whole again." The other was an account of the death of a nobleman much beloved by the doctor,-the Duke of Beaufort; which he took so much to heart, that (I quote again) he said, "in the hearing of several persons, at the Bull-head tavern, in Clare-market, (whither he never came after,) that, now he had lost the only person whom he took pleasure in conversing with, it was high time for him to retire from the world, to make his will, and set his house in order; for he had notices within, that told him his abode in this world could not be twelve months longer;" and he did die in less than twelve months after, There is at the present moment, in Verc-street, close to Clare-market, the sign of the Bull's-head; but I have no means of ascertaining whether it is the house alluded to or not.

Adjoining to Verc-street is Bearyard, being at this time a filthy place, almost beyond belief; occupied, as it is, by tallow-melters, cow-keepers, slaughtermen, tripe-boilers, and, stablings: yet here was once the play house where the first actress appeared upon the stage.

Descending from Clare-market, by Clement's-lane,-now one of the lowest neighbourhoods in London, though inhabited, about and long after the period I have been speaking of, by men of consequence, and many of the houses then having gardens behind them, you come to St. Clement's Church, built by Sir Christopher Wren. At this church there are chimes, which very inelegantly play the 104th Psalm; but there is a classical recollection about these chimes, as Shakspeare has incidentally mentioned them in one of his plays, though I cannot recollect which.*

Close below the church, historical

Although I am confident I have met with this allusion in Shakspeare, yet it cannot be to the present chimes which it applies; for, upon enquiry, I find they have been constructed since Shakspeare's time: indeed, I believe that Wren only built the body of the church, which was in 1682, and the present steeple, the principal part, to be sure; but the great entrance, beneath the steeple, is under stood to be much older: it is therefore probable that there were chimes used in the more ancient church of this parish to which Shakspeare's allusion may refer.

remembrances are awakened by four streets leading to the Thames, which mark the site of the residences and gardens of some noble families: the first is Essex-street, whereabouts once stood the house of Elizabeth's celebrated favourite; and farther on are Arundel, Norfolk, and Surrey, streets, the names of

course indicating that there the Norfolk family used to live. Their gardens used to stretch down to the river; and those banks, which are now defiled and blackened by the gloomylooking coal-barges, and the swarthy labourers in them, were in those days gay with elegant pleasure-boats, bearing in them the brave and the beautiful of England. A similar recollection is awakened at the lower end of the parish, where Beaufort-buildings is situated, which was anciently the residence of the duke of that name.

But, to return to the neighbourhood of the church, we have a celebrated reminiscence in the once well-known place for oratorical display-the Robin Hood. The house in which this room is still situated is now in the possession of an industrious carpenter; and the place where some of the greatest men of their day first launched out into the sea of debate, and tried and confirmed their powers, is now let out by the carpenter to a Mr. Chivers, I believe, who teaches grown gentlemen and ladies to dance there; or gives an occasional ball for the city apprentices and the temple clerks to show off with their fair partners in a quadrille. What a falling off! This room was formerly approached by a court, leading out of Butcher-row, a street no longer in existence, called Robin Hood court; but is now shut-in by the large new houses built in Picket-street.

narrow

The Olympic Theatre in Wychstreet, where M. Alexandre is now ventriloquizing, is built upon the spot where formerly stood one of those great taverns, then so common, called, I think, the Queen-of-Bohemia; in part of which old premises, about twentyfive or thirty years ago, a discovery was made of a considerable quantity of the remains of human bodies, bones, dissections, &c. which some unknown surgeons had deserted, upon finding they were discovered. I remember (though a boy at the time,) it produced a tremendous sensation in the neighbourhood; and the crowds that

went, for the first day or two, were so great, as to create a fear that the old building would fall.

Just behind the Olympic Theatre, and issuing into Drury-lane, is Cravenbuildings, occasioning precisely similar remembrances with those produced by Norfolk-street, &c.

J. M. LACEY.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

▼HE author or authors of "Wa

as you perceive, to uphold his characteristic attribute of fertility. The press was scarcely cold from the rapid production of the four volumes of "Peveril of the Peak,” when its labours were again demanded for three more, under the title of "Quentin Durward." I know not how the case may stand with you and your readers, but, for my part, I had begun to be a little tired of this voluminous author, maugre the stimulating mystery with which it is affected to invest his identity, and the empirical cognomen of "the Great Unknown." Whether in verse or prose, I have always found him less entertaining on this than on the other side of the Tweed; and, in proportion as he advanced southward, he seemed to lose the keen and vivify. ing spirit inhaled from his northern mountains. His hardy Scots (so thought I, as I read his "Nigel,") dwindle in the atmosphere of our southern metropolis, as the myrtles of Devon might if transplanted to the bleak wilds of the Highlands. Even in the midway region of Derbyshire, either his imagination flagged from a lack of his native stimulus, or he lacked acquaintance with the romantic beauties of the country by which the patrimonial castle of his hero is surrounded.

