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At that period the people would have the Marseillaise sung or played on all occasions, and many were the disagreements between them and the sergens de ville in consequence. Karr recommended that it should be played five quarters of an hour in the theatre before it was asked for at all, and they would soon get tired of it, adding

"I would wager that if the prefect of police only forbids the people from going on all fours in the street, he will find, the day after to-morrow, numbers prepared to resist this arbitrary ordonnance with surprising enthusiasm."

His own personality was never long kept out of sight in the journal. He thus gave the history of his portrait being taken :

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"Two years ago, Celestin Nanteuil was sent to take my likeness for some gallery or other. He did not find me at home, neither did another gentleman who called at the same time. There was a good fire, and cigars. At the third cigar, said M. Nanteuil, 'It is half-past eleven.' Thirtyfive minutes,' said the other. He is not coming.' 'He is not coming.' 'Monsieur is a literary man?' 'No; I am a painter. I come to take M. Karr's portrait.' 'It is unfortunate that he is not at home.' 'Oh, it's not much matter. I've often seen him, and at a pinch, I can paint him from memory. There is only one thing to embarrass me: I do not know whether his hair is short or long.' 'Oh, very short.' 'Very good. 'That's his dressing gown, I think,' pointing to a black velvet frock. I shall sketch it.' It was put on a chair, but the folds did not adjust themselves gracefully. 'This will never do. Monsieur, if I might take the liberty!' With pleasure.' 'Would you kindly put on the dressing gown, so that the folds may fall better. Capital! I think your hair resembles his in colour.' 'His is not so dark.' 'No matter; it's easy to darken it. The hair is done. Now for the eyes. What colour?' 'Don't know. Blue or green, may be.' 'Oh, stuff! Your's are black, but what matter. Aren't his moustaches rather long?' 'Yes.''Faith this ought to be like.' 'To whom?' 'To him.' But it is I who have sat for it.' 'It would be worse if no one sat. Will you wait longer?' Oh, yes; and you ?' 'No, no; my sketch is made. Oblige me by acquainting M. Karr that I waited a long time.' 'He will be very sorry." 'Allow me (lights his cigar). The honour to salute you!' 'Sir, your servant.'"

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Armand de Pontmartin, a living literary critic and novelist, gives us some broad hints as to the amount of

dependence to be placed on the tendency of a notice by Karr, or even the Nestor of the press, Jules Janin, even by a neophite, to whom otherwise they would delight to do a friendly office.

"The procedure of Julio (Jules Janin) resembles that of more than one great musical professor, who undertakes to treat his audience to a portion of Lucia, of William Tell, or the Huguenots. At first you get some impression of Donizetti, of Rossini, of Mayerbeer; but take care! The great man begins to be full of himself, the notes rain down, the triple crotchets rush in torrents; it is a shower, an avalanche, a torrent. The floods have rushed down on the head of the original idea, drowned it, and swept it away. Thus does Julio. By way of pacifying his conscience, he writes on the first page the name of the author and the title of the work, and then let him save himself who can! He goes from one variation to another in French and Latin; and so eccentric is his course, that you neither know where you are, nor where you are going, nor what is the subject in question. Apropos of a medley at the Gymnase, he will recount the second Punic War, and a buffoonery at the Palais Royal will serve for pretext to cite a passage from Xenophon. Still an excellent old boy, and overflowing with talent, provided you ask him not for the impossible. The impossible with Julio is to declare his opinion clearly and concisely on the subject in hand, or to remember in the morning his judgment of the evening before. He attends a piece, he is delighted, he says to the author, it is charming. You will be pleased with my Monday's notice of it.' He goes to his desk. What's this? The wind is from the north; the soap-bubble floats to the right; it floats to the left. Away goes the pen; it takes the bridle between its teeth, the praise is spilled into the first drain, the epigram is lord of the race. The poor author, praised to the skies on Wednesday, complimented on Sunday, is left prostrate on Monday. It is not the fault of the feuilletonist; it is the fault of the feuilleton, which has mistaken the mustard for the honey pot. Another time he'll be more attentive. It is all the fault of the grinding organ that has disturbed his nerves, of the blue bottle buzzing at the window, the idea that has escaped to the ceiling, the appropriate phrase that has hid itself under the grate. The author is in despair, but Julio is blameless."

