.

"It was into the power and under the jurisdiction of such a wretch as this, that poor Don Diego and I had fallen. Upon the night of our arrival he showed us to our room, made a speech to us, and it was a very short one, for he did not wish to give away even

his time or his breath to others without charging for them. He told us what we had to do, and this occupied us the next day, until the hour for eating came. We went to the room in which the young masters sat at the table, and we, their servants, had to wait on them. The refectory was a small narrow hole of room, that looked as if it would not hold more than half a peck of any kind of victuals. A table was laid there, and five young gentlemen were seated around it. The first thing that I looked about for was, to see if there were any cats. Observing none, I asked the cause of their absence from a servant who was manifestly an old one in the house, for his thin features and his lantern jaws bore evident marks of the boarding school in which he had been nurtured. 'Cats,' said he, and his heart seemed to break as he gave utterance to the words; Cats! Ah, who ever yet heard that cats liked hunger, that they had a passion for fasting, and a desire to pass a life of penance? Your jolly face and fat figure, show that you are a complete stranger to this house, young man.' And with this he began to grieve for himself, and I must own to frighten the very life out of me, for when I looked round the room, I observed that they who had preceded myself and my master as pupils in this school, were as thin and sharp as awls, and their unhappy faces looked as if they had been all rubbed with diaculum.

"The Licentiate Cabra sat down to table and said grace, and then they all partook of a meal, which might be compared to eternity; for as a meal, it had neither a beginning nor an end. Broth was first brought in wooden trenchers, but it was a broth clearly of that description, that there was more danger to a man's life in looking at and swallowing it, than Narcissus experienced at the fountain. I could not but note the anxiety with which the lean flaccid fingers of each guest went swimming in desperation after an orphan chick-pea, which some wondrous chance had cast amid the thin potation he was imbibing.

"As to the Cabra himself, he finished every gulp of the stuff he was taking with some such exclamation as this:

"Of a verity, there is nothing in the world to equal this pot-luck. Let them say what they will, to eat any thing richer than this is a sin; to wish for any thing more savoury than this is downright gluttony.

"I was busily engaged in cursing him and his philosophy, when I saw enter the room a boy-no, not a boy, but an entity, that was for want of a body, half a spirit, and this thing was carrying in its hands a dish, and on the dish there was something that purported to be intended for meat, but so lean, so thin, so bony, that it seemed to be a part of the fleshless creature that was carrying it. There was served up with this dish a single turnip.

"What, what!' exclaimed the master, have we turnips also to-day? never yet flew the partridge that was equal in flavour,

richness, and delicacy, to a fine turnip. Eat, my dears, eat, it does so rejoice me to see you eat.'

"He gave to each of them a bone, with such a scanty particle of mutton attached to it, that it wasted away into nothing between the vain attempt of scraping it off with their nails, and picking it with their teeth. I will be bound for it that not a morsel of meat ever entered one of their stomachs. Cabra looked at them, whilst they were struggling to extract some nourishment from his dishes, and thus addressed, Eat away, eat away, remember you are boys, and boys always have such sharp appetites; eat away, I do so love to see you eat.'

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"And such was his language to poor creatures, who were actually yawning from pure hunger.

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At last the meal was declared to be finished, and there were to be seen lying on the table a few scraps of bread, a few peelings of herbs, and two or three bones, when the schoolmaster said, 'These are for the servants, they must eat as well and heartily as ourselves, we certainly can have no desire to stint them in their appetites.'

"A plague upon thee, I mentally exclaimed, and upon all thou hast eaten; for the spectacle of starvation before me, gave me a pain in my stomach to look at it.

"He said grace, and then turning to the scholars observed, Come, give place now to the servants, and do you, my good boys, now go and take some exercise until two o'clock, lest all you have eaten should do you any harm.'

"We servants then sat down to the table.........and this is a positive fact, which I am ready to verify upon oath, that one of the servants, a man named Sorre, a Biscayan by birth, had so far forgotten how, and in what manner people should eat, that upon his happening to lay hold of a crust, he put it twice to his eyes, and even with the third offer he was not able to bring his hand with the bit in it straight to his mouth. ........All this may be easily credited, when I state that which was mentioned to me by Cabra's own servant, viz., that when he first came to the house, he had seen two heavy Flemish horses put into Cabra's stables, and two days afterwards, they were brought a pair of fleet coursers, so light and so empty, that a blast of air would blow them off the face of the earth; and the same man added, that he had also known two strong lusty mastiffs, by stopping in Cabra's house for something less than three hours, turned into a brace of lank greyhounds.......... These are things, I may add, which I do not know of my own knowledge, but that being told, I believe; but for which however I will not stake my credit, lest it should be said, that I was inclined to indulge in anything like exaggeration."-QUEVEDO, Vida del Gran Tacano, cap. 3. Vol. i. pp. 67-70. Barcelona Edition, 1702.

It may be objected that this is pure hyperbole. Admit

VOL. XXIII.-NO. XLVI.

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that there is exaggeration, still we think it arises from a superabundant wit, and is calculated to provoke the laughter of the reader. It is a species of extravagant humour, which may amuse many and can corrupt none. We may, at least, say thus much of an author, who is denounced by Senor de Ochoa as a mere trifler in words, as a poor spirit, who contents himself with a mere play upon phrases.*

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Quevedo, we avow, has great merit in our eyes. He is thoroughly orthodox. In one of his descriptions of the lower regions, he depicts the arch-heretic Luther as being properly deposited in his own place;" whilst his satire is pure, the morality healthy, the descriptions agreeable, and the general reflections applicable to all times. A few extracts will, we trust, be found sufficient to justify us in making this assertion.

"I arrived," says Quevedo, who describes himself as travelling through the regions of Pluto, " at a very dark cell, where I heard a frightful noise made by the clattering of fetters, the rattling of chains, the roaring of fires, the cracking of whips, and the piercing cries of those who seemed to be suffering great agony. Upon asking what was the meaning of all this, I was told that this was the place of punishment of the Oh!-that-I-had-buts.' I assured the person who told me this, that his explanation was altogether unintelligible. What,' I asked, 'is the meaning of the Oh!-that-I-had-buts?'

"These,' it was replied, are fools who lived wickedly, and doomed themselves to eternal punishment without ever intending it; and hence it is that they are always heard saying, Oh! that I had but-been silent; Oh! that I had but-been kind and compassionate to the poor; Oh! that I had but-abstained from touching the property of another.'

"Filled with terror, I fled from this abode of the blind and foolish sinners, and yet was destined soon to meet with others who

*He aqui otra muestra, que mas bien es una caricatura, de uno genero que tambien cultivaron mucho nuestros autores del siglo xvii. y en el que Quevedo llego al non plus ultra de la perfeccion ó, mejor dicho, de la extravagancia. Aqui tenemos, llevado al mas alto punto de la exageracion, el abuso de los equivocos, de los retruécanos y de toda especie de juegos de palabras y de trabucamientos de ideas."-Ochoa. Note on the Novela del Caballero Invisibile, Vol. iii. p. 59.

+"Al cabo estava el maldito Lutero hinchado como un sapo, y blasfemando."-Las Zahurdas de Pluton, Vol. i. p. 45.