ALEMAN, Mateo, a remarkable Spanish writer, born at Sevilla, about the middle of the sixteenth century; best known to us by his racy and amusing Adventures of Guzman Alfarache, published in 1599; a work highly esteemed for the purity and elegance of its Castilian style, though the delineations are often coarse and indelicate. This and several succeeding works of the same kind, under the feigned adventures of rogues and vagabonds, cover a sly satire on the corruption of Spanish manners in the time of Philip II. It was from this, and the novel of Espinel, entitled The Life of Squire Marcos Olegon, that Le Sage borrowed many of the characters and adventures in his admirable Gil Blas. Aleman also wrote a Life of St Antonio de Padua; and having visited Mexico, he there published an Ortografía Castellana in 1609, which has obtained some reputation. He died in the reign of Philip III.