Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848

It would be unjust to leave out Samuel Foote, in a work treating of the satires and caricatures of the last century. Possessing neither the brush of Hogarth nor the pen of Churchill, he wielded a weapon as formidable in its way – that, namely, of dramatic mimicry, or stage satire; and he is properly named by Mr Wright the great theatrical caricaturist of the age. For a time, the reckless and vindictive wit was the terror of the town: an affront to him, real or imaginary, caused the unlucky offender to be paraded before the world, under some fictitious name, upon the boards of his theatre, which, at first, was the "little" one in the Haymarket. For some time Foote and Macklin had it between them, but, disagreeing, Macklin left, whereupon his ex-partner immediately caricatured him upon the very stage he had so lately trodden. "The Haymarket was an unlicensed theatre, and Foote evaded the law by serving his audience with tea, and calling the performance in the bills 'Mr Foote's giving tea to his friends.' His advertisement ran, 'Mr Foote presents his compliments to his friends and the public, and desires them to drink tea at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, every morning, at playhouse prices.' The house was always crowded, and Foote came forward and said, that as he had some young actors in training, he would go on with his instructions whilst the tea was preparing." Afterwards he got a license, and rebuilt the theatre. But his bitter wit and gross personalities continually got him into trouble, frequently caused his pieces to be prohibited; exposed him to threatened, if not to actual castigation; and, finally, were the indirect cause of his death, accelerated, it is generally believed, by shame and vexation at the false but revolting charge brought against him by a clergyman he had savagely lampooned.

The fate of Hogarth was not dissimilar to that of Foote, with the difference that the painter was slain literally with his own weapons. Foote's victims had neither the ability nor the opportunity to expose him, as he did them, upon the stage. The Methodists, Dr Johnson, the East India Company, and the Duchess of Kingston, each in turn subjected to his vicious attacks, retorted as best they might by pamphlets and cudgels, but apparently made little impression on the player's tough epidermis, until a disreputable parson devised the poisoned dart with which to inflict a sure and cowardly wound. But Hogarth caricatured others till others learned to caricature him, – with less talent, certainly, but with sufficient malice to annoy and harass the artist, and finally, it is said, to break his heart. "His constant practice," says Mr Wright, "of introducing contemporaries into his moral satires, had procured him a host of enemies in the town; whilst his vain egotism, and the scornful tone in which he spoke of the other artists of the age, offended and irritated them." How seldom do satirists preserve temper and coolness under the retort of their own aggressions! After more than a quarter of a century passed in turning his neighbours into ridicule, Hogarth might be thought able to endure a rub or two in his turn, and even to receive them with good grace and a smiling countenance. But many a veteran has found, to his cost, that a life passed in the field does not render bullet-proof. Hogarth made good fight to the last, but his offensive arms were better than his defensive ones; his enemies' shot fell thick and fast, and all he could do was to die upon his guns. For the last twelve or fifteen years of his life he appears to have been particularly unpopular, and continually caricatured. His Analysis of Beauty, published in 1753, drew upon him a great deal of ridicule; and in 1758, his opposition to the foundation of an Academy of Fine Art was the signal for a shower of abuse and caricatures, more or less witty – oftener less than more. But the campaign that finished him – the Waterloo of the unlucky humorist – was one he rashly undertook against Wilkes and Churchill, previously his friends. This was imprudent in the extreme; for he might be sure that all the minor curs, who had so long yelped at his heels, would redouble their wearisome assaults when reinforced by such formidable champions as the North Briton and "Bruiser" Churchill. Wilkes warned Hogarth that he would not be kicked unresistingly, but the painter persevered; and Wilkes kept his word. No. 17 of the North Briton was stinging retaliation for No. 1 of The Times; and Churchill's "Epistle to William Hogarth" was at least as galling to the artist as his well-known portrait of "A Patriot" could be to Wilkes. The quarrel was kept up with much spirit till the death of Hogarth in October 1764.

The American war, and the ill-advised colonial legislation which brought it on, gave rise to many caricatures, some of them of considerable merit. The first of which a transcript is given us by Mr Fairholt's graver, relates to the Boston tea-riots of 1770. In it Lord North is pouring tea down the throat of America, personified by a half-naked woman with a crown of feathers, who rejects the unwelcome draught in his lordship's face. Britannia weeps in the background, and Lord Chancellor Mansfield, the compiler of the obnoxious acts, holds down the victim. When war actually broke out, and the bloody fight of Bunker's Hill gave a foretaste of its disasters, satires fell thick upon the ministry as well as upon the king, whose will, the Opposition maintained, was law with Lord North's cabinet. In June 1776 a long poem, smart enough, but very violent and unpatriotic, was published under the title of Lord Chatham's Prophecy.

