The point of which jest, heightened by the contemptuous diminutive, lies in the hint that Góngora, then a priest in orders, was no _old Christian_, but either Jew or Morisco. Another enemy of Quevedo was Perez de Montalvan, a writer of plays the favourite disciple, parasite, and bully of Lope de Vega--whom our satirist was fond of assailing in verse and prose for his dogmatism, his arrogance and his _inscrutable ignorance_. Montalvan took his revenge in a volume entitled _El Tribunal de la Justa Venganza_, written under an assumed name, in which Quevedo's satirical works are tried and condemned for their offences against religion and morality. Among the works of Quevedo, that which, perhaps, is most characteristic of his genius, and most valuable as a picture of contemporary life and manners, is _Don Pablo de Segovia_, here presented in an English dress, and, as we venture to believe, in a most appropriate and harmonious setting, through the art of M. Vierge. _Don Pablo de Segovia_, otherwise known as _El Gran Tacaño_ (_The Great Sharper_), is a prime sample of that species of romance which was native of the soil of Spain--there first engendered at least, and flourishing nowhere else in the same vigour and luxuriance--the _picaresque_ novel. The _picaro_--from _picar_, to peck, to nibble at--if he was not a special product of Spain, throve there in the sixteenth century as he did nowhere else in the nations. He was not necessarily a rogue, but always a vagabond. He was one who was at odds with the world--a remnant left over in the making of society--a survival of the age gone by. Of his order were all the broken men of the time--a time in which there was much breaking of men--those who lived by their wits on the witless, the mumpers and beggars, strolling quacks, sham pilgrims, charm-sellers, discharged or runaway soldiers, thieves by profession and knaves by necessity, gypsies, bullies and bravoes, jail-birds, roughs, prisoners, and the baser sort of parasites--the excrement of life, the scum and draff of society. In this kind of material, admirable stuff for the humorist and the painter, Spain was especially rich in the sixteenth century. A capital sample of the accomplished _picaro_ is Ginés de Pasamonte, the galley-slave freed by _Don Quixote_, who robbed _Sancho_ of his ass, and afterwards appeared as _Master Peter_, the puppet-showman. He is the typical rogue, whose model in youth, in manhood, and in age is to be found on the canvas of Velasquez and of Murillo. He is a stock figure in the national drama. He must have been a familiar sight to the Spaniards of that age, standing at every street corner, every convent door. He was as common as the poor poet in the market-place. The favourite haunts of the _picaresque_ gentry, the Bohemian and the Alsatian, are they not enumerated by the roguish inn-keeper in _Don Quixote_, himself one of the craft, who plays so deftly upon the knight and his humour?--_the