335

SHREDS.

In a grave Essay on Knowledge and Superstition, in a recent number of the Quarterly Review, we were somewhat surprised to find a smart phrase, which is almost a literal_translation from the following pleasant definition of an Apothecary:

"Charlatan qui manipule des drogues qu'il ne connaît pas, pour les faire entrer dans un corps qu'il connaît encore moins." It was at once consolatory and mortifying, to think that a learned critic had been found pilfering from the same sources as ourselves; for we had, in truth, prepared a very recondite article on the ways of the world, "full of wise saws," which we had in great part concocted from an odd mélange of grave and witty definitions and maxims, entitled Dictionnaire des Gens du Monde. We will now, however, be honest "upon compulsion;" for as the Quarterly Reviewer has been nibbling at our cheese-parings, we begin to think that the book has acquired some reputation;-the defenceless and the obscure are the best subjects for plunder. To fill up a page we may, however, venture to tack together a few shreds, and thus contrive, as many others do, to extract an advantage even out of our tardy honesty.

AGE. The only secret which the ladies keep inviolably. SOULS. An article of commerce amongst Sovereigns. MASKED BALL.-A charitable establishment for ugly wo

men.

INSOLVENCY.-A mode of getting rich by infallible rules. A WIFE.-A woman who, having promised obedience, always knows how to make herself obeyed.

ROUGE.-A composition which has the property of rendering old women a little more ugly, and young women a little less pretty.

FEMME GALANTE.-A rose from which every lover plucks a leaf, till the thorn alone is left for the husband.

A FOOL.-An individual whose folly does not accord with that of the majority.

A GENTLEMAN.-A man who has duties to discharge and models to follow, and who ordinarily dispenses with one and the other.

GRATIS. A Word so alien to our manners, that we have been obliged to seek it in a dead language.

IMPERTINENCE. The pride of footmen.

IMPORTANCE. The greatness of fools.

YOUTH.--The age of a man till twenty, of a woman till fifty. FASHION.-A law whose object often varies, but whose power is never weakened:

OPIUM.-German tales, Melodrames, and Leading Articles. PEDANTS.-The Harpies of Literature, who corrupt all they

touch.

A VOYAGE.-Matter for lies.

FASHIONS. A tax which the industry of the poor levies upon the vanity of the rich.

PERSECUTION. An invention for the encouragement of

heresy.

CREDITORS.-Honest gentlemen who are always wrong, and who teach politeness.

We should be glad to see some man of observation and wit undertake a "Dictionary of the World," adapted to our own meridian. The modern acceptation of the commonest words furnishes a thousand illustrations of the difference between their real and their conventional meanings. We have a Dictionary of Slang, but none of Cant;of the Vulgar Tongue, but not of the Fashionable Dialect. Mr. Egan and Dr. equally unintelligible to the uninitiated, without a key. This little Book should be ready with the next Court Calendar, and might form an appropriate companion to that celebrated work, the Peerage, the Baronetage, and all other Indexes to good Society.

the late Mr. Thurtell and my Lord

P. A.

are

LEMIRA OF LORRAINE.

A ROMANCE *.

WE are fond, as we will avow our frailty, of all works of fiction; and, wherever they occur to us, we glance over their pages, whether they come to us with the sanction of the popular favour, or, whether we meet them languishing under the neglect of the public; or, possibly, smitten with the heavy rod of criticism. We know that the public is sometimes, for a season at least, erroneous in its judgments; and we are still more

* 3 Vols. 8vo. Whittaker, 1823.

certain that in these days, the rod of criticism is frequently wielded by the hands of weakness, of ignorance, of interest, of caprice, or of malice. We judge, therefore, in every instance for ourselves; and, sine amore et odio, we determine on the merits or the demerits of the work before us, without any reference to its author or its fortunes; to its publisher or its type. Having accidentally met with the romance, the title of which stands at the head of this paper, our attention was forcibly arrested with the ingenious complication of its story; with the variety and the specific delineation of its characters; with the multiplicity of its incidents; with the vivid portraiture of its scenery; with its frequent and powerful appeals to the passions; and, lastly, with the elegance and the accuracy of its diction. We read it, therefore, twice through; and, on the whole, we have been so much pleased with it, that we cannot entertain a doubt of contributing largely to the entertainment of our readers by introducing it to their acquaintance.

Of the action of this interesting piece the scene is laid in France, at a period when the seventeenth century had run somewhat more than half its course; when the spirit of chivalry was not yet altogether extinct; and when the court of Louis XIV., in its first dazzling display, attracted the eyes of Europe, and exhibited to the surrounding nations the imposing spectacle of gallantry and taste. The reader will, of course, conclude that the fiction of the Princess of Lorraine is connected with historic truth; and that many of its agents are personages who are previously known to us, in consequence of their having acted some distinguished part on the great political theatre of the world. To this association of fiction with history, some grave objections have been made by the critics of the present day. But the immediate purpose of the writer is obtained by it, for he thus acquires more verisimilitude for his story; and if he abstains, for the production of effect, from falsifying the authentic records of history, we cannot perceive that he is amenable for any very serious offences; for the fiction and the historic truth may flow blended in his page, without being confounded, like the Titaresius and the Penëus* in the lines of the poet; and whilst the reader is instructed by the latter, he may be delighted by its adaptation to the former. We will not assert that the truth of history has been uniformly respected in the work now under our notice: but we are not inclined to be. severe on this offence of our author's, (for an offence we must

* II. B. 751.