"Your plumèd corps though Percy cheers,
And far-famed British grenadiers,
Renown'd for martial skill;
Yet Albion's heroes bite the plain,
Her chiefs round gallant Howe are slain,
On fallow Bunker's Hill."

Subsequent verses foretell all manner of evils to Great Britain, and the whole poem breathes a spirit of exultation at our reverses, which would have been less ungraceful from an American than from an English pen, and which, at the present day, no amount of party feeling would be held to justify. But the shamelessness of Whiggery was then at its height; the pseudo-patriots of the time recked little of their country's misfortunes when these gave them opportunity of triumph over a political antagonist. What cared they for the reverses of British arms, or the lopping off of Britain's colonies, if they thereby saw themselves nearer the possession of the place and power whose emoluments they so greedily coveted? Charles Fox, with his faro-purse empty and an execution in his house, could hardly afford to be particular as to the strict cleanliness of the path to the treasury bench. Then or never was the moment to sacrifice public weal to private advantage. And accordingly, when, "on the 3d December 1777, the Court was thunderstruck with the disastrous intelligence of the surrender of General Burgoyne and his army at Saratoga, the Opposition could hardly conceal their exultation: the disgrace and loss which had fallen on the British arms were exaggerated, and chanted about the streets in doggerel ballads." An "Ode on the success of his Majesty's Arms," written in December, and printed in the Foundling Hospital for Wit, celebrates ironically the glorious results of the campaign, and the skill and prudence of the ministers at home; and ends with a congratulation on the old tale of King George's mechanical amusements: —

"Then shall my lofty numbers tell,
Who taught the royal babes to spell,
And sovereign arts pursue;
To mend a watch, or set a clock,
New patterns shape for Hervey's frock,
Or buttons make at Kew."

The homely tastes of George III., his love of farming, and habit of amusing himself with a turning-lathe, were great themes for scurrilous attacks upon the royal person, both in print and caricature. "Mr King the button-maker" was held up to ridicule in every low publication on the Opposition side of the question. The Oxford Magazine frequently returned to the charge, sometimes with almost as much humour as impertinence. This was rather earlier than the American war, which gave rise to still more offensive inuendoes against the sovereign. Thus, when an outcry was got up against the employment of Indians in conjunction with the British troops in North America, and when all manner of horrible stories of cannibalism and so forth were set afloat, we are shown a caricature of the king squatted on the ground, cheek by jowl with a befeathered savage. The Indian handles a tomahawk, the king holds a skull, and "the Allies" (this is the title of the disgusting print) gnaw each at his own end of a large human bone. The brutality of the conception renders such a caricature as this far more unpleasant than the coarse, but generally good-humoured, quizzes subsequently executed by Gillray on royal foibles and economy. Some of our older readers may remember these. They were published towards the end of the last century. Half-a-dozen are excellently well copied on pages 205 to 211 of Mr Wright's second volume. There is "The Introduction" – George III and Queen Charlotte receiving their daughter-in-law the Princess of Prussia, and bewildered with delight at the golden dowery she brings. Then we have the King toasting his muffins, and the Queen frying her sprats; and again, (the best of them,) the royal pair out for a walk, and majesty overwhelming an unlucky pig-feeder by a volley of interrogative iterations. But few caricatures bear description, and least of all Gillray's, where the design is often of the simplest, and the humour of the execution every thing.

Gillray's first attempts at caricature were on the occasion of Lord Rodney's victory over De Grasse. It will be remembered that, when the North Administration went out in 1782, one of the first acts of their Liberal successors was to recall Rodney, a stanch Tory, on pretext of his not having done all he ought to have done with the West Indian fleet. England was badgered by her numerous enemies, and her affairs looked altogether discouraging, when sudden news arrived of the triumph which established her sovereignty of the seas. Ministers found themselves in an awkward predicament. It was neither gracious nor graceful to persist in the victor's recall, and yet, what else could be done? His successor, Admiral Pigot, had already sailed. Too late, an express was sent to stop him. "A cold vote of thanks was given by both Houses to the victorious Rodney, and he was raised to the peerage, but only as a baron, and was voted a pension of but £2000 a-year." Such shabby reward for an achievement of immense importance was, of course, not suffered to pass unnoticed by the late ministry, now the Opposition. A fleet of caricatures was launched, and amongst them were two by the then unknown Gillray. In one of them, "King George runs towards the admiral with the reward of a baron's coronet, and exclaims, (in allusion to Rodney's recall and elevation to the peerage,) 'Hold, my dear Rodney, you have done enough! I will now make a lord of you, and you shall have the happiness of never being heard of again!'" Probably these maiden efforts attracted little notice, for some time still elapsed before Gillray made much use of his pencil for the public amusement. In this same year of 1782, however, he brought out a clever caricature of Fox, who had just resigned his foreign secretaryship on Lord Shelburne's coming to be prime minister, vice Rockingham, deceased. In this print Charles James is represented, as a sort of parody on Milton's Satan, gazing with envious eye at Shelburne and Pitt, as they count their money on the treasury table.

