war between Spain and Portugal continued,
may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is
perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were
then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore
have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the
recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the
date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been
written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which
were published before 1654, are cited in it--it is not of later date,
because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of
Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but
Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and
Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself
to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell
in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a
prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest
anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author
as an autograph, a sort of "chien de Bassano," to point out the real
date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588;
that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and
remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the
anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his
ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate
other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated.
One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of
Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is
supposed to relate this story at Madrid in 1607; in it a king of
Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign.
Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro
Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security
in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of
Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage's attention was
called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he
undertakes to correct in another edition--a promise which he fulfilled
by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to
Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who s