which is here, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, turned into a joke or quibble. Nor is this its only evil feature. To transform the rich creations of a poet's fancy into ribaldry and jest—to metamorphose the harmonious expression of his grandest thoughts into clownish barbarism,—^this surely is offence enough against good taste. But it is not alone good taste which here receives a shock. Every opening which the original might give, or seem to give, for licentious description is seized upon; every page is more or less mud-bespattered. A third work, the Romans Tragi-comiques is neither better nor worse; what has been said of the Roman Comique applies equally to them. As the title indicates, these tales are meant to be of a gloomier cast; but the "comic" parts seem to me infinitely the most tragical.
A little before the time of Scarron and La Fontaine, a collection of verses culled from the portfolios of various noted authors of the time had been published under, the title of Le Cabinet Satyrique, The contents of these volumes, which, I am sorry to say, have lately been reprinted in Belgium by a publisher of the Holywell-street stamp, are even worse than those of the works I have just noticed. All decency—all delicate reticence—is thrown aside, and the grossest expressions are used to convey the grossest imaginations.
I have purposely mentioned this work out of its chronological order, inasmuch as it may be supposed to have immediately suggested the songs and ballads of Rochester, D'Urfey, and others, of whom in passing to England, I am about to speak. Without pausing, then, to examine that off-shoot of the Pantagruelist school in France which, in the middle of the eighteenth century,connecting itself with the Sentimentalists, headed by Rousseau, became still more dangerous because it issued forth in sheep's clothing, and, like the bright wisp, allured its follower to a dreary waste of bog and mire; let us proceed to its disciples in England, whose names and whose writings are more " familiar in our mouths."