"Aside he turned
For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance."

The expression of Fox's face is excellent, and the likeness good, but yet it wants something of the raciness of Gillray's later works. Fox and Burke were the great butts of the satirists at this particular moment, and also in the following year, on the occasion of their coalition with Lord North. James Sayer, then in full force as a caricaturist, and anxious to curry favour with his patron Pitt, to whom he was subsequently indebted for more than one lucrative place, was very severe upon them; and the power of caricature at that time must have been very great, if it be true that Fox admitted the severest blow received by his India Bill to have been from a drawing of Sayer's. It was a cry of the day that Fox aimed at a sort of Indian dictatorship for himself, and the satirists gave him the nickname of Carlo Khan. In the caricature in question, entitled "Carlo Khan's Triumphant Entry into Leadenhall Street," "Fox, in his new character, is conducted to the door of the India House on the back of an elephant, which exhibits the full face of Lord North, and he is led by Burke as his imperial trumpeter; for he had been the loudest supporter of the bill in the House of Commons. A bird of ill-omen croaks from above the would-be monarch's doom." On the other side of the question, several good caricatures also appeared, levelled chiefly at William Pitt, then on the eve of his prime ministership, and amongst these were three, published anonymously, which Mr Wright is probably not mistaken in attributing to the pencil of Rowlandson.

The imitation of French fashions and manners, and even of French profligacy, already noticed as gaining ground in English society about the middle of the eighteenth century, had reached the highest pitch towards its close. Nothing could be more absurd than the dresses of 1785, the enormous hats and prodigious buffonts and buckram monstrosities of the women, except perhaps the rush into the opposite extreme which took place at the commencement of the French Revolution. One of the caricatures of 1787, under the title of "Mademoiselle Parapluie," shows us a young lady serving as an umbrella, sheltering a whole family from a shower beneath the tremendous brim of her hat, (a regular fore-and-after), and under the protecting shadow of a protuberance, concerning whose composition (crinoline not having then been invented) future ages must remain in deplorable darkness. Then, every thing was sacrificed to breadth in costume. Pass we over six or seven years, and the lady of fashion who, at their commencement, could hardly get through a moderate-sized doorway, might almost glide head-foremost through the keyhole. A thin scanty robe, clinging close to the form, a turban and a single lofty plume, a waist close up under the arms, a watch the size of a Swedish turnip, with a profusion of seals and pendants, compose the fashionable female attire of that day. The dress of the men is equally ridiculous, both in cut and material, the great rage then being for striped stuffs, known as Zebras, and employed for coats as well as for the absurd pantaloons, puffed out round the hips and buttoned tight on the leg, in vogue amongst the beaux of the period. The modes that succeeded these were equally exaggerated and ugly. And the frivolity and extravagance of the time kept pace with the follies of dress. There was a rage for strange sights and extraordinary exhibitions; and the Londoners, especially, carried this passion to an extent that rendered them easy dupes of charlatans and impostors. "It stands recorded in the newspapers of the time, on the 9th of September 1785, – 'Handbills were distributed this morning that a bold adventurer meant to walk upon the Thames from Riley's Tea Gardens.' We are further informed that, at the hour appointed, thousands of people had crowded to the spot, and the river was so thickly covered with boats, that it was no easy matter to find enough water uncovered to walk upon." Of course the thing was a mere trick, and the Cockneys had their disappointment for their pains. Then balloons were the crotchet of the hour, and they also came from France, where they had been brought to a certain degree of perfection, but where it was soon found they were more positively dangerous than probably useful; for in May 1784, "a royal ordonnance forbade the construction or sending up of 'any aërostatic machine,' without an express permission from the king, on account of the various dangers attendant upon them; intimating, however, that this precaution was not intended to let the 'sublime discovery' fall into neglect, but only to confine the experiments to the direction of intelligent persons." In England, the fancy for them increased, and was the subject of various caricatures and pamphlets, until the death of a couple of Frenchmen, thrown to the earth from an immense height, cooled the soaring courage of the aëronauts. A more destructive and permanent folly was the passion for gambling, which, in spite of the attacks of the press, of grave censure and cutting satire, pervaded all ranks of society. There was a perfect fury for faro; and ladies of high fashion, and of aristocratic name, thought it not beneath them to convert their houses into hells. Three of these sporting dames, who had made themselves a name as keepers of banks, to which they enticed young men of fortune, were popularly known as "Faro's daughters." Lord Kenyon, when deciding on a gambling case, pledged himself, in a moment of virtuous indignation, to sentence the first ladies in the land to the pillory, should they be brought before him for a similar offence. Not long afterwards, several titled gamblers were actually arraigned at his tribunal, but he forgot his threat, and let them off with a fine. The hint, however, was enough for Gillray, then in his glory, and for his brothers of the comic brush, and the moral exposure and castigation which 'Faro's daughters' endured at the hands of the caricaturists, can have been hardly less stinging and annoying than actual exposure to the hooting and pelting of the mob. General demoralisation, the natural consequence of gambling, characterised this period. Men and women, ruined at the board of green cloth, recruited their finances as best they might; and when no other resource remained, the latter bartered their reputation, and the former took to the road. Those were the palmy days of highway robbery. "We are in a state of war at home that is shocking," writes Horace Walpole in 1782. "I mean from the enormous profusion of housebreakers, highwaymen, and footpads; and, what is worse, from the savage barbarities of the two latter, who commit the most wanton cruelties. The grievance is so crying, that one dares not stir out after dinner but well armed. If one goes abroad to dinner, you would think he was going to the relief of Gibraltar." Sixty-two years ago, in January 1786, "the mail was stopped in Pall Mall, close to the palace, and deliberately pillaged, at so early an hour as a quarter past eight in the evening."

