University of Virginia Library

“Thus ends,” says Calderon, “the first part of the hazanas notables of Luis Perez,” whose name I have, for sundry reasons, (and without offence to the hero, I hope,) changed to Gil. He was “a notorious robber,” says Mr. Ticknor, a kind of Spanish Rob Roy perhaps; at all events, one whose historical reality is intimated by greater distinctness of character than is usual in these plays. Of such gentry examples are never wanting in Spain, where so little alters to this day; witness the career of the famous José Maria, quite lately ended; and who, I read in a book of Travels, was, like Gil, a farmer, for his first calling; a most merciful robber when he took to his second; and who performed Gil's feat of confronting, if not a Judge, a Prime Minister in his own den.

Gil perhaps had better have “played his pranks” (as Fuller says of Robin Hood) in prose; but he was a lawless fellow, and blank verse lay in his way. Those who think his style altogether too heroic for a country robber, will at least find my version more than excused by the original.