Francisco de Quevedo

“ 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. ”

“ I hate and abominate the painter who fills columns with the recital of his misfortunes, telling you how he lost his paint brush, or how he had never a canvas of the right size, and soulfully lamenting the degeneracy of an age which knows quite too much to appreciate him. I can almost worship a man who silently conquers a living death.
Vierge is an artist who, like all great artists, has worked for his art—and his bread and butter. ”

“ He wrote lyrics with the grace, simplicity, and ease of Horace. He is as prodigal of humour as Rabelais, whom he resembles also in his unfastidiousness, his obscurity, and his extravagance. He has been likened to our English Swift, to whom he is akin in the quality of his mordant wit, and almost approaches in his anti-humanity; but he is lacking in the creative force of the author of Gulliver. Not unlike Swift was Quevedo in fortune as in genius, for it was disappointed ambition which wore out his heart and drove him to satire, to visions, and assaults on human folly and vice. ”

“ He added, he was going to Madrid, because a threadbare elder brother, as he was, soon grew tainted and mouldy in a country town, and had no way to subsist; and therefore he was going to the common refuge of distressed persons, where there is room for all, and open house kept for wandering spongers: “And I never want five or six crowns in my pocket,” said he, “as soon as I am there, nor a good bed, meat, and drink, and sometimes a forbidden pleasure; for a good wit at Court is like the philosopher’s stone, which converts all it touches into gold.” ”

“ In that Golden Age, prolific of authors, the hundred years between the birth of Cervantes and the prime of Calderon, there was no genius so fruitful in every kind of intellectual product. Poet, politician, humorist, satirist, theologian, moralist, historian, novelist—Quevedo stands out a prodigy of learning, wit, and quick and various invention, even among the crowd of gifted writers who made that period famous in letters. He has been called the Spanish Juvenal—the Spanish Ovid—the Spanish Lucian. ”

“ I cried for mere vexation, and they archly said, “It is all for your health’s good to be bemired; hold your peace.” This done, they washed me, laid me in the bed again, and went their way. Being left alone, I lay and considered, that what I had endured in one day at Alcalá was worse than all my sufferings under Cabra at the boarding-school. At noon I dressed me, cleaned my cloak and cassock the best I could, washing it like an old clout, and waited for my master, who, when he came, asked me, “How I did?” ”

“ She began with Don Diego; the poor wretch shrunk up, and the old jade being blind, and her hands shaking, instead of giving him it inwardly, let it fly betwixt his shirt and his back up to his very poll; so that became an outward ornament which should have served for a lining within. Only God knows how we were plagued with the old woman. She was so deaf, that she heard nothing, but understood by signs, though she was half blind; and such an everlasting prayer, that one day the string of her beads broke over the pot as it was boiling, and our broth came to table sanctified. ”

“ I went by times to take my place in a court the nuns’ windows looked into, where it was comical to see the strange postures of others, as mad pretenders as myself. One gazed without ever so much as winking; another stood with one hand on his sword, and his beads on the other, like a statue upon a tomb; another with his arms stretched out as if he were flying; some gaping, as if they would have had their hearts fly out at their mouths; some leaning against the walls, as if they had come to support them; some walking as if to be bought for their pacing, like horses ”

“ Fewer people, probably, have seen Vierge’s Quevedo since it has been published, than in a day sit and gape, and yawn in awe-struck ignorance before the Sistine Madonna; and yet the latter is as blatant a piece of shoddy commercialism as has ever been produced; the Quevedo is a pure work of art. Indeed, never in the history of the world were there such marvellous drawings produced as to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fun which Quevedo makes out of this flimsy material is only to be understood by those who know the proverbs of Spain, and the great part they play in the national talk and literature.
Less innocent, perhaps, are some of Quevedo’s other burlesque pieces, which neither gods, men, nor county councillors may allow. In these the poet sins, however, more from carelessness of humour than grossness of imagination. It is not his ideas that are nasty so much as his words which are coarse. ”

“ When we concede all this we admit the worst which can be said of Quevedo’s work, and impute nothing against the author, either as artist or moralist. 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. ”

“ I coughed and hawked to conceal my weakness, wiping my whiskers, muffled up with my cloak upon the left shoulder, playing with my tens, for I had but ten beads upon my string. All that saw me believed I had dined, and had they thought creatures were then dining upon me they had guessed right. All my confidence was in my crowns I had sunk, though it smote my conscience that it was against the rules of our profession to pay for a dinner, being obliged to feed upon the public ”

“ Cervantes resided at Seville with his family between 1588 and 1598, and there is little doubt that the picture he draws of Seville low life is of this period. Rinconete y Cortadillo, in all the qualities of the higher art, must be placed at the head of this species of literature. Although only a sketch, it is brimful of humour, wit, and life, drawn with the same delicate and masterly hand which has given us Don Quixote. What is admirable in the picture is the skill with which a repulsive subject is treated, so that, while preserving all its truth, it is redeemed from grossness. ”

