lished. (Arthur Hall and Co.)—If there be any truth in
the origin who really and truly make a home in the country of their &dep.
assigned to these reminiscences—which we are inclined to believe there is not as the anecdotes have nothing new about them, and the so-called personal narrative is of the most trite, bare, and unconvincing description—it is a pity that an attempt was not made to turn them into readable English. On the whole, we do not remember to have read so bad a translation. The writer has the barest acquaintance with the French language, none with its idioms or niceties, and is evi- dently quite ignorant of the history of the time to which the reminis- cences refer, as he endorses the frequent blunders of the original. The first instance of bad translation occurs in the first sentence, in which the writer is made to say, "My mother vowed to me an uncontrolled dislike," but there is hardly a more correct sentence in the book. We learn that Madame 'de Maintenon's "language was mild, just, in good terms, brief;" that the "Noctambule " was "a small man, without sword," and that his "physiognomy was full of wit;" that Monsieur was married to Charlotte de Baviere ; that the "conjuration " of Cellamare compro- mised several nobles ; that "Lord Stairs " was a favourite of the King, and that Mademoiselle de Blois was the daughter of Madame de Montes- pan, though she has been previously, and correctly, enumerated among the children of the Duchess° de Is Vanier°. We learn of Dubois that "his exterior was that of a ferret and of a vulgar pedant," and of the Duo de Berry, that .4 Mediocrist, without imagination or views, he, how- ever, had much common-sense ;" that when Mesdemoiselles de Valois and De Charolais quarrelled, "their ulcerated hearts could not forgive ;" and that La Grange, in his "Philippiques " (an allusion which the translator does not seem to understand), "displayed all that art has of the finest and most delicate." These samples are taken at random, as hundreds of similar samples might be. All the internal evidence is against the genuineness of the "Diary," but however that may be, the translation is quite worthless.
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