Of the _picaresque_ novel, which is the special product of Spain--never successfully acclimatized in any other country, and as entirely Spanish as the _olla_ or the _gazpacho_--one of the purest specimens is _Don Pablo de Segovia (Paul the Sharper), exemplo de Vagamundos y espejo de Tacaños--pattern of Vagabonds and mirror of rogues_. The book is generally known as _El Buscon_, or _El Gran Tacaño_. The latter title, which is not Quevedo's, was made the leading designation of the book after the author's death, and is still that by which the book is most popular in Spain. _Buscon_ is from _buscar_, to seek, and means a pursuer of fortune, a searcher after the means of life, a _cadger_. _Tacaño_ is ingeniously derived by old Covarrubias, in the earliest Spanish dictionary, from the Greek [Greek: kakós], being a corruption of _cacaño_; or from the Hebrew _tachach_, which is said to mean fraud and deceit. _Don Pablo_, however his titles may be derived, is generally admitted to be the perfect type of an adventurer of the _picaresque_ school. The book of his exploits, though left, like so many Spanish books, unfinished, is described by Quevedo's best critic as _of all his writings the freest from affectation, the richest in lively and natural humours, the brightest, simplest, and most perspicuous; in which he comes nearest to the amenity, artlessness, and delightful and delicate style of Don Quixote_. These praises are not undeserved, although the knight of industry, in his quest of adventures, is very far from being of kin to the warrior of chivalry, the gentle and perfect knight of La Mancha. Disfigured as it is by all Quevedo's faults of style and manner, _Don Pablo_ deserves to be rescued from the fate to which its faults of language, rather than its defects of taste or its failure in the moral part, have hitherto consigned it, at least in England. As a picture of low, vagabond life, it necessarily deals with vice, but it cannot be said that the vice is rendered attractive. All the characters are bad, in the sense that they all belong to the class who have failed to achieve a decent life. The company is not select in which we move, but it can hardly be said that there is contamination in it any more than we get from looking at Hogarth's _Gin Lane_, or the _Borrachos_ of Velasquez. From beginning to end _Don Pablo's_ career is one of undisguised trickery, dissimulation, and lying. All his companions are thieves, or impostors, or rogues, patent or undetected. The scenes are laid almost entirely in the lowest places--in the slums of Segovia, of Madrid, and of Seville, mostly in prison or in some refuge from the law. The manners of the people, men and women, are as repulsive as their morals; and they talk (which is not unusual) after their natures. When we concede all this we admit the worst which can be said of Quevedo's work, and impute nothing against the author, either as artist or moralist.