discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon
monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French
academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused,
contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence,
and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as
Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente
attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of
the three French _savans_, to the impossibility of finding any thing to
say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and
appeals to literary Europe as the judge "en dernier ressort" of this
important controversy. Llorente, however, was too precipitate; for on
the 8th of January 1822, M. de Neufchateau presented to the French
Academy an answer to Llorente's observations, on which we shall
presently remark.

It is maintained by the ingenious writer, Llorente--whose arguments,
with such additions and remarks as have occurred to us upon the subject,
we propose to lay before our readers,

1st, That Gil Blas and the Bachiller de Salamanca were originally one
and the same romance.

2dly, That the author of this romance was at any rate a Spaniard.

3dly, That his name was Don Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneira, author of
_Historia de la Conquista de Mejico_.

4thly, That Le Sage turned the single romance into two; repeating in
both the same stories slightly modified, and mixing them up with other
translations from Spanish novels.

As the main argument turns upon the originality of Le Sage considered as
the author of Gil Blas, we shall first dispose in a very few words of
the third proposition; and for this purpose we must beg our readers to
take for granted, during a few moments, that Gil Blas was the work of a
Spaniard, and to enquire, supposing that truth sufficiently established,
who that Spaniard was.

Llorente enumerates thirty-six eminent writers who flourished in 1655,
the period when, as we shall presently see, the romance in question was
written. Of these Don Louis de Guevarra, author of the Diablo Cojuelo,
Francisco de Santos, Jose Pellicer, and Solis, are among the most
distinguished. Llorente, however, puts all aside--and all, except
Pellicer perhaps, for very sufficient reasons--determining that Solis
alone united all the attributes and circumstances belonging to the
writer of Gil Blas. The writer of Gil Blas was a Castilian--t