and the depravity of his own! But the charm of Richardson's novels-prolix and languid in the developement of incident, and tame and mawkish in the elaboration of feeling, as they frequently are--is chiefly in the pleasing delineation of virtuous principle; nor would it be easy in all his writings, to point to a single scene of highly wrought imagination, or spirit stirring excitement. more negative illustration than is afforded by Richardson's works, of the convenience of epistolary fiction, could scarcely have been

chosen.

A

But the scope and tendency of M. Jouy's precious essay on romance, is most creditably displayed in his eulogy of Rousseau's Heloise, which he proclaims to be une noble creation,' and in his insidious censure of the historical romance, which he declares to be an eminently false species of writing, which all the suppleness of the most varied talent can clothe only with frivolous charms!" The meaning of all this is very soon made to appear: the whole drift of this long and laboured preface, is only to depreciate the genius of Sir Walter Scott. Such is the pervading spirit of the following passage:

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The historical romance, since it must be called by its name, has not the merit of novelty. The mixture of fiction with real events, is one of the oldest inventions of the infancy of literature. The chroniclers, who, in their emphatic style, relate the prowess of Amadis de Gaul and the peers of Charlemagne, are in fact only historical romancers. All the romances of chivalry rest upon a foundation of truth: Scudéry, La Calprenède, and their school, are only imitators of archbishop Turpin. Mademoiselle de Lussan, also, amused herself during the seventeenth century in investing the court of Philip Augustus in romanesque costume. And lastly, if I wished to trace in all its branches, and analyse with precision the species of half historical, half imaginary composition which we are here considering, I could prove that the Abbé de Vertot, the Abbé de Saint Real, and Sarrazin, writers of the academy, and the inventors of fictitious details for the embellishment of real events, have infinitely more right to the title of the creators of the historical romance, than Madame de Genlis and Walter Scott.'

Madame de Genlis and Walter Scott! This sneering detractor, we suspect, is the first person who ever dreamt of reducing the masterly creations of the author of "Waverly" to such an equality and juxta-position with the flimsy common-place of the "Tales of the Castle."

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The historical romancer, abandoning to the historian all that is useful in his labours, pretends to select all that is pleasing in the recollections of history he does not trouble himself with the lessons of the bye-gone time, he is contented to envelope himself in the illusions which he borrows from it. To paint costumes, describe armour, trace imaginary physiognomies; to lend to real heroes movements, words, and actions, the reality of which nothing can prove; such is his business. Instead of raising history to its own level, he degrades it to an equality with fiction; he forces the veracious muse to become the witness of falsehood; his talent can never

enable him to approach, except in an uncertain and scarcely probable manner, to the reality, such as we may imagine that it must have been.

A writer has appeared, more distinguished for erudition than strength of thought; profoundly versed in the antiquities of Scotland, his country; a correct prose-writer and an elegant poet; gifted with a prodigious memory, and the talent of recalling into life, as it were, the recollections of the past: destitute, however, of philosophy, and never troubling himself to bring to judgment the morality of actions or of men. After having published some brilliant poetry, but which displayed neither depth nor vigour of poetical genius, he bethought himself to reduce into the form of narration, the greater part of the antiquarian recollections which he had made his study: he retraced the ancient manners of a country, which is still barbarous, even to this day: the customs, the dialect, the scenery, the superstitions of these descendants of the ancient Celts, who have preserved even their primitive costumes, astonished by their singularity. The faculty of inventing ideal figures, of clothing them in celestial beauty, of communicating to them a superhuman existence, that faculty of ereation which belongs to great poets, was altogether withheld from Walter Scott. He wrote from the dictation of his recollections; and after having turned over old chronicles, he was contented to copy whatever they offered that was curious and surprising."