After having for some years drawn their principal themes for satire from the social follies and political dissensions of their countrymen, the English caricaturists and song-writers found "fresh fields and pastures new" in foreign menaces and threatened invasion. In their usual presumptuous tone, French newspapers and proclamations spoke of the conquest of England by the conqueror of Italy, as of a project whose realisation admitted not the smallest doubt. This country had not then that confidence of invincibility which she gathered from subsequent victories in the field; and the positive assertions of France, that she had but to throw an army on the English coast to secure prompt and powerful co-operation from the Jacobin party, caused considerable alarm in the country. To kindle true patriotism, and raise the courage of the nation, recourse was had to loyal songs, and anti-French caricatures. The anti-Jacobin lent efficient aid, and Gillray put his shoulder to the wheel. The periodical and the artist were a host in themselves. Clever verses, and pointed caricatures, followed each other in quick succession. Soon Buonaparte betook himself to Egypt, the victory of the Nile spread rejoicing through the land, and caricatures caught the exultation of the hour. John Bull was represented at dinner, forking French frigates down his capacious gullet, and supplied with the provender, as fast as he could devour it, by Nelson and other nautical cooks. Buonaparte, stripped to the waist, with all enormous cocked-hat on his head, and the claret flowing freely from his nose, receives fistic punishment at the hands of Jack Tar. The suppression of the Irish rebellion of '98, and the death of General Hoche, who had replaced Buonaparte as the threatened invader of the British Isles, confirmed the feeling of security our naval triumphs had inspired. The Peace of Amiens set the wags of the pencil on a new tack, and Monsieur François was represented as imprinting "The first Kiss these Ten Years" on the lips of burly, blushing Britannia, who, whilst accepting the salute, hints a doubt of her admirer's sincerity. The doubt was justified by the rupture that speedily followed. The camp of Boulogne was formed; the French army were reminded of the pleasant pastime, in the shape of rape and robbery, that awaited them in the island famed for wealth and beauty. On this side the Channel nothing was left undone that might increase English contempt and hatred for the blustering bullies upon the other. Individuals and associations printed and disseminated "loyal tracts," as they were called. "Every kind of wit and humour was brought into play to enliven these sallies of patriotism; sometimes they came forth in the shape of national playbills, sometimes they were coarse and laughable dialogues between the Corsican and John Bull." Libels on Buonaparte, burlesques on his acts, parodies of his bulletins, accounts of the atrocities of his armies, were daily put forth, mingled with countless songs and tracts of encouragement and defiance. Some of these were spirited, but generally the substance and intention were better than the form – at least so they now appear to us, who read them without the additional savour imparted by the appropriateness of their time of production. Gillray keeps better, and one still must smile at his John Bull, standing in mid-Channel with trousers tucked up to his thighs, offering a fair fight to his meagre enemy, who contemplates him with a visage of grim dismay from above the triple batteries of the French coast. It is said that Buonaparte was much annoyed by personalities levelled at himself and his family, in some of the caricatures of 1803. They were often very coarse, and conveyed unhandsome imputations on the conduct of his female relatives; some of whom – rather flighty dames, if all tales be true – gave by their conduct plausible grounds for such attacks. Napoleon himself was represented in every odious and contemptible shape that could be devised, – as a butcher, a pigmy, an ogre, and even as a fiddle, transformed by an abominable pun into a base villain, upon which John Bull, a complacent smile upon his honest face, plays with sword instead of bow. This was after Maida, when the British army had begun to share the high esteem in which repeated victories had long caused our fleets to be held. A droll caricature, by Woodward, represents Napoleon abusing his master-shipwright for not keeping him better supplied with ships; whilst the unfortunate constructor, with hair on end, and a shrug to his ears, excuses himself upon the ground that, as fast as he builds, the English capture. It is to be remarked that hardly any of the caricatures of Napoleon attempt a likeness of him. They usually represent him as a lantern-jawed, disconsolate-looking wretch, with a prodigious cocked-hat and plume of feathers – that is to say, quite the contrary, both in head and head-dress, of what he really was. Both Gillray and his successors seem to have preferred sketching him as the received personification of a Frenchman, to giving a burlesque portrait or real caricature of the man. We trace this peculiarity, in many instances, up to the year 1814, when George Cruikshank, in depicting a Cossack "snuffing out Boney," (an allusion to French disasters in Russia), still represents the then plump Emperor as a lean, long-chinned scarecrow, with sash and feathers. Rowlandson does nearly the same thing, in his vulgar print of Napoleon's reception in the Island of Elba; and the only caricature reproduced by Mr Fairholt, in which is preserved the general character of the Emperor's head, is an anonymous one, where the head is placed on a dog's shoulders, and "Blucher the Brave," by a rough grasp on the nape of the quadruped's neck, extracts "the groan of abdication from the Corsican Bloodhound." Probably the classic regularity of Napoleon's countenance discouraged the caricaturists from attempting his likeness. They were deterred by the difficulty of burlesquing a face whose grave expression and perfect proportion gave no hold to ridicule, and made it pretty certain that the general resemblance would be sacrificed to the exaggeration of even a single feature.