"Peverel of the Peak?" It might as well have been Frogbelly of the Fens, for any use that is made either in characteristic scenery, or characteristic ineident, to which that scenery is so inviting. Did Sir Walter Scott, -I beg his pardon, he says he is not he, or, at least, his mask says so for him, -did the author of " Waverley," then, not even know that from Peverel Castle there is still a subterranean communication with the awful wonders over which it nods?-with "the Peak-caverns of infernal Loe!" Or

could his imagination have suggested no use to which so inviting a circumstance might have been applied? Be this as it will, I suspect that not a reader acquainted with the Peak of Derbyshire, has travelled through the four volumes, to which it furnishes a title, without feeling some degree of mortifying disappointment, at not catching one single glance of its delightful and romantic scenery in all that length of way. Nor was this my only source of dissatisfaction: I felt subject

Roundheads was already exhausted, that the wine had been already drained from the cup, and that little but the lees were presented to us in this di̟luted draught.

Nor did the sort of apologetie portrait of that indolent and selfish profligate, Charles the Second, or even the splendid incoherencies of his equally profligate favourite, Buckingham, atone for the comparative want of interest in the generality of the other characters; while the merryandrew exploits of Finella, and the pantomime impossibilities exhibited by itinerant courtiers at country alehouses, outraged all credulity; and the tedious prosings of Sir Geoffrey Hudson, to me, at least, were utterly unreadable.

If we were, therefore, to have more acquaintance with this "Great Unknown," I was glad to find that he had shifted his ground, and chosen a scene of action, and a period of history, that promised something like novelty. The hero, Quentin Durward, is indeed a Scot; and, to say the truth, although a Scot, he is, upon the whole, a very interesting sort of character,-not at all unfit for a high-born dame of chivalry to fall in love with; which is not always the case with the heroes of this author. They are, in truth, not unfrequently the most common-place personages of the whole drama. But, if Quentin have the good luck to be at once the hero of the tale and of the reader, he is not such of the author. That honour he reserves for the notorious Louis the Eleventh of France; upon the glossorial delineation and sustainment of whose detestable character he lavishes all his art; while poor Quentin and his adventures are sometimes almost lost sight of,-for more than half of the third volume in particular.

The

The outline of the story is briefly thus:-Quentin Durward, a youth between nineteen and twenty, as gallant and as keen a spirit "as ever breathed mountain air," and the sole survivor of a race "harried" to extermination in a feud with the Ogilvies, finding himself in a state of orphan destitution, and too proud of "fifteen descents in his family" to think of following "any other trade than arms," goes upon his almost pennyless travels with a determination to let out his sword, in the true hero-like style, to whatever belligerent potentate he can make the best bargain with.

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Full of spirit, and empty of food, "at the ford of a small river, or rather a large brook, tributary to the Cher, near the royal castle of Plessis," he is encountered, and somewhat treacherously exposed to a dangerous ducking, by "two substantial burgesses," as he first supposes; or, as his second thought suggests, a moneybroker or a corn-merchant, and his butcher or grazier;" but who prove, in reality, to be no other than the notorious King Louis and his chief hangman. With the former of these, however, who calls himself Maitre Pierre, (and who finds the young wanderer not to be the Bohemian gipsy, whom he had certain politic reasons for consigning either to stream or gallows, as might be most convenient,) Durward soon becomes better acquainted; and by him is treated, at an inn in the neighbourhood of the castle, with a magnificent and substantial breakfast, —to which the hungry Scot does ample justice. At this inn he becomes somewhat smitten with the bright eye and dark tresses of "a girl, rather above than under fifteen years old," who comes into the breakfast room to offer her attendance on the supposed burgess, and whom he supposes to be the daughter or the upper servant of the innkeeper. With such a person, of course the blood of fifteen descents from the Durwards of Glen-houlakin does not permit him absolutely to fall in love; although he afterwards catches a glimpse of her white arm across a lute, and hears her sing a love-ditty in no very barmaid-like style. But, after some eccentric adventures, and a very narrow escape from being hanged on one of the execution-oaks that surround the royal

