knowledging the authorship of Mes Prisons, demanded satisfaction on the part of Alexander Dumas. "I am at his orders, gentlemen." "But it is only right to apprise you that we come on the part of Alexander Dumas the son, not the fa ther."Oh that is a different affair." He rang the bell and desired the servant to bring his son; and the nurse soon appeared leading in a child four or five years old, and his face smeared with barley segar. Mirecourt then addressed his visitors with a very serious air, Messieurs, I am certain that my son feels as lively an interest in my honor, as the son of M. Alexander Dumas in that of his father: you Will therefore please to demand satisfaction from him in the present instance." The friends arose from their seats, and exclaimed against the stupid joke played off at their expense. "I grant that the joke is not in good taste; but it will serve to shew the ridiculous character of your proceeding. M. Alexander Dumas is in good health; him I have attacked, and it is from him I expect a demand for satisfaction. I have nothing to do with his son. If I happened to kill or wound him, would not the world say, 'lo! the defarmer has murdered the child of the defamed.' This is what I propose. Let M. Alexander Dumas authorise his son to go to the ground in his stead, and I will place myself at his disposal tomorrow The visitors however disappointed, could not gainsay the justice of the proposal: they withdrew, and did not repeat the visit. A regular Parisian Edmund Curll, proposes to our literary adventurer to write a chronicle on the subject of Marion Delorme. He takes the hint, but rather disapFints his loosely inclined patron by the decent and moral style of the work, which gives a very lively picture of Bety in the Paris of Louis XIII. The work is ready but the fitting time of publication is wanting. The revolution of February allows neither time nor incimation to the Parisians, to study old world memoirs, and the author has enemies by the hundred. After some time it comes forth in a feuilleton with the name of Mery attached. Towards the conclusion Mirecourt puts his own proper signature to the work, writes a very flattering biography of the Marseillais Proteus by way of introduction to the second edition of the chronicle; and being assailed by Duas and his corps in the Memoirs' and the journals at their command, Curll urges him to proceed with Les Contemporains, making use of them as fitting instruments for parrying the attacks, and assaulting in turn, Dumas, Émile de Girardin, Jules Janin, Eugène Sue, and the professors of socialism and Voltairianisin in general. The idea has been worked out to the advantage of the author and his adviser, Gabriel Roux Curll, not without the former suffering now and then from fine and imprisonment awarded at the earnest request of his smarting antagonists. The rod seems to make no impression, nor induce more measured language. He hates to the full measure of Dr. Johnson's taste, and if the objects of his wrath exhibit sympathy with socialism or infidelity, he is at a loss to find colors sufficiently odious for the finishing touches of their portaits. He is however incapable of a deliberate falsehood; in lashing the abominable system of Proudhon, he does every justice to the social and domestic virtues of the man himself, while the orthodox views of Teuillot do not screen him from a most bitter flagellation. As the Fabrique des Romans Alexre Dumas et Compagnie was the starting point of his literary career, it is but just to lay before our readers his style of handling that great man, cautioning them to bear in mind his original grievance and tendency to be carried away by prejudice. We need not dwell on his sketch of Alexander's youth, having treated that part of the subject in our review of the Memoirs. Coming to the production of the Drama of Henri III., he exhibits side by side, Act II. Scene IV., of Schiller's Don Carlos, and Dumas Henri III., Act IV., Scene I; and a more glaring piece of plagiarism could not be found after Mr. Charles Reade or Lord William Lennox. No matter what error or fault he may be chastising for the time, the vice of borrowing from his fellow creatures, either money, or ideas, or language, is always tagged to it as certainly as the regulator to a steam engine. He gives an instance of his undoubted composition from the drama of Christine à Fontainebleau: it is here submitted with a faint expectation of our being favoured with a neat translation into English; the choice of prose or verse being left to the convenience of the operator. • IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, No. XII. "Comme au haut d'un grand mont, le voyageur lassé Sans qu'un éclair de joie un seul instant y brille, User à le rider son front de jeune fille, Sentir une courone en or, en diamant, Prendre place, à ce front, d'une bouche d'amant." Alexander the Great hearing the report of musketry in the streets in July, 1830, cries out to his servant : "Joseph hie to my gun-maker for my double-barrelled musket, and two hundred bullets, twenty to the pound." Two hundred bullets! royalists he means to slay! Oh Misericorde ! what a multitude of An entire volume of the memoires is devoted to his exploits during the three days. We seek not the slightest quarrel with him on the subject. Let him outshine Renaud or Tancred;-let him pretend that he braved the bullet shower at the Pont d'Arcole :-leave him the honor of having taken the Artillery Museum let him have peppered the Swiss guards from behind one of the Lions of the Institute, it concerns us little are not these astounding facts chronicled in the "Memoirs." And here the critic lectures Dumas and, by implication, Soarestre his collaborateur, on the abominations of the drama of Antony, and the pilfering from Victor Hugo of the character of Didier. No doubt but his censures on the evil effects of the piece are just, and the culprits richly deserve the execration he lavishes on them; but oh, Mirecourt, worthy