esprit follet like Asmodeus, who is as much a decided creation of genius, in his way, as Ariel or Caliban. Without possessing the darker powers and propensities of a Fallen Angel, he presides over the vices and the follies, rather than the crimes of mankindis malicious, rather than malignant; and his delight is to gibe, and to scoff, and to teaze, rather than to torture:-one of Satan's light infantry, in short, whose business it is to goad, perplex, and disturb the ordinary train of society, rather than to break in upon and overthrow it. This character is maintained in all Asmodeus says and does, with so much spirit, wit, acuteness, and playful malice, that we never forget the fiend, even in those moments when he is very near becoming amiable as well as entertaining.

"Don Cleofas, to whom he makes all his diverting communications, is a fiery young Spaniard, proud, high-spirited, and revengeful, and just so much of a libertine as to fit him for the company of Asmodeus. He interests us personally by his gallantry and generous sentiments; and we are pleased with the mode in which the grateful fiend provides for the future happiness of his liberator. Of these two characters neither is absolutely original. But the Devil of Guevara is, as the title of the book expresses, a mere bottle conjuror, who amuses the student by tricks of legerdemain, intermixed with strokes of satire, some of them very acute, but devoid of the poignancy of Le Sage. Don Cleofas is a inere literal copy from the Spanish author. There is no book in existence in which so much of the human character, under all its various shades and phases, is described in so few words, as in the Diable Boiteux. Every page, every line, bears marks of that sure tact and accurate development of human weakness and folly, which tempt us to think we are actually listening to a Superior Intelligence, who sees into our minds and motives, and, in malicious sport, tears away the veil which we endeavour to interpose betwixt these and our actions. The satire of Le Sage is as quick and sudden as it is poignant; his jest never is blunted by anticipation; ere we are aware that the bow is drawn, the shaft is quivering in the very centre of the mark. To quote examples, would be to quote the work through almost every page; and, accordingly, no author has afforded a greater stock of passages, which have been generally employed as apothegms, or illustrations of human nature and actions; and no wonder, since the force of whole pages is often compressed in fewer words than another author would have employed sentences. To take the first example that comes: The fiends of Profligacy and of Chicane contend for possession and direction of a young Parisian. Pillardoc would have made him a commis, Asmodeus a VOL. XV.

debauchee. To unite both their views, the infernal conclave made the youth a monk, and effected a reconciliation between their contending brethren. • We embraced,' said Asmodeus, and have been mortal enemies ever since.' It is well observed by the late editor of Le Sage's works, that the traits of this kind, with which the Diable Boiteux abounds, entitle it, much more than the Italian scenes of Gherardi, to the title of the Grenier a Sel, conferred on the latter work by the sanction of Boileau. That great poet, nevertheless, is said to have been of a different opinion. He threatened to dismiss a valet whom he found in the act of reading the Diable Boiteux. Whether this proceeded from the peevishness of indisposi tion, under which Boileau laboured in 1707; whether he supposed the knowledge of human life, and all its chicanery, to be learned from Le Sage's satire, was no safe accomplishment for a domestic; or whether, finally, he had private or personal causes for condemning the work and the author, is not now known. But the anecdote forms one example, amongst the many, of the unjust estimation in which men of genius are too apt to hold their contemporaries.

"Besides the power of wit and satire displayed in the Diable Boiteux, with so much brilliancy, there are passages in which the author assumes a more serious and moral tone; he sometimes touches upon the pathetic, and sometimes even approaches the sublime. The personification of Death is of the latter character, until we come to the point where the author's humour breaks forth, and where, having described one of the terrific phantom's wings as painted with war, pestilence, famine, and shipwreck, he adorns the other with the representation of young physicians taking their degree.

"Few have ever read this charming book without remembering, as one of the most delightful occupations of their life, the time which they first employed in the perusal; and there are few also who do not occasionally turn back to its pages with all the vivacity which attends the recollection of early love. It signifies nothing at what time we have first encountered the fascination; whether in boyhood, when we were chiefly captivated by the cavern of the robbers, and other scenes of romance; whe ther in more advanced youth, but while our ignorance of the world yet concealed from us the subtle and poignant satire which lurks in so many passages of the work; whether we were learned enough to apprehend the various allusions to history and public matters with which it abounds, or ignorant enough to rest contented with the more direct course of the narration. The power of the enchanter over us is alike absolute, under all these circumstances. If 2 H

there is anything like truth in Gray's opinion, that to lie upon a couch and read new novels was no bad idea of Paradise, how would that beatitude be enhanced, could human genius afford us another Gil Blas!

