speech of his own, delivered in the Chamber of Peers, some ten years ago, on the liberation of Greece? Comparisons between the French and English _revolutions, between Cromwell and Buonaparte, between the Puritans and the Jacobins, including a special chapter upon Danton, and a long account of the escape of Charles II, after the battle of Worcester, immediately succeed. As may be expected, the hero of the work is not forgotten. The mention of Lovelace and his captivity introduces an anecdote of Chateaubriand. "Without being young and handsome, like Colonel Lovelace, I have been, like him, incarcerated. The governments which ruled France from 1800 to 1830 had exercised some forbearance towards a votary of the muses; Bonaparte, whom I had fiercely attacked in the Mercure, was at first prompted to despatch me; he raised his sword, but he struck not. "A generous and liberal administration, exclusively composed of literary men, of poets, writers, editors of newspapers, has proved less ceremonious towards an old comrade. 66 My kennel, somewhat longer than it was broad, was seven or eight feet high. The stained and bare wainscot was covered with the poetry and prose scrawled upon it by my predecessors. A pallet with soiled sheets occupied three parts of my habitation; a board supported by two trestles, placed against the wall at an elevation of two feet above the bed, served the purpose of a press for the linen, boots, and shoes of the prisoner. A chair, a table, and a small cask, as a disgusting convenience, formed the remainder of the furniture. A grated window opened at a considerable height; I was forced to mount upon the table in order to breathe fresh air, and to enjoy the light of heaven. I could only distinguish, through the bars of my felon's cage, a gloomy narrow court, and dark buildings, round which the bats kept fluttering. I heard the clank of keys and chains, the noise of the sergens de ville and spies, the pacing of soldiers, the ground of arms, the shrieks, the laughter, the obscene licentious songs of the prisoners, my neighbours; the howlings of Benoit, condemned to death as the murderer of his mother, and of his obscene friend. I could distinguish these words of Benoit, amidst his confused exclamations of fear and repentance: Alas! my mother! my poor mother!' I beheld the wrong side of society, the sons of humanity, the hideous machinery, which sets in motion this world, so smiling to look at in front, when the curtain is raised. 6 "The genius of my former greatness and of my glory, represented by a life of thirty years, did not make its appearance before me; but my Muse of former days, poor and humble as she was, came all radiant to embrace me through my window; she was delighted with my abode, and full of inspiration; she found me again as she had seen me in London, in the days of my poverty, when the first dreams of Réné were floating in my mind. What were we, the solitary of Pindus and I, about to produce together? A song, in the style of Lovelace. Upon whom? Upon a king? Assuredly not! The voice of a prisoner would have been of bad omen: it is only from the foot of our altars that hymns should be addressed to misfortune. None, moreover, but a poet of great renown can be listened to when he sings: 'O toi, de ma pitié profonde Humble objet des regards du monde, Puisses tu, né dans la souffrance, Et de ta mère et de la France "My song was not therefore of a crown fallen from an innocent brow; I was content with celebrating a different crown-a white one, too, laid on the coffin of a young maiden. + 66 'Tu dors, pauvre Elisa, si légère d'années! Tu ne sens plus du jour le poids et la chaleur : Jeune fille et jeune fleur!' The "The prefect of police, with whose behaviour I have every reason to be satisfied, offered me a more suitable asylum, as soon as he was made acquainted with the agreeable abode which the friends of the liberty of the press had considerately assigned to me, for having availed myself of that liberty. The window of my new dwelling opened upon a cheerful garden. It was not enlivened by the warbling of Lovelace's linnet; but it abounded in frisky, light, chirping, bold, quarrelsome sparrows: they are found everywhere, in the country, in town, on the balustrades of a mansion, along the gutters of a prison; they perch quite as cheerfully upon the instruments of death as upon a rose bush. What matter the sufferings of earth to those who can fly away further. My song will not be more lasting than that of Lovelace. Jacobites have left nothing to England but the anthem God save the King. The origin of this air is not uninteresting: it is ascribed to Lulli; the young maids, in the choruses to Esther, delighted, at St. Cyr, the ears and the pride of the great monarch by the strains of the Domine salvum fac regem. The attendants of James