REYNOLDS'S MODERN LITERATURE OF FRANCIS.

SUM is the comprehensive title of this book as it stands in the titlepage ; but it appears from the introduction, that the author's design is to give a view of the literature of France since the Revolu- tion of 1830. An account of the literature of so great a nation, even for this limited period—or, indeed, for any period however brief, even the day that is passing over us—would have presented an extensive field of inquiry. But Mr. REYNOLDS makes it narrow enough. According to him, the present literature of France con- sists of the works of six or eight writers of novels and romances, two or three dramatists, a like number of poets, and a couple of politicians. We are not inclined to form any very high estimate of the literature of the day either in France or England ; but we were not prepared for so beggarly an account of the former as Mr. REYNOLDS has given us, especially after reading his magniloquent introduction. Our definition of literature, it would seem, differs widely from his. We conceive it to embrace philosophy, history, philology, criticism, and the whole circle of the arts and sciences, as well as poetry and fiction. It is common enough to talk of lite- rature and science, as of two distinct things. It is very true that science, of itself, is not literature ; but science taught by books be- comes literature. Even poetry and fiction do not of themselves constitute literature : they exist where literature is unknown, and, like science, only become literature when embodied in books. 'The whole circle of human knowledge, the whole fruits of the human intellect, become literature when they are communicated to the world by means of letters. Those, therefore, who have recourse to Mr. REYNOLDS.S Modern Literature qf France, with the hope of obtaining any idea of the modern literature of France, will be wofully disappointed. His writers, with little exception, would have been counted among the small fry of literature in the days when there were giants iu the land : and in truth, his book is little more than a catalogue raisonne of the small litterateurs of France, by the kindred hand of a small litterateur of England. The French novel and tale writers of the day furnish Mr. REY'. NOLDS with the bulk of his materials; and his object is the very questionable one of introducing their works to the acquaintance of the English public, and conquering, the English prejudice, which, he admits, exists against them. The bad odour in which these books are held in England may be a prejudice, but it is deeply rooted and generally spread ;.and we, for our part, have no wish to see it removed. There are a few—a very few—exceptions ; but, generally speaking, the French novels and tales of the present day are regarded in so disreputable a light, that they are excluded from every respectable library, and kept out of the hands of the youthful members of every decent family. What would any of our readers think of the inmates of a house in which he found the novels of PAUL DE KOCK, or GEORGE SAND, or DE BALZAC, lying on the drawing-room-table ? They are not even to be found in the shop of a respectable English bookseller; but are provided by foreign !circulating-library-keepers to gratify the irregular appetites of young people, and few young people can venture to ask for them without a feeling of shame and hesitation. So much for the existence of this prejudice ; and now as to its grounds. Mr. REYNOLDS is exceedingly wroth at the article in the Quarterly Review a few years ago, in which such a sweeping onslaught was made on the whole tribe of modern French dra- matists and novelists, describing their writings as a mere mass of filth and abomination, and attributing to them the universal poli- tical, moral, and social disorder, of which the writer gave so fright- ful a picture. The article was grossly exaggerated; its extrava- gance has been exposed more than once ; and, in regard to one -,material point, Mr. REYNOLDS is right when he says—" To sup- pose that the insurrection of 1830,—an insurrection having for its object the working of a great and glorious change in the liber- ties of a mighty people,—depentbsd on the licentiousness of novels and dramas, is to believe that the heated imaginations of men were fired rather by the contents of a circulating library than influenced by a just sense of wrong and oppression." To ascribe the burst of .patriotic enthusiasm, which immortalized the days of July 1830, to the popular plays and novels, would be paying those productions by far too high a compliment. In this point of view they assuredly went for nothing : but when Mr. REYNOLDS proceeds to say, that be will show in the course of his work " that the generality of French novels are any thing but licentious and abandoned," he un- dertakes a task in which he egregiously fails. Indeed, he shows the very reverse. ' Though it would avail little to place our own assertion in Opposition to the assertion of another, we must say, that when curiosity has tempted us at any time to take up one of these books, we have laid it down with disgust, notwithstanding the unquestionable genius and power which they frequently display. When not actually licentious, and calculated, by prurient descrip- tions, to inflame the passions of the young, they generally tend to generate a distaste for the order of society and the sacred bonds a domestic life ; and their degrading,b pictures of human nature must tend to produce, in the minds of those who habitually con- template them, a scepticism as to the very existence of virtue, which must be any thing but conducive to its practice. Can such reading fail to be pernicious ? and can the morals and manners of Society remain uninjured where such reading is universal? This is not our opinion alone ; it is entertained in Paris itself by those practically-instructed moralists the Police Magistrates and Judges of the Criminal Courts. Of this there is plenty of evidence in the Paris journals; and we need not go, to seek it, further than the Gazette des Tribunaux of' the 25th of last month ; Where, in an account of a shocking case (though of almost every- day occurrence) of a young couple belonging to the class of trades- people, who resolved to terminate an illicit intercourse by a double suicide, the Advocate-General ascribed the frequency of such crimes to " la lecture de mauvais romans." Indeed, this species of reading prevails among the bourgeoisie, and even the working classes, to a degree of which these classes in England have no con- ception. Take Mr. REYNOLDS'S own account (and it is a very cu- rious, though perhaps a coloured one) of the currency of the writings of PAUL DE Eons and "ex uno disce omnes." " A new novel by Paul de 'Click creates a more powerful sensation than the speech of the King himself; and, on the day of publication. not a diligence, not a mail, not a public conveyance, leaves the French metropolis without

