[Illustration: Fr. GASPAR DE VILLARROEL.] [Sidenote: Criticism in _Anales de la Biblioteca_] [Sidenote: Guevara’s plagiarism] The fifth volume of _Anales de la Biblioteca_ (Buenos Aires, 1908) contains a new and complete edition of Guevara’s _Historia del Paraguay, Río de la Plata y Tucumán_, superseding the incomplete copies issued by Angelis and by Lamas. In the preliminary essay of this publication Paul Groussac has subjected Guevara’s work to a severe critical examination, in which he makes clear Guevara’s dependence on Lozano’s writings, not merely the ordinary dependence of one writer on the results attained by other investigators in the same field, but the dependence of the plagiarist. The principal historical accounts of this south-eastern part of America in existence before Guevara wrote were those of Techo, Charlevoix, Lozano, and Centenera’s _Argentina_. Guevara’s dependence goes so far that the whole substance of his book is found in Lozano, except the final matter of the twelfth decade, which is drawn from Techo. “The ordinary character of Guevara’s imitation consists in reproducing more or less servilely the corresponding passage of Lozano. Especially in the parts referring to the flora and fauna, the transcription, either entire or fragmentary, is usually literal, without change of verb or adjective. On the other hand, there are numerous suppressed passages, arbitrary, brutal, really chopped out of the parts mutilated.” The critic finds the copying not the chief offence, since it was a practice generally observed in the Society, but the deceit of the preamble and the author’s injurious silence respecting the historian to whom he owed everything. But admitting that this severe judgment is well founded, emphasis may be laid on the fact that Guevara’s style represents a considerable advance over that of his predecessors in the same field. If it may be regarded as consciously laboured, it certainly has the great merit of clearness. The author does not give any indication of great learning, or as in possession of an extensive variety of knowledge, but, as Groussac suggests, he had nevertheless “sufficient attainments for the satisfactory accomplishment of his task.”[170] V [Sidenote: Effect of Jesuit expulsion] [Sidenote: Dobrizhoffer and Pauke]