bottom he must amuse himself, as Froissart says, "moult tristement à la mode de notre pays 999 1 With his departure from Dover on the 22nd May, the Duke's figure fades beyond the limits of this paper, and his further fortunes must be studied in Lucien Perey's second volume, 'La Fin du XVIIIe Siècle.' He continued to dally with the affairs of his duchy, and to live the salon life of a grand seigneur. He organized little fêtes and proverbes, wrote songs and album verses, produced fluent fables which he read to the Academy (where he often presided)-in short, completely justified his reputation as 'le plus aimable maître des cérémonies de la société française.' When at last came the crash of the Revolution, he was denounced by the terrible Chaumette, and shut up in the prison of Les Carmes. There, an old man of seventy-nine, he set himself down philosophically to translate, at so many lines per day, the interminable 'Ricciardetto' of Cardinal Nicholas Fortiguerra.2 1 Two years earlier, according to the newly printed Newcastle correspondence, he had spoken of Nivernais as ‘an old acquaintance of mine, and the most respectable man in France' (Ernst's' Chesterfield,' 1893, p. 518). 2 'Ricciardetto' had previously been translated into French by the brother of General Dumouriez. An Italian edition Upon his release, he found he had lost everything but his serenity of temper. As the citoyen Mancini, he turned undismayed to literature; wrote a biography of the Abbé Barthélemy, the author of 'Anacharsis'; and issued, in eight volumes, his own collected works, none of which has had the good fortune to become classic, although a selection of the fables, translated into English, was printed in this country by the younger Cadell. That long disease,' his life, was protracted until February, 1798, but neither age nor misfortune could diminish his amiability and his 'coquetry to please.' Only a few days in three volumes with frontispieces by Cateni, and engraved titles by Moreau, was published at London and Paris in 1767. Those who have counted them' (says M. SainteBeuve), declare that there are thirty thousand lines in this once famous burlesque of Ariosto. Nivernais-it may be added here besides being a bookmaker, was also a bookcollector; and the present writer is fortunate enough to possess a specimen from his library. It is a copy of Johannes Veenhusius his edition of Pliny's Letters (Lugd. Batav. 1669, 8vo), whole bound in old red morocco with 'LE. DUC. DE. NIVERNOIS.' on the side, and his armorial shield at the back. The volume must have been a favourite with Nivernais, for one of his cleverest pieces is a Dialogue des Morts between Pliny and Madame de Sévigné, in which the interlocutors say remarkably plain things to one another concerning the art of letter-writing. before the end, he addressed one of his most charming letters to his lawyer, who was ill; and almost his last act was to dictate from his deathbed some graceful and kindly verses to M. Caille, the faithful doctor who attended him. There had been question of a consultation; but the Duke thought it needless. 'Ne consultons point d'avocats ; Je n'en veux point d'autre en ma cure; Qui font bonne guerre au trépas; Je veux mourir entre vos bras.' Having then slept quietly for six hours, he woke at last to find himself surrounded by sympathetic faces. In the effort to greet them, he passed away, a smile of recognition still upon his lips. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF HUMPHRY CLINKER.' No one will contend,' says Henry Fielding in the Preface to one of his sister's books, 'that the epistolary Style is in general the most proper to a Novelist, or that [and here he was plainly thinking of a certain work called "Pamela "] it hath been used by the best Writers of this Kind.' The former part of the proposition is undeniable; but however true the latter may have been when Fielding wrote in 1747, it is scarcely as true now. Even if we omit for the moment all consideration of modern examples, 'Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison'—both of them novels told by letters, and in one of which Richardson emphatically vindicated his claim to rank among the 'best Writers followed 'Pamela' before Fielding's death. Half-a-dozen years after that event, another and a greater than Richardson adopted the same medium for a masterpiece; and the sub-title of Rousseau's 'Nouvelle Héloïse' is, 'Lettres de deux Amants, habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes.' Still later in 1771-the 'epistolary Style' was chosen, for his final fiction, by one of Fielding's own countrymen; and in the success of the enterprise, the fact that it was achieved in what Mrs. Barbauld correctly defines as the most natural and the least probable way of telling a story,' has fallen out of sight. To think of Grandison' or 'Clarissa' is to remember that the prolixity of those prolix performances is increased by the form; but in Smollett's Expedition of Humphry Clinker' the form is scarcely felt as an objection, assuredly not as an obstruction. It is true, also, that between Smollett's last and best book and the books of the authors mentioned there are some other not unimportant differences. One of these lies in the circumstance that his communications are never replied toa detail which, however irritating in a practical correspondence, obviates in a novel much of the wearisome repetition usually charged against epistolary narrative; another difference is, that there is no serious approach to anything like a connected story in the detached recollections of travel recorded by the characters in Humphry Clinker.' Entertaining in themselves, those characters in their progress encounter other characters who are equally entertaining, and an apology for |