CECIL A PEER.

Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb, appeared at the commence- ment of the last publishing and Parliamentary season. A glance sufficed to show that one part of the title was accurate enough : and from a slight examination we opined that the author was in- capable of exhibiting life or painting manners—that he could not construct a story, a connected series of events presenting a general picture of human life, either in this age or any other— that he could not conceive characters justly or develop them truly, whether in action or discourse—and that if he really bad witnessed any thing of the society he undertook to describe, he was unequal to the effort of " catching the living manners as they rise." We therefore put the book aside, with several better things, till a day of leisure should arrive. In the interim, out comes Cecil a Peer: and, having read the continuation, we have no appe- tite for the commencement. From scattered passages and selected morsels in favourable reviews, we expected to find in this writer the showy and spangle-sparkling vivacity that characterized the brisker class of those the old wits called dunces-

" Dulness with transport eyes the lively dunce, Remembering she herself was pertness once." In the volumes before us there is only the effort after this vulgar though popular quality. With the exception of one episode and a few chance pages, Cecil a Peer is not only pert and flippant, but dull.

It has been said that the continuation is inferior to the com- mencement : and such may possibly be the case, from the exhaustion of the writer. This sort of thing, however, is difficult to exhausi. When a person possesses the ready pen that results from a happy self-confidence and a fluent fustian-like style, and when, discarding the tie of a connected story, he varies his so-called plot by carrying his hero to any country, and introducing any historical persons or events, he might go on writing for ever. In these cases it is not so much the writer who is exhausted, as the reader who is sick.

The story of Cecil a Coxcomb, so far as we have gathered it consisted of a series of scenes in love, war, and literature. Mr_ Cecilwas a younger brother, born in wedlock, but not, it turns out, the son of his legal father. He was, as the Irishman says, " a divil among the women," and breaks several hearts for love, besides the neck of his elder brother's son and heir, and the heart of the boy's mother. In war, he goes to the Peninsula to fight with the armies of Napoleon ; and subsequently visits Italy, to talk literature with Byron ; returning to accept a post in the Royal Household of George the Fourth. At this stage Cecil a Peer begins ; and a variety of things are hitched into the three volumes upon the plan just indicated. In the world of fashion, the writer undertakes to present the quintessence of society at Windsor and Brighton, the Exclusives before the Reform Bill, the restored old repine under the Bourbons, and the changes (or what he fancies the changes) made by the accession of the Whigs in London and the King of the Barricades in Paris. In politics—or rather the quintessence of the philosophy of politics, for Mr. Cecil looks down upon mere politics—he attempts to pass judgment upon the great changes that have taken place since the break-up of Toryism after Lord Liverpool's death, including Catholic Emancipation, Re- form, the displacement of the Whigs by William, their return, and the accession of Victoria. In his own career one heart is broken, not exactly by Mr. Cecil, but through him; and the reader is presented with the deathbed-scene of Cecil's mother frantic with remorse, unfolding her adulteries, and acknowledging that Cecil is no son of the man whose title he is to iuherit. His other love affairs are flat ; intended, it would seem, to make a jest of the tender passion of middle-aged dandies, but as dull as dull jokes always are. There is throughout these sections a desperate effort to force up cominonplaces or commonplace paradoxes into something brilliant or smart, but which generally ends in the flat or the &Ise, though here and there a casual exception may be met with. The only part approaching to interest is the episode narrating the death of Cecil's elder brother. This person is painted as a sort of paragon, who "sways the destinies of nations "—or at least causes Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill to be carried. He is left a widower, with an only daughter, in whom all his affections centre. This young lady, also a paragon, falls in love with one of Cecil's companions—a pleasant, good-natured young man, but without fine feelings or high mind : the accident of a duel discovers their pas- sion ; the father yields to it ; but the marriage breaks his heart, (broken hearts are this writer's stock in trade,) and he goes abroad and dies. The story is told without the usual effort and exaggera- tion of the writer, and exhibits some power and observation of character; but it will not bear examination. So prudent a per- sou as Danby would have done what people far less prudent do— tried the effects of time and absence; which so good a daughter could not have objected to. The evil effects of an ill-assorted marriage are seen by the author; but, instead of following them to their legitimate end, he makes them the occasion of a melodra- matic scene, in which he plays the generous obtainer of money under something like false pretences. In a favourable and feeble notice in the Edinburgh, which the writer of Cecil says has done him "Glorious Justice,' the reviewer occupies part of his space in wondering who the author is ; and con- cludes by guessing Mrs. GORE. The novels of this lady have lately exhibited signs of haste and exhaustion, dashed by a very indiffer- ent morale ; but she has not yet fallen to the level of' Cecil. Shade of Aristotle ! the buoyant style and easy wit of Mrs. GORE to be confounded with the laboured composition of a man who scarcely ever rises beyond a brisk impertinence, and then only into a smart saying of questionable truth. Mrs. Goan has mixed in good society, and can paint its manners: if the writer of Cecil has ever mingled in such society, he cannot depict it ; and though he may have skirted it, he always seems to glide over it like a man uncertain of his ground. The fashionable characters of Mrs. GORE are loose and immoral enough ; yet they are rather corrupt than scoundrels— light, fickle, and frivolous : but so are the persons around them ; and, like other creations of nature, they are in their place. There is none of this keeping in Cecil—all is forced and overdone. The only trait which the hero has in common with a modern roue is, that he cares for nothing but his own gratifications, and would sa- crifice anybody and any thing to obtain them. Yet the fictitious villain surpasses the real in this—that the latter may not perceive the full consequences of his actions at the time be commits them, and possibly might repent of them if they were brought before him ; whereas the author of Cecil makes his hero sit down to sum up his ntisdoings, to trace out their results, and to allude to them in a style as offensive to moral propriety as it is flippant in taste. Lastly, Mrs. GORE, like all true artists, never obtrudes herself— she is felt, not seen : the author of Cecil, like the author of Pel- ham, is always thrusting himself upon the reader. See his account of the

