being taken as models. Marvellous were the exploits in love, war, and midnight adventure, but Gimbo and G., the principal narrators, dwelt mostly on stories of wild beasts: amongst others, they related that lions had been seen to crack Bushmen's, Hottentots', and Kaffirs' heads in their jaws like hazel-nuts, merely eating the brains, having dined already heartily on Boers' Vraws, who were always fat and nice, like pigs at an agricultural show. One day a man pursuing an elephant in marshy ground fell into the hole made by his leg, and there stuck fast till the elephant generously returned, put his trunk round him, and pulled him out with a flop, like a cork from a ginger-beer bottle. Upon which O'Rourke remarked, "It was a pity a fox didn't happen to pass, or he might have brushed his clothes." A glass of wine with Mr. Longhead. G. called out to Bright, and said: "Bright, I don't think your friend would much relish being charged by a rhinoceros ?" Bright. Mr. President, I appeal to you; my friend is insulted. The President rose and said: "It appears to me there is but one way of settling this affair; it would, in a case so gross as this, be most unbecoming in G. to offer an apology; and as to your accepting it, Bright, it is quite out of the question. Mr. Vice, ring the bell." The bell was rung; the mess waiter appeared. wants you." "The president You have heard President. Bring up coffee and pistols for two. the order, gentlemen; do you abide by my decision, or shall I report the affair to the colonel in the morning? G. and Bright both bowed to the president. The mess waiter returned, bringing with him on a large silver salver two cups of coffee and a brace of pistols. "Are you sure," inquired the president, "that the pistols are carefully loaded ?" "Yes, sir, the drum-major loaded them himself." "Gentlemen, take your coffee whilst Mr. Vice measures out twelve napkins-it will steady your hands." The ground was measured, and the principals were posted. The pistols being handed to them by Mr. Vice, Mr. Longhead entreated, and implored them not to proceed; he did not in the least mind what had been said of him; and tears literally filled his eyes. The president whispered confidentially that most likely only one of the combatants would be killed, and if they did not fight they would both be obliged to leave the service. "Gentlemen, you will observe me drink this glass of claret; I shall do it slowly. You will fire the instant I turn up the heel-tap." They fired together; the pistols having been heavily loaded with powder, one of the mess servants, posted outside for the purpose, broke a pane of glass in the window behind Bright, as if the bullet had passed through it. Bright said it was very near, but he was not yet satisfied; but the prayers, entreaties, and anguish of poor Mr. Longhead prevailed with the president, who bade the combatants shake hands, and sending out the pistols, he ordered a glass of hot brandy-and-water and a cigar for each of them, and bade them sit together. The excitement of the above scene, and "the pepper in the soup," at last overcame Mr. Longhead, and he sank into a deep and heavy sleep. How was he to be got home? How fortunate the hand-barrows had been brought! He was so heavy in his sleep they rolled him on to it. Gimbo, G., the president, and Bright were bearers. Their arms began to feel fatigued with so weighty a burden, and, singularly enough, they put it down to rest just where one of those tiny streams come down the Heirengracht, and the bearers saw the waters gradually rise, till overflowing the dam the upper part of his stout legs had formed, a pretty little waterfall jutted forth on the other side. Gimbo, who was fond of Shakspeare, seeing Longhead still fast asleep, said, in a soliloquy, "Canst thou, oh partial sleep! give thy repose to the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude!" G. remarked, "If he had a headache in the morning, it would be an awful one, judging by the size of the head itself." Bright said it could be proved from Pope that he was sober now, though he might have been drunk before the cloth was off, for Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And that last tumbler of brandy-and-water was so stiff! The president proposed, instead of chopping logic at that hour of the morning, they should proceed, which was accordingly done. The barrow being removed from under "the Illustrious Stranger," he was left on the steps of the house of L. and X., where Bright first made his acquaintance. All the bearers but one ran off, taking with them the hand-barrow. Bright rang the bell violently, then ensconced himself behind a tree till he saw the door opened, and then followed his companions. Thus ended Mr. Longhead's first night at mess. The acquaintance of Mr. Longhead, so singularly begun, was not dropped; on the contrary, being a thoroughly good-tempered, goodnatured fellow, apologies were made to him. His second and subsequent mess-dinners were strikingly unlike the first. No one afterwards enjoyed the story more than himself, and never more was trick of any kind played upon him. The smoke from Mr. Longhead's cigar often rose in peace with that of the officers who occupied the guard-room benches in Government Gardens, and, mingling in contented unison, was at length gradually dispersed. And so fared the smokers! Mingle-Mangle by Monkshood. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWALS: X.-BALZAC. JEAN-LOUIS GUEZ DE BALZAC was born in 1594 at Angoulême. At twenty he began to travel in the service of the Duc d'Epernon, to whom his father (a gentleman of Languedoc, wedded to a lady who brought him as her marriage portion the lands of Balzac) was "attached." In Holland he became acquainted with Théophile, and is said, by that looseliving and loose-tongued reprobate, to have there brought upon himself, by his unbridled excesses, the maladies about which his letters were afterwards so plaintive. Whatever degree of truth, or of untruth, there may be in this charge, subsequently brought by a notorious demirep against a man of high character, as well as literary fame, the young traveller must have had his hours of study and application; for it was at this early period, and in this foreign land, that he composed his Political Discourse" sur l'état des Provinces-Unies." Soon afterwards he was engaged as agent by the Cardinal de La Valette, and in this capacity spent eighteen months at Rome during the years 1621-22. His stay in Italy had, on his own showing, the happiest influence on his style. It led him to compare Italian diction, its graces, harmonies, and finished art, with the rude and roughshod movements of his native prose. Returning to France, he began to exercise himself in composition. The result was that, what Malherbe had been to French poetry, Balzac became to French prose: united, they have the credit of inventing French polish. His ear was good, his knowledge of the Latin classics was extensive, and his study of Italian literature had been minute; by which endowments and acquirements he so far profited, that, as one of his biographers says, "he contrived to introduce a harmony and precision of style which were before unknown in French prose, and which acquired him the name of the most eloquent writer of his time, and the reformer of the French language." By some writers he has been put down on the list of assiduous visitors at the Hôtel de Rambouillet. M. Ch. Livet, in a recent contribution to the Moniteur (27th July, 1857), has proved, to the contrary, that he very rarely assisted at the reunions of the Marquise. The fact is, Balzac confined himself pretty closely, after returning from Italy, to his estates on the banks of the Charente, from which he only stirred five or six times during the rest of his life, to show himself in Paris. He came thither attracted by the promised favour of Richelieu, who had sought his friendship previous to becoming Minister and Cardinal, and to whose good-will he was eventually indebted for a pension of two thousand francs, and the honorary titles of Councillor of State and Historiographer of France. But the pension appears to have been far from regularly paid, and as for the honorary titles, Balzac called them magnifiques bagatelles, and was manifestly out of humour with his fortunes in the capital. His "proud soul," says D'Olivet, could not stoop to the patient endurance and cringing acknowledgments required from aspirants to success at court. "He had no wish to obtain by dint of persistance and importunity the favours he considered due to the splendour of his reputation, and preferred what his rural possessions afforded him, honestly, of the necessaries of life, to those superfluities which at court would have cost him too dear." Perhaps, adds the good abbé, a regard to the state of his health formed part of his philosophy: why run after riches, if you are not in a condition to enjoy them? For Balzac was not thirty years old when he began to complain that life was a burden to him; he felt older than his father, he said, and as "used up" as a ship that has thrice made the voyage to India. Balzac was renowned for his hyperboles, and probably these are of them. That malicious Théophile, however, would point to Holland, and talk of wild oats, and say, Hinc illa lachrymæ. The first volume of the "Letters," by which the Seigneur de Balzac made his great reputation, and yet retains it, or the name and tradition of it, was given to the world in 1624, when the writer was in his thirtieth year. They caused, we are told, a general revolution among the beauxesprits, who had hitherto formed a Republic, the dignities of which were shared among many; which Republic all at once became a Monarchy, in which M. de Balzac was raised to royalty by the suffrages of all. He was not talked of simply as the most eloquent man of the age, says Boileau, but as the only eloquent one. His glory was not only preeminent, but unique. According to Ménage, nothing could equal the eagerness of the public to get hold of a new volume of the Letters: no other present could gallants devise that would be so