consider every page with his most critical and minute attention. He has chosen a stanza which, though familiarity has at last reconciled to my ear, still my severer judgment does not accord to. Difficult in the extreme it is to keep the sense pure and distinct through such a clatter of rhymes; and though it is not very often he wants shelter in that difficulty, I would not wish him to seek it in a single instance if it were possible. I therefore, amongst other things, altogether protest against his participles, whose jingle is unworthy of his work. I have expressed some discontent at the bottom of the 16th book; I repeat it in this place, and wish him to take it into serious review. I must beg he will not print his verbs in the past tenses without the customary abbreviations, which all poets heretofore have adopted. It will appear affected, and must tend to mislead common readers, disgust others, and edify none. I hope he will not print it in such a style of expense as shall cause it to be the purchase of the few rather than the many; at least, not his first edition. "I thank him not less for the confidence he has reposed in me than for the pleasure he has bestowed on me; and I wish him all possible success with his contemporaries, and all the fame he merits. from posterity. "Richard Cumberland. dards. He declares it wanting in unity, but asserts that he should not regard that defect much were the poem his, "as it is of much more consequence that it should be a spirited and interesting than a critically regular epic poem." He is rather severe in his strictures on the want of variety in the different characters of the personages of the poem; he animadverts racily upon the machinery, banishing back to Limbo the entire flock of devils, demons, and supernatural creations. He praises the descriptive powers of the writer; but would have their exercise restrained, and would prune the luxuriance of his most successful passages. He commends the style and manner as often good; but considers that both are frequently vitiated through the necessities of the unmanageable stanza, which resembles the bed of Procrustes, and compels tautology and redundancy of expression. Upon the versification he bestows a moderate share of praise; but urgently recommends a careful revision of it in every part, with a view especially to the perfection of the Alexandrines, upon which mainly, according to him, the strength of the verse depends. He concludes his letter in the following words : "I have run into far greater length than I intended; but the most important consideration is still behind, and it is one upon which I ought not, perhaps, to decide positively, since friendly partiality for the author may warp me one way, or The remarks of Boscawen, were they transcribed a jealous anxiety for the full success of his work seriatim, would of themselves fill a moderate may draw me too far to the other side. The volume. Although he is as liberal as the others serious question on this poem is, whether, allowing in his verbal criticisms and emendations, he yet it to have ever so many beauties, it is, upon the appends whole pages of observations at the end of whole, so written as to keep alive the curiosity the several cantos. What he mainly insists upon and rivet the attention of the reader? Unhapis condensation; he would have the entire poem pily,' says Dr. Johnson, this pernicious failure is cut down at least one-third. Richard's long-winded that which our author is least able to discover. harangue should be broken up, and the devils great We are seldom tiresome to ourselves; and the act and small should either be banished from the scene of composition fills and delights the mind with altogether, or amalgamated into one black gentle-change of language and succession of images; man. Boscawen's letter to the baronet, appended every couplet when produced is new; and novelty to the last canto of the poem, occupies eleven is the great source of pleasure. Perhaps no man closely-written pages, and is quite a learned and ever thought a line superfluous when he first wrote elaborate essay upon the true elements of the epic, it, or contracted his work till his ebullitions of which he describes as the grandest of all human invention had subsided.' This admirable passage achievements, a triumph of art of which the world is worthy the serious attention of every writer of a has never seen more than four or five instances. long poem. The nature of the stanza you have He professes to shrink from pronouncing upon a adopted has often led you into a circuitous mode labour which ought to be xrnua eiç ae, declaring of expression very likely to fatigue an indifferent himself incompetent to pronounce judgment; but reader. My curiosity and high opinion of the he does pronounce judgment nevertheless, analysing writer led me pretty well through passages that his friend's performance with much industry and to others may seem heavy, and details that I canmore minuteness, and weighing and measuring it