So much cannot be claimed for the _Pícara Justina_ (1605) of Francisco López de Úbeda, who is commonly identified as the Dominican, ANDRÉS PÉREZ, author of a _Vida de San Raymundo de Peñafort_ and of other pious works. His _Pícara Justina_ was long in maturing, for he confesses to having "augmented after the publication of the admired work of the _pícaro_," Guzmán; whom Justina, in fact, ends by marrying. Pérez has acquired a notorious reputation for lubricity; yet it is hard to say how he came by it, since he is no more indecent than most picaresque writers. He lacks wit and invention; his style, the most mannered of his time, is full of pedantic turns, unnatural inversions and verbal eccentricities wherewith he seeks to cover his bald imagination and his witless narrative. But his freaks of vocabulary, his extravagant provincialisms, lend him a certain philological importance which may account for the reprints of his volume. It may be added that, in his _Pícara_, Pérez anticipates Cervantes' trifling find of the _versos de cabo roto_; and, from the angry attack upon the monk in the _Viaje del Parnaso_, it seems safe to infer that Cervantes resented being forestalled by one who had probably read the _Quixote_ in manuscript.[25] A more successful attempt in the same kind is the _Relaciones de la Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregón_ by Vicente Espinel (?1544-1634), a poor student at Salamanca, a soldier in Italy and the Low Countries, and finally a priest in Madrid. His _Diversas Rimas_ (1591) are correct, spirited exercises, in new metrical forms, including versions of Horace which, in the last century, gave rise to a bitter polemic between Iriarte and López de Sedano. Moreover, Espinel is said to have added a fifth string to the guitar. But it is by his _Marcos de Obregón_ (1618) that he is best known. Voltaire alleged that _Gil Blas_ was a mere translation of _Marcos de Obregón_, but the only foundation for this pretty exercise in fancy is that Le Sage borrowed a few incidents from Espinel, as he borrowed from Vélez de Guevara and others. The book is excellent of its kind, brilliantly phrased, full of ingenious contrivance, of witty observation, and free from the long digressions which disfigure _Guzmán de Alfarache_. Espinel knew how to build a story and how to tell it graphically, and his artistic selection of incident makes the reading of his _Marcos_ a pleasure even after three centuries.