Nothing can be more palpable, than that the popularity of our great novelist's works is here the living wound of M. Jouy's bitterest mortification and envy; and the occasion of his impotent spleen and malignity is most ludicrously visible. The station which the Scotch Baronet,' as he calls him, has won in France, by his conquest over national vanity and prejudice, has interfered with the great M. Jouy's projects of literary ambition :-et hinc illæ lacrymæ. If he can push the "historical romancer" from his seat, this inculcator of incest designs to take his place for the edification of society: denying to Walter Scott the faculty of inventing ideal figures, of clothing them with celestial beauty, of communicating to them a superhuman existence, M. Jouy is prepared to develope such powers in himself. He has no doubt, that the merit of the epistolary novel, founded on the very nature of romance, will survive the capricious taste of the present generation; and that, when a crowd of imitators shall have fatigued the attention of the readers of pretended historical fictions, the public will return to the objects of earlier predilection. A new era in romance writing will then arise, in short-of which 'Cécile ou les Passions' will form the commencement, and its modest and moral author the great Coryphoeus and master!

Having thus laid down his very profound canons of criticism, M. Jouy gravely proceeds to usher in the salutary example of his system, by the stale trick of pretending that the correspondence which he publishes is genuine, and that, it having fallen into his hands byune suite d'évenemens extraordinaries,' he has left it in the epistolary form, lest he should deprive it of that impress of truth, so precious to the observer of human nature.' He next.

vehemently protests, that the personages and the facts, presented in these letters, are not imaginary; that there are few histories more true than this romance; and that not only its foundation, its characters, its episodes, and its principal details, are rigorously correct, but that a portion of the letters themselves, even that portion of them whose authenticity might with most apparent reason be questioned, are only faithful copies and extracts of original letters confided to his charge.' At the same time, he ingenuously confesses, that the real names of the writers he cannot give, without betraying a secret, of which friendship has made him the depository. We care not to inquire, whether any part may be true of this assertion, which he introduces in so earnest a manner, not as a business of the fiction, but in a critical preface, and upon the grave responsibility of his personal veracity. But if we could suppose that he had known such characters as are introduced in his novel, and consented to be made the confidant of their abominable guilt, we should only conclude, that the company which he kept was quite worthy of his principles.

In proceeding to speak of the subject of the novel itself, we shall gladly escape from all more particular details than are necessary to justify the reprobation with which we have branded it. Briefly then, it is the tale of an incestuous and mutual passion between an uncle and a niece, the revolting sentiment and disgusting circumstances of which, are elaborately expanded through five volumes. The avowed, or even the sincere, intention of exhibiting guilt so unnatural, for the purpose of marking its fearful retribution, would not justify the outrage upon all the better feelings of a Christian society, which is involved in the very introduction of such a subject. But the author of this work has not even the insufficient plea of such an object. His incestuous lovers abandon themselves, after a few struggles, to infamy; yet they are made, not even to suffer those penalties of disgrace which wait upon the illicit indulgence of ordinary feelings, they encounter only the griefs of separation, and obstacles to their union, which form the commonstock miseries of every novel; and finally, after having violated all laws of religion and nature, of God and man, they are restored to each other, HAPPILY UNITED, and cherished by their mutual friends. And, yet, M. Jouy has had the audacious hypocrisy to claim a good intention for his work; and he concludes his introduction with an expression of hope that the moral aim which he has proposed to himself in writing it will not be mistaken!'

The language of the descriptions and sentiments which enter into the story, is plainly a grovelling imitation of the most impassioned and voluptuous manner of Rousseau. Indeed, the whole work is a sorry, and, strange to say, a corrupted copy of the Nouvelle Heloise. But it were an injustice to Jean Jacques himself, to compare the libertinage of his mind with that of M. Jouy. He, at least, respected the distinctions which separate mankind from the brutes

that perish he painted a guilty passion with every vicious allurement and sentiment, but it was not a passion at which society revolts. There, too, some antidote was, perhaps compunctiously, administered with the poison: and at least we are convinced, that few readers ever rose from the perusal of the Heloise, all licentious as it is, without a deep impression, that the lengthened misery far overbalances the shortlived enjoyment of unrestrained passions. But this man shamelessly labours, not only to exhibit the crime of his story to palliation and sympathy, but to imagine its reward in the eventual happiness of the parties. Moreover, in the voluptuous portraiture of passion, he has only the inclination, not the power of Rousseau, to decorate sensuality with the graces of meretricious sentiment. The present volumes are full of scenes of the most impure and indecent nature; and the effort is every where apparent to dilate on circumstances of amorous abandonment, and studiously to excite the imagination by the most glowing and elaborate pictures of forbidden indulgence. But the amiable author has here totally failed of his effect: there is something in the nature of his subject, which admits of no other feeling than unqualified disgust; and we turn, with an involuntary shudder of horror, from the gross and palpable details of a passion, in which the uncle is the favoured lover, and the niece the willing object of seduction.

