[110] The first edition is dedicated to his patron, the Archbishop of Toledo, whose _daily_ pension to him, however, _may_ have well been called “alms”--_limosna_--by Salas Barbadillo. Other editions followed, and “Marcos” has continued to be reprinted and read in Spain down to our own times. In London, a good English translation of it, by Major Algernon Langton, was published in 1816, in two volumes, 8vo; and in Breslau, in 1827, there appeared a very spirited, but somewhat free, translation into German, by Tieck, in two volumes, 18mo, with a valuable Preface and good notes. The original is on the Index of 1667 for expurgation. [111] The _Escudero_ of the plays and novels of the seventeenth century is wholly different from the _Escudero_ of the romances of chivalry of the sixteenth. Covarrubias, _in verb._, well describes both sorts, adding, “Now-a-days” (1611) “esquires are chiefly used by ladies, but _men_ who have any thing to live upon prefer to keep at home; for as esquires they earn little, and have a hard service of it.” In many particulars, his history resembles that of his predecessor, Guzman de Alfarache. It is the story of a youth who left his father’s house to seek his fortune; became first a student and afterwards a soldier; visited Italy; was a captive in Algiers; travelled over a large part of Spain; and after going through a great variety of dangers and trials, intrigues, follies, and crimes, sits down quietly in his old age to give an account of them all, with an air as grave and self-satisfied as if the greater part of them had not been of the most discreditable character. It contains a moderate number of wearisome, well-written moral reflections, intended to render its record of tricks, frauds, and crimes more savory to the reader by contrast; but though it falls below both the “Guzman de Alfarache” and the “Lazarillo” in the beauty and spirit of its style, it has more life in its action than either of them, and the series of its events is carried on with greater rapidity, and brought to a more regular conclusion.[112]