Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848
"The Viscount de Morgenstein was one of those illustrious pianists whose talent has much less connexion with music than with sleight of hand. M. de Morgenstein achieved only three notes a minute less than M. Henry Herz; as he was young and worked hard, it was thought he would overtake, and perhaps surpass that master. He had long curling hair, affected a melancholy and despairing countenance, and was considered to have something fatal in his gait. His mere aspect betrayed the man overwhelmed by the burden of genius and by the divine malediction."
The character of an old country gentleman, who has ruined himself to marry his niece to a spendthrift count, is very well hit off. Eloi Alain, who has a grudge against the poor old fellow, persecutes him in every possible way; his aristocratic and ungrateful nephew refuses him the pension agreed upon, and, to maintain appearances, Monsieur Malais de Beuzeval is reduced to shifts worthy of Caleb Balderstone. Although a parvenu, with vanity for the stimulus of his stratagems, one cannot help feeling sorry for the weak but kind-hearted old man, who shuffles on a livery coat, and puts a patch over his eye, to inform visitors, through the wicket, that he himself is not at home – his own servants having left him; who paints a blaze, each alternate day, upon the face of his sole remaining horse, that neighbours may credit the duplicity of his stud; and who illuminates his drawing-room and jingles his piano in melancholy solitude, to make the world believe M. de Beuzeval is receiving his friends. His manœuvres to procure a supply of forage, and his ingenuity in dissipating the astonishment of its vender, who cannot comprehend that the master of broad pastures should purchase a load of hay, are capitally drawn. Like every thing else, however, the hay comes to an end, and, at the same time with the horse, the master runs short of provender. Only the four-legged animal has resources the biped does not possess.
"M. de Malais was again compelled to lead out his horse Pyramus during the night, to graze the neighbours' lucerne. One morning the inhabitants of the village of Beuzeval heard the castle-bell announce, as usual, the breakfast. M. de Beuzeval walked into the breakfast room, but found nothing to eat. He nibbled a stale crust and set out for Caen, whence he always brought back a little money, his journeys thither being for the purpose of disposing of some relic of his departed splendour. But when he had ridden a league he remembered it was Sunday; the man he had to see would not be at his shop, and he must wait till the next day. He returned to Beuzeval, and thence rode down to Dive. Berenice, who was lace-making at her door, made him a grateful curtsey, and he stopped to exchange a few words with her. Pélagie, who was preparing dinner, inquired after Pulchérie.
"'Madame la Comtesse de Morville is well,' he replied; 'I heard from her the other day. My nephew, Count de Morville, has promised to bring the countess to see me this summer.'
"Onesimus and his father were close to shore. Pélagie begged M. de Beuzeval's permission to look to their dinner, as they were obliged to put to sea again as soon as they had eaten it. M. Malais got off his horse and entered the house.
"'Your soup smells deliciously,' said he; 'it is cabbage soup.'
"'A soup you seldom see, M. de Beuzeval.'
"'Not for want of asking for it. I am passionately fond of cabbage soup, but they never will make it at my house.'
"'I daresay not. It is not a soup for gentlefolk.'
"'Yours smells excellent, Pélagie; but you were always a good cook.'
"'Ah, sir! there is one thing that helps me to make good dinners for our men!'
"'What is that, Pélagie?'
"'A good appetite. They put to sea last night, and here they come, tired, wet, dying of hunger: all that is spice for a plain meal.'
"The fishermen entered.
"'Come along!' cried M. Malais, 'you have a famous soup waiting for you. Upon my word, it smells too good; I must taste it. Pélagie, give me a plate; I will eat a few spoonsful with you. Certainly, it is but a short time since I took my breakfast – what people call a good breakfast – but without appetite, without pleasure.'
"'Indeed! M. Malais, you will do us the honour of tasting our soup?'
"And Pélagie hastened to put a clean cloth upon the table. Berenice fetched a pot of cider. Onesimus moored the horse in the shade; then they all sat down, taking care to give the best place to M. Malais, who eagerly devoured a plateful of soup."