Censor Morum! Why do you see the straw in Dumas' eye, and let the briar in Hugo's escape notice? Have you read the romance of the latter, and is it not one of the most depressing and least edifying that ever issued from the brain of writer, and might not these maxims be drawn from it without the slightest perversion of the author's meaning? "The moral power of a human being over his impulses and actions is nil. The world is governed by destiny, or fate, or necessity. Genuine goodness, if extant, is allied to deformity. We are powerless in our attempts to do good; but if our designs are wicked. we are certain of success, the devil lending a hand; and the amiable and innocent exist for the sole purpose of being hunted down and devoured by the wicked." The only merit allowed by our critic to his Béte Noire is that of a tolerable arrangement of the materials collected. by his scouts he denies him any power of invention in toto. "There is a certain merit in being a good disposer, but solely in the case of disposing materials collected by one's self. But this is the mode adopted by our man. Here is a pirate captain who has boarded and taken a merchant vessel; but our filibuster is an amiable rogue, and would not for the world put an enemy to the sword when he cries quarter: quite the reverse. He orders an allow ance of rum to the vanquished to refresh them after the fatigues of fight; but all the while, he is getting an endless amount of valuable parcels conveyed to the deck of his vessel, and thence to the hold, where he arranges everything in the neatest order. Oh what a jolly good fellow, and how comfortably he settles matters!" On the representation of his piece "Les Demoiselles de Saint Cyr," Jules Janin took the liberty of passing thereon some ungracious remarks; Dumas not at all relishing the liberty taken, returned blow for blow, and a very characteristic quarrel arose. An imaginative French writer describes his Englishman not stretching out a saving arm to a drowning countryman, for the valid reason that he had not been previously introduced to him; so a few words about the mercurial Parisian Jeames of the Morning Post, may not be out of place before we enter on the particulars of his terrific combat with the Goliath of letters. And here once for all, we pass unqualified censure on Mirecourt and his imitators, who from the circumstance of a literary opponent having a cast in his eyes, a turned up nose, a disreputable sire who saw no evil in coining bad money, or a mother who preferred the society of aneighbour's husband to that of her own, will persist in saddling his victim with the crimes of his parents, or ridiculing him for natural defects which the poor culprit himself would be the very first to repair if in his power. Jules escapes extra punishment of the kind alluded to: his tormentor merely quotes one of his apostrophes ; "Oh eighteen hundred and four! Glorious year to enter on the world!" and adds from himself. "Of a certainty no year so glorious or prolific of great events has taken its position in the procession of ages. Napoleon, victorious at the Pyramids and at Marengo, placed the imperial diadem on his own head; and the prince of critics was born at St. Etienne near Lyons, of poor but honest parents." In due time he is pursuing his studies in Paris at the college of Louis le Grand, very little to his own satisfaction, or that of his teachers. He is too much occupied in reproach ing government for removing muskets and drums from the students; and giving them only bells and missals in place; and in devising a Saint Bartholomew for all the Jesuits in the kingdom, too much occupied, we repeat, to be able to afford time to physics or metaphysics. Jeames, that is to say Jules, according to his biographer, was never intended by nature for a disciple of St. Peter of Alcantara; to back his assertion he quotes from his notice of Les classiques de la Table. "You cannot open this book without finding the water coming to your mouth a book full of juice and savour-written by men full of their subject. You have but to turn over the sparkling pages, and you will at once hear the click clack of the spits, the roaring of the furnace, as the flames envelope the mighty pot; charming smoke! Weet vapors! oderiferous clouds! Ah! the difficult and perilous profession of the gourmand,-profession that requires such profound knowledge, such strength of head, and such indomitable health." "There" says Mirecourt, "is a style inspired by the stomach;" but he spoils the effect by adding that Janin exercises his exquisite taste at his neighbour's table only. If you pay him a visit you are treated to an omelet, or if very high in favor, to a cutlet. After leaving college our future monarch of the coulisses is supported partly by a kind aunt, and partly by the prodace of lessons. Along with his attachment to the delights of the table, he has a foible for dogs, and will change his lodging if his favorite is not made free of the premises. "He proceeds to the dog-market; his heart throbs with delight at the chorus of melodious barking and baying that he hears. He is in extacy, he trembles with joy in seeing round him the living merchan. dise, yelping, growling, shewing teeth, or wagging tail. Janin goes from greyhound to boule-dogue, from the king-Charles to the Newfoundland, from terrier to spaniel, from beagle to house-dog. He gets a shake-paw from every one, studies the breeds, makes enquiries after their morals and characters, and finishes by selecting a full-bred cur, wanting the ears, and with a coat unaffectedly ragged. The happy brute had fixed his choice by holding out his muddy paw in a more friendly fashion than the others." Having given lessons at an academy for a quarter without touching salary, he finds the keepers in possession one morning, as he enters to discharge his functions. He knows that there is a cask of excellent wine in the cellar, and determines that it is a pity to have it sold for the behoof |