It is not till Defoe's time that the English picaresque novel acquires any real importance. There is a female picaroon in Moll Flanders, and, as Defoe read Spanish, it is conceivable that Moll Flanders was suggested by the Picara Justina; but this re semblance does not make a picaresque novel of Moll Flanders. The satirical spirit which is lacking in Moll Flanders is abun dantly present in Colonel Jack, which bravely aims at exhibiting "vice and all kinds of wickedness attended with misery." Hence forward the picaroon is naturalized in English literature, and is gloriously reincarnated in Fielding's Jonathan Wild and in Smol lett's Ferdinand, Count Fathom.
The Dutch translation of Lazarillo de Tormes (1579) did not enable the picaresque novel to strike root in Holland, yet from it is derived one of the best Dutch comedies, De Spaensche Brabander Jerolimo (1616) of Gerbrand Bredero. A German translation of Guzman de Alfarache was published by Aegidius Alberitnus in 1615; both Lazarillo and Rinconete y Cortadillo were translated by Niclas Ulenhart in 1716, and in 1627 there appeared an anonymous version of the Picara Justine. The Spanish tradition was followed by Martin Frewden in a con tinuation (1626) of Guzman de Alfarache, but the only original picaresque novel of real value in German is Grimmelhausen's Simplicissimus. The attempt to acclimatize the picaresque novel in Italy failed completely.
The first translation of the Novelas ejemplares was published at Paris in 1618 by Rosset and d'Audiguier; and French trans lations of Guzman de Alfarache, of Marcos de Obregon, of La Desordenada codicia, of the Buscon and of the Picara Justine were printed in 1600, 1618, 1621, 1633 and 1635 respectively. Scarron frankly mentions Castillo Solorzano's Garduiia de Sevilla in the Roman Comique (1651), and his Precaution inutile and Les Hypocrites are convincing proofs of close study of Spanish picaresque stories : the Precaution inutile is taken from Guzman de Alfarache, and Les Hypocrites is merely a translation of Salas Barbadillo's Hija de Celestina. The Roman bourgeois (1666) of Antoine Furetiere is generally described as a picaresque novel, but it is concerned with the foibles of the middle class rather than with the sly devices of common vagabonds.
The Spanish picaroon lives again in Gil Blas, where, with a dexterity almost rarer than original genius, a master of literary manipulation fuses materials unearthed from forgotten and seem ingly worthless Spanish quarries. Gil Blas is a creation of the
gentler, sunnier French spirit ; like Beaumarchais's Figaro he is a Spaniard born, reared and humanized in Paris, and these two are the only picaroons whose relative refinement has not been gained at the cost of verisimilitude. But the old original scoundrel was not yet extinct : in the interval between the appearance of the Barbier de Seville and the Mariage de Figaro Restif de la Bre tonne produced a sequel (1776) to the Buscon—a sequel so dull as to be wellnigh unreadable. The untamed Spanish rogue had become impossible towards the end of the 18th century: in the 19th he was deliberately rejected when Theophile Gautier wrote his Capitaine Fracasse. Yet Gautier conscientiously provides a Spanish atmosphere. Capitaine Fracasse is the last important book which continues the picaresque tradition. But picaresque fiction can never be exhausted while human nature is unchanged. Pereda (q.v.) in Pedro Sanchez (1884) touches the old theme with the accent of modernity; and the picaro flourishes afresh in the novels of Baroja.