We refer to the book itself those who would know how the poor old gentleman made a second fierce assault on the tureen, and an equally determined one on the bacon and greens; to what expedients he was subsequently reduced; how it fared with the Countess Pulchérie and her scapegrace husband, and what were the struggles, sufferings, and ultimate rewards, of the courageous and simple-hearted Alains. The book may safely be recommended to all readers. This is more than we can say for the next that comes to hand —Un Mariage de Paris by Méry. This we should pitch into the rubbish-basket after reading the first two chapters, did it not serve to illustrate what we have often noted – the profound and barbarous ignorance of French literary men on the subject of England and the English. Were this confined to the smaller fry, the inferior herd of Trans-canalic scribblers, one would not be surprised. It is nothing wonderful that such gentlemen as M. Paul Feval and poor blind Jacques Arago, should take le gin and le boxe to be the Alpha and Omega of English propensities and manners, and should proceed upon that presumption in romances of such distinguished merit as Les Mystères de Londres and Zambala l'Indien. But M. Méry is a man of letters esteemed amongst his fellows – a hasty and slovenly writer, certainly, but possessing wit, and tact, and style, when he chooses to employ them; and having, moreover, he himself assures us, in the pages of the singular production now under dissection, been all through England – although this we apprehend he effected by means of express trains, without stop or stay, from Folkestone to Berwick-upon-Tweed and back again. Even this much acquaintance with the British Isles is denied to many of his contemporaries, who evidently derive their notions of English habits and customs from the frequenters of the English taverns about the Places Favart and Madeleine at Paris. M. Méry is above this. He draws entirely upon his imagination for the manners, morals, and topography of the country in which his scene is laid. He has got a few names of places, which he jumbles together in the most diverting manner. His hero, Cyprian de Mayran, a Paris exquisite of the first water, saddened by a domestic calamity, comes to London in quest of dissipation and oblivion. He has some acquaintances there, dating from a previous visit, and amongst them is the popular singer Sidora W – , a lady, we are told, "whose talent would have been very contestable at Paris, but was venerated in London, the city of universal toleration. When, in Norma, or Fidelio, she kept only tolerably near to the intentions of the composers, changing their notes into false coin, a phalanx of admirers rose like one man, and a triple round of applause rent thirty pair of yellow gloves. The name of Sidora W – had great attraction, (the italics are M. Méry's,) and when displayed on gigantic placards, before Mansion-house, or Post-office, as well as on the modest gray circulars of the grocers, at night whole squadrons of noble equipages were seen manœuvring between Long Acre and the peristyle of Covent Garden, and the theatre of Drury Lane was invaded." The nightingale who thus, in 1845, filled to suffocation the walls of Drury, (a fact Mr Bunn may have difficulty to remember,) had a rural retreat at Highgate, where she received a motley company. "The garden of reception was like a vast flower-basket inhabited by a woman, and surrounded by a dark fringe of mute adorers. There were all the faces of the English universe: retired Calcutta nabobs; ex-governors of unknown Archipelagos; colonels whose defunct wives were Malabar widows, snatched from the funeral pile of their Indian spouses; admirals bronzed by twenty cruises under the equator; nephews of Tippoo Saib; disgraced ministers from Lahore; ex-criminals from Botany Bay, who, having grown rich, were voted virtuous; princes of Madagascar and Borneo; citizens of New Holland, (naturalised Englishmen, notwithstanding their close affinity to orang-outangs,) – in short all the human or inhuman types that Sem, Cham, and Japhet invented on their escape from the Ark, to amuse themselves a little after a year's diluvian captivity on the summit of Mount Ararat. It is only in London such collections are to be met with; and the foreign naturalist has the gratuitous enjoyment of them. The capital of England is sometimes generous and disinterested in its zoological exhibitions."
