had been an absentee from an early age, they delighted to honour her. It might have been different if she had always occupied an old chateau there,

and had never been treated with consideration by the great ones of the capital. The effects produced by her romances are visible at this day in her native province. Hear Alphonse Karr, himself a quasi west-countryman, on this subject.

"I must tell you one thing which is necessary to say and to repeat, when one relates those histories which take place in the country of Caux. My lady-readers may lay blame on the author for the strange names he has given to the greater part of the personages of the story (Clovis Gosselin): this would be, however, unjust. These names not only exist but they are common

in the country. Bérénice, Almaïde, Astérie, Isoline, Généreux, Césaire, Clovis, are names which you will hear all the day long. Cléopâtre is more rare, but I have met with two instances. I attribute the

frequency of these names to the influence

of Mlle. de Scuderi. This illustrious wo

man who, in spite of much pretension and mannerism, was not without merit, enjoyed in her own day a great reputation. Her renown was particularly grateful to the inhabitants of Havre, where she was born. During the vogue of these romances, ladies who stood as godmothers to the children of sailors and peasants, did not fail to give them the names then in favour; and these names have naturally perpetuated themselves in the country."

Mons. de Scuderi, Mademoiselle's brother, though without his sister's talents, had a very high opinion of his own merits. He wrote a good deal, and probably gave some assistance to his voluminous sister. We have met with this anecdote concerning the brother and sister in an old book of French Biography; the reader shall have it at its worth

"An odd adventure befell Mademoiselle de Scudery on a journey with her brother. At the inn they were to lodge in a room with two beds; and after supper, fell to discourse of the process of the romance of "Cyrus" which they had then begun, and particularly how Prince Mazara should be disposed of. After a pretty warm debate, it was carried that he should be assassinated. Some merchants in the next room, overhearing their discourse, and concluding that these strangers were contriving the death of some

The brother died in 1667, but poor Mademoiselle survived her fame, and departed in 1701, at the advanced age of 94. Boileau's merciless satire and the inherent defects of the quasi-historic romances had at last completely uprooted from the minds of the public the favour they once enjoyed. Books on the plan of the "Rogues and Rapparees" of Spain, grave novels of modern life, and alas! novels whose strict habitat is or was Holywell-street, succeeded; and in very many cases, the change only tended to corrupt and debase public taste.

Marie Magdalen Pioche de la Vergne, Comtesse de la Fayette, the first French writer who composed novels of ordinary life distinct from the

mere collection of ridiculous adventures, was daughter to the Governor of Havre de Grace. She was married to François, Comte de la Fayette in 1655, and died in 1693. She wrote "Zaide" in the style of Spanish romances, and the "Princess of Cleves," and the "Princess of Montpensier," in which the occurrences are not much out of the course of common life, but very little care is taken to preserve historical truth. Segrais, a man of letters, under the patronage of Mlle. Montpensier, and who had written some agreeable tales, in which incense was unsparingly burned in honour of "La Grande Mademoiselle," found it convenient to leave her court and abide with our countess. He gave her some assistance in the composition of the first two of her romances mentioned above; but the graces of style and liveliness of description which distinguish them, are the lady's by every right. She is also to be credited for giving for the first time pictures of the existing aristocratic life, and transcripts of their conversation. The Countess enjoyed the respect and friendship of many

of the literary lights of the reign of Louis XIV. Besides her novels she wrote historical sketches of the Court of France, and of England during the sway of Henrietta Maria.