carried to their country the majestic invocation: they addressed it to the God of armies, when they marched to battle in defence of their banished sovereign. Struck with the beauty of this loyal song, the English of William's faction appropriated it to themselves. It became an appendage to the usurpation and to the sovereignty of the people, who are ignorant at this day, that they are singing a foreign air, the hymn of the Stuarts, the canticle of divine right and of legitimacy. How long will England yet implore the Ruler of the world to save the king? Reckon the revolutions heaped up in a dozen notes, which have outlived these revolutions! "The Domine salvum of the Catholic rite is, likewise, an admirable song: it was sung in Greek in the tenth century, when the hippodrome was graced with the emperor's presence. From the pageant it was transferred to the church: another era that has passed away."-Vol. ii. pp. 190-4. The history of our literature, from the restoration, occupies no great quantity of space, and the criticisms which it embodies, are certainly of the most trifling description. Some odd mistakes occur, such as placing Denham and Otway among the writers subsequent to the accession of the House of Hanover, ascribing to Francis the authorship of the "Art of Poetry," which he translated from Horace, and making the first Earl of Shaftesbury a licentious poet :—but it is hard to avoid some slips in writing on foreign literature, and especialy when we have to deal with writers so careless of every thing but effect. The arrangements of our dramatic authors is diverting enough, to deserve to be extracted. 'Shirley, Davenant, Otway, Congreve, Farquhar, Cibber, Steele, Colman, Foote, Rowe, Addison, Moore, Aaron Hill, Sheridan, Coleridge, &c., exhibit the succession of English dramatic poets up to the present day. Tobin, Joanna Baillie, and a few others have attempted to revive the old style, and the old theatrical forms."-Vol ii. p. 201. M de Chateaubriand is unquestionably a man of talent, but he sadly over-rates himself. He wants exactness and critical reading for the fit execution of such a work as that which we have been reviewing. Even when, instead of passing opinions on the literary history of others, he enters the walks of literature as an author, not a critic, his style is disfigured by that species of pseudo-eloquence which his countrymen call phebus; while his ideas are for ever clouded, for ever rendered uncertain and indistinct, by the mystic and mouthing enthusiasm in which they are clothed. Vanity is his besetting sin. If he would allow us to forget the magnificence of his embassy to London, in 1822, after having formerly appeared there as a poor emigrant, we should look upon him with more partial eyes.-But we suppose that is impossible. NOTE. We find the following in p. 208, vol. ii.-He has been speaking of the calamities to which so many men of letters have been subjected. "In the cloisters of the Cathedral of Worcester, the stranger's notice is attracted by a sepulchral slab, without date, without a prayer, without a symbol; its only inscription is the word Miserrimus. Could this unknown, this nameless Miserrimus have been any other than a man of genius ?"-Vol. ii, p. 208. We have understood that this Miserrimus was a clergyman of the parish, who had been involved in perpetual legal quarrels with his parishioners, that rendered him, in his own opinion, at least, the most miserable of mankind. We do not vouch for the authenticity of the story. A melo-dramatic romance has been suggested to Mr. F. M. Reynolds by this tombstone. His book is called "Miserrimus." It is now forgotten, but we may be sure that it was there M. de Chateaubriand found the story. ART. IX.-1. The Edinburgh Review on Absenteeism. (No. 85, Nov. 1825.) 2. Evidence of J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. before the Committee of 1830, on the State of the Irish Poor. (Third Report of Evidence, ordered to be printed, July 16, 66 "A BSENTEE," is a term which appears to have derived its origin from the anomalies of Ireland. Johnson says it is "a word used commonly with regard to Irishmen living out of their country;" and he quotes a passage from Sir John Davis, on Ireland, in which reference is made to a statute passed against absentees in the third year of Richard the Second. He also quotes a sentence from Child's Discourse on Trade, in which it is asserted, that "a great part of estates in Ireland are owned by absentees, and such as draw over the profits raised out of Ireland, refunding nothing." The foundation of the absenteeism, which is so peculiar to Ireland, was laid in the earliest times of the British connection. Sir John Davis, after noticing that "the kings of England, who, in former ages, attempted the conquest of Ireland, being illadvised and counselled