A PARCEL FROM PARIS

It is some time since we had a gossip about French literature and littérateurs. The fact is, that, since the blessed days of February drove crestfallen monarchy from France, and began the pleasant state of things under which that country has since so notably flourished, literature has been at a complete stand-still in the land beyond the Channel. We refer especially to the light and amusing class of books it has been our habit occasionally to notice and extract from. With these the revolution has played the very mischief. Feuilletons have made way for bulletins of barricade contests, for reports of state trials, for the new dictator's edicts and proclamations. The rush at the Cabinets de Lecture has been for lists of genuine killed and wounded, not for imaginary massacres, by M. Dumas' heroes, of hosts of refractory plebeians, or for the full and particular account of the gallant defence of Bussy d'Amboise, against a quarter of a hundred hired assassins – all picked men-at-arms, and all setting on him at once, but of whom, nevertheless, he slays twenty-four, and only by the twenty-fifth is slain. And, by the bye, what pity it is that a few of our friend Alexander's redoubted swordsmen could not have been summoned from their laurel-shaded repose in Père la Chaise, to avert the recent catastrophe of the house of Orleans. Just a brace and a half of his king-making mousquetaires would have done the trick in a trice. Rumour certainly says that, in February last, a tall dark-complexioned gentleman, with a bran-new African Kepi on his martial brow, a foil, freshly unbuttoned, in his strong right hand, and a yell of liberty upon his massive lips, was seen to head a furious assault upon the Tuileries, at a time when that palace was undefended. Ill-natured tongues have asserted that this adventurous forlorn-hope leader was no other than the author of Monte Christo; but of this we credit not a syllable. It is notorious that M. Dumas is under the deepest obligations to the ex-king of the French, to whose kind and efficacious patronage (when Duke of Orleans) his first very sudden, very brilliant, and not altogether deserved success as a dramatist was mainly due. Equally well known is it that the popular writer was the favoured and intimate associate of two of Louis Philippe's sons – the Dukes of Orleans and Montpensier. Take, in conjunction with these facts, M. Dumas' established reputation for steady consistency, gravity, and gratitude, and of course it is impossible to believe that he ever acted so basely to his benefactors. But, even admitting republican predilections on his part, his love of liberty would assuredly prevent his constraining those well-known stanch supporters of the right divine, Messrs Athos, Artagnan, and Company, who, if set down in Paris in 1848, would have played the very deuce with the young republic. The giant Porthos would have stridden along the boulevards, kicking over the barricades as easily as he raised, single-handed, the stone which six of the degenerate inhabitants of Bellisle were unable to lift, (Vide "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne;") whilst the astute Gascon Artagnan would have packed General Cavaignac in a magnified bonbon-box, with air-holes in the lid, and Copahine-Mège or Chocolat-Cuillier on the label; and would have conveyed him on board a fishing smack, there detaining him till he pledged his honour that the king should have his own again. And, upon the whole, and whatever budding honours and civic crowns M. Dumas may anticipate under the genial reign of republicanism, it would have been more to his present interest to have stuck to monarchy, and led his legions to its rescue. Under the new regime his occupation is gone; his literary merchandise vainly seeks a market. Paris, engrossed by domestic broils and political discussions, by its anarchy, its misery, and its hunger – no longer cares for the fabulous exploits of Gascon paladins, and of privates in the Guards, who make thrones to totter, and armies to fly, by the prowess of their single arm. But M. Dumas is not disheartened. When the drama languishes, and the feuilleton grows unproductive, he falls back upon the Premier-Paris. When readers are scarce for twelve-volume romances, and plays in ten acts and thirty tableaux cease to draw, he starts upon a fresh tack – proposes enlightening the public on politics, regenerating France through the leaders of a newspaper. We were greatly amused by his advertisement of the journal, intended to act as lantern to this shining light of the new political day. "Our task is easy" – these were its concluding words – "Dieu dicte, nous écrivons!" Setting aside the slight profanity of this startling assertion, one cannot but admire the characteristic modesty of the self-conferred secretaryship. We are assured, however, that M. Dumas has been found far less able and attractive at the head of the column, than he was in his old place at the foot of the page.