not help thinking too minute. . . . But the world throughout according to the old scholastic stan- in general cannot be expected to read the work with the same dispositions; and such is the general indolence and aversion to long works, especially of this kind, that I am convinced Dr. Johnson's observations apply more strongly now than when he wrote them. If he is right, you must not trust your own judgment on this point; but if your friends who have read the poem do but hint that it might be shortened a little, conclude that it ought to be very much so; for it is a delicate subject on which to give an opinion. Some of your friends may fear that if they speak quite out, What Cumberland calls "participles," Pye designates as double rhymes—such as "ending" and "bending," "condition" and "position," &c., &c. It is singular that each and all of the critics make a dead set against such rhymes, which they regard as an uncouth innovation by no means to be tolerated. Anstey lays it down as a rule that they can never be used but in burlesque verse. The baronet, however, did not agree with them, and retained his double rhymes, though, in accordance with Cumberland's advice, he altered the past tenses of all his verbs to the number of scores of thousands, abbreviating them by substituting the apostrophe for the letter e, thus printing "employ'd" instead of "employed," &c., &c., through the whole book. though you must esteem, you may not like them | consign to forgetfulness the fruits of many long and so well in future. For my own part, I throw laborious years of study, to say nothing of the myself entirely on your candour, when I give it sacrifice of several hundred pounds of expense. as my sentiments that you cannot exercise too much self-denial in revising this poem; that you should give up some lines and some passages that have given you pleasure in composing, if the rejection of them is conducive to the great object of condensing, and in many parts enlivening and invigorating the work; and that you ought to sit down with a fixed resolution to shorten it by, at least, one third; the effect of which operation, diligently and judiciously performed, would, I am convinced, be highly conducive to the fame and success of your poem. Vive, Vale!" Thus much for the counsels of friends. What was their effect upon the hospitable and worthy baronet in the first instance we have no means of ascertaining. It is probable that the process of collating the judgments of the whole seven into one volume, a task which he personally accomplished, had the effect of rendering him less enamoured of his performance than he had been when he first contemplated its virgin pages fresh from the hands of the printer. It is impossible to recall the history of this vast undertaking throughout its never-to-be-accomplished career without a feeling of something like veneration for the chief actor in it. He must have been a hero in some sort; he must have possessed perseverance enough to have laboured for long years steadily in the pursuit of one object, and that confessedly, of all human enterprises, the most difficult of attainment; he must have had sufficient candour to defer to the opinions of counsellors, the major part of whom were by no means indisposed to assert their own superiority by the display of his weakness; and, as the event proved, he must have had such a modest estimation of his own powers as induced him finally to He was plainly a man of a noble spirit; he preferred oblivion to a doubtful reputation; would rather be nothing than not the most worthy. Nihil nisi honorificentissime might have been his motto. He disdained to become a Triton among minnows-aspiring to the summit of Parnassus, and failing, he had no notion of taking a station at the foot of the mount, but abandoned the territory to others. As far as we are qualified to judge, he was a better classic and a better poet than many of his contemporaries, who yet cut a brilliant figure for a time. Had Hayley produced such a work as our modest baronet had the judgment to suppress, all Christendom would have heard of it, and there would have been no end, for a twelvemonth at least, of ovations and glorifications on account of it from all the petty poetasters of the day. It is better as it is. To a noble mind a mushroom reputation is worse than none at all; and it is far better for mankind that great artistic failures should be kept out of view than that they should be paraded to excite the admiration of the untaught and undiscriminating. The baronet went down to the tomb of his fathers some thirty years ago. It is not clear to us that we have any right to publish his name, which he himself never thought fit to print; but there is no reason that the world should not profit by his example, which we recommend to the consideration of the poets and would-be poets of our time, who, as we have good and sufficient reasons for asserting, are but too prone to rush headlong into print and publication whenever the means and the opportunity are in their power. It may be of use to some of our young friends especially to ponder over the above brief history of an Unborn Epic Poem. PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS? AN ADVENTURE IN ROUEN. "PARLEZ VOUS Francais?"