The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, Alain René le Sage [most read books .txt] 📗

ebony cabinet, ornamented with figures in

a clumsy taste of sculpture. Instead of a convenient desk, he had

a small table in his closet; and his library was made up with

some few books, and a great many bundles of paper arranged on

shelves one above the other the whole length of the wall. His

kitchen, too modest to put the rest of the establishment out of

countenance, exhibited a frugal assortment of earthenware and

other necessary implements of cookery.

 

Fabricio, when he had allowed me leisure to philosophize on his

domestic arrangements, begged to know my opinion of his

apartments and his housekeeping, and whether I was not enchanted

with them: Yes, beyond all manner of doubt, answered I with a

roguish smile. You must have applied your wits to a good purpose

at Madrid, to have got so well accoutred. Of course you have some

post. Heaven preserve me from anything of the sort! replied he.

My line of life is far above all political situations. A man of

rank, to whom this house belongs, has given me a room in it,

whence I have contrived to piece out a suite of four, fitted up

in such taste as you may see. I devote my time to no employments

but what are just to my fancy, and never feel what it is to want.

Explain yourself more intelligibly, said I, interrupting him. You

set me all agog to be let into your little arrangements. Well,

then! said he, I will rid you of that devil curiosity at once. I

have commenced author, have plunged head long into the ocean of

literature; verse and prose run equally glib; in short I am a

jack of all trades to the muses.

 

What! you bound in solemn league and covenant to Apollo?

exclaimed I with most intolerable laughter. Nothing under a

prophet could ever have anticipated this. I should have been less

surprised at any other transformation. What possible delights

have you had the ingenuity to detect in the rugged landscape of

Parnassus? It should seem as if the labourers there have a very

poor taking in civil life, and feed on a coarse diet without

sauce. Out upon you! cried he, in dudgeon at the hint. You are

talking of those paltry authors, whose works and even their

persons are under the thumb of booksellers and players. Is it any

wonder that writers under such circumstances should be held

cheap? But the good ones, my friend, are on a better footing in

the world; and I think it may he affirmed, vanity apart, that my

name is to be found in their list. Questionless, said I, talents

like yours are convertible to every purpose; compositions from

such a pen are not likely to be insipid. But I am on the rack to

know how this rage for fencing with inky weapons could have

seized thee.

 

Your wonder and alarm has mind in it, replied Nunez. I was so

well pleased with my situation in the service of Signor Manuel

Ordonnez, that I had no hankering after any other. But my genius,

like that of Plautus, being too high. minded to contract itself

within the sphere of menial occupations, I wrote a play and got

it acted by a company then performing at Valladolid. Though it

was not worth the paper it was scrawled upon, it had more success

than many better pieces. Hence concluded I that the public was a

silly bird, and would hatch any eggs that were put under it. That

modest discovery, with the consequent madness of incessant

composition, alienated my affections from the hospital. The love

of poetry being stronger than the desire of accumulation, I

determined on repairing to Madrid, as the centre of everything

distinguished, to form my taste in that school. The first thing

was to give the governor warning, who parted with me to his own

great sorrow, from a sort of affection the result of similar

propensities. Fabricio, said he, what possible ground can you

have for discontent? None at all, sir, I replied; you are the

best of all possible masters, and I am deeply impressed with your

kind treatment; but you know one must follow whithersoever the

stars ordain. I feel the sacred fire within me, on whose aspiring

element my name is to be wafted to posterity. What confounded

nonsense! rejoined the old fellow, whose ideas were all

pecuniary. You are already become a fixture in the hospital, and

are made of a metal which may easily be manufactured into a

steward, or by good-luck even into a governor. You are going to

give up the great object of life, and to flutter about its

frippery. So much the worse for you, honest friend!

 

The governor, seeing how fruitless it was to struggle with my

fixed resolve, paid me my wages, and made me a present of fifty

ducats as an acknowledgment of my services. Thus, between this

supply and what I have been able to scrape together out of some

little commissions, which were assigned to me from an opinion of

my disinterestedness, I was in circumstances to make a very

pretty appearance on my arrival at Madrid; which I was not

negligent in doing, though the literary tribe in our country are

not over-punctilious about decency or cleanliness. I soon got

acquainted with Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and the whole set of

them; but though they were fine fellows, and thought so by the

public, I chose for my model in preference, Don Lewis de Gongora,

the incomparable, a young bachelor of Cordova, decidedly the

first genius that ever Spain produced. He will not suffer his

works to be printed during his lifetime; but confines himself to

a private communication among his friends. What is very

remarkable, nature has gifted him with the uncommon talent of

succeeding in every department of poetry. His principal

excellence is in satire; there he outshines himself. He does not

resemble, like Lucilius, a muddy stream with a slimy bottom; but

is rather like the Tagus, rolling its transparent waters over a

golden sand.