bearing to the country librarians of all parts a package of the anxiously- awaited volumes. There is not a circulating library throughout France that does not possess one or more complete sets of his works ; there is not a news- room where, among the few dozens of standard books which grace the little shelf in the corner, the novels of Paul de Kock are not to be found. His po- pularity extends to the meanest and most distant cottage in the empire;

exists not a labourer who tills the land in the remotest province, that ms not beard of Paul de Kock, and laughed at the village pedant's recital of the best

episode in his last work. Mount the imperial of the diligence, and the condue- teur will talk to you of Paul de Kock. Converse with the fine du comptoir in acafe, and she will ask you to knit her his lately-published novel. Hire a cabriolet de place, and the driver will tell you that he has just perused Paul de

Kock's new work. Chatter with your porter's wife when she brings you your newspaper in the morning, and she will call your attention to the critique of

Paul de Kock's book in the fenilleton. Speak to your cook relative to your

dinner having been late the day before, and she will throw the blame on Paul de Kock. Ask your friend why he broke his appointment, and the reply will be the same. In fine, M. Charles Paul de Kock engrosses public attention as much as the prices of Funds, the measures of the Ministers, or the war in 'Spain. He is a ' Monsieur Tonson,' whose existence is interminable."

But we must hear what Mr. REYNOLDS himself, When he comes to particulars, says respecting the licentiousness and immorality of .modern French novels. And first, we must endeavour to ascertain what hiS notions are of licentiousness and immorality ; which, he enables us to do by one sentence in his introduction, where he as- serts that "the publications of LE SAGE, Louver-CouvEr, [mean- log, we presUrne, Lotivz.T DE COUVRAY,] AO. PIGAULT LEURint cannothe Aaid to be more immoral or indecent :than-the. warkeef SMOLLETT or FIELDING." We never should have dreamed damn. tinning. the admirable LE SAGE in the same sentence with Louvt-s, the author of one of the most detestable books in existeneei the very title .of which (the . Chevalier de Faublas) ,hesitate. to Write,—and PIGAULT LEBRUN, whose obscenities, however .popular they may have been in France, would hardly be tolerated in au English brothel. If Mr. REYNOLDS cannot discover that 'these precious productions are more indecent or immoral than those of FIELDING or SMOLLETT, " there must be matter in't ".when be'usea the language we shall immediately quote, in speaking of some of his favourite authors whom he would introduce to the acquaintanCO of his countrymen and CUltldryWOMen. Let us begin, as he does, with GEORGE SAND—the nom de guerre, as many of our readers probably know, of Madame DUDEVANT, as well known to be in her life a dcmirep, as in her writings to be one of the most brilliant, powerful, and profligate novelists of the age. Mr. REYNOLDS'S account of this celebrated lady is curiously Frenchified. First as to the lady herself- " Madame Dutlevant is a lady under thirty years of age, beautiful in person as she is elegant in mind, and calculated as much to grace a gilded salon as to shine in a concerzatione [conversaziond among a number of' eminent literati. She is witty and spirituelle as well as philosophic and profound, and as capable of exciting peals of laughter as of d awing the tear of tender sym- pathy from the eyes. Her style of conversation is not vested with the same boldness or fearlessness which characterize her writings ; her ideas are inva- riably expressed with a reserve and modesty which cannot be traced in her volumes.