-Many persons to as I am concerned, as undecipherable as a Chaldee whom this question is put will bluntly answer manuscript, or an epigram in the Enchorial "No," and that's exactly my predicament. I character. can't speak French. I don't pretend to do it. I In due course of time I was consigned to the never did; and, in all human probability, I never care of the Reverend Dr. Muddlehead. "French, shall. Don't imagine for one instant that I am a German, dancing, gymnastics, and the use of the gentleman "whose education has been neglected," globes," were among the more prominent atas the phrase is. Very far from it. To this day, tractions of his prospectus. The first-mentioned I have the most vivid recollection of the pains my elements of a polite education were imparted by a poor dear mother used to be at with "Cobwebs hairy and gigantic Swiss, of the name of Lafargue. to Catch Flies" and "L'Ami des Enfants." But Whether, under his auspices, I should have entered the "cobwebs" never caught me; and the stories life as an accomplished linguist it is now imposof "L'Ami," which, when translated for my benefit sible for me to say. My own comfortable con by a younger sister, I considered infinitely supe-viction is that I should. But M. Lafargue was rior in point of brilliancy and interest to "Frank" no more than man; and the little hand-maiden of or Rosamond," remain to this moment, so far our establishment "warn't going to put up with no foreigneerin' impudence-she warn't." What | matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, knowthe exact nature of the misunderstanding may ing just about as much French as the most illitehave been-whether the brawny Helvetian may rate of my cotemporaries; which, as nine out of have taken a more romantic view of the relation ten knew none at all, is, I am sure, a sufficiently existing between himself and the coy damsel than moderate estimate of my accomplishments. the handbook of etiquette for gentlemen would have warranted, we were never able to discover. All I know is, that one morning there was a particularly stormy trio in the back-parlour-that the maid, the man, and the master severally explained their respective ideas upon the subject under discussion; and that ultimately the man effected a hasty exit from the premises, apparently with no particular intention of returning in a hurry. Some venerable female reader may possibly imagine that I had waived the incalculable advantage of acquiring the modern languages while the organs of speech were still young and flexible, in order to place myself, unembarassed by vicious habits of pronunciation, in the hands of those eminent professors who adorn the halls and cloisters of our glorious Alma Mater. Alas! university-mennone others, probably-will believe me when I say that, from the time of my entering to that of my leaving Trinity, not one word of any living language, barring my own, ever passed my lips. They formed the subject of no lectures-no ex tainly included in no part of our college routine, and were equally ignored for degree. So I left Trinity as ignorant in this respect as I entered it; that is to say, to the question, "Parlez-vous Francais ?" I bluntly answered, "No." I have heard a good many reasons advanced on either side for what appears to me, at this (not very great) distance of time, a most unfortunate educational fallacy. I am not by any means alluding invidiously to our university system, such as it was half a dozen years ago, but to the almost exclusive preference to this day bestowed upon Greek and Latin in nine places of education out of ten; to the fact, in short, that in the aforesaid nine places the modern languages are either burked altogether, or treated as a necessary evil -a flimsy and all but useless adjunct to the more honourable branches of the tree of knowledge. After him came a nice, meek little Parisian, who called himself an Abbé. He was not the sort of man though, for a French master. He wanted energy, both physical and moral, to con-aminations, that I ever heard of. They were certrol the pack of boisterous little savages among whom his lot was cast. His end was not peace. Adjoining the school-room was a long blind passage, used for the purposes of a lumber-closet; it was crammed with ricketty chairs, lame forms, desks, packing-cases, and a second-hand pulpit. The window had been bricked up to save the tax; and a luxuriant crop of cobwebs and a mouldy smell were among the more striking characteristics of the apartment. Generally, the French lesson took place in the parlour; but one fine sty day Muddlehead gave in to a suggestion that it was warmer there than in the school-room, and appropriated the same to his own division the French class being accordingly