"Le Sage's claim to originality, in this delightful work, has been idly, I had almost said ungratefully, contested by those critics, who conceive they detect a plagiarist wherever they see a resemblance in the general subject of a work, to one which has been before treated by an inferior artist. It is a favourite theme of laborious dulness, to trace out such coincidences; because they appear to reduce genius of the higher order to the usual standard of humanity, and of course to bring the author nearer a level with his critics. It is not the mere outline of a story-not even the adopting some details of a former author, which constitutes the literary crime of plagiarism. The proprietor of the pit from which Chantry takes his clay, might as well pretend to a right in the figure into which it is moulded under his plastic fingers; and the question is in both cases the same-not so much from whom the original rude substance came, as to whom it owes that which constitutes its real merit and excellence.

"It is therefore no disparagement to Le Sage, that long before his time there existed in other countries, and particularly in Spain, that species of fiction to which Gil Blas may be in some respects said to belong. There arises in every country a species of low or comic romance, bearing somewhat the same proportion to the grave or heroic romance, which farce bears to tragedy. Readers of all countries are not more, if indeed they are equally delighted, with the perusal of high deeds of war and chivalry, achieved by some hero of popular name, than with the exploits of some determined freebooter, who follows his illicit trade by violence, or of some notorious sharper, who preys upon society by address and stratagem. The lowness of such

men's character, and the baseness of their

pursuits, does not prevent their hazards, their successes, their failures, their escapes, and their subsequent fate, from being deeply interesting, not merely to the common people only, but to all who desire to read a chapter in the great book of human nature. We may use, though not in a moral sense, the oft-quoted phrase of Terence, and acknowledge ourselves interested in the tale, because we are men and the events are human."

sition, yet which seems so very real, that we cannot divest ourselves of the opinion that we listen to the narrative of one who has really gone through the scenes of which he speaks to us. Gil Blas' character has all the weaknesses and inequalities proper to human nature, and which we daily recognize in ourselves and in such a witty sharper as the Spaniards our acquaintances. He is not by nature painted in the characters of Paolo or Guzman, and such as Le Sage himself has embodied in the subordinate sketch of Scipio, but is naturally disposed towards honesty, though with a mind unfortunately too ductile to resist the temptations of opportunity or example. He is constitutionally timid, and yet occasionally capable of doing brave actions; shrewd and intelligent, but apt to be deceived by his own vanity; with wit enough to make us laugh with him at others, and follies enough to turn the jest frequently against himself. Generous, good natured, and humane, he has virtues sufficient to make us love him, and as to respect, it is the last thing which he asks at his reader's hands. Gil Blas, in short, is the principal character in a moving scene, where, though he frequently plays a subordinate part in the action, all that he lays before us is coloured with his own opinions, remarks, and sensations. We feel the individuality of Gil Blas alike in the cavern of the robbers, in the episcopal palace of the Archbishop of Grenada, in the bureau of

the minister, and in all the various scenes through which he conducts us so delightfully, and which are, generally speaking, very slightly connected together, or rather no otherwise related to each other, than as they are represented to have happened to the same man. In this point

of view, the romance is one which rests on character rather than incident; but although there is no main action whatsoever, yet there is so much incident in the episodical narratives, that the work can never be said to linger or hang heavy.