Amidst these dingy exotics, Cyprian, "with his Parisian elegance, his fresh complexion, his hair of a vivid auburn, waving like that of the Apollo Belvedere," appeared like a swan amongst gray geese; and, seating himself between "two equinoctial beings not classed by Buffon," he soon engrossed all the attention of the fascinating Sidora, to the suppressed but violent indignation of Prince Rajab-Nandy, and her other copper-coloured admirers. One of these waylays the handsome Frenchman on his return home. Whilst passing over Highgate Bridge, Cyprian's horse starts violently, and an "equinoctial gentleman, with nothing white about his whole person, except a pair of yellow gloves, (a Gallo-Irishism,) springs from amongst the brushwood, and plants himself in the middle of the bridge, like a satyr in the poem of Ramaiana." A duel is arranged, to take place at Cricklewood Cottage, and Cyprian gallops into London by Tottenham-Road. Having no male acquaintances in London, except two sobersided bankers, he is at a loss for seconds. Finally he prevails on two of the opera chorus, in consideration of a new coat and a sovereign, to accompany him to the field of danger; and, after duly gloving and dressing them in Saint-Martin-Court, he packs them in a hackney-coach and starts for Cricklewood, which we now learn is on the summit of the mountain of Hamstead. "There, in a pavilion decorated Chinese-fashion, three men of tropical physiognomy awaited De Mayran…" Opposite the cottage there stretched out, to an immense distance, over hill and over valley, a gloomy forest, which served as dueling ground in the quarrelsome days of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. In a level glade, bare of trees, the Anglo-Indians paused. It was a wild and solitary place; nevertheless, here and there, on the fir trees, were seen enormous electioneering placards, bearing the words, "Vote for Parker!" This is rich, particularly if we bear in mind that the author is perfectly serious, and devoutly believes he is giving a very curious insight into the local usages and characteristics of semi-civilised England. M. Méry's hero has other adventures, equally true to life, – makes new acquaintances on board a river-steamer; dines with them at Sceptre and Crown at Greenwich, and at Star and Garter at Richmond; and falls violently in love with Madame Katrina Lewing, a beautiful Englishwoman. M. Méry makes merry on the river Thames, which he affects to believe rises in the immediate vicinity of Richmond, and concerning whose origin and exiguity he is very facetious. He also displays his acquaintance with English literature by quoting "the great poet Pope's famous drinking song in honour of the Thames, 'I you like, little stream!'" Then Cyprian prevails on Katrina to elope with him to Port Natal, (of all places in the world!) and realises his fortune as a preparatory measure; but Katrina proves a mere decoy-duck, and the amorous Frenchman is stripped of his bank-notes, and left in the dead of night in the middle of a field. In vain, at daybreak, does he seek a shepherd to question, because, as M. Méry testifies, English peasants do not inhabit the fields; shepherds are scarcely known in the country; and the only one he, the aforesaid Méry, ever beheld, during his extensive rambles in England, was a well-dressed young gentleman, with gloves on, reading the Morning Chronicle under a tree. Then we have a thieves' orgie, where the liquors in demand are claret and absinthe, nothing less – M. Méry not condescending to the gin, so much abused by his contemporaries. And, finally, a murder having been committed, its circumstances are investigated on the spot, by a Queen's proctor, assisted by two policemen, a barmaid, and a physician. We might multiply these literary curiosities; but we have given enough to prove their author's intimate acquaintance with the country about which he so agreeably writes. It is related of M. Méry's friend Dumas, that he once resolved on a visit to London, posted to Boulogne, steamed to London bridge, and reached St Paul's, but there turned back, anathematising fog and sea-coal, and never stopped till he found himself in the Chaussée d'Antin. Without vouching for the truth of this tale, we must admit its probability when told of the eccentric Alexander. Mr Méry's knowledge of this country is just what he might have obtained by an hour's conversation with his friend, upon the return of the latter from his journey to St Paul's. But it is a crying sin of French writers, when they get upon foreign ground, that, in their anxiety to give to their books a tinge characteristic of the country, (couleur locale they call it,) they outstrip the limits assigned to them by their real knowledge of the land and its inhabitants, and, meaning to be effective, become simply ridiculous. And England is the country, of all others, whose ways they apparently have most difficulty in rightly comprehending. On a more southern soil they are less apt to run into absurdities, but sin chiefly on the side of overcolouring. This