mustered in the latter. Just as the lesson came to a conclusion, I was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to perpetrate a most unwarrantable hoax upon the poor inoffensive little Abbé. "Monsieur !" Ishouted, as he picked up his well-worn shovel hat and bowed courteously to the class, "Monsieur, dis door non dat pour takee vous out in de road!" "Ah, c'est ça ! Mille remerciments-ne vous dérangez pas, monsieur-je vous en prie !" exclaimed the unsuspecting victim, as I threw open the door of the lumber-closet with a profound salaam. "Merci beaucoup! En face, n'est pas ? Adieu, messieurs, adieu!" Of course the door was shut and locked upon him in an instant. For half a minute or so, we heard him breaking his shins over a variety of obstacles, still softly murmuring "Merci beaucoup." Then came a tremendous bang, announcing to our uncontrollable delight that his reverend head had at last come in collision with the second-hand pulpit. We could stand it no longer. Out we rushed into the play-ground, with a roar of laughter which must long have reverberated within those inky walls. Half an hour afterwards the unlucky prisoner was discovered by the Doctor himself, tapping like a woodpecker and earnestly imploring freedom, pour l'amour de Di-eu! Of course I am not going to enter here upon the merits or demerits of what is called a classical education. I only aver that, upon arriving at man's estate, I find myself in possession of a great deal of knowledge that I don't want, and totally destitute of a great deal that I do. I have had enough of Homer and Virgil to last my time. I am very unlikely to catch myself again attempting a Greek Iambic; and I cannot help, perhaps peevishly, wishing that, even at the expense of a little Greek, the rudiments, at least, of French and German had been crammed into me before I was too old to be whipped; for that precious season is very brief, and flieth away never to return. And why, when those golden hours were on the wing; when the years were so rapidly vanishing in which the pronunciation of a living language can alone be certainly acquired-my time should have been altogether spent among the dead, is still to me one of the many mysteries of my existence. I was taught to look upon the great languages of the continent as almost beneath the true dignity of a schoolboy. I was encouraged to believe that I studied them, not so much The Abbé having very prudently declined to for my own benefit as to find bread and butter for risk his neck amongst us any longer, the Doctor penniless Germans and starving French refugees. announced that the modern language department As a man of the world, I can now recognise would in future be superintended by himself. A plainly enough the stark absurdity of such an nice mess he made of it! Ultimately, in short, I error. I now find myself debarred from half the advantages of travel, without such an expenditure | to explain who I am, and why, at this particular of time and labour as I have neither the leisure moment, I find myself on board "the fast and nor the inclination to bestow. I am told, indeed, commodious steam-ship" Little Wonder. that, having once acquired the dead languages, the path to the living ought to be smooth and easy. What mockery! I now know to my sorrow that I have been ploughing all seed-time, and that the harvest will be exactly such as I had alone a right to expect. I have been led into the above reflections partly because I rather wanted a vent for my feelings, and partly because they in some degree bear upon my story. Now I've done. Forget that I ever bored you with my rights and my wrongs, and I'll tell you exactly what befel me not six months ago; that is to say, in the month of August in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two. The bells of Southampton were just chiming twelve one fine starry night in the month and year last aforesaid, when that "fast and commodious steam-ship," Little Wonder, cast off her last lashing, and went paddling down the water, outward-bound for the fair city of Havre-de-Grace. Most of her passengers have turned in for the night; but, if you carefully inspect the deck, you will, I flatter myself, find one object not altogether unworthy of your attention. I allude to a graceful and athletic young man of about five-andtwenty. He is thoughtfully pacing the deck, leaving behind him at every turn a whiff of delicate aroma from one of the most magnificent principes that ever crossed Hudson's counter. His dress is perfectly fashionable, without being in the slightest degree overdone; nothing of the stable about it. No horse-shoe pins in the region of the choker; no silver snaffle-bit to accommodate a cutaway that won't button; no incredible steeplechase performed over a field of cheap calico as the decoration of his shirt. Raise your eyes to his face, and there, I flatter myself, you will find your previous impressions in his favour, if possible, strengthened. It is at once handsome, goodhumoured, and intelligent. And