The line adopted by Janin is precisely that which our hero would take if his occupation consisted of pure criticism. It was our intention to enter upon some of the literary squabbles of the Girardins, the Dumases

the Victor Hugos, the George Sands, and the doings at the coteries; but we have unwitting loitered on the way with the eccentric subject of our notice, and may complete our design at some more favourable opportunity. These writers, of whom we have been speaking are all falling into age and neglect, and the rising generation are beginning to look on their works as we regard the novels of Lord Mulgrave, Robert Plomer Ward, Hon. Mr. Lyster, Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Gore, Lady Bury, and, alas! Sir Edward Bulwer himself, We can scarcely reconcile our

selves to the new men, the new women, and their new works. In point of genius they seem short of the standard of their predecessors, and they seem equally indifferent to the moral effect of their productions. With both races (due exceptions made) the only thing proposed was the production of a tale, that, from its exciting character, and the sympathy it should excite among a reading public hankering after forbidden fruit, would cause a large and eager demand for the narrative as it appeared piecemeal in the Siécle, the Presse, or the Débats.

FITZGERALD'S LIFE OF STERNE.

TILL these volumes* appeared, England possessed no biography of one of the quaintest and most fascinating of her humorists. We adopt for convenience the term humorist, and Mr. Thackeray's doubtful limitation of the phrase. Why so capital an omission has remained for so long unsupplied is a point admitting of many conjectural solutions. The fact is enough for us, and that Mr. Fitzgerald has adequately filled a great blank in the gallery of our national literary portraiture we shall presently demonstrate. A series of contributions from his pen upon the subject of this biography appeared in successive numbers of this Magazine. The material which they supplied has been embodied in the narrative. It shall be, however, from that larger portion of the work which has never seen the light in any shape or disguise previously to its appearance in its present form that we shall derive the extracts we mean to submit, and the thesis of our commentary. As a subject for a biography, nothing could be more effective than Sterne. It was Mr. Forster who very happily entitled the first edition of his charming memoirs, The "Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith;" a title which he afterwards modified into the more staid "Life and Times of Goldsmith." But Sterne's odd existence was indeed a tissue of strange adventures. Extravagant loves, gipsy rambles, awkward scrapes, social triumphs, and

strange complications. He was hampered by his cloth, and the gown of which his cloth was made. But though this was a fatal embarrassment in a biographical view, it makes the situations more dramatic. And one of the most welcome conclusions which we are led to draw, after closing these volumes, is that Mr. Sterne's existence was even more Shandean than his "Shandy;" and that the books he wrote, and the extravagances he penned, were not, as has been always insinuated, "patches on the harlequin's jacket," flung aside as soon as the pantomime was over. It is comforting to those who love to know deceased men of letters as they do personal friends; to feel interest and sympathy for their ways and habits, to love them as some are led to love even the Johnson of Boswell; it is comforting, we say, to feel, that Sterne corresponds with his books and that his life and temper reflected Shandeism as much as "Tristram."

More valuable still are these volumes as a refutation of what may be called the unaccountable prejudices of the late Mr. Thackeray. We are glad that no affectation of forced delicacy has prevented Mr. Fitzgerald doing what was his duty in this case; and that the prevailing tone of sympathy and sentiment for the loss of one great humorist, whom the nation is now lamenting, has not stood in the way of justice to the memory of a greater master of humour. At the

* "Life of Laurence Sterne." By Percy Fitzgerald, Esq., M.R.I.A. London: Chapman

and Hall.

We have been favoured with early sheets of the work, on which we rely for our notice.

same time the task has been done with a scrupulous delicacy, and even gentleness, worthy of all praise. The warmest and most sensitive of the author of "Vanity Fair's" friends, could not object to the calm and even tender fashion in which what we may call the monstrous image he set up of the great Shandean has been cast down.