About the middle of the preceding century, the Spanish picaresque, or rogue story, began to be known and relished in France. The earliest of these, and probably the best, is the Lazarillo de Tormes, composed by Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, while he was prosecuting his studies at Salamanca. Mendoza was born in the early part of the sixteenth century, but this youthful production of his was not known in France till its latter portion. He left the work incomplete, and did not choose, or had not leisure, to write a conclusion later in life. A certain De Luna corrected and continued the Lazarillo in an edition published at Saragossa, in 1652, and this furnishes the text of all succeeding editions. Mendoza died in 1575, having, during his life, distinguished himself by the composition of various pieces of fine poetry. He represented his sovereign, Charles V. at Venice, and at the Council of Trent, where he harangued the churchmen on the objects nearest the heart of the long-headed Emperor. Being appointed Captain-general of Sienna and other strong places in Tuscany, he kept Paul III. and the Tuscans in a state of anxiety. Julius III. succeeding, and being more friendly to the Spanish interest, Mendoza accepted at his hands the Gonfalon, and punished some of his rebellious subjects. He collected all the ancient manuscripts he could, from all quarters, and befriended literary men to the utmost of his power. Literature and politics were not sufficient to afford full occupation to the faculties of this great man. Though his countenance was not prepossess ing, he wrote the praises of the Italian ladies in elegant verse, and centred much of his happiness in being distinguished by them. He was recalled by Charles V. a little before his resignation; for many complaints had been made of his harsh political measures, and of his breaches of the commandment that forbids the coveting of neighbours' wives.

Having now returned to his native country, in the decline of life, he showed little improvement in morals.

A rival for the affection of a Spanish dame drawing his dagger on him during a warm discussion, he pitched the assailant from a first-floor window into the street, and was rewarded by his then master, Philip II., with a short imprisonment. He beguiled the tedium of his detention with the composition of a metrical complaint of the cruelty of his mistress. Being exiled from the court, he retired to Granada, his native place, and indulged his literary impulse by the collection of Arabic manuscripts. His last literary labour was the history of the wars of the Alpuxaras, in which Philip was at issue with the insurgent Moors. He is styled the Spanish Sallust for the vigour and perspicuity which distinguish this fine work. The brave old writer would have shown more sympathy with the little remnant of the Moriscoes if he could have permitted his pen the liberty he would gladly have given it.

"Lazarillo de Tormes" was more easily met with half-a-century ago, in the country, than now in town. We must find room for a short extract, premising that the hero, at his outset, was committed by his mother to an avaricious, blind beggar, to serve as his guide and friend. Her parting words were, "Be an honest man, and God bless thee. I have brought thee up with no small care, and I have provided thee with a good master. Thou must make the best on't." This kind man would have starved poor Lazarillo, but he contrived to cut slits in the money and meat bags, abstracted coins and provisions, and also got the wine-pot from between his master's legs and took mouthfuls at times. However, his thefts being discovered, the old man afterwards continued to hold the jug by the handle.

"That new precaution proved but a whet to my industry, for, by means of a reed, one end of which I put into the pot, I used to drink with more satisfaction and convenience than before, till the traitor hearing me suck, rendered my darling machine useless by keeping one hand upon the mouth of the jar.

"Used to wine as I then was, I could more easily have dispensed with my shirt; and of making a hole near the bottom of the that exigency put me upon a fresh invention mug, which, stopping with wax, at dinner time I took the opportunity to tap the can, and getting my head between the old man's legs, received into my mouth the precious

juice with all the dexterity imaginable. So that my master, not knowing to what he should impute the continual leakage of his liquor, used to swear and domineer, wishing both wine and pot at the devil.

"You won't accuse me any more,' cried I, ‘of drinking your wine, after all your fine precautions to prevent it.' To that he said not a word, but feeling all round the pot, he at last, unluckily, discovered the hole which, cunningly dissembling at that time, he let me alone till next day at dinner. Not dreaming, God knows, of the old man's malicious intentions, but getting in between his legs, according to my wonted custom, receiving into my mouth the distilled dew, and pleasing myself with the success of

my own ingenuity, my eyes upwards, but half shut, the furious tyrant, taking up the sweet but hard pot with both his hands, flung it down, with all his force, upon my face, by the violence of which blow, imagining the house had fallen upon my head, I lay sprawling, without any sentiment or judgment, my forehead, nose, and mouth gushing out with blood, and the latter full of broken teeth and broken pieces of the

pot."

Poor Lazarillo changed his masters frequently without improving his circumstances. He was nearly starved with a miserly ecclesiastic, and then entered the service of a poor hidalgo, whom he supported for a while with the produce of his own skill in begging. The excuses made by the poor gentleman for the absence of breakfast, dinner, and supper, his dainty partaking of Lazarillo's store, and all the inconveniences that await on keep ing up appearances, are excellent in their way. Lazarillo is not only the first in time of the rogue-novels, but the first in originality, freshness, and liveliness.

