the original source of all the stories of the Zegries and Abencerrages. It gave the Spaniards a model for the historical novel proper, but though it was popular at the time--so popular that it was taken for real history--Perez de Hita founded no school. The Spanish character was becoming too impoverished for a large and poetic romance. What imagination there was, was becoming concentrated in the theatre before withering entirely. [SN: _Character of the_ Novelas de Pícaros.] The fate of the _Novelas de Pícaros_ is one of the most curious in literature. But for them, and their popularity outside of Spain, there could not well have been any Gil Blas, and without him the history of modern prose fiction must have been very different. Yet apart from the example they set, and the machinery they supplied, their worth is small. We find in them the same monotony of type and incident as in the _comedia_ and the _Libros de Caballerías_, while they have neither the fine theatrical qualities of the first (which was, we may allow, inevitable) nor the manly spirit of the second. Poetry, heroic sentiment, or deep religious feeling we could not expect from what only professed to deal with the common and animal side of life. But they do not give what might have compensated for these things, average sensual human nature, acting credibly and drawn with humour. Their fun--and they strained at jocularity--is of the kind which delights to pull the chair from below you when you are about to sit down, and laughs consumedly at your bruises. To make the jest complete you must be old, ugly, sickly, and very poor. There is no laugh in the _Novelas de Pícaros_, only at their best a loud hard guffaw, and when they do not rise to that, a perpetual forced giggle. Truth to life is as far from them as from the _Libros de Caballerías_, but the two are on opposite sides. In mere tediousness they equal the heroic absurdity, for--and this is not their least offensive feature--they are obtrusively didactic. The larger half of the _Guzman de Alfarache_ is composed of preachment of an incredibly platitudinous order. Boredom for boredom, the endless combats of the knight-errant are better. And withal we find the same childish effort to attain originality by mere exaggeration. The _Lazarillo de Tormés_ forces the tone of the _Celestina_, _Guzman de Alfarache_ advances, more particularly in bulk, beyond _Lazarillo_, _Marcos de Obregon_ improves on _Guzman_, and so it goes on to the grinning and sardonic brutality of Quevedo’s _Pablo de Segovia_ and the jerking capers of _Don Gregorio Guadaña_. This last is the work of an exiled Spanish Jew, Enriquez Gomez (_f._ 1638-1660). Imagine Villon’s _Ballade des Pendus_ without the verse, without the pathos, spun out in prose, growing ever more affected through endless repetitions of sordid incident, and you have the _Novela de Pícaros_.[41] [SN: _The_ Celestina.]