[Transcriber's note: the illustrations in the source volumes were uncaptioned. The captions I've added are my best guess as to what is going on in the illustrations.] [Frontispiece: Gil Blas being presented to royalty] ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE THE ADVENTURES OF GIL BLAS OF SANTILLANE TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY TOBIAS SMOLLETT PRECEDED BY _A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICE OF LE SAGE_ BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY With Twelve Original Etchings by R. de Los Rios _IN THREE VOLUMES--VOL. I._ LONDON J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD & CO. 1881 THE AUTHOR'S DECLARATION. There are some people in the world so mischievous as not to read a work without applying the vicious or ridiculous characters it may happen to contain to eminent or popular individuals. I protest publicly against the pretended discovery of any such likenesses. My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists: God forbid I should hold myself out as a portrait-painter. Let not the reader then take to himself public property; for if he does, he may chance to throw an unlucky light on his own character: as Phædrus expresses it, _Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam_. Certain physicians of Castille, as well as of France, are sometimes a little too fond of trying the bleeding and lowering system on their patients. Vices, their patrons, and their dupes, are of every day's occurrence. To be sure, I have not always adopted Spanish manners with scrupulous exactness; and in the instance of the players at Madrid, those who know their disorderly modes of living may reproach me with softening down their coarser traits: but this I have been induced to do from a sense of delicacy, and in conformity with the manners of my own country. GIL BLAS TO THE READER Reader! hark you, my friend! Do not begin the story of my life till I have told you a short tale. Two students travelled together from Penafiel to Salamanca. Finding themselves tired and thirsty, they stopped by the side of a spring on the road. While they were resting there, after having quenched their thirst, by chance they espied on a stone near them, even with the ground, part of an inscription, in some degree effaced by time, and by the tread of flocks in the habit of watering at that spring. Having washed the stone, they were able to trace these words in the dialect of Castille: _Aqui està encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias_. "Here lies interred the soul of the licentiate Peter Garcias."