dom, and Zadig, that the events of life are placed beyond our controul. L'Homme au quarante ecus was meant to ridicule the system of the economists, and Bacbouc to correct the disposition of the French nation, to behold every thing in a ridiculous point of view, of which among all his countrymen Voltaire was himself the most guilty. But, though the object of this celebrated author, and the charms by which his incidents are adorned, be peculiar to himself, there is seldom much novelty in the incidents themselves. In Micromegas he has imitated an idea of Gulliver's Travels; in the Ingenu, the principal situation is derived from the Baronne de Luz, a romance by M. Duclos. The origin of almost every chapter in Zadig may be easily traced; thus the story of Le Nez has been suggested by the Matron of Ephesus: In Ariosto may be found Les Combats, or the story of the man in green armour, and in one of the Contes Devots, that of the hermit and angel introduced towards the conclusion; the pursuit of the bitch and horse is from the search of the Cynogefore, in the Soirées Bretonnes of Gueulette, who had it from an Italian work, Peregrinaggio de Tre Figliuole del Re de Serendippo. The tale, however, had been originally told in an Arabic work of the 13th century, entitled Nighiaristan,

which was written to show the acuteness of the Arabian nation. In the Nighiaristan, three brothers, of the family of Adnan, set out on their travels. They are met by a camel-driver, who asks if they had seen a camel he had lost. One brother says that the animal was blind of an eye; the second that he wanted a tooth; the last that he was lame, and was loaded with oil on one side, and honey on the other. Being thus suspected of having stolen the camel, the brothers are sent to prison, and afterwards explain to the judge by what observations they had discovered all these circumstances. Another of Voltaire's novels, La Princesse de Babylon, has been suggested by a French tale, entitled Le Parisien et la Princesse de Babylone, inserted in La Nouvelle Fabrique des excellens Traits de Verités par Phillippe Alcripe. The name here assumed is fictitious, but the author is known to have been a monk of the abbey of Mortemer, who lived about the middle of the 16th century. In his tale Le Parisien, &c., the beautiful princess of Babylon has a disgusting and unwelcome suitor in the person of the Sophi of Persia. The son of a French jeweller hearing of her beauty, sends her an amatory epistle, by means of a swallow, and receives a favourable answer by a similar conveyance; and this bird,

which corresponds to Voltaire's phoenix, becomes the friend and confidant of the lovers. Afterwards the Parisian repairs to Babylon, and the princess, by feigning sickness, effects an elope

ment.

In Candide, the most celebrated of Voltaire's romances, the incidents seem to possess more novelty. The object of that work, as every one knows, is to ridicule the notion that all things in this world are for the best, by a representation of the calamities of life artfully aggravated. It seems doubtful, however, how far the system of optimism, if rightly understood, is deserving of ridicule. That war, and vice, and disease, are productive of extensive and complicated misery among mankind, cannot indeed be denied, but another arrangement, it must be presumed, was impracticable; and he who doubts that the present system is the most suitable that can possibly be dispensed, seems also to doubt whether the Author of Nature be infinitely good.

3. The next class of fictions, according to the arrangement adopted, comprehends those works of local satire in which remarks on the history, manners, and customs of a nation, are presented through the supposed medium of a foreigner, whose views are unbiassed by the ideas and as

sociations to which the mind of a native is habituated.

Of this species of composition, the object is to show that our manners and arts are not so near perfection as self-love and habit lead us to imagine; and its form was adopted, that opinions, religious and political, might be broached with more freedom, by being attributed to outlandish characters, for whose sentiments the author could not be held responsible.

The Turkish Spy (L'Esploratore Turco,) seems to have been the prototype of this species of composition. According to some authors, it was written by an Italian, named John Paul Marana, who, being involved in political difficulties in his own country, went to reside at Paris, and there wrote the Turkish Spy. It first appeared, it has been said, (Melanges de Vigneul Marville,) in the Italian language, and came out in separate volumes, towards the close of the 17th century. I certainly never saw the work in that language, and its Italian original is somewhat questionable. We are told, indeed, in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, that Dr Manley was the original author, and that Dr Midgeley, who pretended to have translated it from the Italian, having found it among his papers, appropriated the composition to his own use.

Mahmut, the Turkish Spy, is feigned to have been employed by the Porte to observe the conduct of the Christian courts, and is supposed to have resided at Paris from 1637 to 1682. During this period he corresponds with the divan, and also with his own friends and confidants at Constantinople. The work comprehends an infinite variety of subjects, but the information communicated is chiefly historical; the author principally discourses on the affairs of France, but the internal politics of Spain, and England, and the Italian states, are also discussed. In some letters he gives an account of battles, sieges, and other events of a campaign; descants on the conduct and valour of great captains, and on the fortune of war; in others he treats of court intrigues, and the subtilties of statesmen. When he addresses his friends and confidants, he amuses them with relations that are comical, affecting, or strange, the new discoveries in art and science, and those antiquarian researches, which, according to his expression, are calculated to draw the veil from the infancy of time, and uncover the cradle of the world. On religious topics he discourses with much freedom, and also on what he hears concerning the affairs of his own country,the discontent and rebellion of the beys and bassas, the war with the Persians, and the amours of the seraglio.