TROUBLES OF A 00XC0/411.

Meanwhile I trust others are not as sick as myself of the sound of my nitric The way in Which society has been be-Cecilled for the last six months, is really overpowering. Multiform as the cloud of Polonius, I have been pointed out to myself at all the parties of the season, • Wearing strange shapes, and bearing many names.'

Methinks there have been ten Cecils in the field ; and had I much faith in the doctrine of wraiths and fetches, must long ago have died of consternation, under the influence of apparitions of " the author of Cecil." Some weeks ago I sat by myself at a Greenwich dinner, which my other self was invited to amuse; and a deuced stupid fellow I was.

On the other band, if proof against terrors of the Bodach Gist, I have run some risk of being bored to death by disclaimers of the authorship in question. Scarcely a scribbler about town but lois essayed to prove to me, in nineteen sections of prose, that he was incapable of producing so silly a book as " Cecil," and that his club accused him wrongfully; that ' he had stooped to write a novel, lie trusted it would not have turned out quite so inartistical a production; A mighty maze, and all without a plan ;' without plot, design, arrangement, and with very little moral." One and all, in short, pride themselves on the conviction that they should have produced a Paternoster Row legitimate, in the style of James, while my discursive illegiti- mate was avowedly a loose string of pearls in the style of Howell and James- " inest sua gratis parvis." The gods give them joy of their taste ! There are authors enough and to spare who write books regulation-wise; but for my part, I do not pretend to be in the regulars. I am a Guerilla, a haekwoodsman ; any thing rather than a.gentleman who prattles belles lettres for the delectation of Grosvenor Square, and does small literature for the Annuals. As to your historical three-volume novels per rule and compass, with a beginning, an end, and a middle, it strikes me that there is beginning to be no end to them, and they are all middling.

To pronounce an opinion upon identity from internal evidence alone, is always a matter of uncertainty, however probable the grounds of conjecture. If we thought it worth while to venture a guess as to this foolishly mooted authorship, we should attribute the book to a disciple of a pretended " Patrician," who some years ago amused the town by a correspondence and a street brawl, if it be not an alter idem. In the author of Cecil, as in the author of Cavendish, some talent and some fluency are vitiated by bad taste, a low morale, flippancy, and self-conceit. Each has a knack of seizing upon public events and public men, to hitch them into a story where they have no particular business; although the contrivance is not without its effect, but less in Cecil than in the productions of the author of Cavendish. Both have a mania for ill-tinted classical quotations ; both a tendency to imposition by representing themselves as other than they are ; both will single out some person, if not to libel, yet to de- preciate in fiction—identifying him by certain touches, but chang- ing him by others, so as to have the effect of personal delineation, yet enable the writer to escape by disavowal. Both are, moreover, given to gross flattery : the slaver in both cases being worse than the bite. Here is an example of more than Irish blarney on the queen, when Cecil, as Lord Ormington, came to town on her accession.

CECIL A SYCOPHANT.

Never shall I forget the warmth of enthusiasm that prevailed in London at that moment. The city, the very kingdom, seemed to fancy itself grown young, and even the climate to imagine it had attained a second spring, because the sceptre was glittering in the hands of girlhood. It was a new, a peculiar, an almost bewildering position for old England ; and the severest ordeal that her monarchical institutions (just then, too, amid the general decadence of monarchy) could have been exposed. But, glory to Britannia! she came out of the trial triumphant. 'Even I, though close familiarity with the stage-trick of royal life had some- what depressed my veneration for regalitics, even I felt touched to the soul by the idea of the duties peculiarly connected with the thrice-hallowed preroga- tive of the throne. I saw that the Peers of a youthful Queen ought to become Paladins, and that Cecil must be foremost in their ranks.