After a great deal more to the same purpose, we have the fol- lowing edifying sketch of her history— "This woman of a million passions, when she first entered upon the mar- riage state with the nobleman whose name she bears, found that the endear- ments of her domestic circle were few ; and hers was a disposition which, feel- ing a perpetual want of something to love and.cherish with a pure and unvary- ing. affection, was easily led astray so soon as those ties of attachment were— as is reported, but how truly we know not--wantonly broken by him who ought to have been proud of the woman whose incipient genius he could not but have perceived. Hence—in an age and a city of pleasure and temptation—exposed to all those dangers which are ever to be encountered by beauty and talent— and gifted with a soul as full of poesy and lore as her imagination was of' rich- ness and originality—did the baroness yield to the exigencies of her nature and of her position, anti seek that consolation with another which she could not find in him who was her legal protector. She became an authoress in due time; and, aware that prejudice might attach unpopularity to her writings if issued under the auspices of her real name, she adopted that of ' George Sand,' and, as we before stated, experienced the most complete success ever attained by any female in modern times."

Truly an exemplary personage ! In regard to her works, take the following description of " the most celebrated" of them.

"Lelia is the most celebrated, because it is the most pernicious—[Observe what is the chief cause of the celebrity of a novel in naile]—of the category of volumes the titlepages of which bear the immortal name of this extraordinary writer. The tale is, however, devoid of one single feature to recommend it : it is a HELLISH compound of poisonous drugs, combined fim the purpose of forming a drought which may instil a slow poison into the veins of those who luxuriate in it!"

Is this not sufficient for GEORGa SAND? We are, happily, "in- nocent of the knowledge" of Lelia. We know a little, however, of some of this illustrious lady's other productions; and assuredly, if the draught they afford is less nauseous, it is not on that ac- count the less pernicious. 01' what value, as testimony in titvour of these other works, is the opinion of a man who thinks that PIGAULT LEBRUN and LouVET are not more indecent and immoral than SMOLLETT or FIELDING ?

In describing the Alosaique, a collection of tales by MERIM1IE, writer whom Mr. lisysosms warmly eulogizes, he says- "' Frederigo:amulan: paper in the Jhloaaique, is too singular to be absolutely blasphemous, and too interesting as a specimen of ancient legend to escape without notice. In this wild romance, the Saviour of mankind and his twelve disciple's are introduced together with Pluto aml Mars ; it is a species of panto- mime, in which ancient and Christian mythology are strangely jumbled toge- ther. Our regard for the religious scruples of our fellow-countrymen alone prevents us from laying an analysis of ' Frederigo' before our readers."

'Phis at least is considerate !—We have not room to multiply these extracts; but we cannot omit what Mr. REYNOLDS says of the dramas of his prime favourite, Vieroa Huoo. " Hernani was the most successful of all Hugo's dramas upon the stage ; and it probably possesses the least merit as a book. Marion de l'Ornie, Marie Tudor, and Le Itoi s'aniuse, are but of second-rate merit, though of first-rote immorality. The last was forbidden by the Minister of the Interior to lie per- formed on the stage ; a decree against which Victor Hugo appealed to the tri- bunals without suet C30."

Mr. REYNOLDS omits to tell us, that the piece of ribaldry entitled Le Boi s'amuse was too high even for a Parisian palate, and was nearly hooted off the stage before being prohibited by the authori- ties; and M. Huoo excited some surprise by his fatuity in appeal- ing against the prohibition of a piece which had already, in fact, received its quietus from the audience. Probably the Minister was too well acquainted with the Parisian public to rely much on the permanence of their proper feeling. As to Mark Tudor, it is suffi- cient to say that its subject is a profligate amour between the stern daughter of Henry the Eighth and an Italian adventurer! Horned is certainly a harmless play, but as certainly a dull one : some few years ago, Lord LEYESON GOWER took the trouble to translate it, but his publication failed to excite any attention. Licence seems to be, to these French writers, what his hair was to Smarsost : de- prive them of that, and their strength leaves them. They remind us of the Italian prima donna, who, when somebody was prosing to her about innocent pleasures, exclaimed impatiently, " I hate inno- cent pleasures I"

It is as a novelist that Vinton HUGO is praMinent. Some of

his works of this class—particularly Bug Jargal and Hans d'Islande—with all their talent, are odious and revolting: but Le 'Vernier Jour d'im amdamng and Notre Dame de Paris are less debased by impurities than most romances of the modern French school. '['he last is indeed the most powerful work of any living writer of fiction. Even it, however, is a book which few men, we think, possessed of English tastes and feelings, would care to read a second time. Its scenes and descriptions sometimes exceed the bounds of modesty ; and it resembles its fellows in presenting (as the Edinburgh Review says) that mixture "of the coarsest exhibi- tions with a display of the finest sentiments, which is the darling feature of the literature de la morgue." It is, however, limpid purity when compared to many other books of its class.