"The son of the squire of Asturias is entrusted also with the magic wand of the Diable Boiteux, and can strip the gilding from human actions with the causticity of Asmodeus himself. Yet, with all this power of satire, the moralist has so much of gentleness and good humour, that it may be said of Le Sage, as of Horace, Circum præcordia ludit. All is

"The principal character, in whose name and with whose commentaries the story is told, is a conception which has never been equalled in fictitious compo

lively; even the cavern of the robbers is illuminated with a ray of that wit with which Le Sage enlightens his whole narrative. It is a work which renders the reader pleased with himself and with

mankind, where faults are placed before him in the light of follies rather than vices, and where misfortunes are so interwoven with the ludicrous, that we laugh in the very act of sympathizing with them. All is rendered diverting both the crimes and the retribution which follows them. Thus, for example, Gil Blas, during his prosperity, commits a gross act of filial undutifulness and ingratitude; yet we feel, that the intermediation of Master Muscada the grocer, irritating the pride of a parvenu, was so exactly calculated to produce the effect which it operated, that we continue to laugh with and at Gil Blas, even in the sole instance in which he shews depravity of heart. And then, the lapidation which he undergoes at Oviedo, with the disappointment in all his ambitious hopes of exciting the admiration of the inhabitants of his birth-place, is received as an expiation completely appropriate, and suited to the offence. In short, so strictly are the pages of Gil Blas confined to that which is amusing, that they might perhaps have been improved by some touches of a more masculine, stronger, and firmer line of morality.

"It ought not to escape notice, that Le Sage, though, like Cervantes, he considers the human figures which he paints as his principal object, fails not to relieve them by exquisite morsels of landscape, slightly touched indeed, but with the highest keeping, and the most marked effect. The description of the old hermit's place of retreat may be given as an example of what we mean.

"In the History of Gil Blas is also exhibited' that art of fixing the attention of the reader, and creating, as it were, a reality even in fiction itself, not only by a strict attention to custom and locality, but by a minuteness, and at the same time a vivacity of detail, comprehending many trifling circumstances which might be thought to have escaped every one's memory, excepting that of an actual eyewitness. By such a circumstantial detail the author has rendered us as well acquainted with the four pavilions and corps de logis of Lirias, as if we had ourselves dined there with Gil Blas and his faithful follower Scipio. The well-preserved tapestry, as old as the Moorish kingdom of Valencia, the old-fashioned damask chairs-that furniture of so little intrinsic value, which yet made, in its proper place, such a respectable appearance-the dinner, the siesta-all give that closing scene in the third volume such a degree of reality, and assure us so completely of the comfort and happiness of our pleasant companion, that the conclu

ding chapters, in which the hero is dismissed, after his labours and dangers, to repose and happiness-these very chapters, which in other novels are glanced over as a matter of course, are perhaps the most interesting in the Adventures of Gil Blas. Not a doubt remains on the mind of the reader concerning the continuance of the hero's rural felicity, unless he should happen (like ourselves) to feel some private difficulty in believing that the new cook from Valencia could ever rival Master Joachim's excellence, particularly in the matter of the ollapodrida, and the pig's ears marinated. Indeed, to the honour of that author be it spoken, Le Sage, excellent in describing scenes of all kinds, gives such vivacity to those which interest the gastronome in particular, that an epicure of our acquaintance used to read certain favourite passages regularly before dinner, with the purpose of getting an appetite like that of the Licentiate Sedillo, and, so far as his friends could observe, the recipe was always successful."

And now, when, in addition to these specimens, we mention, that each of the Essays extends to from forty and fifty very large and closely printed pages, and that of ten or twelve authors already embodied in this work, we have alluded as yet to no more than three or four, we apprehend we have done enough to call the attention of all those who are capable of judging, what books are, and what books ought to be, to " Ballantyne's Novelist's Li

brary."

May it be conducted with equal skill to its conclusion. The life of Voltaire by Sir Walter Scott is yet to come, and that, certainly, will be a present of no ordinary interest. Goethe Rousseau,-and Marmontel and Prealso yet is before us, and Schiller, and vost among the foreigners,-and Radcliffe (at least) among ourselves.

In case Sir Walter Scott does not interfere in these details, we beg to caution the publishers, that they must be particularly on their guard about the selection of a translation of Werter: indeed, we are not aware that any version worthy of a place here does as yet exist in our language. The same observation must be made as to" The Ghost Seer;" and we suspect our old favourite, Manon Lescaut, may be in the same situation. The English doings of these and many other foreign romances with which our boyhood was acquainted, were all quite execrable; but these may be better. At all events,