The next to Lazarillo in time and talent is "Guzman d'Alfarache," the work of Mateo Aleman, first published at Madrid, in 1599. The hero, in his time, fills a greater variety of offices than his prototype, and displays more versatility of talent. The author showed in this work great knowledge of the world, great powers of observation and insight into human character; and gave truthful pictures of the manners of his age. He wrote, besides, a poetical life of Saint Anthony of Padua, and a work on orthography. He died in Mexico, in the reign of Philip III. Lesage translated the

Guzman into French.

It may be objected that we are tra

velling out of our proper field in devoting so much space to the light literature of Spain; but it must be recollected that France, at and before looked to the Peninsula for models of the era of which we are treating, excellence in fiction and the drama, translated them, and copied their style and matter in works purporting to be original. However, they introduced some new matter that could well have been spared. In the Spanish originals, lascivious subjects or descriptions were very rare; in the French imitations they abounded. Still, the novelists of the French picaresque school in the seventeenth century, however outspoken, wrote as if they were unconscious of doing any harm. Their successors in the eighteenth century, many of them being infidels as well as loose livers, seem to have taken a positive pleasure in corrupting the morals of their readers, and chuckled as they wrote at the amount of mischief they were doing. There was a degree of delicate finesse blended with apparent simplicity in their art, calculated to effect much profounder and more permanent mischief than the unveiled indecency of their predecessors. We have before us one of the barefaced class, written by Monsieur de Moulines Sieur de Parc, a Lorain gentleman, first printed in 1622, and "done into English by a Person of Honor, and published at the White Lion, near the little North door of Paul's, 1655." It is entitled the "Comical History of Francion, wherein the variety of Vices that abuse the Ages, are satyrically limn'd in their Native Colours." The Sieur de Parc dedicates the folio volume to Francion himself, now a person of honour, instead of the scamp he erewhile was. He congratulates him,

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that your Manners and Conversation of life are now so full of Gravity and Modesty, that you are the more to be commended for having disentangled yourself from so many temptations and charms, which on every side did surround you," &c., &c., &c. The Sieur du Parc being dead at the date of the edition, from which the Person of Honour made the English translation, the editor ushered it into the presence of the public with a long preface. We present the first few lines of his

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· ADVICE UNTO HIS READERS.

"This here is the work of Sieur du Parc, who hath made himself famous enough by the Adventures of Floris and Cleontia, and of those of Phinemenes and Chrysaura, in his Book of the Disagreeable Adventures of Love. It is true that these Histories have a Stile very Poetical and Figurative, but such as was agreeable to the subject he undertook,

and to the Mode of that Time in which it

was not fashionable to speak of the Delights of Love in ordinary Words."

The Sieur had composed the above works in the Scuderi and Calprenède manner, but in Francion he changed his hand. The reader may judge of the edifying nature of the work by the opening adventures. Francion, in the garb of a pilgrim, wishing to get an ancient bridegroom out of his castle, so as to leave the stage clear for his own designs, induces the old gentleman to get half-naked into a tub in the moat, and utter some magic incantations, and wash himself. The next operation was to enter a grove and execute other fooleries, and repeat, when he supposed the devil was approaching -"Oh, whatsoe'er thou beest, great Mastiff, that runnest towards me with open mouth and uplifted taile, thinking to have found the Prey thou lookest for, return to the place whence thou comest, and content thyself to eat up thy grandmother's old shooes." A maid, lately hired, is a robber in disguise, who, on the same night, is to admit two other companions. The general result is, that Francion is tossed from a window into the tub he had got the old dotard to fix in the moat; the aged Castellan is bound to a tree till he is released next morning; one robber is left suspended in mid-air by a rope; another fastened naked to a grating; and all serve as laughing-stocks to the people going to early mass next morning, These mistakes of a night are related in a style of the most callous and audacious grossness, and the narrative is pointed in italic letters, with the following moral :

Thus they whose perverse inclinations lead them to wicked actions, never prosper in their undertakings, but receive a suteable reward to their crimes, as the severall pas

sages here related testifie. Valentine (the old Castellan), for the foolish curiosity that transported him to the Diabolicall practice of Necromancie, became a scorne to all. The Thieves, whose covetous desire to enrich themselves by others losse, made them attempt to rob the Castle, not onely failed of their intented purchase, but suffered publique shame and pain. Lauretta, indeed, though she had strained courtesie with her conscience, received no present punishment nor reproach, but what's deferred we seldom find is lost. As for Francion, his vicious intention was recompenc'd with harme enough."*

And so the adventures proceed, every one worse than its antecedent, till it pleases the hero to amend his life and conclude the volume.

