[337] Voltaire, Œuvres, ed. Beaumarchais, Tom. XX. p. 155. Le Sage, Œuvres, Paris, 1810, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xxxix., where Voltaire is said to have been attacked by Le Sage, in one of his dramas; besides which it is supposed Le Sage ridiculed him under the name of Triaquero, in Gil Blas, Lib. X. c. 5. But the most important and curious discussion concerning the authorship of Gil Blas is the one that was carried on, between 1818 and 1822, by François de Neufchâteau and Antonio de Llorente, the author of the History of the Inquisition. It began with a memoir, by the first, read to the French Academy, (1818,) and an edition of Gil Blas, (Paris, 1820, 3 tom. 8vo,) in both of which he maintains Le Sage to be the true author of that romance. To both Llorente replied by a counter memoir, addressed to the French Academy, and by his “Observations sur Gil Blas,” (Paris, 1822, 12mo,) and his “Observaciones sobre Gil Blas” (Madrid, 1822, 12mo); two works not exactly alike, but substantially so, and equally maintaining that Gil Blas is Spanish in its origin, and probably the work of Solís, the historian, who, as Llorente _conjectures_, wrote a romance in Spanish, entitled, “El Bachiller de Salamanca,” the manuscript of which coming into the possession of Le Sage, he first plundered from it the materials for his Gil Blas, which he published in 1715-35, and then gave the world the remainder as the “Bachelier de Salamanque,” in 1738. This theory of Llorente is explained, with more skill than is shown in its original framing, by the late accomplished scholar, Mr. A. H. Everett, in an article which first appeared in the North American Review, for October, 1827, when its author was Minister of the United States in Spain, and afterwards in his pleasant “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,” published in Boston, 1845, 12mo. But there is a ready answer to all such merely conjectural criticism. Le Sage proceeded, as an author in romantic fiction, just as he had done when he wrote for the public theatre; and the results at which he arrived in both cases are remarkably similar. In the drama, he began with translations and imitations from the Spanish, such as his “Point of Honor,” which is taken from Roxas, and his “Don Cesar Ursino,” which is from Calderon; but afterwards, when he better understood his own talent and had acquired confidence from success, he came out with his “Turcaret,” a wholly original comedy, which, far surpassed all he had before attempted, and showed how much he had been wasting his strength as an imitator. Just so he did in romance-writing. He began with translating the “Don Quixote” of Avellaneda, and remodelling and enlarging the “Diablo Cojuelo” of Guevara. But the “Gil Blas,” the greatest of all his works of prose fiction, is the result of his confirmed strength; and, in its characteristic merits, is as much his own as the “Turcaret.”