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In truth this strange view of Mr. Thackeray approached almost to a "phobia." The name of Sterne seemed to have the effect of infuriating him like a piece of scarlet cloth. In the Cornhill Magazine he came back again and again to the subject. He tossed and gored the unhappy Yorick --called him "sniveller," mountebank,' wretched, worn-out old scamp,' driveller," a street tumbler," a "great jester, not a great humorist." Long after, in his reading, he lighted on a story to the Shandean's prejudice. Forthwith he rushed into a "Roundabout" apropos of Boots," and printed it. seems unaccountable in one who was so great a humorist himself; who had the large faith of a humorist, and the warm and generous admiration for Fielding, and Smollett, and Goldsmith.

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Even the "Lecture" on English Humorists, besides its mistaken tone, is shown to be full of serious mistakes; though the author of this biography has considerately put by his corrections, as it were, in a private place, and banished them to the Appendix.

Of Sterne's character, Mr. Fitzgerald gives us, with the freedom of conversation, and the conciseness of an epitaph, his own masculine and vivid estimate, at the close of his "life." It carries with it the weight of the vast mass of evidence which he has accumulated, and the writer delivers it with the matured convictions, and the judicial balancing, which befits the conflict of testimony and the conspicuous interest of the case. He says:

"It is strange to think that there were people who might have taken the skull of a

second Yorick into their hand, as the Prince

of Denmark did that of the first, and have

moralized over it sadly. They might have

thought of his life, weighed his character, not too partially, but tenderly and with allowance, as I have striven to do in this memoir to the best of my poor ability,-and

have summed up all, something after this fashion: He was more or less weak, vain, careless, idle, and given to pleasure;—these were his natural faults. He was free of pen and speech-profane sometimes-and did not honour the gown he wore;-these were the general scandals of his time, which seized on him like a contagion. But beside those faults or vices, were the redeeming traits of a generous sympathy and warmth, kind fatherly affection, a careful consideration (wonderful in a careless being) for the pecuniary interests of those for whom it was his duty to provide, a genial humour, and, strange as it may seem, a tone of natural piety. He was unfortunate in his marriage in the age, which seemed to strive how it should turn his head with flatteries; unfortunate in a frame that was always ailing. His were, in short, as he said over and over again so pathetically, follies of heart and

-unfortunate in his friends-unfortunate

not the head. These hindrances should be kept in view; and, when we would anticipate the task of the Recording Angel, should prompt us not to blot out the entry for ever, but to make a gentle and charitable judg

ment."

The first characteristic that impresses on reading these volumes is. the enthusiasm, and almost love, with which the author deals with his subject. Many readers will, perhaps, decline to be led to the conclusion desired; but all will appreciate the honest ardour and genuine sympathy with which the task is done. The result is a figure of flesh and blood, that lives, walks, thinks, and stumbles (morally)-that we can take by the hand, that we see with our eyes, that if we condemn, we must at least pity. How much better this than the

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dry bones" biographies which have been too much the fashion--stuffed with chaff and husks; of which the recently published life of Warburton is but a sample. All honour to Mr. Forster for being the first to introduce living men on the stage. The art of this style is the presence of an abundance of detail. Detail gives life; but there must be a certain skill and knowledge of detail. Infinitely precious, therefore, become magazine scraps, patches from newspapers, allusions in obscure memoirs, old engravings, and a hundred other sources.

of pictures. There can be no question These volumes are, indeed, a series that the miniature detail and concentration of colour in which he delights are valuable as contributing to picturesque effect, even on so large a

canvas. Everything in these volumes
may be said to be new. We are in-
troduced into a new state of society
to a new inner life. It is pleasant,
for instance, to see the old York man-
ners, and the old York ladies and
gentlemen, going to the balls given in
"Lord Burlington's Assembly-rooms."
Pleasant, too, as a picture, is the view
of London society when Mr. Sterne
"came upon town," his being "hur-
ried off his legs" with great people,
his dinners, his routs, his levees in his
"lodgings in ye Pall Mall." Plea-
santest of all are the pictures of travel
in France, which touch a long-for-
gotten chord, and which no book that
we can recollect has dealt with; for
there is here a mine of picturesque
effect the diligences, the postilions
"in boots like fire-buckets," the way-
side inns, the old French houses, and
the provincial life of the old French
towns, his photograph of Toulouse
and Montpelier, in short, the tracing
of Mr. Sterne over every inch of
ground in the "Sentimental Journey,"
to his very inns and post-houses.
Here, for instance, is a picture of a
French ménage at Toulouse. A good-
natured Gallo-Irish Abbe, M'Arty,
found out a suitable residence for
Sterne and his family in that town.

when they required it, all for the same modest figure! Something of this is to be accounted for in the cheapness of the times. Even twenty years back, such charming retreats on the edge of a French provincial town, were to be secured by the economic stranger. But something, too, I suspect, must be placed to the account of the tenant's seductive and pleasant ways.

