Another proof of this change is to be found in “The Pythagoric Age” of Enriquez Gomez, first published in 1644; a book of little value, which takes the old doctrine of transmigration as the means of introducing a succession of pictures to serve as subjects for its satire. It begins with a poem in irregular verse, describing the existence of the soul, first in the body of an ambitious man; then in that of a slanderer and informer, a coquette, a minister of state, and a favorite; and it ends with similar sketches, half in poetry and half in prose, of a knight, a schemer, and others. But in the middle of the book is “The Life of Don Gregorio Guadaña,” in prose, which is a tale in direct imitation of Quevedo and Aleman, sometimes as free and coarse as theirs are, but generally not offending against the proprieties of life; and occasionally, as in the scenes during a journey and in the town of Carmona, pleasant and interesting, because it evidently gives us sketches from the author’s own experience. Like the rest of its class, it is most successful when it deals with such realities, and least so when it wanders off into the regions of poetry and fiction.[115] [115] “El Siglo Pitagórico y la Vida de Don Gregorio Guadaña,” was written by Antonio Enriquez Gomez, a Portuguese by descent, who was educated in Castile, and lived much in France, where several of his works were first printed. The earliest edition of the “Siglo Pitagórico” is dated Rouen, 1644, but the one I use is of Brussels, 1727, in 4to. There is a notice of the life of Gomez in Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 297, and an examination of his works in Amador de los Rios, “Judios de España,” 1848, pp. 569, etc. He was of a Jewish Portuguese family, and Barbosa says he was born in Portugal, but Amador de los Rios says he was born in Segovia. That he renounced the Christian religion, which his father had adopted, that he fled to France in 1638, and that he was burnt in effigy by the Inquisition in 1660, are facts not doubted. His Spanish name was Enriquez de Paz; and in the Preface to his “Sanson Nazareno” he gives a list of his published works. But the work which most plainly shows the condition of social life that produced all these tales, if not the work that best exhibits their character, is “The Life of Estevanillo Gonzalez,” first printed in 1646. It is the autobiography of a buffoon, who was long in the service of Ottavio Piccolomini, the great general of the Thirty Years’ war; but it is an autobiography so full of fiction, that Le Sage, sixty years after its appearance, easily changed it into a mere romance, which has continued to be republished as such with his works ever since.[116]