at remarkable _Theatre de la Foire_,
which, though a mere collection of the lightest Harlequinades, has more
readable matter of literature in it than the whole English comic drama
since Sheridan, with the exception of the productions of the late Sir
William Gilbert.

Nor must much be said even of his minor novel work. The later
translations and adaptations from the Spanish need hardly any notice for
obvious reasons; whatever is good in them being either not his, or
better exemplified in the _Devil_ and in _Gil_. The extremely curious
and very Defoe-like book--almost if not quite his last--_Vie et
Aventures de M. de Beauchesne, Capitaine de Flibustiers_, is rather a
subject for a separate essay than for even a paragraph here. But Lesage,
from our point of view, is _Le Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_, and to
the _Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ let us accordingly turn.

[Sidenote: _Le Diable Boiteux._]

The relations of the earlier and shorter book to the _Diablo Cojuelo_ of
Luis Velez de Guevara are among the most open secrets of literature. The
Frenchman, in a sort of prefatory address to his Spanish parent and
original, has put the matter fairly enough; anybody who will take the
trouble can "control" or check the statement, by comparing the two books
themselves. The idea--the rescuing of an obliging demon from the grasp
of an enchanter, and his unroofing the houses of Madrid to amuse his
liberator--is entirely Guevara's, and for a not inconsiderable space of
time the French follows the Spanish closely. But then it breaks off, and
the remainder of the book is, except for the carrying out of the general
idea, practically original. The unroofing and revealing of secrets, from
being merely casual and confined to a particular neighbourhood, becomes
systematised: a lunatic asylum and a prison are subjected to the
process; a set of dreamers are obliged to deliver up what Queen Mab is
doing with them; and, as an incident, the student Don Cleofas, who has
freed Asmodeus,[314] gains through the friendly spirit's means a rich
and pretty bride whom the demon--naturally immune from fire--has rescued
in Cleofas's likeness from a burning house.

[Sidenote: Lesage and Boileau.]

The thing therefore neither has, nor could possibly pretend to have, any
merit as a plotted and constructed whole in fiction. It is merely a
variety of the old "framed" tale-collection, except that the frame is of
the thinnest; and the individual stories, w