the stately academic courtesy in such renderings as "Not I, but Varius," which is as much a distortion of " Scriberis Vario," as "grimed" is of "nigrum." "Not mine-no, nor mine," reads affectedly, and has a faint tinge of clap-trap. "Dark Ulysses" gives a Christian view of Ulysses alien from that of the ancients. They rather liked and admired Ulysses. He was a sort of legendary spoilt child and enfant terrible among heroes; a quaint cross between a Homeric Columbus and a Homeric Munchausen. They never mention him without a grin of satisfaction, not at all rendered in "dark Ulysses." "Pelops' house unblesť" is feeble for "sava Pelopis domus," and again introduces a Christian element, in which the, here, truly "dark" and bloody savagery implied in sava is drowned in attar of roses or holy water. There is something really very simple, unaffected, yet fine, in the "tenues grandia," for which "my weak wit" is conceited and falsely modest. "Tenues" refers less to Horace himself, or his wit, than to the character of his subjects. If there is the faintest sidelong glance at himself, it is magnified a thousand times in "my weak wit."

Professor Conington may fairly say that it is a choice of difficulties; and so it no doubt is. We congratulate him heartily upon having overcome so many. It is no small achievement to have given a translation of Horace which Latin scholars can read with attention and with genuine pleasure; and the careful comparison of which at every step, while it cannot fail to increase their insight into the poet's meaning, must impress them not only with the impossibility of the task, but the wonderful science and maturity with which Professor Conington has dared to cope with it.

ART. III.-WITS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Euvres de Chamfort, précédées d'une étude sur sa vie et son esprit. Par Arsène Houssaye.

Galerie du XVIII Siècle. Par Arsène Houssaye.

Histoire de la Presse en France. Par Eugène Hatin. Vol. VII. Esprit de Rivarol. Paris, 1808.

Causeries du Lundi. Par M. C. A. Sainte-Beuve. Vols. III., IV.

THE reader, whose historical zeal carries him to the earlier numbers of the Moniteur Universel, as they appeared during the weeks of the Terror, finds himself confronted by one of those half-comical, half-revolting contrasts, for which human

nature-and especially French human nature-shows from time to time so strange a capacity. In one column he will perusc the long morning list of victims of the Conciergerie,-old men and maidens, rich and poor, strong and weak, alike swept promiscuously away under the ruthless ban of hostility to the commonweal, and, ere their doom printed, already on the road to death. In the other, as he turns shuddering away, he will be detained by an almost equally long list of "to-night's entertainments," grand scenic tableaux, emblematic ballets, hippodromes à la Grecque, masked balls, the comic opera, the successful vaudeville, all proceeding with complete regularity, and all apparently in the greatest possible request. What, he will exclaim, must be the innate frivolity, the cruel indifference, the latent barbarism of a race which saw nothing strange in such an appalling mixture of tragedy and farce! Were they men or fiends who could be thus casily amused, while death hung over each, and the pavement outside streamed with kindred blood? Who but the traditional "tigre-singe" could skip away, yet bloody-handed from civil slaughter, to applaud the nimble fect of some venal Terpsichore, or the quips and cranks of some fashionable buffoon?

We shall run the suspicion, we fear, of the same sort of inhuman versatility if we invite our readers to a less grave, but scarcely less characteristic, aspect of the French Revolution than that with which history has rendered them the most familiar. Friends and foes for the most part, though differing wide as heaven and earth in all beside, have depicted it in the light of the sublimest of human tragedies. Whatever else a sympathising or a hostile critic judged it, both regarded it as colossal; and colossal in a sense that forbade, as if half profane, the notice of those collateral topics which, in meaner matters, might appropriately claim attention. The scale of action was heroic, the performers demi-gods or demi-fiends, and praise and censure alike assumed a tone of fitting gravity and respect. The halffrantic vehemence of Burke, the curses of an army of Tory denunciators, the shrieks of political or religious cowardice, the vindictive Conservatism-which in our own days has dwindled down to the Cassandra-like maledictions of a single maudlin peer-for a long while accustomed Englishmen to regard that strange series of events as a catastrophe whose Titanic proportions overwhelmed the sense, an outrage at which heaven and earth might stand aghast, and which struck mankind with awful silence, a conflagration, lit with no earthly flame, blazing at our very doors, and too full of grand results, one way or the other, to our species, for any language but the impassioned cry of hope, the solemn denunciation, the groan of horror and despair. At length the flames died down, the smoke cleared

