dello. Books were books in those days, not batches, by the baker's dozen, turned out every morning; and the gayest of writers were held in serious estimation accordingly.

VER-VERT;*

OR,

THE PARROT OF THE NUNS.

(FROM THE FRENch of gresset.)

"What words have passed thy lips?"

MILTON.

INTRODUCTION.

THIS story is the subject of one of the most agreeable poems in the French language, and has the additional piquancy of having been written by the author when he was a Jesuit. The delicate moral which is insinuated against the waste of time in nunneries, and the perversion of good and useful feeling into trifling channels, promised to have an effect (and most likely had) which startled some feeble minds. Our author did not remain a Jesuit long, but he was allowed to retire from his order without scandal. He was a man of so much integrity as well as wit, that his brethren regretted his

* Sometimes written Vert-Vert (Green-green).

loss, as much as the world was pleased with the acquisition.

After having undergone the admiration of the circles in Paris, Gresset married, and lived in retirement. He died in 1777, beloved by everybody but the critics. Critics were not the good-natured people in those times which they have lately become; and they worried him as a matter of course, because he was original. He was intimate with Jean Jacques Rousseau. The self-tormenting and somewhat affected philosopher came to see him in his retreat; and being interrogated respecting his misfortunes, said to him, "You have made a parrot speak; but you will find it a harder task with a bear.".

Gresset wrote other poems and a comedy, which are admired; but the Parrot is the feather in his cap. It was an addition to the stock of originality, and has greater right perhaps than the Lutrin to challenge a comparison with the Rape of the Lock. This is spoken with deference to better French scholars; but there is at least more of Pope's delicacy and invention in the Ver-Vert than in the Lutrin; and it does not depend so much as the latter upon a mimicry of the classics. It is less made up of what preceded it.

I am afraid this is but a bad preface to a prose translation. I would willingly have done it in verse, but other things demanded my time; and after wistfully looking at a page or two with which I in

dulged myself, I renounced the temptation. Readers not bitten with the love of verse, will hardly conceive how much philosophy was requisite to do this: but they may guess, if they have a turn for good eating, and give up dining with an epicure.

I must mention, that a subject of this nature is of necessity more piquant in a Catholic country than a Protestant. But the loss of poor Ver-Vert's purity of speech comes home to all Christendom; and it is hard if the tender imaginations of the fair sex do not sympathize everywhere both with parrot and with nuns. When the poem appeared in France, it touched the fibres of the whole polite world, male and female. A minister of state made the author a present of a coffee-service in porcelain, on which was painted, in the most delicate colours, the whole history of the "immortal bird." If I had the leisure and the means of Mr. Rogers, nothing should hinder me from trying to out-do (in one respect) the delicacy of his publications, in versifying a subject so worthy of vellum and morocco. The paper

should be as soft as the novices' lips, the register as rose-coloured; every canto should have vignettes from the hand of Stothard; and the binding should be green and gold, the colours of the hero.

Alas! and must all this end in a prose abstract, and an anti-climax! Weep all ye little Loves and Graces, ye

"Veneres Cupidinesque!

Et quantum est hominum venustiorum."

But first enable us, for our good-will, to relate the story, albeit we cannot do it justice.*

* There are two English poetical versions of the Ver-Vert; one by Dr. Geddes, which I have never seen; the other, by John Gilbert Cooper, author of the Song to Winifreda. The latter is written on the false principle of naturalizing French versification; and it is not immodest in a prose translator to say that it failed altogether. The following is a sample of the commencement :

"At Nevers, but few years ago,

Among the Nuns o' the Visitation,
There dwelt a Parrot, though a beau,
For sense of wondrous reputation;
Whose virtues and genteel address,

Whose figure and whose noble soul,
Would have secured him from distress,

Could wit and beauty fate control.
Ver-Vert (for so the nuns agreed
To call this noble personage)
The hopes of an illustrious breed,
To India owed his parentage."