literature. Its poets were ruined in their struggle against the double barbarism of church and state; and their writings were burned as so many violations of the pure Roman faith.

The volumes before us close with M. Fauriel's views on the subject of this last persecution. They are taken from the preface to a volume published ten years; and scarcely known to English readers. It is a versified history of a part of the war against the Albigenses. It deserves a separate examina

tion.

M. Fauriel's researches, and his most able exposition of his conclusions, will be fatal to a crowd of speculations upon the sources of modern romance and poetry. But in raising a splendid system of literary and social history upon the deepest and widest foundations, his merit does not consist so much in the originality of his opinion, that the poetry of the Troubadours sprang out of old elements, and was composed extensively of earlier materials, as in the great ability with which he has traced out numerous proofs of the correctness of this opinion. Before his day, and also in his time, but without any communication with him, distinguished writers of our own had settled the filiation of modern with classical letters, and especially romance. Warton did so in the last century; and earlier authorities might be cited to the same purpose.

More

recently, Sir Walter Scott, a very Troubadour himself, had suggested correct views on the subject; and the late learned Mr. Price had pursued them to sounder conclusions than Sir Walter's, with greater force of argument and equal eloquence of language. The judgment of Mr. Price on the point is illustrated by a brilliant citation from Campbell, who also took the right side of a question, which, when M. Fauriel's works are well known, will scarcely be ever again disputed.

The resemblances to be found in modern romance and classical fictions are obviously too intimate,' says Mr. Price, to have been the result of accident, or a common development of circumstances possessing some general affinity. The majority, on investigation, will be found to have been derived, however indirectly, from sources of classical antiquity; and their existence in this dismembered state forcibly illustrates a remark of Mr. Campbell's, which is equally distinguished for its truth and its beauty,-'that fiction travels on still lighter wings (than science), and scatters the seeds of her wild flowers imperceptibly over the world, till they surprise us by springing up with similarity, in regions the most remotely divided.' (Essay on English Poetry, p. 30.) But while these resemblances tend to establish the fact, that popular fiction is in its nature traditional, they necessarily direct our attention to another important question,-the degree of

antiquity to be ascribed to the great national fables relative to Arthur, Theoderic, and Charlemagne.'*

The numerous admirers of the genius of the late Mr. Price, will be gratified at finding in such a work as M. Fauriel's, a confirmation of his opinions, and a rational explanation of the difficulties to which he alludes.

It would be a most curious speculation to subject the numerous theories afloat upon the rise of modern poetry, to the test of M. Fauriel's arguments. Mr. Laing's learned vindication of the claims of the Scandinavians to a parentage of the oldest date, and to its fruits in at least the whole of the literature of Britain; and the German pretensions to an originality beyond recorded history for their remarkable early poetry, would be found alike at fault. Perhaps the most interesting part of these volumes, is the chapter in which the source of the German Minnesingers' poems seems to be traced to demonstration, to the Provençals, in the delightful story of Walther of Aquitaine, a very few words of which will lead the reader to wish to be better acquainted with it.

Walther of Aquitaine, the genius of civilization, has escaped from the court of Attila, where he was a hostage. He is attacked in his flight by a barbarous chief, whose followers he defeats with great slaughter, in a succession of single combats. He has fled from Attila, with another hostage, Hildegunde, the daughter of his mother's brother; and he is affianced to her. After inflicting a severe check upon his assailants, he resolves at nightfall, to await a second attack on the mountains where he had halted, that it might not be said he had fled like a thief in the dark!' He first makes the access to his post secure. Then, kneeling on the bodies of the men he had killed, embraces them one after another; and turning to the east with his sword drawn, he pronounces this brief prayer.

I offer my grateful thanks to thee, O God, the Creator of all things, and without whose permission nothing comes to pass,—I thank thee for preserving my life from the sword of my enemies, and my honour from their reproach. And I humbly pray, O Lord, who wouldest not that the wicked should perish, but that his sin should pass away, I humbly pray that I may see these dead men again in heaven.'-Hist. de la Poesie Provençale, vol. i., p. 373.

The scene of this unexpected incident is a high point of the Vosges, in which the fugitives had found a safe halting place. The next day's combat ended well; and Walther escaped

* Preface by Mr. Price to the edition of 1824 of Warton's English Poetry,' vol. i., p. 72.

with his bride into Aquitaine, to carry on the long struggle of the old civilization of the south and west against the encroachments and invasions of the barbarous tribes from the north and east.