"The whole establishment was organized in a few days. Mr. Sterne loved to revel in this new housekeeping. They had an excellent cook, a femme-de-chambre, and 'a good-looking laquais' (Francois, most likely). He found out that they could live for very, very little.' Wood was the only thing dear; and by-and-by they found that, keeping a capital table, two hundred and fifty pounds would be their whole yearly expenditure. He at once put himself on a course of ass's milk three times a day, and began to get strong again.”

This is all new and welcome ground, The and is full of picturesque detail. mantic of inns, is given fully, and is history of "Desseins," that most rohighly curious. We clatter through Fleur was hired, and we see an host Calais, through Montreuil, where La of the hotel which we stayed at, and to Paris. At Dessein's Hotel, howactually learn his name, and post up ever, we take leave to pause for a short space, and inspect the premises with the pleasant biographer of the sentimental traveller.

"They were lodged delightfully, just outside the town, in a stately house, elegant, "What a tide of travellers has flowed charmingly furnished, built in the form of steadily from the packets, since those sena hotel, with a court in front, and opening timental times, making awkwardly and behind on pretty gardens laid out in ser- timorously for the hotel, and asking in their pentine walks, and considered the finest fn best damaged French to be shown the cynothe place. These grounds were so large and sure of the establishment, Sterne's room.' so much admired, that all the ladies and What endless processions upstairs, preceded gentlemen of that quarter used to come and by obsequious waiterdom, until the door, promenade there on the autumn evenings, with the inscription in gilt letters, 'Sterne's and were welcome to Mr. Sterne. Inside, Room,' is reached! What reverence, what there was a fine dining-room and a spacious suppressed breathings, what almost palpable reception-room-quite as good as Baron visions of the departed humorist! The air d'Holbach's at Paris; three handsome bed- seems charged with sentimental aroma, it rooms with dressing-rooms; and two good seems but yesterday he sat in that very rooms below, dedicated to Yorick-where he chair. The favourite print, too, is over the wrote his adventures. There were cellars chimney-piece. A profitable show-room on in abundance. Mr. Sterne was in raptures the whole. People have asked, and paid with it all-revelled in his seigneurie of dearer, for the favour of sleeping in Sterne's such a mansion-thought it only too good chamber; endless reveries, meditations, and by half for us;' but felt comfort in the won- general magazine literature, has been conderfully moderate rent-only thirty pounds cocted there. Nay, only yesterday, as it a year! For this modest rent, too, his were, a famous English author passed landlord, M. Sligniac, was to "keep up" through-stayed the night at 'Dessein's,' the gardens. Nay, there was a pretty occupied 'Sterne's Room,' dreamt on him, country-house not far off-an old chateau, meditated on him, could almost see him with a pavilion attached to it-where Mr. sitting there in his 'black satin smalls,' held Sterne used to write his Shandy's in, and converse with him, and finally wrote 'a which he christened 'Don Pringello's,' in roundabout' on him. Yet, see what freaks compliment to one of the Crazy Castle set the imagination will play.

which M. Sligniac gave him the use of,

"That pleasant detective traveller of forty

years ago was taken, as usual, into 'Sterne's Room,' number Thirty-one, was shown the Sir Joshua mezzotint over the chimneypiece, and yet was sceptical. The outside of the house was all over-grown with vineleaves, and the traveller, shrewdly suspecting there might be some record of the date of erection cut on the stone, sent up a man on a ladder to cut away the vine-leaves, an operation which led to the discovery of a tablet

A.D. 1770.

