It is difficult to imagine any virtue of a texture so frail as to be injured by the reading of _Paul the Sharper_. There is no vice in the book, even though it deals exclusively with vicious people. There is nothing hurtful in the character of the complete rogue, nor is he painted in any but his natural colours, as a mean, sordid vagabond, who does or says nothing whatever to gild his trade or to embellish his calling. This is the crowning merit of Quevedo's book, among those of its class, that there are no shabby tricks played upon the reader, such as other writers of even higher pretensions are guilty of--no attempt to pass off a rogue as though he were a hero in distress--a creature deserving of sympathy, who is only treating the world as the world treated him--a victim of fortune, whose ill-usage by society justifies his attitude towards the social system. There is no sentiment expended over _Paul of Segovia_. There is no snivelling over his low condition, or railing at his unhappy lot. He is not conscious of his degradation. He is a thief, the son of a thief, with a perfect knowledge of what his mother is; but he makes no secret of his calling, nor indulges in excuses for himself or his family. The other heroes of the _picaresque_ novel make some faint pretence to decent behaviour, but _Paul_ never deviates into respectability. He is _picaro_ to the fingers' ends--in either sense. Through all his changes of character and of costume he is still rogue, entire and perfect, without any sprouts of honesty or repinings after a better life. The _naïveté_ with which he tells of his exploits, without boasting and without shame, is of the highest art--true to nature, nor offensive to morality. Whether he is cheating a jailer or bilking a landlady, dodging the _alguacil_ or bamboozling the old poet, or befooling the nun, or tricking the bully, he is always true to himself, without affectation or conceit of being other than he is. There are no asides, where either the hero or the author (as the bad modern custom is) communes with his conscience, or finds excuses for himself, or draws a moral, or in some way or other imparts to the reader how much superior he (the writer) is to his hero, and how conscious he is of the reader's presence, giving him to understand, in a manner unflattering to his intelligence, how that all that he writes is in joke and not to be taken in bad part. That Quevedo does not do so is his chief point of art in the book, which deserves to be ranked among the best of its class, as a chapter out of the great comedy of human life. The simplicity with which the story is told, without those digressions and interruptions to which the Spanish story-teller is so prone, make it a work almost unique among books of the kind. For once Quevedo has spoken in a language direct and plain, without a riddle or a hidden motive. It is of course a satire, but a satire of the legitimate kind,