The whole circumstances of the tale are such, as it could enter only into the most depraved or insane imagination to conceive. The scene is laid in the house of the parents of Cécile, and it is the daughter of his sister, who receives and returns the flagitious passion of the seducer. The vaults of his family chapel and the tomb of his mother, are described by this hero of M. Juoy's invention as the seat of the guilty consummation. Que te dirai-je Charles! Cécile eperdue, prosternée sur la tombe maturnelle, embrassant d'une main l'urne funeraire ne fut pas un objet sacré pour moi; le delire qui m'egarait s'empara de ses sens l'inceste et le sacrilége furent consommés.' This Charles, to whom he makes the recital, is the worthy bosom companion of the hero; and their virtuous friendship, which treasures the confidence of this atrocious guilt, and is shewn in a thousand extravagances of weeping sentimentality, is another of the 'Passions,' consecrated by M. Jouy. Thus, also, the mother, the aunt, and the maiden friend of Cécile, are all made acquainted with the intrigue, and countenance either its progress or its results. Every act in this drama of iniquity is carefully detailed, and minutely dwelt upon; and that the birth of its fruits may be circumstantially described, the heroine is made to address a letter to her seducer, in the intervals of her travail. Nor is this prurience of description confined to the principal story; and, among the minor offences of the book against virtue and decency, there is one episode, the story of a nun in the first volume, which would alone render the whole production fit only for a brothel. But enough, and more than enough, of such scenes; the

nature of the revolution which M. Jouy would effect in the taste for romance, will be sufficiently understood from the insight which we have ventured to give into the plot of Cécile.

In the business of the tale are interwoven a thousand absurdities, which might be only ludicrous in any less offensive production, but which here serve to heighten the disgust of the story. In one place, with true national frivolity, we have an elaborate description of the graceful dancing of the uncle and niece; in another, we are introduced into a grave detail of his taking part of her medicine for her during an alarming illness, that he may induce her to drink the remainder from the same cup; again they eat from the one plate, la même fourchette passant de sa bouche à la mienne, mes lèvres, mes heureuses lèvres imprimées sur le même verre, au même endroit qu'ont effleuré les siennes ;' and, to complete the gross vulgarity and burlesque which mingle with the heavier depravity of the author's mind, we are told, elle étanche avec son voile la sueur qui couvre mon visage; ô delices, ô volupté dont rien ne peut donner l'idée sur la terre!'

From the sentiments and arguments which an author ascribes to the favourite personages of his creation, we are entitled to judge of his own opinions. The whole of the tale before us is not only an exhibition, but a defence of incestuous passion. Charles d'Epival is M. Jouy's model of virtuous sentiment; and he commences by cautioning his friend against his danger, not because of the enor mity of the crimes which he meditates, but because laws, prejudices, and circumstances were opposed to it.' A little farther on, he changes this caution into advice to his friend, that to save the object of their mutual passion from despair, he should avow to her his attachment. In the same strain we have repeated defences of the crime, as opposed only to barbarous prejudices;' and the subject is made the frequent source of the raillery of a virtuous young lady, at the scruples of her friend against 'loving the handsomest man in France, because he happened to have the misfortune of being the brother of her mother, which, after all, was only the fault of her grandfather.' It is quite in the same spirit of enlightened freedom from barbarous prejudices,' that M. Jouy (vol. ii., pp. 43-49), introduces a long dissertation against the inhuman cruelty of punishing infanticide with death, wherein he declares that crime to be prompted by the infamy with which society unjustly visits the unmarried female, who, yielding to the most irresistible of feelings, exposes herself to become a mother. Such is M. Jouy's morality: his philosophy and religion are not much more obscurely developed. His hero is-doubtless, not inconsistently-represented as an atheist, who is suffered to utter such blasphemies as we dare not to repeat, and whose impious objections to the existence of a God, are met only by the feeblest suppositions of Deism. But we are weary of our task; and have discharged our duty of exposing this hoary sensualist and blasphemer. M. Jouy