may be alleged, although to no violent extent, of a pleasant little romance by Paul de Musset, La Chèvre Jaune– The Yellow Goat – intended as an illustration of Sicilian life, particularly amongst the lower orders. The hero of the tale is a precocious peasant boy, dwelling in the mountains with his mother – a fierce old lady who owns a rifle, and detests the Neapolitans. This boy, who herds goats, pets one of them, and trains her to dance; by which means, and by his own good mien, he gains the affections of a notary's daughter, whose papa, disapproving of the attachment, has the peasant taken up on a false accusation of theft. The boy escapes, turns bandit, and is accompanied in his forays and ambuscades by his goat, who dances tarantellas on the mountain-tops, and plays so many queer antics that she finally is held uncanny, and becomes an object of fear and veneration to the ignorant Sicilians. The story is prettily and pleasingly told, and is just the sort of reading for a lazy man on a hot day. But, like most of the same author's works, it wants vigour and originality. Paul de Musset is a careful and a polished writer, and whatever he executes conveys the idea of his having done his best; but his best is by no means first-rate, and he labours under the great disadvantage of having a younger brother a far cleverer fellow than himself. Nevertheless, he is not to be spoken of disrespectfully. Slight as most of his productions are, they are often graceful, and sometimes witty. One of his recent bluettes, Fleuranges, although a thrice-told tale, is distinguished by its charming vivacity and lightness.
We turn to François le Champi, by George Sand. We need hardly say that Madame Dudevant is any thing but a favourite of ours. Whilst admitting her genius and great literary talent, we deplore the evil application of such rare powers, – the perversion of intellect so high to purposes so mischievous. And we cannot agree with M. de Lomenie, who, in his sketch of her life, asserts the pernicious influence of her books to be greatly exaggerated, maintaining that "the catastrophe of almost all of them contains a sort of morality of misfortune which, to a certain extent, replaces any other." This is a specious, but a very hollow argument. How many of those who read George Sand's books have ability or inclination to strike this nice balance between virtue and vice, and do not rather yield themselves captives to the seductive eloquence with which the poetess depicts and palliates the immorality of her characters! Her earlier works gave her a fair claim to the title of the Muse of Adultery, which some uncivil critic conferred on her. The personages were invariably husband, wife, and lover, and the former was by no means the best treated of the three. After a while she deviated from this formula – employed other types, and produced occasionally books of a less objectionable character; but, upon the whole, they are ill to choose amongst. In the one before us there is no great harm, but neither is there much to admire. As a literary production, it is below the average of its predecessors. It is a story of peasant life in western France. George Sand is taking a country walk one evening, when her companion accuses her of making her rustics speak the language of cities. She admits the charge, but urges, in extenuation, that if she makes the dweller in the fields speak as he really speaks, she must subjoin a translation for the civilised reader. Her friend still insists on the possibility of elevating the peasant dialect, without depriving it of its simplicity; of writing a book in language that a peasant might employ, and which a Parisian would understand without a single explanatory note. To professors and amateurs of literary art, the discussion is of interest. Madame Sand agrees to attempt the task; and takes for her subject a tale she has heard related the previous evening, at a neighbouring farm-house. She calls it François le Champi, but her critic cavils at the very title. Champi, he says, is not French. George Sand quotes Montaigne, to prove the contrary, although the dictionary declares the word out of date. A champi is a foundling, or child abandoned in the fields, the derivation being from champ. And having thus justified her hero's cognomen, she at once introduces him, at the tender age of six years, boarded by the parish with Zabella, an old woman who dwells in a hovel, and lives on the produce of a few goats and fowls that find subsistence on the common. Madeleine Blanchet, the pretty and very young wife of the miller of Cornouer, takes compassion on the poor infant, and finds means to supply him, unknown to her brutal husband and cross mother-in-law, with food and raiment. The child grows into a comely lad, gentle, intelligent, and right-hearted, and devotedly attached to Madeleine. He enters the service of the miller, a rough dissipated fellow, given up to the fascinations of a loose widow, Madame Sévère, a sort of rural Delilah, who tries to seduce the handsome Champi, and, failing of success, instils