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 Tacano_ (_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. The _picaro_--from
_picar_, to peck, to nibble at--if he was not a special product of
Spain, throve there in the sixteenth century as he did nowhere else in
the nations. He was not necessarily a rogue, but always a vagabond. He
was one who was at odds with the world--a remnant left over in the
making of society--a survival of the age gone by. Of his order were all
the broken men of the time--a time in which there was much breaking of
men--those who lived by their wits on the witless, the mumpers and
beggars, strolling quacks, sham pilgrims, charm-sellers, discharged or
runaway soldiers, thieves by profession and knaves by necessity,
gypsies, bullies and bravoes, jail-birds, roughs, prisoners, and the
baser sort of parasites--the excrement of life, the scum and draff of
society. In this kind of material, admirable stuff for the humorist and
the painter, Spain was especially rich in the sixteenth century. A
capital sample of the accomplished _picaro_ is Gines de Pasamonte, the
galley-slave freed by _Don Quixote_, who robbed _Sancho_ of his ass, and
afterwards appeared as _Master Peter_, the puppet-showman. He is the
typical rogue, whose model in youth, in manhood, and in age is to be
found on the canvas of Velasquez and of Murillo. He is a stock figure in
the national drama. He must have been a familiar sight to the Spaniards
of that age, standing at every street corner, every convent door. He was
as common as the poor poet in the market-place. The favourite haunts of
the _picaresque_ gentry, the Bohemian and the Alsatian, are they not
enumerated by the roguish inn-keeper in _Don Quixote_, himself one of
the craft, who plays so deftly upon the knight and his humour?--_the
Fish-Market of Malaga, the Islets of Riaran, the Compass of Seville, the
Aqueduct-Square of Segovia, the Olive Grove of Valencia, the Suburbs of
Granada, the Strand of San Lucar, the Clot-Fountain of Cordova, the
Pot-Houses of Toledo._[2]