The disjointed times being decidedly unfavourable to belles lettres, we were scarcely surprised at the first non-arrival of the monthly parcel, in which our punctual Paris agent is wont to forward us the literary novelties of the preceding thirty days. On a second and a third omission, we grew uneasy, and suspected the Red Republicans of abstracting our packages in transitu; but absolved the democrats on receipt of advice, that if the books did not arrive, it was because they were not sent; and that, if they were not sent, it was because there were none, or as good as none, to send. At last a case has reached us – half the usual size, but containing, nevertheless, the French literature of the entire summer. A poor display indeed! The pens of the novelists have shrivelled in their grasp; their plump goose-quills have dwindled into emaciated tooth-picks. Instead of the exuberant eight-volume romance, with promise of continuation, we have single volumes, meagre tales, that seem nipped in the bad, blighted by the breath of revolution. No author, not already involved in one of those tremendous series with which French writers have lately abused the public patience, now cares to exceed a volume or two. M. Sue, having got into the middle of the seven capital sins, is fain to flounder on through the ocean of iniquity; but his pen flags, evidently affected by the discouraging influence of the times. M. Dumas has brought out the final volume of "Les Quarante Cinq," a romance which we may observe, en passant, is a scandalous specimen of what the French call faire la ligne– doing the line, writing against paper, upon the Vauxhall principle of making the smallest possible substance cover the utmost possible surface. It is pity to see a man of remarkable talent, which M. Dumas really is, thus degrading himself into a mere mercantile speculator, lumbering his books with pages upon pages of useless and meaningless dialogue – if dialogue that is to be called, of which the following stuff is a specimen: —

"You are the Chevalier d'Artagnan."

"Then let me pass."

"Useless!"

"Why useless?"

"Because his Eminence is not at home."

"What! His Eminence not at home! Where is he then?"

"Gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes."

"Where?" &c., &c.

