ished by the Cortes, revealed to the world the secrets of the prisonhouse of which he had so long kept the keys and records. As respects the question now at issue, Llorente, whose passions, at the time when he wrote upon it, had been cooled by the frosts of seventy or eighty winters, discusses it with rather more moderation than Father Isla, but still with evident and very deep feeling. He takes at times a tone bordering on the pathetic, and appeals to the generosity of the French; representing it as a thing below the magnanimity of a great nation, abounding in all sorts of literary riches, to despoil a comparatively poorer neighbor of this pearl of great price. Assuming at the close an air of solemnity, he asserts, that whatever may be the verdict of contemporary critics, the grand tribunal of posterity will certainly decide the question in favor of the claims of Spain.

We are not sufficiently versed in the details of this controversy to be able to say exactly at what period it arose, or to mention all the various alternations of opinion, and successive triumphs of one party or the other, which have probably marked its progress. We believe, however, that the contemporaries of Lesage entertained some doubts as to his full and exclusive right to be considered the original author of Gil Blas. The compilers of a French biographical dictionary, published in 1771, mention the work with the Bachelor of Salamanca, Guzman de Alfarache, and Le Diable Boiteux, among the author's imitations or translations from the Spanish, as if he had himself acknowledged it to be so, as he did the others. It would seem, however, that an opinion expressed in this and the Council of State, the two highest political corporations in the kingdom, both under the influence of the clergy, joined in three successive representations to the king in favor of the measure, with which the king as often refused to comply. These circumstances were commented upon at the time in all the newspapers in Europe, and ought not to have escaped the attention of the attorney general of Great Britain.

way, without explanation or qualification, must have arisen from the carelessness and ignorance of the person who gave it, rather than the probability of the fact, which, if true, was certainly not so notorious or undisputed as this article would make it appear. The assertion proves nevertheless, that there was a current report of this description. Voltaire has somewhere thrown out hints of the same kind; but we are not aware that any formal disquisition had been published on the question until the appearance of the Spanish translation of Father Isla, preceded by a preliminary discourse, in which the worthy Jesuit boldly and peremptorily pronounces Lesage to be a literary pirate.

It must be owned, however, that the learned Father deals in round and angry assertion rather than argument; and upon looking a little narrowly into the substance of his reasoning, we do not find any distinct objection whatever to the claims of the French author, excepting the authority of the above-mentioned biographical dictionary. This is quoted and much relied upon by Isla, but amounts in reality to nothing; because it is perfectly evident that the compiler had paid no attention to the subject, possessed no precise information upon it, and did not mean to treat it as a questionable point. He obviously had in his mind the idea, that the work was an avowed translation or imitation from the Spanish. Father Isla, notwithstanding his confident tone, has no direct proof whatever to support his assertion; nor has he attempted even to make it out by internal evidence, as he naturally should have done, and as Llorente very properly has. The system of Isla is, therefore, wholly baseless as presented by him. In order to show in what manner Lesage became possessed of the Spanish manuscript of Gil Blas, he mentions a report that he had been for several years at: tached to the French embassy in Spain; and that during

this time he formed an acquaintance with an Andalusian lawyer, who confided to him this and some other manuscripts, which were too free in their remarks on political subjects to appear in Spain. The first of these facts, if true, would rather serve to confute, than to establish the system of Father Isla, since a long residence in Spain. under such circumstances would furnish the most plausible account that could be given of the manner in which a foreign writer might have obtained the rich mass of Spanish materials employed in this novel. The story of the Andalusian lawyer and his manuscripts is too vague to deserve much attention. On the whole, our Jesuit seems to have given proof of zeal in a great measure without knowledge; and to have, in fact, done little or nothing toward establishing the claims of his country to the authorship of Gil Blas. The extreme confidence which he felt in an opinion in favor of which he had so little to say, may perhaps be thought to make it probable that there prevailed among the literary men with whom he associated a general presumption to this effect, which formed the real ground of his belief in a proposition which he evidently had not taken the trouble to examine.

In the midst of the graver collisions that came on soon after in both hemispheres, and fully occupied the attention of the French and Spanish nations, the public lost sight for a time of this dispute about the origin of Gil Blas, and we do not find that any thing of note was published respecting it until the year 1818, when Count François de Neufchâteau read to the French Academy a memoir, entitled, An Investigation of the Question whether Lesage was the Original Author of Gil Blas, or whether he borrowed it from the Spanish. In this work, which was printed in the following year, 1819, the Count sustains the claims of his countryman; and in the year 1820, he published in Paris a new edition of Gil Blas,

with notes, in which he defends the same system. Llorente was then residing at Paris, deeply engaged in his history of the Inquisition and other literary labors of a very serious and important character. His patriotism (generally most sensitive in persons away from home) took the alarm at this inroad on the national glory of Old Castile, and he immediately undertook the work now before us, which he submitted to the Academy in the year 1820, and not long after printed. The Count replied in a subsequent memoir, presented to the Academy on the 20th of January, 1822, and entitled, An Examination of the New System in regard to the Authorship of Gil Blas, in answer to the Critical Observations of M. Llorente. This production also was printed, and here the controversy appears to have come to a close, both parties having made out their respective opinions to their own satisfaction, and left the decision to the public. We regret to say, that we have not seen either of the memoirs of the Count de Neufchâteau, and that we have no other knowledge of the nature of his arguments, excepting such as we have derived from the work of Llorente. We are aware that this is an extremely suspicious source; and while we candidly admit, that we feel a strong leaning toward the conclusions of the worthy secretary of the Inquisition, we also freely allow, and even exhort the reader to make any deductions from the weight of our authority on the subject, which he may think proper, on account of our imperfect and partial acquaintance with the argument. A defence of almost any proposition, drawn up by a careful and able writer, will appear pretty plausible until the other side has been heard. Such, indeed, is the prestige produced by a powerful and acute logician, that the celebrated Henry the Fourth of France, after listening to the opposite counsel on the two sides of some important case,

declared that he did not know how it came about, but that they must certainly both be right.

Having thus cleared our consciences by apprising the reader of the real extent of our knowledge, and putting him fairly on his guard, we proceed without further preliminaries to state concisely, but as we hope with clearness and, as far as may be, a rigorous impartiality, the tenor of the argument on both sides of this question. It may perhaps appear to some as of too trifling a character to engage the attention of a journal habitually devoted to graver subjects. Let those who think so pass at once to the next article, and take their fill of Rail Roads, Fortifications, Claims on on France, South American Politics, or whatever it may happen to treat upon. ouselves, we think we may well venture to review what two Spanish priests and a Count of the French empire were not afraid to write, nor the first Academy in Europe to listen to; and we know not why the question, Who wrote Gil Blas? should not be as interesting to the public as, Who wrote Eikon Basilike? Who wrote Junius, Ossian, Chatterton, Homer? or, finally, Who wrote Waverley? the impenetrable riddle that so long baffled the curiosity of the present age, and has lately been so happily solved by the great unknown himself.

For

To the question, Who wrote Gil Blas? the natural answer is, undoubtedly, in the first instance, Lesage. A man must be held to be the writer of his own books, as he is considered in law the father of his wife's children, until the contrary be proved. Pater est quem nuptiæ demonstrant; and a title-page affords the same presumption of authorship as a marriage register of paternity. The burden of proof rests, therefore, in this case upon those who endeavor to invalidate the pretensions of the French dramatist.

The first and principal argument which they allege, is