Alas! just two years too late for the credit of Sterne's Room.' This is fatal to all the reverent pilgrimages made for nearly a hundred years back, and, indeed, made every day; fatal, too, to the fine writing and conjuring up of the 'lean, hectic-looking parson' and his 'black satin smalls.'*

"The waiter, however, in no way disconcerted, offered to fix on another room in the house, and call it Sterne's!"

Like those who have "entertained angels unawares," M. Dessein found himself all the better for the chance visit of Yorick.

"Dessein's fame increased. His hotel

was 'thought to be the most expensive in Europe.' He offered the traveller Burgundy, the best in his cellar, for five livres, which was declined as being monstrously

dear! The monk used to come in until a

very recent date, asking alms, being preserved as a sort of imperishable institution. Such a one-gentle, resigned-looking man, almost mild, pale, and penetrating'-presented himself to the late Mr. Rogers and his friend, as they were sitting over their wine; and the friend, to the gentle poet's annoyance, made some such speech as Mr. Sterne made to his monk. 'Il faut travailler,' said Mr. Rogers's friend; and the monk, bowing his head meekly, without a word, withdrew. There is intrinsic evidence in all Mr. Sterne's characters and incidents that they are taken from life and experience; but those external proofs which turn up now and again are certain testimonies to his accuracy. "Mrs. Piozzi must have seen this very famous monk, who she calls Father Felix, and whose manners and story,' she says, struck Doctor Johnson exceedingly when he came through. The great moralist pronounced that so complete a character could scarcely be found in romance. He had been, like Mr. Sterne's monk, a soldier; knew English; read Addison and Napier,

the first pages of her pleasant Tour. Her sketch of Calais, as seen from the window, is a photograph:-'The women in long white cambric cloaks; soldiers with whiskers; girls in neat slippers, and short petticoats, contrived to show them; postillions with greasy night-caps and vast jack-boots, driving your carriage, harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheepskins.'

"Frederick Reynolds, in those free-andeasy memoirs which he has left behind him, sets out some droll adventures at Calais. He, too, put up at the famous Dessein's, and burning with veneration for the author of Tristram, actually stopped the Innkeeper. on the stairs, to ask him about the great humorist. This was about the year 1775, when Monsieur Dessein was a little advanced in life, and wore a tail and curls of curious size. The youth asked him boldly if he recollected Mr. Sterne. The other answered with a true theatrical pose-'Your countryman, Monsieur Sterne, von great, von very great man! and he carry me vid him to posterity. He gain moche money for his Journey of Sentiment-mais moi. I made more through the means of dat dan he by all his ouvrages réunis. Ha!' He then threw himself into a sort of Tristram attitude,

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placing his forefinger on his breast, said— Qu'en pensez vous?' and disappeared with mystery. Allowing for the wild, rollicking ation which is common to the writings of tone of these recollections, and the exaggerwards, it does somehow seem to fit the traevery comedian, from Tate Wilkinson down

ditional likeness of the host of the Hôtel

d'Angleterre.

"Selwyn knew him, and recommended Fagnani, about whom he was nearly crazy, that quasi-daughter of his, Mademoiselle to his care. The wild Duke of Queensberry knew him. In short, everybody knew him. He cleared parcels through the customhouse for his noble friends. And Oliverthe one Oliver-not the stern Puritan, but the gentle Goldy, on that expedition with the

Hornecks, before mentioned-came straight to Sterne's Hotel, and put up with

Dessein.

ist, who might surely have given immorA famous and delightful humortality to, at least, a hotel; but that fit of comic jealousy, which he once assumed because the people in the street kept staring at some painted women in a gallery and overlooked him, was but a type of his destiny in life."

While upon the "Sentimental Jourand played on the violin. He had been there ney," it may be as well to extinguish

about the year 1772, and was remarkable then; so it does seem likely that he was Mr. Sterne's Father Lorenzo. And Mrs. Piozzi was glad to hear that he was alive, and had only gone into Spain.

"She sat in Dessein's parlour, and wrote

one of those false lights, "the Pucks" of biography, as the elder Disraeli happily terms them, who mislead the benighted explorer. It is a pity that the criminal code does not provide for this worst type of forgers. Mr. Fitz

* The writer exposed this really comic mistake in a recent number of the Athenæum,

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