by the great men here, did not, upon the submissions of the Irish, communicate their laws unto them, nor admit them to the state and condition of free subjects," says, that "the next error in the civil polity, which hindered the perfection of the conquest of Ireland, did consist in the distribution of the lands and possessions, which were won and conquered from the Irish. For the scopes of land, which were granted to the first adventurers, were too large; and the liberties and royalties, which they obtained therein, were too great for subjects." He specifies the grants to Strongbow, Robert Fitz-Stephen, Miles Cogan, Philip le Bruce, Hugh de Lacy, John de Courcy, William Burke Fitz-Adelm, Thomas de Clare, Otho de Grandison, and Robert le Poer; and adds, "thus was all Ireland cantonized among ten persons of the English nation; and though they had not gained the possession of one-third part of the whole kingdom, yet in title they were owners and fords of all, so as nothing was left to be granted to the natives." The effects of this "error" were most perceptibly felt in the reign of Henry the Third: "All writers," continues Davis, "do impute the decay and loss of Leinster to the absence of the English Lords, who married the five daughters of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke (to whom that great seignory descended), when his five sons, who inherited the same successively, and, during their times, held the same in peace and obedience to the law of England, were all dead, without issue, which happened about the fortieth year of King Henry the Third: for the eldest being married to Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk, who, in right of his wife, had the Marshalship of England; the second to Warren de Mountchensey, whose sole daughter and heir was matched to William de Valentia, half brother to King Henry the Third, who by that match was made Earl of Pembroke; the third to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; the fourth to William de Ferrers, Earl of Darby; the fifth to William de Bruce, Lord of Brecknock: These great lords, having greater inheritances, in their own right, in England, than they had in Ireland, in right of their wives, (and yet each of the co-partners had an entire county allotted for her purparty, as is before declared), could not be drawn to make their personal residence in this kingdom, but managed their estates here by their seneschals and servants. And again, the decay and loss of Ulster and Connaught is attributed to this; that the Lord William Burke, the last Earl of that name, died without issue male; whose ancestors, namely, the Red Earl, and Sir Hugh de Lacy before him, being personally resident, held up their greatness there, and kept the English in peace and the Irish in awe; but when those provinces descended upon an heir female and an infant, the Irish overran Ulster, and the younger branches of the Burkes usurped Connaught. And, therefore, the ordinance made in England, the third of Richard the Second, against such as were absent from their lands in Ireland, and gave two-third parts of the profits thereof unto the king, until they returned, or placed a sufficient number of men to defend the same, was grounded upon good reason of state which ordinance was put in execution for many years after, as appeareth by sundry seizures made thereupon in the time of King Richard the Second, Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., whereof there remain records in the Remembrancer's office here. Among the rest, the Duke of Norfolk himself was not spared; but was impleaded upon this ordinance for two parts of the profits of Dorbury's Island, and other lands in the county of Wexford, in the time of Henry VI. And afterwards, upon the same reason of state, all the lands of the House of Norfolk, of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Lord Berkeley, and others, who, having lands in Ireland, kept their continual residence in England, were entirely resumed by the act of absentees, made in the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII." The policy adopted with regard to the "first adventurers,” influenced the English government, whenever there was an opportunity, in all subsequent times. Upon the accession of Edward the Sixth, the territories of O'Moor, Prince of Leix (King's county), and O'Connor, Prince of Offaly (Queen's county), were seized, and distributed according to pristine usage. In Elizabeth's time, the same occurred, but on a far more extended scale. One or two samples of the pretexts, on which "scopes of land," forming no inconsiderable portion of the entire island, were thus disposed of, are worth mentioning. Con O'Neill, to whom the principality of Ulster belonged, had two sons,-Shane, who was legitimate, and Matthew, who was born out of wedlock. |