I had a sort of notion—I may he pardoned, for it was the notion of all Eng- land—that Victoria was a child. I reached London with notions of protec- tion ; overflowing with the loyalty, the chivalry, indispensable to form a ram- part round the throne, lest the throne be over-thrown. But if there wanted in my bosom any proof of the "divinity that doth hedge" a sovereign, it was afforded in the mysterious influence which, by a simple form of heraldic pro- clamation, had converted a timid child into a thinking, feeling woman. Yet even that word is insufficient; the fulness of the change is only demonstrable by the expression, t• into queen." Never shall I forget the influence exercised over my feelings by the first ex- pansion of the pure virgin voiceriwhen from the throne the new Sovereign ad- dressed herself to the Peers of her realm: No theatrical appeal to their devo- tion. All was calm, dignified, and right royal. She came to summon around her the descendants of the sage counsellors of her fathers, not to avail herself of the temporary enthusiasm of the hour—" a queen, ay, every inch a queen." And yet that voice was so youthful, that form so slight, that countenance so mild, that one could not but be deeply affected by the prospects of the dangers surrounding every woman though a queen, every sovereign albeit a iciman. A double danger was impending over that fair frail being; and I could have found it in my heart to turn aside and weep, as gray-healed men are known to have done at her first Council, as I listened to the opening words of her address. Ere it came to a close, I was reassured. An unaccountable feeling of trust arose in my bosom. I speak it not profanely, when I say that the idea of the yet unknown Saviour, a child among the Doctors ot the Temple, occurred spontaneously to my mind.

Be the author of Cecil who he may, we think he may be pro- nounced a writer by trade, or a well-practised amateur. With the fluency he has the mechanical word-spinning of a magazine- contributor ; snatching anecdotes, facts or remarks, as godsends, without regard to the fitness of their application, and dressing them in the smartest garb he can without much care for any thing but the space they fill ; and when anecdotes, facts, or remarks fail, clutching at mere words—the names without a thought of the qualities of things. Did ever any thing in the palmy days of fashion- able novels exceed this mindless stuff, descriptive of

CECIL'S DOINGS AS A PEER!

In my little Parliament, Bulwer represents the republic of letters Landsecr

the province of the arts, Moore dines with me as the poet, Lockhart as the critic, Louis de Noailles as the Grammont, Sidney Smith as the wit, Sidney Herbert as the Sir Philip Sidney of the day. Every god and demigod has his 12Pecific shrine in my temple. I invite Lovelace Milnes, (as Lord Ormington,

may allow myself finery enough

" When a man's name is Dick to call him Lovelace,"

more particularly as "the Brook side" is nearly equal to Althea, and be has an objection to having it all Dicky with him,) I invite Milnes, I say, as "Young England," Greville as " Old England," and Sir Henry, my Watier's chum, as " Old Harry "; I invite the roué set (just now, by the grace of Ministerial anathema, so much the fashion) whenever I want to pass for a moral man ; or when I wish to reassume my Don Juanic hat and plume, surround myself with the country baronet husband and sons-in-law of Lady Winstanley, by com- parison with whose humdrummery the innocent fleece of my lambkinism passes for that of a lost mutton. I give dinners to some men because they under- stand them, to some because they want them, to some because I want them. I do not pretend to any super-exquisiteness of gastronomy, because givers of super-exquisite llinuers are apt to be fussy about them—to put their entrées into Italics so as not to be lightly passed over, and above all, to be punctilious of punctuality. A dinner should be good enough to be talked of afterwards, but not so good as to prevent one's talking about other things while the ban- quet is proceeding. I call the courses evil courses that demand perpetual notes of admiration.

My table comprehends all sorts of talking and talkers—" original matter, criticism, gossip of the week, and notices of the fine arts," as the weekly papers have it. But people do for Cecil what they would not do elsewhere : Rogers smiles for me, Ilovrden frowns, Lope looks solemn. My reviewers gossip, my Chancellors of the Exchequer prattle small-talk, my men about town listen while Ossulston, Courtenay, or Dundas is singing, Luttrell or Macaulay talking.

" Of 8e waimilipme 'Ltd) eebv acicricovro, Ka.bv tietdovres Hatnova xoii pot 'Axatio. v. MiXwmPres 'Esccieiryov 6 bi ehpiva ripircr' tiKamov."

I rather flatter myself, that when Ormington Rouge shall exhibit over its portico the achievement of the thirteenth lord of that name, London will tes- tify its respect and sorrow in crape and bombazine.

Yet this is the forced and vapid pertness which is to pass for brilliancy and wit, and achieve for its author an "European reputa- tion "!