jealousy into the ear of the miller, who drives François from his house. The young man finds occupation in a distant village, and returns to the mill of Cornouer only when its master is dead and Madeleine on a bed of sickness, to rescue his benefactress from grasping creditors, by means of a sum of money his unknown father has transmitted to him. George Sand makes every woman in the book fall in love with the Champi; but he repulses all, save one, and that one never dreams of loving him otherwise than as a mother. At last one of the fair ones who would fain have gained his heart, generously reveals to him, what he himself has difficulty in believing, that he is in love with Madeleine Blanchet; and, further, compassionating his timidity, undertakes to break the ice to the pretty widow. It requires a talent like that of George Sand to give an air of probability to all this. There are at most but a dozen years' difference between Madeleine and the Champi, but the reader has been so much accustomed to look upon them in the light of mother and son, that he is somewhat startled on finding the boy of nineteen enamoured of the woman of thirty. The love-passages, however, are managed with Madame Sand's usual skill. As a picture of peasant life, the book yields internal evidence of fidelity. The granddaughter of the farmer-general of Berri has called up the memories of her youthful days, passed in happy liberty upon the sunny banks of Indre, and of the years of connubial discontent that went heavily by in her husband's Aquitanian castle, when country rides and the study of Nature's book were her chief resources. It was from this castle of Nohant that the Baroness Dudevant fled, now nearly twenty years ago, to commence the exceptional existence she since has led. We may venture to take a page from her Lettres d'un Voyageur– a page replete with that peculiar fascination which renders her pen so powerful for good or evil.
"It grieves me not to grow old, it would grieve me much to grow old alone; but I have not yet met the being with whom I would fain have lived and died; or, if I have met him, I have not known how to keep him. Hearken to a tale, and weep. There was a good artist, called Watelet, who engraved in aquafortis better than any man of his time. He loved Margaret Lecomte, and taught her to engrave as well as himself. She left her husband, her wealth, and her country, to live with Watelet. The world cursed them; then, as they were poor and humble, it forgot them. Forty years afterwards there were discovered, in the neighbourhood of Paris, in a little house called Moulin-Joli, an old man who engraved in aquafortis, with an old woman whom he called his Meunière, who also engraved at the same table. The last plate they executed represented Moulin-Joli, Margaret's house, with this device, —Cur valle permutem Sabinâ divitias operosiores! It hangs in my room, above a portrait whose original no one here has seen. During one year, he who gave me that portrait seated himself every night with me at a little table, and lived on the same labour as myself. At daybreak we consulted each other on our work, and we supped at the same table, talking of art, of sentiment, and of the future. The future has broken its word to us. Pray for me, O Margaret Lecomte!"
It is no secret that Madame Dudevant's Watelet was Jules Sandeau, a French novelist of some ability, whose name still makes frequent apparitions in the windows of circulating libraries, and at the foot of newspaper feuilletons. Let us see what M. de Lomenie says of this period of her life, and of her first appearance in the lists of literature, in his brief but amusing memoir of this remarkable woman.
"Some time after the July revolution, there appeared a book entitled, Rose et Blanche, or the Actress and the Nun. This book, which at first passed unnoticed, fell by chance into a publisher's hands; he read it, and, struck by the richness of certain descriptive passages, and by the novelty of the situations, he inquired the author's address. He was referred to a humble lodging-house, and, upon applying there, was conducted to a small attic. There he saw a young man writing at a little table, and a young woman painting flowers by his side. These were Watelet and Margaret Lecomte. The publisher spoke of the book, and it appeared that Margaret, who could write books as well as Watelet, and even better, had written a good part, and the best part, of this one; only, as books sold badly, or not at all, she combined with her literary occupations the more lucrative labour of a colourist. Encouraged by the publisher's approval, she took from a drawer a manuscript written entirely by herself; the publisher examined it, bought it, doubtless very cheap, and might have paid a much higher price without making a bad speculation, for it was the manuscript of Indiana. Soon after that, Margaret Lecomte left Watelet, took half his name, called herself George Sand, and of that half name has made herself one which shines to-day amongst the greatest and most glorious."
