Leyva, that four
months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while
he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the
following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it
discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning
to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead;
and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma
has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de
Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of
Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before
the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the
transcriber's omission of the words "Duke of Uzeda, son of," which
should precede the cardinal duke, &c., and which makes the sentence
historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal
Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at
the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there
was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate
Le Sage's claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes
nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes
the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in
Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in
other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of
the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism
can ever be said "digito monstrari et dicier hic est," it is here.

If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances--the
travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the
prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the
Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the "haire and the discipline" mentioned by
Moliere, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition
of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary's inkstand,
the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in
which Philip's mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the
Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the
minister's office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the
crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign
viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spa