away, and it gradually became perceptible that the universe remained intact. The calm, half-humorous genius of Carlyle, piercing through the golden haze of rhodomontade, and fathoming the shallows of many a tempest-ridden tea-cup, marshalled the facts of the story into artistic shape, reduced heroes and demons alike to strictly terrestrial proportions, and proved that the grand convulsion of French society, when cleared of fictitious embellishment, was the handiwork of no superhuman agents, but of irritable, passionate, and, in many cases, extremely feeble men; that vanity, jealousy, and a host of petty instincts had at least as much to do with it as the grander passions of our nature; and that though, in the evolution of the drama, some natures beyond the ordinary standard of daring and ability disclosed themselves,-and one intellect at least of the very highest order rose upon the surrounding chaos,-yet that most of its results could be accounted for by the activity of commonplace emotions working in a host of inferior minds, and had a side which was far more ludicrous than either terrific or sublime. A few striking personages stand of course foremost on the stage, and vindicate in more than one instance the doubtful honour of monstrosity. Louis XV., an effete Sardanapalus, grovelling daily deeper in his sensuality; Orleans, rubicund already as if with a Tartarean glow; Danton, a portent of ferocious power; Mirabeau, shaking his lion-like locks, and preparing, as a giant refreshed with wine, for the subjection of a pigmy race; the stately Austrian lady, imperial in her very weaknesses, falling queen-like and undismayed amid curses and gibes; Corday, hurrying in joyful enthusiasm to her perilous emprise; Roland, in her white robe and flowing locks, confronting her accusers, or returning from the tribunal in more than stoical dignity to announce her doom,-these are indeed the conspicuous personages of the tale, but they are not the whole; nor did their earnestness for good or evil, their strength of will, the intensity with which they felt, the scale upon which they acted, represent the true character of the great mass of Frenchmen. Behind them stand inferior performers, and it was these, after all, that made the Revolution what we know it to have been. attitude of mind the very reverse of majestic, a childish passion for display, an insatiable thirst for flattery, an exquisite sensitiveness to the sting of satire, a passionate and unthinking rebellion against the inequalities incidental to human society, such was the thin soil out of which the Revolution sprang, such were the motive principles which shaped its onward course. It was natural enough that a generation bred in an atmosphere like this, should, when it came to be engaged in any considerable undertaking, become from time to time bombastic, theatrical, and extravagant. It was equally natural that men of such a cast, trained

An

by the tradition of centuries in the habits of brilliant conversation, and wielding a language of incomparable neatness and pliability, should carry the art of effective rejoinder to the utmost possible perfection, and should assign to witty and epigrammatic language a controversial importance which less impressible natures find it difficult to understand.