Somebody has hazarded the sweeping assertion that the lover is the King of George Sand's novels. George Sand herself is the queen of the class of femmes incomprises, the victim of a mariage de convenance. The death of her grandmother left her, at the very moment she quitted the convent where she had been educated, alone and almost friendless. Ignorant of the world, she allowed herself to be married to a rough old soldier, who led a prosaic existence in a lonely country-house, had no notion of romance, sentiment, or reverie, and made little allowance for them in others. The days that ought to rank amongst the brightest memories of a woman's heart, the early years of marriage, were a blank, or worse, to Aurora Dudevant, and the bitterness thus amassed not unfrequently breaks forth in her writings. It has been urged by her partisans, in extenuation of her conjugal faux pas, that her husband was ignorant and brutal. On the other hand, the idle have invented many of the delinquencies imputed to her since her separation, just as they have told absurd stories about her fantastical habits; and have made her out a sort of literary Lola Montes, swaggering and smoking in man's attire, and brandishing pistol and horsewhip with virile energy and effect. The atmosphere of Paris is famous for its magnifying powers. Seen through it, a grain of sand becomes a mountain, an eccentricity is often distended into a vice. We lay this down as a rule, which none who know and understand the French metropolis will dispute; but we do not, at the same time, in any way take up the gloves in defence of George Sand, with whom we have not the honour of a personal acquaintance, and whose writings would certainly incline us to somewhat ready credence of her irregularities and masculine addictions. Now that she has attained the ripe age of forty-four, we may suppose her sobered down a little. Before the February revolution upset society, and drove the majority of the wealthy from Paris, we happen to know she was a welcome guest in some of the most fashionable and aristocratic drawing-rooms of the Faubourg St Germain, where she was sought and cultivated for the charm of her conversation. Since the revolution, there have been reports of her presiding, or at least assisting, at democratic orgies; but these rumours, as the newspapers say, "require confirmation." Since we have, somehow or other, got led into this long gossip about the lady, we will make another extract from the writer already quoted, who tells an amusing story of his first introduction, obtained by means of a misdelivered note, intended by the authoress of Lelia for a man who cured smoky chimnies. A resemblance of name brought the missive (a summons to a sick funnel) into the hands of the biographer, who, puzzled at first, finally resolved to take advantage of the mistake, to ascertain whether George Sand really did wear boots and spurs, and smoke Virginian in a short pipe. He expected something masculine and alarming, but in this respect was agreeably disappointed.
"I saw before me a woman of short stature, of comfortable plumpness, and of an aspect not at all Dantesque. She wore a dressing gown, in form by no means unlike the wrapper which I, a commonplace mortal, habitually wear; her fine hair, still perfectly black, whatever evil tongues may say, was separated on a brow broad and smooth as a mirror, and fell freely adown her cheeks, in the manner of Raphael; a silk handkerchief was fastened loosely round her throat; her eyes, to which some painters persist in imparting an exaggerated power of expression, were remarkable, on the contrary, for their melancholy softness; her voice was sweet, and not very strong; her mouth, especially, was singularly graceful; and in her whole attitude there was a striking character of simplicity, nobility, and calm. In the ample temples and rich development of brow, Gall would have discerned genius; in the frankness of her glance, in the outline of her countenance, and in the features, correct but worn, Lavater would have read, it seems to me, past suffering, a time-present somewhat barren, an extreme propensity to enthusiasm, and consequently to discouragement. Lavater might have read many other things, but he certainly could have discovered neither insincerity, nor bitterness, nor hatred, for there was not a trace of these on that sad but serene physiognomy. The Lelia of my imagination vanished before the reality; and it was simply a good, gentle, melancholy, intelligent, and handsome face that I had before my eyes.