It has been observed, as a defect in M. Fauriel's system of civilization, that he recognises conquest as one of its legitimate elements. This is the more surprising, inasmuch as the most powerful part of his whole work is his indignant denouncement of the conquering Franks, whose inroads upon his Provençals, and men of the south, unquestionably caused enormous misery. He also saw with an eagle-eye the great mischief afterwards inflicted on the south by the wars of religious conquest against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, he takes no distinct stand against force as a means of extending dominion, as contradistinguished from the more civilizing progress of peace, and commerce, and all enlightened arts. He mentions, almost in a spirit of approval, certainly, with no terms of reproof, the perpetual wars of the early Massilians with their barbarous neighbours; which were extensively wars of conquest, not defence. He treats in the same way the conquests made by the Romans with their aid, the result of which was an enor mous increase of the territories of the Massilians from the spoil of the conquered tribes. He looks upon the subsequent conquest and attendant civilization of all Gaul by the Romans as indispensable and proper coincidences. He eulogises Charle magne the conqueror, as much as Charlemagne the civilizer. He has not a word of indignation for the enormities of conquer ing crusaders in the East, however naturally he may narrate with satisfaction the decline of the power of the invading Musselmen and Arabian conquerors of Spain and of the west. In one word, his warm sympathies are given to the warlike strains of the Troubadours, as much as to their lays of peace and refine

ment.

This is a great fault in such a man, and with such a theme. He has done so much, and his influence in France has been so great, that his stopping short of the legitimate consequences of his own doctrines, is deeply to be regretted. The testimonies in honour of Fauriel would fill a volume. A portion of them is contained in the writings of Benjamin Constant, of Destutt de Tracy, of Cabanis, of Madame de Stael, of Cousin, of Villemain, of Guizot, of Thierry, and a host of other French men of letters. Of foreigners, Monte, Manzoni, and W. Schlegel, may be mentioned as a mere specimen of those who duly appreciated his great talents. In England he seems to have attracted notice on one occasion only; namely, in the struggle for the inde pendence of Greece. His Songs of Greece presented a rare

union of learning and taste. They received an eloquent eulogy in the Westminster Review,' and a zealous translator in Mr. R. B. Sheridan. M. Fauriel's watchful regard of most of our literary labours, during his long life, deserved a more diligent study on our part of his works. If he had followed our AngloSaxon history with somewhat greater care, he would unquestionably have become more intimate with our successes in a field, the importance of which could not have escaped his penetration. It is, perhaps, the only branch of literature in which he seems to be deficient.

M. Fauriel's works should be collected. During, fifty years he was deeply versed in all that was enlightened throughout Europe; and his ablest contemporaries attribute to him the rise of the modern school of history in France. His miscellaneous criticisms are a most valuable series of essays on historical and philosophical subjects; and his correspondence may be expected to furnish treasures equally valuable. Happily the integrity of the man corresponded with his talents. With the higher prospect of fortune when Bonaparte was consul, he preferred an obscure retreat to an advancement that must degrade his principles; and, for thirty years, he steadily acted up to those principles in defiance of the double seduction of the Empire and of the Restoration.

'Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.'

After the Revolution of 1830, he received a poor but characteristic reward, by being appointed the first Professor of Foreign Literature in Paris, a chair said to have been founded for him. The book, too briefly noticed in this article, contains many of the lectures read in that chair.

M. Fauriel died, at an advanced age, in 1844, universally respected, leaving his vast collection of manuscripts, more or less complete, to the care of an English lady, and to the literary supervision of Dr. Jules Mohl, the able editor of these volumes.

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Art. II. The Select Works and Memoirs of the late Rev. Joseph Fletcher, D.D. By the Rev. Joseph Fletcher, Jun., of Hanley. 3 Vols. 8vo. London: John Snow. 1846.

THE multiplication of 'memoirs' threatens to become a serious evil. There is no rule of justice or wisdom governing, to any considerable extent, this department of literature. Self-conceit, and private partiality, are continually intruding upon the public histories without events, and letters without meaning. Men of truth and honour are shocked and disgusted at the wholesale exaggeration which marks the records of those they knew, perhaps too well, while living; and the simple-minded and unsuspicious are startled and amazed that they should never have detected the astonishing excellencies of members of their own circle, and dwellers in their own neighbourhood. The canon that only good should be spoken of the dead, is caricatured and abused. Ordinary talent becomes extraordinary genius, common consistency is transformed into singular holiness, and an average amount of patient suffering obtains the honours due only to heroic courage and martyr-like fortitude. Judging from the manner in which lives' are generally written, it might be supposed that death secured the past as well as future perfection of Christians; or, that their characters, like their wills, were only known after their departure. Many of them, if permitted to revisit earth, would be utterly unable to detect their own likenesses, which, as bad portraits, need a name to be recognised by any one.

A powerful reason of the unnecessary and injurious multiplicity of biographical works is doubtless a mistake affecting the use and application of a plain and important truth. The distinction is not sufficiently observed between commonness of character and commonness of condition. All admit that the most useful biographies are those of men who have filled the most common spheres, and passed through the most common experiences. A pattern is valuable, other things being equal, in proportion to the number of points at which it meets and resembles the cases of those who are intended to be taught and stimulated. As Sprat observes, in his Life of Cowley,' 'It is from the practice of men equal to ourselves that we are more naturally taught how to command our passions, to direct our knowledge, and to govern our actions.' But this being the end of examples, if it be desirable that they should have a considerable similarity of outward condition and mode of life to those of the men before whom they are presented, it is indispensable that they possess a high order of moral excellence. It is not enough, to fit for this office, that a man have lived, had the