The History Of The famous preacher Friar Gerund De Campazas: Otherwise Gerund Zotes. by [ISLA y ROJO (José Francisco de).] - 1772

Translated from the Spanish. In two volumes. London: Printed for T. Davies, in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden; And W. Flexney, in Holborn, 1772. 2 Vols., Demy 8vo (watermarked with fleur-de-lys); half-title not called for in volume one, not present in volume two; twenty-nine entry Errata (plus translator’s note) on A4v in volume one; twenty-two entry Errata on [Mm8r] in volume two; pp.[viii]+564; [ii]+541+[i (blank)]+[i (Errata leaf, blank on verso]; A⁴, B - I, K - U, X - Z, Aa - Ii, Kk - Nn⁸, Oo²; [-]¹, B - I, K - U, X - Z, Aa - Ii, Kk - Mm⁸; contempoary full natural calf, spine with five bands raised over the cords, ruled and numbered direct, gilt, recent red lettering-piece; a.e. burnished brown. Expert, almost invisible, restorations to calf of spines, and end-papers almost invisibly strengthened at hinges; lacking the back free end-paper to volume two (a fact which is not obvious because the facing page is blank; first and last couple of leaves in each volume stained at margins from the turn-ins of the calf, and one gathering with some light foxing; small hole in Aa8 of volume two, probably due to an original paper flaw, with loss of all or part of six letters in total; otherwise, and in effect, a very nice copy. The first appearance of Volume II. in any language.The first volume is a translation of Isla’s ‘Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes’, as published originally under the name Don Francisco Lob•n de Salazar, in 1758, but slightly cut by the removal of a lengthy “declamation against a Portuguese book not worth a long confutation,” as the translator’s Advertisement explains, together with “some episodical criticisms on foreign learning, in which [the author] talks with too much peremptoriness of what he was but indifferently qualified to talk of”, whilst “some of the didactic parts likewise are curtailed”. Though the first volume was originally published in Spanish, it was suppressed in 1760 by the Inquisition, with the result that the second volume, which was just then ready to be printed, never appeared, and this translation, made, as the Advertisement again records, from the author’s “only copy of [the manuscript], partly written by a careful amanuensis, and partly with his own hand”, represents the first appearance of the second portion of the work in any language. A picaresque novel, written in the tradition of Cervantes, and full of fresh humour, wit, and irony, the story is that of a peasant boy who rises to prominence as a preacher by means of his smooth tongue. It constitutes a biting satire on the charlatanism and bombast of the popular preaching friars of the day, combining a satirical and burlesque narrative fiction about bad preachers, who continued to follow the pompous and pedantic style of the Gongoran Baroque, with a didactic treatise on sacred oratory. The author also intersperses various stories and jokes, and it includes incidentally the first appearance in print of the phrase ‘accidentally on purpose’. The translator is usually thought to have been Thomas Nugent, though it has also been attributed to Ferdinando Warner. ESTC, T63924 All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.