“ It may be well, therefore, to show wherein the greatness of Vierge’s technique lies.
It is most evident in his power of expressing many facts with the fewest possible lines. Each one of these lines is put down with the thought of the engraver for ever in his mind. This, however, does not mean that he is less free in his handling. It merely implies his complete command of his materials. The art of leaving out, and yet conveying the right impression, probably is the most difficult in the world. Like all art, which is most subtle, it appears ridiculously easy. ”

“ It would be an affront to the cook not to taste it; what a delicate hand she has at seasoning!’ With this we fall on, and down goes half the meat in the dish for a taste. If there be bacon, we call it our delight; if mutton, the only thing we love; if but a turnip, an excellent morsel; and so everything that comes in our way is ever the thing that we most admire. If all this fails, we are sure of the alms of some monastery, which we do not receive in public among the beggars, but privately, endeavouring to persuade the friars that we rather take it out of devotion than for want. ”

“ It was my misfortune, that as he was speaking to me, the lawyer came behind us, and knowing his steed, ran at the footman, beating him about the head and face with his fist, and asking him, as loud as he could cry, “How he durst have the impudence to let anybody ride his horse?” And what was worst of all, he turned to me, and in a very angry manner, bade me get down with many curses. All this was in the full view of my mistress and Don Diego Coronel, which put me as much out of countenance as if I had been whipped at the cart’s tail. ”

“ Such as you see me, I am a real substantial gentleman, of a good family and known seat on the mountains; and could I but feed my body as I keep my seat and gentility, I should be a happy man. But as the world goes, good Sir, there is no keeping up noble blood without bread and meat, and, God be praised, it runs red in every man’s veins; nor can he be a worthy person who is worth nothing. [18] I am now convinced of the value of a good pedigree, for being ready to starve one day, they would not give a chop of mutton in the cook’s-shop for mine ”

“ In summer it is pleasant enough to see the men so parched and the women so cool. In winter some of us stay so long in the wet that we are mouldy, and the moss grows upon us; neither snow nor rain can drive us away; and all this is only to see a woman through a grate and a glass, like some holy relic, or curious piece of workmanship, for that is all we can ever expect. It is just like falling in love with a blackbird in a cage, if ever she talks; or with a fine picture, if she does not. The greatest favour ever to be attained is to touch the ends of the fingers. ”

“ It was not the adventurers, however, of which people were sick, but of the dull and stupid books which pretended to tell of their exploits. Whatever chivalry there was in Spain had died out before the blighting influence of the Second Philip—that antithesis incarnate of all romance. The taste for low life was a natural and to a great extent a healthy reaction from the unwholesome diet, miscalled romance and of chivalry, on which the people had fed. ”

“ But while collectors, dealers, and directors of Museums squabble over a piece of dirty paper, or throw public funds and private money away for drawings of which, if Dürer or Rembrandt, or any painter of distinction, perpetrated them, he should have been ashamed, none has the wit to spend as many pennies on the drawings of modern men with no popular reputation, as they do pounds for the work of others who have a widespread, and possibly justly merited fame, but no knowledge of the art they practise. ”

“ Among the works of Quevedo, that which, perhaps, is most characteristic of his genius, and most valuable as a picture of contemporary life and manners, is Don Pablo de Segovia, here presented in an English dress, and, as we venture to believe, in a most appropriate and harmonious setting, through the art of M. Vierge. Don Pablo de Segovia, otherwise known as El Gran Tacaño (The Great Sharper) , is a prime sample of that species of romance which was native of the soil of Spain—there first engendered at least, and flourishing nowhere else in the same vigour and luxuriance—the picaresque novel. ”

“ Until art be taken as seriously as literature, and be discussed with as much thought and care and attention by men who understand it practically as well as theoretically—for the theory of art is or no value, and the practice is everything—illustration will not find its proper place as one of the most living and important of the fine arts. But, no matter—the great illustrator is quite as much of a creator as the great painter or the great sculptor. ”

“ And from the point of view of technique Vierge’s work is the most perfect that has been done, and it is this quality alone—that is technique—which has made the reputation of Rembrandt and Velasquez. It is not because of its subject that a picture is great, but because of the manner in which it is worked out. To rank subject above execution, from which it is absolutely inseparable, is intolerable to the artist, and is merely a device of the inartistic to palm off their incompetent productions. ”

“ In all companies we run over a bead-roll of dukes and counts, making some of them our friends, and others our relations, always observing that those great men must be either dead or very remote. The best of all is that we never fall in love, unless it be to earn our bread; for by our constitutions, coy ladies, though never so beautiful, are absolutely forbidden; so that we ever court a tripe-man for our meat, the landlady for our lodging, the starcher for our band and other necessaries; and though such slender diet makes us unfit to satisfy them all, yet we keep them in good humour. ”