"Continuing my examination, I remarked with pleasure that the grande désolée had not yet completely renounced human vanities; for, beneath the floating sleeves of her gown, at the junction of the wrist with the white and delicate hand, I saw the glitter of two little gold bracelets of exquisite workmanship. These feminine trinkets, which became her much, greatly reassured me touching the sombre tint, and the politico-philosophic exaltation, of certain of George Sand's recent writings. One of the hands that thus caught my attention concealed a cigarito, and concealed it badly, for a treacherous little column of smoke ascended behind the back of the prophetess."
Whether or no the interview thus described really took place, Madame Dudevant should feel obliged to her biographer for his gentle treatment and abstinence from exaggeration. On the strength of the puff of smoke and the epicene dressing gown, many writers would have sketched her hussar fashion, and hardly have let her off the mustaches.
We are nearly at the end of our parcel, at least of such portion of it as appears worthy a few words. Here are a brace of volumes by M. de Kock, over which we are not likely long to linger. An esteemed contributor to Maga expressed, a few years ago, his and our opinion concerning this ancient dealer in dirt – namely, that he has no deliberate intention to corrupt the morals or alarm the delicacy of his readers, for that morals and delicacy are words of whose meaning he has not the slightest conception. Paul, every Frenchman tells you, is not read in France, save by milliners' girls and shopboys, or by literary porters, who solace the leisure of their lodge by a laugh over his pages, contraband amongst gens comme il faut. No man is a prophet in his own land; and yet we have certain reasons for believing that, even in France, Paul has more readers, avowed or secret, than his countrymen admit. But at any rate, we can offer the old gentleman (for M. Kock must be waxing venerable, and his son has for some years been before the public as an author,) the consolatory assurance, that in England he has numerous admirers, to judge from the thumbed condition of a set of his works, which caught our eye last summer on the shelves of a London circulating library. To these amateurs of "Kockneyisms," whether genuine cockneys, or naturalised cooks and barbers from Gaul, Taquinet le Bossu will be welcome. The hunchback, everybody knows, is a great type in France. Who is not acquainted with the glorious Mayeux, the swearing, fighting, love-making hero of a host of popular songs, anecdotes, and caricatures, and of more than one romance – especially of a four-volume one by Ricard, a deceased rival of De Kock? Well, Paul – who, we must admit, is quite original, and disdains imitation – has never meddled with the hackneyed veteran Mayeux, but now creates a hunchback of his own. Taquinet is the dwarf clerk of a notary, luxuriating in a wage of fifty pounds a-year, and a hunch of the first magnitude. Pert as a magpie, mischievous and confiding, devoted to the fair sex, and especially to its taller specimens, he is a fine subject for Monsieur de Kock, who gets him into all manner of queer scrapes, some not of the most refined description. The French hunchback, we must observe, is a genus apart – quite different from high-shouldered people of other countries. Far from being susceptible on the score of his dorsal protuberance, he views it in the light of an excellent joke, a benefaction of nature, placed upon his spine for the diversion of himself and his fellow-men. The words bosse and bossu (hunch and hunchback) have various idiomatic and proverbial applications in France. To laugh like a bossu, implies the ne plus ultra of risibility: se donner une bosse– literally, to give one's-self a hunch – is synonymous with sharing in a jovial repast where much is eaten and more drunk. An excellent caricature in the Charivari, some years ago, represented a group of half-starved soldiers sitting round a fire of sticks at the foot of Atlas, and picking a dromedary's scull – "Pas moyen de se donner une bosse!" exclaims one of the dissatisfied conscripts. On twelve hundred francs per annum, poor Taquinet often makes the same complaint; and, in hopes of bettering his fortune, wanders into Germany on a matrimonial venture, there to be jilted by Fraulein Carottsmann, for a strolling player with one coat and three sets of buttons, who styles himself Marquis, because he has been occasionally hissed in the line of characters designated in France by that aristocratic denomination. Then there is a general of Napoleon's army who cannot write his name; and a buxom sutler and a handsome aide-de-camp, sundry grisettes, and the other dramatis personæ habitually to be met with in the pages of Paul – the whole set forth in indifferent French, and garnished with buffoonery and impropriety, after the usual fashion of this zany of Parisian novelists.