did you ever in your life see such a pair of whiskers? None of your short, scrubby, contemptible patches of bristle that too often do duty for what, when properly developed, are among the noblest appendages of a man. His are really a glorious pair, long, luxuriant, and wavy; soft as silk, and in colour the deepest and the richest auburn. Many a duke would offer a hundred pounds a piece for those priceless ornaments, could they only be transferred, uninjured, to thrive upon his sterile and unmanly cheeks. It is really with a feeling of mingled modesty and pride that I inform the reader that I have all this time been endeavouring to give him some faint idea of myself. If I have drawn a fascinating and brilliant picture, he will, I trust, have the goodness to ascribe it to the candour rather than to the vanity of the artist. I wish to vindicate my claim upon his confidence by proving, at the outset, that I do not shrink from details which I am very well aware may be interpreted to my disadvantage. I shall consider myself now fairly introduced, and proceed without further ceremony I'm not so badly off as times go, considering all things. I've three hundred a-year of my own, and a berth in the Treasury. From the latter I draw something under a hundred and twenty. I accept it as an acknowledgment upon the part of Government that they are bound to find me a Hansom there and back, and admire the delicacy with which it is made. Outside Downing-street I get through my time easily enough. I have a good club, lots of friends, a hospitable circle of acquaintance, and find an invitation on my table for five nights out of six in the season. I likewise assert my claims to respectability through the medium of a small tiger, and a stall at Coventgarden. To fill up leisure-moments, I am also a trifle in love. The fact is, cousin Lucy is one of the most perfectly bewitching little creatures alive. I took the liberty of mentioning the fact to her last Christmas, at a particularly nice ball, not a hundred miles from Grosvenor-square. The result was, that we parted with a very definite understanding that the matter couldn't by any possibility rest there. Soon afterwards, however, she went to live with some relations of her mother's, who keep a country house a couple of miles out of Rouen. A very slight exertion of diplomacy upon my part was requisite to procure me a sort of general invitation, "whenever I could be spared ;" and Government, at my urgent request, having consented to make that sacrifice for a good three weeks last August, the motive which led me on board the Little Wonder is, I suppose, sufficiently explained. I am not going to exasperate the reader with any detailed account of my sensations upon first arriving in sight of a foreign town. Suffice it, that, at eight of the clock, we found ourselves quietly gliding into Havre, and were saluted with the roar of welcome from the commissionaires on the quay, with which everybody is familiar who has ever landed in France. Stepping ashore with the air of a veteran traveller, I accepted an hotel card from a grimy gentleman who appeared to speak English with tolerable fluency. I desired him to take me at once to his hotel, order my breakfast, clear my baggage, see to my passport, and have a cab in readiness to take me to the rail in time for the train to Rouen at 12 15; all which he promised punctually to perform. After breakfast, I strolled into the town, changed some money, and made a few trifling purchases with an ease and celerity that perfectly delighted me. Indeed, I returned to my hotel with the flattering conviction strong upon me, that the knowledge of the language of so civil and intelligent a people was, after all, mere matter of curiosity, and perfectly superfluous to the gentleman-tourist. My commissionaire, whom I had gratified with the present of a five-franc piece, insisted upon accompanying me to the railway, and saving me all trouble in procuring my ticket. Upon his tendering it to me, I perceived at once that it was for Barentin and not for Rouen, and begged him | knew whether to be most amused or horrified at to rectify the mistake without delay. the appearance of the cortége, in which I was evidently to bear a part. "It's quite right, sir," said an Englishman who passed at that moment. "I asked for one to Paris just now; and here it is, just the same as your own. It seems they won't book further than Barentin this morning. You will have to take another ticket when you get there, that's all. There's a screw loose somewhere, evidently; but as they assure me there will be no interruption to our journey, I suppose we may trust to their honour." "And where is Barentin, pray?" said I; having about as much idea of the geography of France as of that of Arabia Felix. "Ten miles this side Rouen, according to Bradshaw," returned my companion. "And now suppose we make for the waiting-room, as I see their time's just up." Just as I was inwardly calculating to which crazy vehicle I could