 

You give a fine description of this bachelor, said I to Fabricio;

and questionless a character of such merit must have attracted an

infinite deal of envy. The whole gang of authors, answered he,

good and bad equally, are open mouthed against him. He deals in

bombast, says one; aims at double meanings, luxuriates in

metaphor and affects transposition. His verses, says another,

have all the obscurity of those which the Salian priests used to

chaunt in their processions, and which nobody was the wiser for

hearing. There are others who impute it to him as a fault, to

have exercised his genius at one time in sonnets or ballads, at

another in play-writing, in heroic stanzas, and in minor efforts

of wit alternately, as if he had madly taken upon himself to

eclipse the best writers each in their own favourite walk. But

all these thrusts of jealousy are successfully parried, where the

muse, which is their mark, becomes the idol of the great and of

the multitude at once.

 

Under so able a master did I serve my apprenticeship; and, vanity

apart, the preceptor was reflected in the disciple. So happily

did I catch his spirit, that by this time he would not be ashamed

to own some of my detached pieces. After his example, I carry my

goods to market at great houses where the bidding is eager, and

the sagacity of the bidders not difficult to match. It is true

that I have a very insinuating talent at recitation; which places

my compositions in no disadvantageous light. In short, I am the

dear delight of the nobility, and live in the most particular

intimacy with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, just as Horace used to

live with his jolly companion Maecenas. By such conjuration and

mighty magic have I won the name of author. You see the method

lies within a narrow compass. Now, Gil Blas, it is your turn to

deliver a round unvarnished tale of your exploits.

 

On this hint I spake; and unlike most narrators, gave all the

important particulars, passing lightly over minute and tiresome

circumstances. The action of talking, long continued, puts one in

mind of dining. His ebony cabinet, which served for larder,

pantry, and all possible uses, was ransacked for napkins, bread,

a shoulder of mutton far gone in a decline, with its last and

best contents, a bottle of excellent wine; so that we sat down to

table in high spirits, as friends are wont to do after a long

separation. You observe, said he, this free and independent

manner of life. I might find a plate laid for me every day, if I

chose it, in the very first houses; but, besides that the muse

often pays me a visit and detains me within doors, I have a

little of Aristippus in my nature. I can pass with equal relish

from the great and busy world to my re treat, from all the

researches of luxury to the simplicity of my own frugal board.

 

The wine was so good, that we encroached upon a second bottle. As

a relish to our fruit and cheese, I begged to be favoured with

the sight of something, the offspring of his inspired moments. He

immediately rummaged among his papers, and read me a sonnet with

much energy of tone. Yet, with all the advantage of accent and

expression, there was something so uncouth in the arrangement, as

to baffle all conjecture about the meaning. He saw how it puzzled

me. This sonnet then, said he, is not quite level to your

comprehension! Is not that the fact! I owned that I should have

preferred a construction somewhat less forced. He began laughing

at my rusticity. Well, then! replied he; we will say that this

sonnet would confuse clearer heads than thine: it is all the

better for that Sonnets, odes, in short all compositions which

partake of the sublime, are of course the reverse of the simple

and natural: they are enveloped in clouds, and their darkness

constitutes their grandeur. Let the poet only fancy that be

understands himself no matter whether his readers understand him

or not. You are laughing at me, my friend, said I, interrupting

him. Let poetry be of what species it may, good sense and

intelligible diction are essential to its powers of pleasing. If

your peerless Gongora is not a little more lucid than yourself, I

protest that his merit will never pass current with me. Such

poets may entrap their own age into applause, but will never live

beyond it. Now let me have a taste of your prose.

 

Nunez shewed me a preface which he meant to prefix to a dramatic

miscellany then in the press. He insisted on having my opinion. I

like not your prose one atom better than your verse, said I. Your

sonnet is a roaring deluge of emptiness; and as for your preface,

it is disfigured by a phraseology stolen from languages yet in

embryo, by words not stamped in the mint of general use, by all

the perplexity of a style that does not know what to make of

itself. In a word, the composition is altogether a thing of your

own. Our classical and standard books are written in a very

different manner. Poor tasteless wretch! exclaimed Fabricio. You

are not aware that every prose writer who aspires to the

reputation of sentiment and delicacy in these days, affects this

style of his own, these perplexities and innovations which are a

stumbling-block to you. There are five or six of us determined

reformers of our language, who have undertaken to turn the

Spanish idiom topsy-turvy; and with a blessing on our endeavours,

we will pull it down and build it up again in