The roving instinct of Vicente Martinez Espinel (q.v.) had led him into strange and dangerous company before and after his ordination as a priest, and his Relations de la vida del escudero Marcos de ObregOn (1618) is remarkable for a baffling compound of fact with fiction written in the lucid style of which Espinel was a master; it was largely utilized by Le Sage in Gil Bias. Within five months of its publication at Madrid a fragmentary French version by the Sieur d'Audiguier was issued at Paris, and at Paris also there appeared a Spanish picaresque story entitled La desordenada codicia de los bienes ajenos (1619), ascribed con jecturally to a certain Dr. Carlos Garcia, who reports his conver sation with a garrulous gaol-bird, and appends a glossary of slang terms used by the confraternity of thieves. Every kind of pica roon is portrayed with intelligent sympathy by Alonso Jeronimo de Salas Barbadillo, who is always described as a picaresque novelist; yet he so constantly neglects the recognized conventions of the Spanish school that his right to the title is disputable. Thus in La Hija de Celestina (1612) he abandons the autobiographical form, in El subtil cordobes Pedro de Urdemalas (1620) he alter nates between dialogue and verse, and in El Necio bien afortunado (1621) the chief character is rather a cunning dolt than a suc cessful scoundrel. The pretence of warning newcomers against the innumerable occasions of sin in the capital is solemnly kept up by Antonio Lifian y Verdugo in his Guia y avisos de forasteros que vienen a la corte (1620), but in most of his tales there is more entertainment than decorum.
An unusual gravity of intention is visible in Jeronimo de Alcala. Yafiez y Ribera's Alonso, mono de muchos amos (1624-26), in which the repentant picaro Alonso, now a lay brother, tells the story of his past life to the superior of the monastery in which he has taken refuge.
At about this time there lived in Spain an ex-nun named Catalina de Erauso, who fled from her convent, dressed herself in men's clothes, enlisted, was promoted ensign and saw more of life than any other nun in history. Her adventures arrested the attention of De Quincey, who would seem to have read them in a Spanish original which has been admirably translated since then by the French poet Jose Maria de Heredia. The Spanish original, in its existing form, was issued no earlier than 1829 by Joaquin Maria de Ferrer, whose character is not a satisfactory guarantee of the work's authenticity; but its interest is unquestionable. No such suspicion attaches to the Vida of Alonso de Contreras, first published in 1899, in which every convention of the picaresque novel is faithfully observed, and the incidents are no doubt sub stantially true, though this ex-captain, like most converts, judges his own past with unnecessary harshness. This subtle form of vanity also pervades the Comentarios de el desenganado de si mismo of Diego Duque de Estrada, a rakish soldier and inferior dramatist whose autobiography (begun in 1614 and continued at intervals during many years) was not printed till 186o. A far higher order of talent distinguishes the Capitulaciones de la vida de la corte y oficios entretenidos en ella, a bitterly unsparing review of picaresque life written by the great satirist Francisco Gomez de Quevedo y Villegas (q.v.). These thumbnail sketches
were the preparatory studies worked up into the more elaborate Vida del buscon Don Pablos (1626), the cleverest and most re volting book of its class.
The Varia fortuna del soldado Pindaro (1626) added nothing to the established reputation of Gonzalo de Cespedes y Meneses. Alonso de Castillo SolOrzano (q.v.) tempted the public with three picaresque stories published in quick succession : La Nina de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares the Aventuras del Bachiller Trapaza (1637) and a sequel to the latter entitled La Garduña de Sevilla (1642). But the style was no longer welcomed with the old enthusiasm in Spain. The Bachiller Trapaza was destined to be continued by Mateo da Silva Cabral in Portugal and to be exploited by Le Sage who likewise utilized in Gil Blas episodes taken from El Siglo pitagorico the work of Antonio Enriquez Gomez (q.v.). The primitive rogue returns to the scene in La Vida y hechos de Estebanillo Gonzalez (1646). Le Sage drew upon him in the Historie d'Estevanille Gonzalez.
The first known edition of David Rowland's version of Laza rillo de Tormes is dated 1586, but as a licence to print a transla tion of this tale was granted on July 22, 1568-69, it is probable that a 1576 edition which appears in the Harleian catalogue really existed. Numerous reprints (1599, 1639, 1669-70, 1672, 1677) go to prove that Lazarillo de Tormes was very popular, and that Shakespeare had read it seems to follow from an allusion in Much Ado about Nothing (Act. 11., sc. i.) : "Now you strike like the blind man; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you will beat the post." To Thomas Nash belongs the credit, such as it is, of being the first to write a picaresque novel in English : The Un fortunate Traveller; or the Life of Jack Wilton (I594)• Nash led the way, and a reference to "Spanish pickaroes" in Middleton's Spanish Gipsie indicates that the picaroon type had speedily be come familiar enough for London playgoers to understand the reference. Interest in picaresque literature was kept alive in England by James Mabbe's admirable version (1622) of Guzman de Alfarache; by The Son of the Rogue or the Politic Thief (1638), an anonymous translation, done through the French, of La desordenada codicia; and by another anonymous translation (1657), likewise done through the French, of Quevedo's Buscan. The result of this campaign was The English Rogue described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, a witty Extravagant (1665), by Richard Head and Francis Kirkman.