THE ROGUE
The Rogue ; or, the Life of Guzman de Alfaraehe. Written
The Rogue was the herald of the great flood of picaresque literature let loose in Spain by the death of Philip II. and the relaxation of the censorship. It was a disastrous time for the Spanish arms ; the old order was broken up and the old morality was wearing thin there, as it had already done elsewhere, and the stormy age threw up the creatures of the underworld into plain view. Aleman had his full share of trouble. He married unhappily and eventually lived separately from his wife ; he was arrested once for debt and once for misappropriation of Treasury funds ; he was continually in money difficulties and towards the end of his life had to emigrate to America. It is clear that he did not write from hearsay only of the seamy side of life, and in the course of his hero's progress from the cradle to the galleys he ,rives us a picture of roguery so vivid and so unprejudiced that it bears in every detail the mark of bitter personal experience. Coarse, violent, sordid he shows that life to be ; but full of vitality and rich in humorous turns of fortune —lighted with flashes of sardonic wit, and sudden glows of sympathy and tenderness. So lenient was he towards the dishonesty that springs from need that to escape the accusation
of subverting morality he found it necessary to delay the narra- tive at every step with numberless proverbs and piled up warnings. To modern minds these seem not only tedious, but quite at variance with the general tone of Don Guzman's narration ; in fact, later Spanish editions put them in the margin, and Lesage in his translation omitted them altogether. but in that age of Euphuism they pleased the popular fancy. The intrinsic merit of the book took Europe by storm ; it was translated into French, Italian and German, and eventually into English by Mabbe, whose version was reprinted twice in twelve years—a striking sign of its success.
The most casual glance through these volumes reveals the secret of its popularity. With its colloquial ease it deserves the highest compliment that can be paid to a trans- lation—it reads like an original. In the other quality essential to a translator—the apprehension, not only of the shades of mauling, but of the spirit and rhythm of the author's style -- Mabbe is somewhat lacking. In the roll of his abundant echoing periods we miss the biting simplicity of Aleman's Spanish. But he was certainly a great philologist, with a resounding style of his own, and his work, the result of many years of toil, will always stand as a monument of seventeenth- century English, and a milestone on the high road of the English novel.
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