castle of King Louis, and becoming enrolled among the Scotch archers who form the body-guard of that coldblooded and detestable tyrant; and discovering, during his attendance in the royal apartments, that the supposed barmaid is no other than the fugitive and beautifal Countess Isabelle of Croy, whom the king had artfully induced to seek from him that protection he never meant to afford, the scruples of fifteen descents are instantly dissipated, and the pennyless adventurous Scot hesitates not to plunge over head and ears into the most romantic passion for so lovely, and, as it might be supposed, so unattainable, a prize. The prosecution of this amour, through a variety of adventures, (some of them very highly interesting, and by his conduct in which, it must be admitted, the heroic Scot shows himself worthy of the heart and hand he aspires to,) constitutes the real action of these volumes. The story, however, is mixed up, according to the custom of the would-be mysterious author, with a large portion of histo. rical incident, authentic and suppositious, illustrative of the characters and manners, and the state of society, in the age and country to which the action is assigned.

This part of the work is certainly not without its value, though it overlays, as it were, (especially in the last volume,) the interest of the main action, and produces a very awkward sort of jumbling in the very bungling conclusion. The pictures it places before us of the degradation and misery entailed upon mankind by certain legitimate forms of institution, are pregnant with instruction, such as would not be expected from the courtly champion of Toryism, and the patron of the northern "Beacon." But this is not the only instance in which "the Unknown" has manifested to the discerning eye either the jesuitry of his principles, or the purblind obscurity of his inductive faculties; or, in other words, that he either means something very different from what he professes, or cannot perceive the necessary inductions from his own premises. Ivanhoe," (notwithstanding the caricature misrepresentations of our Saxon ancestors,) is an historical vindication of whole-length radicalism, as Quentin Durward" is the bitterest of satires upon the monarchic

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narchic principle.* The character of Louis the Eleventh is drawn with a masterly hand, — softened, indeed, considerably below the truth of history, and with a sort of attempt to render him somewhat respectable; but still with all his royal propensities for low company and high prerogative; insatiable love of self, and perfect indifference to the sacrifice and the sufferings of mankind; with his barber and his hangman for privy councillors, and high nobility for his cupbearers and trenchermen; liberal only to the mercenaries who protect his person, and rapacious cr parsimonious to all beside as a son, almost a parricide; as a husband, a contemptuous brute in principle; a tyrant alike to his family, his nobles, and his people; an adept in those profound politics of which treachery and murder are the ready instruments, and crafty dissimulation is the never-failing cloak; and, to crown all, the abject slave of that superstitious devotion with which perjury, and the violation of every moral and social obligation, are by no means incompatible, and of that childish credulity which can be bug beared and led by the nose by the quackery of fortune-tellers and readers of the stars. The contrasted character of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, is not sustained with equal spirit and ability; but several of the comparatively subordinate personages are touched with a master's hand.

It will be concluded, however, that this, like the former productions of this author, besides its human personages, is not without its supernatural; that is to say, without some being, acting an essential part in the drama, who, though professedly human, is such as humanity never knew. Some one of the progeny of "Lord Cranstoun's goblin page," though begotten on mortal mothers, is to be

Whiggism and Toryism are mere cant phrases. The only genuine distinctions of political principle in this country are those of Saxon allodialism and Norman feudalism, that is, the system in which every thing arises from the broad basis of the free population, and that in which every thing descends in dependant subserviercy from the throne. In one, the government are the responsible servants of the nation; in the other, the people are the vassal property of the go.

vernment.

found in every production of his pen. I confess that I have no great objection to these imaginative semi-supernatural beings. This author has the art of making them, occasionally, very entertaining; and certainly his stories, in general, would move on rather awkwardly without them. The Egyp tian or Bohemian, Maugrabin Hayraddin, appointed by Louis to guide, or rather to betray, the Countess Isabelle, in her retreat or fugitation from Plessis to Liege, and who is made an essential agent in bringing about the bungling catastrophe of the present romance, is not the most outré or the least amusing of these preternaturals, although the atheistical philosophy with which the author endows him, is sometimes expressed in language which makes us "wonder how the devil it got there." In short, I read the first and second volumes of "Quentin Durward" with considerable interest, and had almost made up my mind to give it a decided preference at least over all the recent productions of the supposed Unknown; and although, during the first two hundred pages of the third volume, wó almost entirely lose sight both of the hero and the heroine,—and we see, indeed, but little of them during the remainder,-yet as the historical episode (hitherto well mixed up and implicated with the tale,) is amusing as well as important; and the affair of the rash visit of Louis to his hostile vassal and rival, Charles the Bold, with the subsequent danger to his royal person, is wrought with considerable skill and interest, I was still disposed to extend my critical indulgence to the dispro portioned length of the digression. But when I came to the awkward and common-place contrivance by which the catastrophe was to be brought about,-when the countess, who had fled from the proposed nuptials attempted to be imposed upon her by her Suzerain liege lord of Burgundy, and now, in the public presence, and before the assembled peers, as resolutely refused the Duke of Orleans, the presumptive heir of France, is, in a fit of resolute and brutal rage, “held out," to use her own words, "as a prize to the best sword-player," or, in other words, to whoever shall bring the head of William de la Mark, the wild-boar of Ardeus,--I confess I lost my patience. Charles does, indeed,