acceptable in the boudoirs, and so instantly devoured by the beaux yeux, of their mistresses. There was a rush for early copies, and the booksellers made something handsome by this Balzac-fever, happily for them so contagious and so violent in the ravages it wrought. Thus installed in lofty state on the "throne of Eloquence" as his admirers magniloquently phrase it, He was monarch of all he surveyed, His right there was none to dispute. He saw, in the words of l'Abbé d'Olivet, what, perhaps, was never seen elsewhere among authors, the jealousy of contemporaries silent before him. But what literary jealousy could not, dared not essay, was attempted by the zeal of a young Feuillant, named Dom André de SaintDenis, who fired up at some "indiscreet expressions" of Balzac the great letter-writer having remarked that "there are certain petty monks who are, in the Church, what rats and similar animals were in the Ark." Irate young Andrew avenged his order by publishing a piquant little bit of polemics. He was answered by Balzac's friends. The answer begat rejoinder, and rejoinder provoked reply, and so the wordy war went on, not the least doughty of the warriors being the general of the Feuillants himself, Father Goulu, who, under the nom de guerre (literally, for once) of Phyllarque, published two volumes, in which he treated Balzac not only as a plagiary and an ignoramus, but an atheist and debauchee. In these delectable tomes, entitled "Lettres de Phyllarque à Ariste," Jean Goulu calls Jean-Louis de Balzac execrable, detestable, abominable, impious, an enemy of mankind, a corrupter of youth, a disturber of the public peace, a criminal guilty of treason against heaven and earth; infamous, profane, an Epicurean, a Nero, a Sardanapalus, And everything that pretty is, in the vocabulary of spiritual slang. Good Abbé d'Olivet has no sort of sympathy with this rampant churchman, and comments on the utter absence of aught in Balzac's writings to show cause for this furious onslaught -that maligned genius being "in reality a man of good morals and full of religion." The damage done him by Father Goulu was insignificant, though the pamphlets it cost him to write, and the explanations it obliged him to put forth, were hurtful as a wear and tear" on his spirits.* He kept on writing a variety of petits ouvrages, all bearing the same impress, on subjects critical, ethical, political, and theological-maintaining, at the same time, an ample correspondence with his friends, if only to keep up his prestige as the very prince of letter-writers. His "Aristippe, ou de la Cour," dedicated to Christina, Queen of Sweden, and treating of the duties of royal and ministerial persons; and "Le Prince," described as a sort of commentary on the politics and events of his time, with a panegyric on Louis XIII. as the model of a good king; are less than caviare to the multitude of to-day. Better known is his "Christian Socrates," a treatise on the religion and morality of the new dispensation, and containing some wise and healthy reflections on the mischiefs of fanaticism, the fallacies of persecution, and the vice of hypocrisy, together with salutary cautions against an over-speculative tendency when dealing with the mysteries of faith. Besides which he composed Latin elegies and epistles, and a rather lively satire on pedants, "Le Barbon," which he dedicated to Ménage. By Ménage were published his Latin verses, &c., after his death, which occurred in 1655. He was buried, in conformity with directions he left, in the cemetery of the Hôpital d'Angoulême, to which institution he bequeathed a legacy of twelve thousand francs. Another item in his will consisted of a sum of two thousand francs made over to the Académie Française, to found a prize for eloquence in prose composition, that art in which he enjoyed the credit of being facile princeps. In our notice of Voiture it has already been shown, that if that sprightly gentleman represented the élégance factice of the Italians, Balzac is considered to be akin rather to the gravité emphatique of Spain. His diction, *He had the character, however, of caring for none of these things. Addison refers to this magnanimous indifference, with admiring respect: "The famous Monsieur Balzac," he says, "in a letter to the Chancellor of France, who had prevented the publication of a book against him, has the following words, which are a lively picture of the greatness of mind so visible in the works of that author. 'If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.' "The author here alludes," adds Addison (awful alliteration), "to those monuments of the Eastern nations, which were mountains of stones raised upon the dead body by travellers, that used to cast every one his stone upon it as they passed by. It is certain that no monument is so glorious as that which is thus raised by the hands of envy. For my part, I admire an author for such a temper of mind as enables him to bear an undeserved reproach without resentment, more than all the wit of any the finest satirical reply."-Spectator, No. 355. |