anyone who indulged in that form of pulpit oratory. Its plan is said to be a resemblance of Don Quixote; its style to be a reminiscence of Rabelais.
The first volume was published in 1758, and eight hundred copies were sold in 24 hours. After two years of uninterrupted circulation this picaresque story came under the condemnation, perhaps the unwilling condemnation, of the Inquisition. The second volume lingered in manuscript for several years. Baretti, the Italian friend of Dr. Johnson, asserted that it was his property, alleging that de Isla had given him "his only copy of this second volume, partly written by a careful amanuensis and partly with his own hand." When it appeared in print for the first time the title-page bore the imprint of En Campazas, but this was of course a jest, and Ticknor, the careful chronicler of Spanish literature, adopted, after an examination of the type and the paper, the current conviction that it had been printed in our country. The English translation was published by T. Davies, in two volumes, in 1772; another issue of the same date, purported to have been published at Dublin by Thomas Ewing. A copy at the British Museum which formerly belonged to that omnivorous reader, the rev. John Mitford, editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, contains a few notes in his neat handwriting. This anonymous rendering into English is assigned to Warner by Richard Twiss in his travels through Portugal and Spain, 1775, p. 442, by the writer in the European Magazine for 1800, p. 174, by the cataloguer of Archdeacon Wrangham's English library, and by F. in the Monthly magazine, where it is called "a work to be read by everyone who cultivates the eloquence of the pulpit."[1]
- ↑ It is perhaps worthy ot record that a unique MS. of "Fray Gerundio" is in British Museum Addit. MSS. 5888. It was given to that institution on 10 Jany. 1772 by the rev. Richard Penneck, Warner's boon companion.
