not upon persons, but upon mankind--against general vice, not against particular sins. The characters of the story, which seems rather to tell itself than to be told, are all such as were the common property of the comic writers of the period, but scarcely anywhere else are they found invested with so much of the breath of life. _Don Pablo_ himself, his companions, his fellow-students, the crazy old poet, the villainous jailer, the braggart _espadachins_, the poor _hidalgo_, the strolling players, the beggars, the gay ladies, the jail-birds, bullies, and thieves--every member of that unclean company, with all their unsavoury surroundings, is a real, living personage. _Don Pablo de Segovia_ was first published in 1626, at Saragossa, and had a great success, several editions being called for before the author's death. There is reason to believe that it was written some years before, being probably circulated in manuscript among the author's friends before being printed, as was the custom of the time. In 1624 Quevedo had been lately released from the first of his imprisonments at Torre de San Juan Abad, and had partially recovered the favour of the Court. It was a period when the printers were most busy with his works--when satires, political apologues, religious tracts, visions, burlesque and piquant odes, fantasies, and calls to devotion were being poured forth abundantly out of his fruitful brain. Señor Guerra y Orbe believes that _Don Pablo_ was written in 1608. That it was composed before 1624 is proved, I think, by the character of the book, which is certainly more juvenile than belongs to a man of forty-six, as well as by a piece of evidence to be found within. In chapter viii., when on the road to Torrejon, _Don Pablo_ comes up with a crazy man mounted on a mule, who proves to be a master of the art of fencing, with several extravagant projects in his brain for the good of the kingdom. Among these he has two schemes to propose to the king for the reduction of Ostend. Now the great siege of Ostend, which is doubtless the one referred to, was that which ended, after three years' fighting in which an extraordinary number were slain on both sides, in September, 1604. It is a reasonable conjecture, therefore, that _Don Pablo_, at least as far as chapter viii., was written prior to this date. The chapters in which the students' adventures at Alcalá are described seem to me also to bear internal evidence of having been written when the impression of university life was still fresh upon the author. This theory of the date of _Don Pablo_ makes the author a young man of twenty-three when the book was composed; and the book itself the third, in order of time, of the _picaresque_ romances, following closely after _Guzman de Alfarache_.