intrust my own sacred person with any reasonable prospect of escaping instant dissolution, my railway-acquaintance came up. "The guard tells me the rails between this and Malaunay, the next station, have been washed away by the rain. Nice, isn't it? You see our conveyance for the next two hours. He says our luggage will follow us all right; but I shall be late for dinner in Paris, and be hanged to them!" The passengers were now crowding rapidly into the various uncouth machines, one of which broke down summarily before it had got half its complement on board. Having secured a ticket for Rouen, I was looking around for my friend and Five minutes more, and we were bowling interpreter, when a few heavy drops of rain from smoothly away over the rich glowing pasture land of a suspicious-looking cloud overhead produced a Normandy. My new companion proved a capital frantic scramble for inside places. Frenchmen fellow, and chatted freely of France, of Paris, of have the most indescribable horror of a wet skin; the glories of the Bal d'Opera, and the brilliant and the one pinnacle of politeness to which no mysteries of the Valentino and the Mobille. I one born south of the channel has ever yet attained never felt in such spirits; and never did I con- is that of "riding outside to oblige a lady." For gratulate myself more upon having made the my own part, having no fancy to be left behind grand discovery that the French language was a altogether, I contrived, with some difficulty, to drug in its own country-a showy but altogether clamber upon the roof of a huge, unwieldy omniuseless accomplishment to the traveller. By bus; and there, buttoning my great coat close up Harfleur we rushed, and Alvimare, and Yvetot, to my chin, I determined manfully to await the famous in old story for its rustic king. At half-worst. past one, however, we came to a dead stop. "Barentin! Descendez, messieurs, s'il vous plait," shouted the guard, flinging open the door of our carriage. "Now for the mystery!" exclaimed my companion, springing out upon the platform. I hadn't long to wait either. Hardly had the Hup, allez!" of our driver set his lumbering team into a jog trot, when down came the rain in a perfect deluge. I soon found my umbrella totally useless, since, there being three persons besides myself in a row upon the roof, we simply The scene immediately around the station was poured cataracts over each other with very little certainly a curious one. Every imaginable de- advantage to ourselves. In fact our seat was soon scription of vehicle that ever went upon wheels swimming with water, which also washed backevery conceivable species of beast that ever wore wards and forwards in the most cruel way over a collar, appeared to have been collected in one our boots. On we went, at first through a long, heterogeneous mass. The ghosts of old, condemned straggling, barbarous village, whose inhabitants diligences, that seemed coated with the rust and stood staring at their open doors, and saluted us mud of another world-huge, windowless omni- with shouts of laughter as we went by. Presently buses, their panels cracked and sprung in every we got into a labyrinth of deep, sticky cross-roads, direction-ricketty gigs, gaudy pleasure-vans, where we rolled and pitched like an Admiralty country carts, apple-waggons, post-chaises, donkey- steamer. Then came a rough, tangled patch of drags, had all evidently been awaiting our arrival. woodland, where the streaming trees took part Nor were the carriages the most curious part of against us, and thrashed our hats off with their The whole neighbourhood must have sodden branches. My own was picked up and been ransacked to furnish cattle and postillions for returned to me by the conductor, neatly lined with this extraordinary levy. Every galled jade, mud; the good man, in presenting it, making a every sorry beast, every halt, lame, and blind noise like a clock suddenly run down. To cut the thing that it ever entered into the heart of a matter short (I wish I could have done it at the knacker to conceive, was there. Tremulous, old time), we arrived at Malaunay in one hour and mail-coachmen, dragged helplessly from the chim- twenty minutes, splashed, drenched, and miserable; ney-corner to cough and wheeze upon the box-looking, indeed, as if we had been suspended for sturdy ostlers, professed flymen, and red, clumsy a similar period in a weak solution of muck. boys, fresh from the plough-tail or the cider-mill, The omnibus upon which I was seated haphad been pressed alike into the service. I scarcely the scene. It may be as well to mention that the following anecdote of sharp railway practice in France is merely a narrative of what actually occurred to the writer of this article in the month of September last. pened to be about the last of the dripping convoy; and upon descending from my lofty perch, I found my previously-arrived fellow-passengers in a state of the most singular perplexity and dismay. A train was indeed in waiting to convey |