VOL. II. PART II.

Ꮓ

admit it to be,) as it very infrequently occurs, and as it is made immediately subservient to the gratification of our feelings. We cannot, indeed, recollect more than one instance in which the writer of Lemira has been guilty of this transgression of historic truth; and then his act is not of so gross and revolting a nature as that of the author of Ivanhoe, when he brings Richard Coeur de Lion, liberated from his captivity, in disguise to England; and on the adventures of the heroic monarch, in the character of an unknown knight, founds the greater and the more interesting part of his story. But we are not disposed to defend the delinquency of one of these writers, by the greater delinquency of the other. Both are, unquestionably, literary criminals; and on each of them we must pass a sentence of condemnation proportioned to the magnitude of his respective criminality.

The romance of Lemira of Lorraine opens with the arrival of Mellidor, its hero, at the convent of St. Maure, where his sister, Rosalie, in strong opposition to her inclinations, had been placed as a novitiate, previously to her taking the veil. From this situation he releases her; and, consigning her to the care of a lady, to whom had been committed the charge of her early years, dismisses her to a country villa which he had prepared for her reception. The explanation of this scene immediately follows, in a short account of the family and parents of Mellidor and Rosalie. The Vicomte de Valmire, the father of these amiable human beings, is one of the old French nobility, a man of high spirit, lofty in his sentiments of honour, reserved and austere in his temper, inflexible in his principles, and rigid in his observance of all the great duties of life. He had been twice married; and the happiness of his union with his first consort, the mother of Mellidor, had been strongly contrasted by the peculiar infelicity of that with his second, the mother of Rosalie. So great, indeed, and so irreclaimable, had been the misconduct of this subject of his last matrimonial contract, that he had been compelled to separate her entirely from his family; and, by the power of a lettre de cachet, to consign her to a private confinement. His property, originally not large, being considerably impaired by the extravagance of this unhappy woman, as well as by the faithlessness of an agent, to whom he had confided a considerable part of it, the old Vicomte finds himself unable to provide suitably for his heir, Mellidor, without placing his daughter in the seclusion of a convent, or without increasing the family possessions by an opulent alliance. In an interview which ensues between the father and the son, the distressful state of their fortunes is dis

covered to the latter, and no alternative is proposed to him but that of his condemning his beloved sister to a fate which he knew to be the most strongly opposed to her happiness, or that of his accepting a wealthy match, which was now offered to him, with the daughter of a man below the rank of nobility. Mellidor, who had chosen the profession of arms, and, by his valour and prudent conduct, had conciliated the confidence and the friendship of his commander, the great Condé, listens to his father with the most painful sensibility; for his heart was already engaged; and, for the first time in his life, he finds obedience to the paternal authority to be a task almost above the power of his filial virtue to accomplish. In consequence of an adventure, romantic indeed, but not improbable, he had been thrown into the society of the Princess of Lorraine, the only daughter of Charles, the amiable but unfortunate sovereign of that small royalty, now upon the point of sinking under the superior forces of France; and the young hero had surrendered his affections to the charms, the accomplishments, the virtues, the high and richly-endowed mind of this extraordinary and most lovely woman. The impression made by Mellidor on the heart of the Princess was not of a less deep or durable nature; and, as fortune had indulged him with the opportunity of saving, not only her own life, but that also of her beloved father, on the rout of the army of Lorraine, he seems, in an early part of the narrative, to be destined for her consort. Their union, however, appears to be opposed by insurmountable obstacles; and when the lover, as a sacrifice to his duty, actually marries the beautiful and rich Melanie, we are induced to consider his separation from the object of his almost idolatrous devotion, as altogether complete. But, by a series of events, at once probable and connected, this consummation is finally attained; and the story is conducted to a satisfactory conclusion. To follow the narration through all its intricacies, or to give a sketch of the numerous characters, (many of them historic, and many the creatures of the writer's imagination,) which are employed in its agency, would extend our article much beyond its due length; and would, also, rather unfairly anticipate the reader's interest and pleasure in the perusal of the work. We will content ourselves, therefore, with suggesting some parts of the story which occur to us as faulty; and we will then conclude with extracts from the pages before us, partly for the entertainment of our readers, and partly to justify the favourable opinion of Lemira of Lorraine, which we have been induced most honestly to give.

When we had lately left, in his sole remaining fortress,