This was conspicuously the case in Revolutionary France. A large section of society, elevating drawing-room repartee into a standard of thought, accepted a witticism as a refutation, and considered that a thing ceased to be true when it began to look ridiculous. The salon life of Paris-the paradise of an army of ambitious idlers-engendered a tone of mind in which far less attention was paid to the accuracy with which an idea was thought out than to the elegance with which it was expressed. To achieve a social success was for the aspirant to fame the most imperative of all necessities, and for this neatness, brilliancy, promptitude, were alone essential. A race of men grew up astonishingly skilful in the fence of words, masters of forcible, pithy expressions, but superficial in knowledge, shallow in thought, and utterly innocent of all earnest intention. They breathed the poisoned air of a vicious society, whose refinement but gave a piquancy to systematic heartlessness and crime. They carried their convictions just so far as the fine ladies, whose smiles they sought, considered it in good taste to follow; their scepticism began in restlessness, and ended in a sneer; their philosophy was the cynicism of faded voluptuaries; their ambition, to live in the mouths of a fashionable coterie; their keenest pleasure, to transfix a rival with the envenomed weapon of a sarcastic epigram. The criticism passed by one of them upon another might with justice be applied to the whole class of which both were members, and serve as the epitaph for a school of wits: "Superficiellement instruit," writes Chamfort of Rulhières, "détaché de tous principes, l'erreur lui était aussi bonne que la vérité quand elle pouvait faire briller la frivolité de son esprit. Il n'envisageait les grandes choses que sous de petits rapports, n'aimait que les tracasseries de la politique, n'était éclairé que de bluettes, et ne voyait dans l'histoire que ce qu'il avait vu dans les petites intrigues de la société." The French empire was, according to the famous definition, a despotism tempered by epigrams. The fashionable creed of a large section alike of its assailants and supporters might be described as cynicism set ablaze with wit.

Two men, conspicuous champions on either side, may be accepted as the types of the class above described; and their performances, although already the object of more literary zeal than their importance might seem to merit, are yet so amusing, and at the same time throw so real a light upon the true history

of the times, that we make no apology for introducing them in detail to our readers' attention: Rivarol, the champion of the departing régime; Chamfort, the fanatic of equality, and the assiduous composer and collector of revolutionary facetiæ. The delicate pencil of M. Sainte Beuve has already sketched the characters of both, and enabled us to understand the real affinity of thought and disposition which, under a superficial appearance of antagonism, bound the two men together, and stamped them, though fighting in different camps, as in reality kindred natures. Both have left a long list of excellent stories to attest the justice of a contemporary reputation, and the humour of each will be best appreciated by being introduced in connection with the principal circumstances of his career.

The society which, half way through the eighteenth century, excited the aspirations of an ambitious Frenchman, was no longer that of Versailles. To the court of Louis XV. survived nothing but the tedious ceremonial and the complete depravity of his great-grandfather's period. The intellectual prestige, which lent a refining splendour to the great monarch's reputation, had vanished along with everything else decent and respectable. The palace was as gloomy as it was corrupt; "quant à la gaieté," says the historian, "il n'en était plus question, le foyer de l'esprit et des lumières était à Paris." Madame Campan, indeed, with the applausive servility of a royal servant, informs us that the king knew how to jest, and occasionally honoured his dependants with witticisms which proved "la finesse de son esprit, et l'élévation de ses sentiments." As specimens, however, of the one and the other, she gives the stupid slang terms by which the Sovereign was pleased to designate the four princesses who had the misfortune to acknowledge his paternity; and she suggests that his répertoire of indelicate phraseology was sedulously enlarged by reference to the dictionary when in his mistresses' society. It is pleasant to turn from such a scene to the dignified reply made by M. de Brissac, one of the few courtiers to whom decency had not come to be a joke. The king was rallying him upon the sensitiveness he displayed as to some matrimonial catastrophe. Allons, Monsieur de Brissac, ne vous fachez pas; c'est un petit malheur; ayez bon courage." "Sire," said the injured husband, "j'ai toutes les espèces de courage, excepté celui de la honte.' The arrival of Marie Antoinette no doubt infused a new spirit into the dull routine of wickedness which had hitherto prevailed at court. Monsieur de Brissac again figures as the author of an appropriate rejoinder. "Mon Dieu," cried the young dauphiness, as the crowd surged under the balconies of the Tuileries, "Mon Dieu, que de monde!" "Madame," said the courtier, sans que Monsieur le Dauphin puisse s'en offenser, ce sont autant d'amoureux." Full of playfulness and vivacity, the young