On this point, the internal evidence is as decisive as the external. The frequent errors of this remarkable romance in Spanish geography and history show, that it could hardly have been the work of a Spaniard, and certainly not of a Spaniard so well informed as Solís; its private anecdotes of society in the time of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth prove it to have been almost necessarily written by a Frenchman; while, at the same time, the freedom with which, as we go on, we find that every thing Spanish is plundered,--now a tale taken from “Marcos de Obregon,” now an intrigue or a story from a play of Mendoza, of Roxas, or of Figueroa,--points directly to Le Sage’s old habits, and to his practised skill in turning to account every thing that he deemed fitted to his purpose. The result is, that he has, by the force of his genius, produced a work of great brilliancy; in which, from his entire familiarity with Spanish literature and his unscrupulous use of it, he has preserved the national character with such fidelity, that a Spaniard is almost always unwilling to believe that the Gil Blas, especially now that he has it in the excellent version of Father Isla, could have been written by any body but one of his own countrymen.[338] [338] “Le Point d’Honneur” is from “No hay Amigo para Amigo,” which is the first play in the Comedias de Roxas, 1680;--and “Don Cesar Ursino” is from “Peor esta que estaba,” in Calderon, Comedias, 1763, Tom. III. The errors of Gil Blas in Spanish geography and history are constantly pointed out by Llorente as blunders of Le Sage in the careless use of his original; while, on the other hand, Fr. de Neufchâteau points out its allusions to Parisian society in the time of Le Sage. But of his free use of Spanish fictions, which he took no pains to conceal, the proof is abundant. I have already noticed, when speaking of Espinel, (_ante_, pp. 67-70,) how much Le Sage took from “Marcos de Obregon”; but, besides this, the adventures of Don Rafael with the Seigneur de Moyadas in Gil Blas (Lib. V. c. 1) are taken from “Los Empeños del Mentir” of Mendoza (Fenix Castellano, 1690, p. 254);--the story of the Marriage de Vengeance in Gil Blas (Lib. IV. c. 4) is from the play of Roxas, “Casarse por Vengarse”;--the story of Aurora de Guzman in Gil Blas (Lib. IV. c. 5 and 6) is from “Todo es enredos Amor,” by Diego de Córdoba y Figueroa;--and so on. See Tieck’s _Vorrede_ to his translation of Marcos de Obregon (1827); Adolfo de Castro’s Poesías de Calderon y Plagios de Le Sage, (Cadiz, 1845, 18mo, a curious little pamphlet); and the fourth book of the same author’s “Conde Duque de Olivares” (Cadiz, 1846, 8vo). In his “Bachelier de Salamanque,” Le Sage goes one step further. On the title-page of this romance, first printed three years after the last volume of Gil Blas appeared, he says expressly, that “it is translated from a Spanish