This is taken at random, from the volume last published of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, in which romance the marvellous and Crichtonian musketeers, brought forward again, when hard upon threescore, show less sign of suffering from the march of years than does the narrative of their adventures from its unconscionable protraction. Much more than half the book is made up of such wearisome conferences as that above-cited, where the interlocutors carry on a sort of cut-and-thrust conversation, with an economy of words explicable by the fact that in a French feuilleton, or volume, one word of dialogue makes a line, as well as ten. With the assistance of his secretary, M. Maquet, and of his son, Alexander the Younger, M. Dumas gets through a prodigious amount of this sort of trash, at once productive to his pocket and damaging to his reputation; and then, when he finds publishers beginning to grumble, and the public detecting the device, and rejecting the windy repast, he applies himself in earnest, and produces something exceedingly good, of which he is quite capable, if once he gets the spur. It is to the necessity of thus occasionally redeeming his reputation, that we are indebted for the few really praiseworthy romances he has written – for the Chevalier d'Harmental, for the earlier portion of the Mousquetaires, and for his masterpiece, Le Comte de Monte Christo. His enemies and libellers have asserted, that the first-named of these books was written by M. Maquet, and only fathered by Dumas; but the assertion is absurd, and is belied by the book itself, replete with that vivid animation which characterises whatever Alexander writes. Moreover, the man who could write such a novel would have no need to purchase the name of M. Dumas. He would not lack a publisher, and his reputation would soon be made. We believe the fact to be, that Maquet is a sort of industrious drudge, employed by Dumas to rummage chronicles, and to collate and write down historical incidents and facts, for his employer to distort and expand into romances. For, as an historical romance writer, M. Dumas is utterly without a conscience. By him characters and events are twisted and turned as best suits his convenience. "I have twenty years' work before me," he is reported to have said, "to illustrate French history." Heaven knows what sort of an illustrator he is! We would advise no one to take their notions of French historical personages from M. Dumas' novels, or from his history either – for he writes history also, at times, and the only doubt is, which is the greatest fiction, his history or his romance. But for the titles, it were not always easy to distinguish between them. It were unfair, however, whilst quizzing his absurdities, to lose sight of his merits. These are numerous and remarkable. His spirit and vivacity of style are extraordinary; and we can call to mind no living writer superior to him for invention. Monte Christo is his masterpiece. It is indeed a very striking and amusing book. With defects that forbid our calling it a first-rate romance of its class, it is yet far more entertaining than many that claim and obtain the title. The readers of the Journal des Debats well remember the eagerness with which each successive feuilleton was looked for, during its appearance in that paper. We ourselves abominate the feuilleton system, by which one is a year or two reading a book, imbibing it by daily crumbs, like the lady who eats her pillau with a bodkin. We waited till the work was complete, and then read it off the reel, – not at a sitting, certainly, considering the length, but early and late, in bed and at board. And being somewhat fastidious in matter of novels, it is evident Monte Christo must have great attractions thus to carry us at a canter through its interminable series of volumes. Its chief fault is the usual one of its author – exaggeration. We are sure M. Dumas is one of those persons who love to dream with their eyes open – to build themselves palaces in fairyland, to arrange gardens after the fashion of that of Eden, to furnish the most preterperfect of apartments with the most fabulous of furniture, to hang diamonds on their trees, and a roc's egg in their drawing-room. His air-constructed castles find a site in the pages of his romances. The right way to read them is to forget as fast as possible the improbabilities and impossibilities. The supernatural being out of vogue, he does not give to Edmund Dantes the lamp of Aladdin, but (which is quite equivalent) a few double handfuls of precious stones, whereof the smallest specimen is caught at by a Jew for a thousand pounds; whilst one of the largest, hollowed out, forms a convenient receptacle for a score of pills, as big as peas, which it is the Count's custom to carry about with him. With the aid of this incalculable wealth, Dantes pursues his grand scheme of revenge upon the persons to whom he is indebted for fourteen years' undeserved imprisonment in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If. Gold being the universal key, all doors fly open before him: nothing is impossible to the man who scatters millions upon the path leading to the goal of his desires. Take the treasure for granted, and still there is much exaggeration to get over; but there are also many truthful touches, many finely-drawn characters. How exquisitely tender are some of the scenes between the paralytic and his granddaughter; how capital and characteristic the interview between the old Italian gambler and the young French thief, when they are paid by the Count to consider each other as father and son! In this romance there is none of the make-weight dialogue so lavishly interpolated in most of the same author's works. In style, too, and description, M. Dumas here rises above his average. His style, always lively and piquant, is usually loose, unpolished, and defaced by conventionalisms the Academy would hardly sanction. In Monte Christo he has evidently taken pains to do well, and the result is the best written book he has yet produced.

