Yet they are included in recent Spanish editions, which is much to be deplored. For the work itself is a classic. In at least two instances the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy refers to Lazarillo de Tormes as an authority for the meaning of words.
English Translations
Lazarillo de Tormes was first translated into English by David Rowlands of Anglesey. He called it The Pleasant History of Lazarillo de Tormes Drawn Out of Spanish. It was published by Abel Jeffes in the Fore Street without Grepell-gate near Groube Street at the sign of the Bell, and dedicated to Sir Thomas Gresham. It contains the Prologue, and a short chapter at the end about Lazaro’s continued prosperity, which is not in the first edition of . This is the best translation. It was published in .
A new edition appeared in , also published by Abel Jeffes, who had then removed to the Blacke Fryers near Puddle Wharfe. There were twenty editions or reprints, and Lazarillo was exceedingly popular with the Elizabethan reading public.
James Blakiston brought out a new edition in dedicated to Lord Chandos. It consists of the translation by David Rowlands, omitting the Prologue, and of a translation of the spurious second part by Juan de Luna. Another edition appeared in , another in . The title is The Excellent History of Lazarillo de Tormes, the Witty Spaniard.
In there appeared The Life and Adventures of Lazarillo de Tormes, with Twenty Curious Copper Cuts. In the nineteenth edition was published. This version is a bad translation, omits the Prologue, and includes the spurious second parts.
The worst performance of all was the edition of in two volumes. The type is better, but it is a very careless reprint of a bad translation. It omits the execrable illustrations of the earlier editions. Spanish names are scarcely recognisable. Gelves is called “the battle of Geleas!” for Escalona we have “Evealona.”
All these translations are from late editions; none from the first edition.
Notes on the Character of Lazaro
The conception of the author, Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, was first to portray a boy, with everything against him, rising from the lowest rank of society to a prosperous condition, and to give a humorous account of his adventures; and secondly, to satirise certain types of men, the products of the age in which he wrote, through the medium of his boy hero.
The author himself was a boy at the time, or at least a very young man, a student at Salamanca. He had no model, and the conception was quite original. He makes Lazarillo de Tormes a boy of his own age. Don Diego was born in . Assuming Lazarillo to have been born in ,6 he was about ten years old when he took service with the blind man, three years with his first three masters, and fourteen years old when he took service with the seller of Indulgences. He carried on the business of water-carrier from the ages of fifteen to nineteen, and was twenty when he married. That would bring him to . The next year, when the Cortes met at Toledo, is made to be the year when Lazarillo de Tormes wrote the story of his life. Doubtless it was the year when Don Diego really completed his little romance, also aged twenty-one.
In conceiving the character of Lazaro it is likely that the young student had in his mind what he himself might have been, if he had been born in the same obscurity. “The two destinies”7 were framed out of a noble and an ignoble birth, success in the latter case being far more meritorious than in the former. We find this reflection in the last sentence of the Prologue, where Don Diego points out how much more those have done who, not being favoured by noble birth, have, nevertheless, by cleverness and force of character, arrived at a good estate. If this idea of a boy such as the author, but without his noble birth and other advantages, was in Don Diego’s mind, we should expect to find Lazaro portrayed as a boy of a naturally good disposition and fine instincts, whose bad qualities were due to his lowly birth and vicious surroundings. It is just such a boy as this that Don Diego presents to us.
Nothing could be worse than poor Lazaro’s home. His mother was a widow who had intimacies with a groom of Moorish blood, had a child by him, and lived on the proceeds of his thieving, while Lazaro was employed to dispose of the stolen goods. When they were found out, the widow’s position became most precarious. Just then the wonderfully clever and plausible blind man appeared on the scene. He offered what, in comparison with the boy’s lot with his mother, seemed to be a decent provision. She is accused of unfeeling conduct in thus parting with her son. I do not think this is intended. The poor woman did what she thought was best for the child, and their parting was sorrowful and affectionate. Don Diego made her a thief and worse, but not a mother without feeling.
The account of the professional cleverness and knowledge of the blind man is very interesting, but, in spite of it all, the little boy seems to have held his