qualify

qualify a little the degradation of this condition : "Your ancestress (said the duke,) was won at a tourney,-you shall be fought for in real melée. Only thus far, for Count Reinold's sake, the successful shall be a gentleman, of unimpeached birth, and unstained bearings; but be he such, and the poorest who ever drew the tongue of a buckle through the strap of a swordhelt, he shall have at least the proffer of your hand. I swear by St. George, by my ducal crown, and by the order that I wear! Ha! messires, (he added, turning to the nobles present,) this at least is, I think, conformable to the rules of chivalry?”

And is it thus, said I, that by the threadbare expedient of the old chivalrous romance, but stripped of all the splendour and poetical consistency of those imaginative legends, the difficulties and entanglements of the fable are to be cut through, rather than unravelled? Is it thus that the drunken fury of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, (or the anti-chivalrous bully whom the author has decked out in his titles,) is .made to spell out, at hap-hazard, the disqualifying qualifications, and to predict the fortunate achievement of the pennyless Scottish archer, with his blood of fifteen descents? Quentin Durward, then, is to cut off the head of the bandit murderer of the Bishop of Liege, and to receive the hand of the lovely countess he had so gallantly protected and preserved, as his undesigned reward. Even in this, however, we are somewhat disappointed. The catastrophe is still more bunglingly brought about. The author has not even the judgment or the invention to do justice to his own hero. shows him worthy of the undivided honour; but he knows not how to confer it upon him. Quentin indeed, through the means of the executed Bohemian atheist (Maugrabin), and, by the connivance of his gentle countess, obtains the exclusive knowledge of certain devices by which the disguised Boar of Ardens may be singled out and encountered in the most confusedly-described conflict which ensues at Liege, and engages with him; but he is not permitted to achieve the ultinate exploit. This is reserved for the Ajax Ass, his uncle Lodovic, who, being "somewhat the worse for wear, and loving the wine-house better than a lady's summer parlour, and, MONTHLY MAG. No. 386.

He

in short, having some barrack tastes and likings, which would make greatness in his own person rather an incumbrance to him, resigns the pretensions acquired to his maternal nephew."

No words can, in short compass, convey an adequate idea of the bungling and incredible manner in which this lame and impotent conclusion is brought about. And, as the publication for which this is designed cannot be expected to find space for the quotation of the whole in the words of the author, I must refer the reader to the original, if he hath patience enough for the perusal. The conclusion, indeed, is strongly marked with the characteristic hand of the real author. All his productions, in verse or in prose, (the "Lady of the Lake" alone excepted,) are marred, to a certain degree, by a halting and awkward tameness in the denouement; and all of them, without exception, in some way or other, contrive to sink the hero, or the character who ought to be such, into a sort of secondary estimation; and even Quentin Durward, who, during so large a portion of the present work, had maintained, in many respects, his just pre-eminence, must, somehow or other, be shorn of his eclat in the last adventure. Even he must be

hero who ultimately atchieves nothing; but owes the reward and happiness he has been in quest of to the blundering achievement of another. I could add another trait which identifies the origin of the poetical and prose romances,-the approximation of so many of them to the times and the incidents of chivalrous romance, and the total failure, in such their approximations, of the display of the true chivalrous spirit, or the splendour of chivalrous manners and adventure. It is the dross, and not the ore, of chivalry, that is presented on all such occasions; as will be found most especially, for example, in the comparison of "Marmion" and Quentin Durward."

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But it will be said, that I have forgotten the positive denial of this identity in the introduction to the work under review. No, I have not forgotten it. On the contrary, I have written an examine of that very passage, in which, if I mistake not, I have gone far towards proving, from that very passage, the very fact which it proR

fesses