distingué il obtint tous les titres, tous les honneurs qu'il avoit desiré: il fut riche-il fut elevé, mais il ne fut point heureux."

In the Letters of Lady Catesby, are exhibited the mental struggles of a woman who had been forsaken by a man she adored, but who now sought pardon and reconciliation. Her lover had been solemnly engaged to her in marriage, but, from a scruple of conscience, had chosen another woman. His wife being now dead, he had come to London, and anew solicited the hand of Lady Catesby. She, to avoid his importunities, retired to the country, and in her first letters to her friend, which form by much the best part of the work, she delineates with admirable spirit the characters of the individuals she met at the castles and manor-houses she visited. The novel, or rather story, of Ernestine, also possesses exquisite grace and beauty. The other compositions of Mad. Riccoboni, Christine de Suabe, Histoire d'Aloise de Livarot, &c., are, I think, considerably inferior to the productions that have been mentioned.

Rousseau's Heloise is generally regarded as the most eloquent and pathetic of French novels; but it seems more deserving of admiration for the passion and feeling displayed in particular passages, than for the excellence of the fable. Events

of the highest interest, which occur at the commencement of the work, serve to throw languor over the succeeding pages. The principal actions of the chief characters, on which the romance is founded, are altogether improbable, and not only inconsistent with the sentiments and passions elsewhere ascribed to these individuals, but repugnant to the ordinary feelings of human nature. Of this description are the marriage of Julia with Volmar, while she was yet enamoured of Saint-Preuxthe residence of Saint-Preux with the mistress he adored, and the man she had espoused, and the confidence reposed in him by Volmar, while aware of the attachment that had subsisted between him and Julia. The author having placed his characters in this situation, extricates himself from all difficulties by the death of the heroine, who, according to the expression of a French writer, "Meurt uniquement pour tirer M. Rousseau d' embarras."

The pathos and eloquence of Rousseau, the delicacy of Mad. Riccoboni, the gloomy, but forcible paintings of Prevot, and the knowledge of human nature displayed in the works of Marivaux, have raised the French to the highest reputation for the composition of novels of the serious class. In many of these, however, though admirable in point

of talent, there is too often a contest of duties, in which those are adhered to which should be subordinate, and those abandoned which ought to be paramount to all others. Thus, they sometimes entice us to find, in the subtilty of feeling, a pardon for our neglect of the more homely and downright duties, and lead us to nourish the blossoms of virtue more than the root or branches.

It was naturally to be expected, that while the more serious class of fictitious compositions was thus successfully cultivated, the more gay and lively productions of a similar description should not have been neglected. La Gaieté Françoise had become proverbial among all the nations of Europe, and, as the fictions of a people are invariably expressive in some degree of its character, corresponding compositions naturally arose. Of these, the most distinguished are the works of Le Sage, whose Gil Blas is too well known to require here any detail of those incidents, in which all conditions of life are represented with such fidelity and animation. The originality, however, of this entertaining novel has been much questioned, in consequence of its resemblance to the Spanish romance Marcos de Obregon, of which an account has already been given (see above, vol. III. p. 319, &c.). Many of the stories in Gil Blas are also de

of

rived from the plots of Spanish comedies; but they have in turn suggested the scenes of many our English dramas: Cibber's comedy She Would and She Would Not, is taken from the story of Aurora, and Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda is from the Mariage de Vengeance.

.. The leading idea of the Diable Boiteux is also borrowed from the Spanish, as the author indeed has acknowledged in his dedication. Part of the fiction, however, appears to have been originally drawn from the cabalistic work, entitled Vinculum Spirituum. The Asiatics believed that, by abstinence and particular prayers, evil spirits could be reduced to obedience and confined in phials. Accordingly, in the Vinculum Spirituum, which was derived from the east, it is said that Solomon discovered, by means of a certain learned book, the valuable secret of inclosing in a bottle of black glass, three millions of infernal spirits, with seventy-two of their kings, of whom Beleth was the chief, Beliar the second, and Asmodeus the third. Solomon afterwards cast this bottle into a great well near Babylon. Fortunately for the contents, the Babylonians, hoping to find a treasure in this well, descended into it, and broke the bottle, on which the emancipated demons returned to their ordinary element. The notion of the

confinement of Asmodeus in the glass bottle, has been adopted in the Spanish work, entitled EI Diablo Cojuelo, written by Luis Velez de Guevara, and first printed in 1641. In that production, the student Don Cleofas having accidentally entered the abode of an astrologer, delivers from a glass bottle, in which he had been confined by the conjurer, the devil, called the Diablo Cojuelo, who is a spirit nearly of the same description as the Asmodée of Le Sage, and who, in return for the service he had received from the scholar, exhibits to him the interior of the houses of Madrid. Many of Le Sage's portraits are also copied from the work of Guevara; as, for instance, that of Donna Fabula and her husband Don Torribio-of the alchemist employed in search of the philosopher's stone, and the hypocrite preparing to attend an assemblage of sorcerers, which was to be held between St Sebastian and Fontarabia. As in Le Sage, the Diablo Cojuelo unroofs one of the mad-houses (casa de los locos); but towards the conclusion of the work, he carries D. Cleofas beyond Madrid-he shows him the academies and convents in the vicinity, and transports him through the air to the provincial towns of Spain and the country-seats of its grandees. Some of the situations in the Diable