chamber walls, during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, D'Israeli says:

Prynne literally verified Pope's description :

"Is there who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls
With desperate charcoal round his darken'd walls?"

The word "verified" is here meant for "anticipated." A verification of a thing must come after the thing itself. How could Prynne's scrawling on his prison walls, in 1632, verify a description that was not written by Pope till a hundred years after?

"There are three foul corrupters of a language: caprice, affectation, and ignorance. Such fashionable cant terms as 'Theatricals' and 'Musicals,' invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity of frivolity."— Ibid.

In the next article D'Israeli, forgetting that he had described the word "theatricals" as a cant term, uses it in the following sentence:

"These proverbs are dramas of a single act, invented by Carmontel, but who designed them only for private theatricals."-Ibid.

"The poems of Chatterton and Ossian are veiled in mystery."—Ibid.

The blunder here consists in the coupling of the names. The writer should have said :-" The poems of Rowley and Ossian," or "of Chatterton and Macpherson."

"It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its discovery."— Ibid.

This sentence requires no comment. It yields not in absurdity to any "Bull," Irish, English, or Scotch, that I have ever met with.

"The ancestors of the human race knew poverty in a partial degree."―lbid.

The human race began with Adam and Eve, and includes all their descendants. Who, then, were their ancestors? D'Israeli, of course, meant to speak of the primitive races of man, the early inhabitants of the earth; and he might have described them as "our ancestors," the "ancestors of the living generation; "but to say that they were the ancestors of the human race is to say that they were their own ancestors. This blunder is not, however, without a parallel. What D'Israeli says of the primitive members of the human family, Milton asserts, in a contrary sense, of Adam and Eve, with this difference, that D'Israeli's language implies an unconscious mistake, while that of Milton is a poetical license, designed to express one of the most beautiful images in the language:-

"So hand in hand they pass'd, the loveliest pair,

That ever since in love's embraces met;

Adam, the goodliest man of men since born,
His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve."

If we turn from D'Israeli's English blunders to his French "bévues," we shall find that he possessed but a very superficial knowledge of a

language, from the literary stores of which he has extracted by far the greater proportion of his "Curiosities" and "Anecdotes." In the article headed "Mysteries, Moralities," he quotes from the Mystery of St. Denis, and concludes with the following quatrain on the subject of baptism :

"Sire, oyez que fait ce fol prêtre ;
Il prend de l'yaue en une escuele,
Et gete aux gens sur la cervele,
Et dit que partant sont sauvés."

Which he translates thus:

"Sir, hear what this mad priest does ;
He takes water out of a ladle,

And throwing it at people's heads,

He says that, when they depart, they are saved."

The word "partant" in the original is an adverb, and means "thereupon," "forthwith." This D'Israeli has mistaken for "partant," the participle of "partir," and the nonsense of his translation would only prove that the priest was mad indeed.

From another of these religious farces, called Sotties, D'Israeli cites this couplet :

"Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs,

Jouer le leur, l'autrui saisir."

Of which he gives the following translation :

"Killing people for their pleasures;

Minding their own interests, and seizing on what belongs to another."

Here we have "jouer le leur," to gamble, rendered by "to mind their own interests;" a rather equivocal method, it must be confessed, of accomplishing that object.

In another place, under the head of "Inquisition," we meet with the following passage:

“Once all were Turks when they were not Romanists. Raymond, count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or sex."—Ibid.

D'Israeli must have translated this from some French writer; but being unacquainted with the idiomatic, though common, expression,-" passer un fil de l'épée," which means "to put to the sword," he gives us the words in their literal sense, which in English is no sense at all.

Farther on, speaking of the feudal custom of the French barons, known as the "droit de suzeraineté," in virtue of which they were permitted to cohabit with the new bride, during the first three nights after marriage, D'Israeli remarks:

"Montesquieu is infinitely French when he could turn this. shameful species of tyranny into a bon-mot; for he boldly observes on this :-'C'était bien ces trois nuits-là qu'il fallait choisir; car pour les autres on n'aurait pas donné beaucoup d'argent.' The legislator in the wit forgot the feelings of his heart."

It is inconceivable by what mental process D'Israeli could have tortured Montesquieu's

I

words into a bon-mot. Not only is there nothing of the kind in what he quotes, but there is not even an attempt at it. Montesquieu merely suggests a reason for the preference given to the first three nights; and in doing so he expresses the sentiments of the barons, and not his own. And yet, it is upon grounds like these that D'Israeli lays at the door of that illustrious man the silly imputation of being "infinitely French," and the grave and offensive charge of forgetting, for the sake of a bon-mot, the feelings of his heart!

These are among the very few instances in which D'Israeli, by quoting the original authorities, enables us to test the correctness of his translations; and if he be found inaccurate in these instances, what are we to think of his accuracy in the greater proportion of the Curiosities, where the original sources of information are kept out of view? But his blunders are not confined to his English or to his French. The materials with which he has manufactured some of his "Curiosities," are of the most fallacious character. I shall quote one instance which will abundantly bear me out in this assertion.

It is an article of the Roman Catholic faith, that the Church, as represented by the majority of its bishops in council, is infallible. Upon this point all sections of Catholics are agreed, it being as firmly adhered to by the Jansenists as