But we lose sight of our parcel, as yet but half unpacked. Here is a volume of the Député d'Arcis, (another of the continuation family,) heavy stuff, seemingly, by Balzac; and this brings us to the end of the continuations. With these exceptions, the French writers who have not altogether left off writing, have at least kept within circumscribed limits. Here we have a volume from M. Méry of Marseilles, a clever, careless writer, not much known in England; another by the authoress of Consuelo; two more from M. Alphonse Karr; a couple from that old sinner, Paul de Kock, who is not often so concise, having superadded, of late years, to his other transgressions the crime of long-windedness; a brief Sicilian sketch from M. Paul de Musset. We turn aside a heap of political matter, of no great merit or value; a few pamphlets, of some talent, but fugitive interest, by Girardin and others; a ream of portraits and caricatures; a few more novels whose authors' names or whose first pages condemn them; Mourir pour la Patrie, and some other revolutionary staves, bad music and worse words, and the box is empty. We sit down to peruse the little we have selected as worth perusal from the pile of printed paper. La Famille Alain, by Karr, is the first thing that comes to hand. We have read the greater part of it already, in the French periodical in which it first appeared. M. Karr is rather a favourite of ours. There are many good points about his novels, although he is, perhaps, less popular as a novelist than as the writer of a small monthly satirical pamphlet, Les Guèpes, The Wasps, which has existed for several years, with varying, but, upon the whole, with very great success. M. Karr's wit is of a peculiar order, approaching more nearly to humour than French wit generally does. There is an odd sort of dryness and fantastic naïveté in some of his drolleries, quite distinct from what we are accustomed to in the comic writings of his countrymen. With this the German origin to be inferred from his name may have some connexion. There is also a Germanic vagueness and dreaminess in some of his books, although their scene is usually on French ground, frequently on the coast of Brittany, a country M. Karr evidently well knows and loves. One of his great recommendations is the general propriety of his writings. Of most of them, the tone and tendency are alike unexceptionable, and some are mere "simple stories," which the most fastidious papas – who deny that any good thing can proceed from a French press, and look upon the yellow paper cover with "Paris" at its foot as the ineradicable mark of the beast, the moral quarantine flag, betokening uncleanness which no amount of lazaretto can purge or purify – might with safe conscience place in the hands of their blooming artless sixteen-year-old daughters. The fact is, that people will read French novels – so long as they are not audaciously indecent, immoral, or irreligious – because the present race of French novelists are far cleverer and more amusing than their English brethren. And although some French novels are offensive and abominable, it is not fair to include all in the black list, or to deny that a great improvement has taken place since the period (the early years of the reign of the first and last King of the French) when the Paris press was clogged with indecency and infidelity. We should be very sorry to put Mrs George Sand's works into the hands of any young woman; we would insult no woman, of any age, by commending to her notice the obscene buffoonery of De Kock; but neither would we condemn the whole flock for a sprinkling of scabby sheep. There are many French writers of a very different stamp from the two just named; and M. Karr is one of the better sort. The tale now before us is a Norman story, possessing better plot and incident than many of its predecessors; for in these respects, this author – from indolence, we suspect – is often rather deficient. We need hardly tell our readers that the Norman is noted for his cunning, and for his litigious propensities, as the Gascon is for his boasting and vanity, the Lorrainer for his stolidity, &c., &c. In La Famille Alain, the characteristics of the province, and the casualties of the peasant's and fisherman's life, are cleverly illustrated. Tranquille Alain, surnamed Risquetout, from certain bold feats of his earlier years, lives by the seaside on the produce of his nets. His family consists of his wife Pélagie, his sons and daughter, Cæsar, Onesimus, and Berenice, and of his foster-daughter Pulchérie. With respect to these magnificent names, M. Karr thinks it necessary to offer some explanation. "I am not their inventor," he says, "and they are very common in Normandy. There is not a village that has not its Berenices, its Artemesias, its Cleopatras. I know not whence the inhabitants originally took these names. Perhaps they were given by dames of high degree, who took them from Mademoiselle de Scudery's romances, to bestow them on their rustic god-children, and they have since remained traditional in the country." The book opens with the christening of a new fishing-boat, to build which Tranquille Alain has borrowed a hundred crowns of his cousin Eloi, miller and usurer. In France, as elsewhere, and especially in Normandy, millers have a roguish reputation. The loan is to be repaid, part at the beginning and part at the end of the fishing season, with twenty crowns interest. But the season sets in stormy and unfavourable; the fish shun the coast; and at the date appointed for the first payment, the debtor is unprepared with either principal or interest. At last the wind lulls, and the angry waves subside into a long sullen swell. Risquetout and his sons put to sea.

"Towards the close of day, as the boats reappeared on the horizon, Eloi Alain came down from Beuzeval, and waited their arrival upon the beach. They had taken a few whitings. Onesimus was proud, because almost all the fish had been caught on his line.

"Risquetout, who had started that morning rather prematurely, without waiting till the fine weather had thoroughly set in, had a feeling of fear and embarrassment at sight of the miller.

"'Have you caught any thing?' said Eloi.

"'A few whitings. Will you come, and eat some with us?'

"Eloi made no answer; but when the lines and fish had been taken out of the boat, and the boat had been washed and hauled up upon the shore, he followed the three fishers to their home. Pélagie also felt uneasy at sight of Eloi; she asked him, as Tranquille had done, if he would eat a whiting, to which he replied, —

"'Not to refuse you.'

"Then, as they changed the fish from one basket to another, he took up two, and kept them a long time in his hands, repeating, 'Fine whitings these, very fine whitings!' until Pélagie said: —

"'You shall take them home with you, cousin.'

"Eloi answered nothing; they sat down to dinner; he found the cider not very good, which did not prevent his drinking a great deal of it.

"'Well, Tranquille,' said he, at last, 'it is to-day you are to pay me the hundred and twenty crowns I lent you.'

"Neither the intrepid Risquetout, nor any of his family, dared to observe that the loan was not of one hundred and twenty crowns, but only of one hundred crowns, for which a hundred and twenty were to be paid back.

"'True,' said Tranquille Alain, 'true; but the same reason which prevented my paying you the other day, prevents me to-day; to-day only have we been able to put to sea.

"'I am sadly inconvenienced for these hundred and twenty crowns I lent you, cousin. I had reckoned on them to employ in an affair – I had taken them from a sum I had in reserve – and here I am, distressed for want of them.'

"'I am sorrier for it than you are, cousin, but a little patience and all will go well.'

"Tranquille did not dare say that Eloi could not be distressed for the hundred and twenty crowns, their agreement having been, that he should repay only a portion at the beginning of the season, and the remainder at its conclusion.

"'And when will you pay me?'

"'Well, cousin, at the end of the season.'