108 Monthly Review of Literature. 



FITZ-GEORGE, A NOVEL. 3 Vols. 



WE hold the appearance of this novel to be one of the most remarkable " signs of 

 the times." 1 1 is a fearless and encouraging commentary upon the liberal character 

 of the age. Novels were pronounced by some of our wise fathers, and are even now 

 considered by a few of our foolish fanatical contemporaries, to be " Devil'shooks." If 

 so, never did devil tell truth more religiously than in the novel before us ; never were 

 finer and more unquestionable facts set forth in the garb of fiction fiction that shews 

 us the naked truth as in a mirror, stripped of its drapery and disguises. " Fitz-George" 

 is in short, as an evening critic has observed, Fat-George ; the identical " first gentle- 

 man in Europe, and friend of Holy Alliances, whose character was once so mis- 

 takenly admired, and is now so justly and universally contemned whose despotism 

 and dandyism were alternately lamentable and ludicrous, and whose vices and 

 follies have proved so frightfully expensive to the nation that consented to foster 

 them as the offspring of a " divine right/' 



This most profligate and selfish of all sensualists this eclipse of Charles the Se- 

 cond and more than rival of Henry the Eighth,both in fat and fancy, could no thave 

 fallen into the hands of a more honest and faithful limner than the author of the novel 

 before us. He extenuates no excrescence, nor does he set a wrinkle down in malice. 

 He takes the character from its historical frame, and paints a domestic and natural 

 portrait of it ; reducing the gigantic lineaments which the false light of days for ever 

 gone by had given to it, to the size of life. In short, George the Fourth, is here for 

 the first time freely and fairly delineated in his habit as he lived; in his private and 

 public prodigalities in the various phases of his folly. We see by turns the 

 heartless libertine, the hollow friend, the waster of incredible sums of money wrung 

 from a famished and war-exhausted country ; the slave to his own passions, the 

 tyrant over those of others the debauchee, the despot and in all and each of 

 these, a man that preferred his own ease and enjoyments to all the world besides 

 a man that had not naturally bad passions, but whose natural understanding was 

 too shallow to save him from the temptations with which men have agreed to sur- 

 round the steps of royalty. The reader should study and criticise this character, as 

 he will see it delineated in the novel ; he will find it not pleasant, perhaps, but 

 appalling, through the loop-holes of such a retreat, to peep at such a world 

 of worthlessness, luxury, and degradation. The truth, thus presented in the 

 form of a pleasant narrative (for the story has all the charms of a romance), and 

 made attractive by the air and semblance of a fiction, cannot fail to impress him 

 with a deep sense of the grnad mistake which society falls into, when it entrusts its 

 destinies to the hands of a man who fancies that he is born to use them solely for 

 his own happiness, and that the well-being of the nation is a matter for the consi- 

 deration of the " fates and sisters three, and such odd branches of learning." 



So much for the Hon. Augustus Fitz-George. His father and mother are 

 sketched in a similar spirit, and the whole miserable machinery, and intriguing 

 spirit of the court, very cleverly laid bare. Most of the characters of the time are 

 sufficiently well drawn to render any particular paraphrase of the names unneces- 

 sary. Fox figures as Mr. Leppard, Pitt as Mr. Graves (the steward to old Lord 

 Fitz-George), and Sheridan as Mr. Drury Borrowman. Perhaps the former part 

 of the book is the best, as it admits of more individual touches and striking scenes 

 some of which are singularly happy and piquante. The whole is admirable ; 

 and we hope that it will find its way into the hands, not merely of every novel 

 reader, but of every reader of every description in the three kingdoms. It explains 

 the political and moral character of the last two reigns better than a hundred 

 histories. 



THE ANNUAL HISTORIAN. BY INGRAM COFFIN. LONDON: WESTLEY AND 

 DAVIES. 1832. 



As this volume appears to be the first attempt of the kind, we shall say little 

 eoncerning it. We suppose that the author intends an annual edition ; if so, we 

 advise him to condense his materials not always to rely upon the first newspaper 

 report to view both sides of the question and omit a few minute particulars. For 

 instance, why tell us the number of flags, banners, salutes, &c. on the opening of 