Into the mere literary merits of these books we do not think it necessary to enter; as we hope and believe that the English pre-

judice, which Mr. REYNOLDS labours so hard to conquer, will con- tinue to render them sealed books to the generality of English readers. HUGO, BALZAC, DE KOCK, DIMAS, and SAND, possess, as writers, great and various excellencies; and it is only to be re- gretted that their powers have not been better employed. In regard to poets, France at present has but two—De LAMAR- TINE and DE BERANGER. As to DE LAMARTINE, so long as we have CAMPBELL and WORDSWORTH, we cannot agree with Mr. REY- NOLDS in opinion that he is the greatest poet now living. He is, however, a poet of the highest order ; though Mr. REYNOLDS'S bald

and feeble translations do not give the faintest idea of his beauties.

De BERANGER is one of the most popular of song-writers; but we cannot piece him in the same class with a DE LAMARTINE or a BYRON. DE BERANGER is the chassonnier of the masses; and his

verses are the very echo of their sentiments, feelings, prejudices, and foibles. lie has been compared to Beesss ; but most erro-

neously. BURNS was as independent in his writings as in his life. A steady and consistent spirit of liberty runs through all his poetry. DE BERANGER has shown himself to be independent of the great, but he has not been independent of the people. To gain their applause, he has made himself an instrument breathed into by the aura popularis—an organ of the changeful moods and passions of

the multitude ; at one time the stern Democrat, the uncom- promising Republican ; at. another, eulogising a despot, and lament- ing over the departed glories of the Imperial throne. What, too, but a desire to catch the tone of the day, could have induced him frequently to indulge in a vein of licentiousness and profanity at variance with the purity and simplicity of his life ? This considera- tion, we confess, has always, to us, detracted from the charm of some of the most beautiful of his lyrics.

In his specimens of DE BERANGER, Mr. IlnyzeoLns has been very infelicitous. One of the songs selected is a revolting piece of

blasphemy ; and they are all ruined by a lumbering, wordy transla- tion, the very antipodes to the terse and simple style of the original.

Our readers may be pleased with a much more favourable speci- men of this pleasing writer, taken from an English version of a collection of his songs published anonymously (by PICKERING) a few years ago, and exceedingly well executed.

MY OLD COAT. Sois moi tldele, u pauvre habit rine j'aimel Ensemble nuns devenons Vieux,"

My dear old coat, I grieve to see How time is wearing thee and me ; Each day, for years now half a score, (Not Socrates himself could more Have done) to save thee from mishap With my own hands I've brushed thy nap, Or rather texture I should say, For nap has long been worn away. Should Fate have other robs in store, And make thy bareness more and more,. Resist with patience sage like me— Old friend, we must not parted be.

Well I remember the first day I put thee on all new and gay— It was my birth-day, ten years past, (Alas, that time should fly so first!) And such was then the honour done thee, My merry friends made songs upon thee! And still those friends as ready are To feast me now as then they were. My honest poverty is not

By them regarded Os 0 blot ; Though poor my garb, they welcome me Old friend, we must not parted be.

We gond may out of evil draw ! Thou (leant a sear, a patch's flaw ; it calls to mind one joyous day When I with Lizzv was at play : 1 said 'twos time the girl to leave, But felt her hold me by the sleeve; 1 tried to fly, but (sad mishap !) She caught and tore my yielding lap. Then, while the mending-thread she plied, I sat delighted by her Fade : Over her work how great our glee! Old friend, we must not parted be.

Have I the looking-glass adored

When wearing thee ? or o'er thee poured

The rich perfume ? or made thee wait In antechambers of the great, Exposed to each disdainful air Of every jack-in-office there ? Not 11 while courtiers have contended

For ribands, stars, and crosses splendid, My small ambition all and sole,

A wild-Hower for thy button-hole,

Has with that prize contented me I Old friend, we must not parted be.

Fear not, my good old coat, that thou Envelopest an owner now Such as in wilder days of yore :

Long since their maddening hours are o'er, Hours which caprice so various made With joy and sorrow, sun and shade! These graver days too have their speed, Nor long shall 1 a garment need ; My being's tide is ebbing fast,

A little longer strive to last ;

The end of -both one day must see— Old friend, we will not parted be !

There are several such things—full of sweet and gentle tender- ness, to be found in DE BERANGER. But, taken collectively, his writings will disappoint the English reader. BURNS is the poet of his race ; DE BERANGER of the present generation of Frenchmen.