John La Fontaine (born, 1621; deceased, 1695) contributed not slightly to seduce the public taste from the decorous stories of Mlle. de Scuderi and D'Urfé, and gorge it on such garbage as we have just quoted. Yet the good, easy gentleman could hardly conceive that his tales were calculated to do harm. He declared to the priest who attended him in his illness, that they had not the slightest ill effect on himself, and that he had not the shadow of a notion that any one could be influenced to evil by them. It is probable that his faculty of judgment was none of the acutest. Some one said of him that it was mere stupidity that caused him to prefer the fables of the Ancients to his own. His housekeeper, on hearing the priest speak plainly and sternly enough to him on his bed of sickness, interfered. Ah, sir!" said she, "don't be too hard with my master. He's not wicked-he's only stupid. God wouldn't have the heart to damn him."

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Contrary to what might be expected from the character of his tales (let no youth or maiden suppose that we impute a shadow of guilt to his delightful fables), the morals of the man himself were irreproachable; and before he died he experienced, and expressed to his friends and brother academicians, the sincerest contrition for the evil he had unintentionally done.

It was in our original design to treat of Racine's theatrical reign; the

transfer of household and fairy stories from the viva voce recitations of the hearth to literary distinction among the Parisian beaux and belles, by Perrault and the Countess D'Aulnoy; the establishment of genuine comedy by Molière, and Scarron's humorous "Roman Comique." We must only hope for an opportunity of dwelling on these pleasant and interesting sub

jects in detail in some future number of the UNIVERSITY. If our paper dare boast of a moral, it is—that fashion is as arbitrary in the publisher's office as in the show-rooms of the milliner; and that the fame of no book is secured that does not give pleasure both to the prince on his throne and the peasant on his wooden stool.

I.

THE story of this unhappy clergyman has not been told before; yet its dim, indistinct outline is, in a sort of general way, familiar to many persons. Still this acquaintance seems to resolve itself into three main featuresthat the centre figure was a clergyman, that he committed a forgery, and that, through the terribly severe laws of his country, he suffered death for his crime. The "Execution of Doctor Dodd" is, perhaps, the idea most distinctly present to all, when they think of his name. The flurry of those days

between his sentence and his death

has in it something almost lurid; and idolaters of Boswell's book—and there are such-will own to there being a sort of horrid fascination in the passages he devotes to this incident. They will own, too, that nowhere does the hero of that marvellous book stand out so grandly, or attract more love and reverence for his brave, massive English soul.

The story is worthy of being told, because no English social event of that character, before or since, ever excited so much absorbing interest. We may gather some faint notion of the sensation spread over the whole kingdom, if we were to read some morning of the arrest of, say, the graceful writer, who has written "Westward, ho!" and of his being committed to a London gaol, charged with some barbarous crime, which was to bring with it the penalty of death. Yet, in those days human life was judicially cheap, and London eyes were used to the spectacle of weekly processions to the gallows. The extreme penalty of the

law, as it is called, viewed from the present century, we are apt to accept as a measure of guilt, which, in those days of bloody dispensation, it was

not.

The wretched clergyman was the victim of the old British, stupid, mulish complacency, which has so often fancied it is doing something Spartan and splendid, when it is only cruel and ridiculous. It once shot an admiral "to encourage the rest," and it hanged Doctor Dodd to show the surrounding world a spectacle of stern, unflinching morality.

For the offence which Doctor Dodd committed, such a punishment was wholly unsuited-even unmerited. Degradation would have been, at most, the moral delinquency accurately there the suitable penalty. Even weighing was no tremendous guilt involved in the offence-for it is clear that if he used the name of his patron, he meant to restore the money eventually. In justice to the man, his story should be considered. The details now about to be presented have never been presented before, and may be said to be new to a nineteenth century reader.

II.

18