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MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



THE HISTORY OF CHARLEMAGNE. BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. LONDON : 

 LONGMAN AND Co. 1832. 



WE must confess that we have been somewhat disappointed in Mr. James's 

 book. We were, perhaps, wrong in expecting, if we did expect, that the life of 

 Charlemagne would have been invested in the gorgeous colouring with which 

 the author knows so well how to clothe his romances ; but we were, we think, 

 entitled to look for a less sober and measured production, particularly where 

 the hero of his tale is, perhaps, as much indebted for his fame to tradition 

 as to history. We cannot but think that a man who sits down to write a 

 history now-a-days is possessed and laid hold of by some unaccountable notion 

 that his book must, perforce, be written, if not in the very style, at least very 

 much after the same manner as his more modern predecessors ; and the conse- 

 quence is, that when the work comes to be read there appears a want of fresh- 

 ness, of originality and of spirit ; the three indispensable requisites not only in 

 a tale of fiction, but also in a work of history. We extract the following passage 

 from the historical introduction, by which the life of the hero is preceded. We 

 by no means agree with the author as to the secular advantages resulting from 

 the establishment of a religion upon a basis of superstition, even upon his own 

 shewing. 



" Far is it from my object to countenance deceit, or even policy in any matter 

 of religion ; a matter which neither requires nor admits of prop or guidance from 

 mortal man ; but still, it is the business of the historian, not only to state 

 events, but to examine their causes, and to trace their effects ; and it appears to 

 me an indisputable fact, that the superstition with which the vivid imagination 

 of a barbarous people clothed the simplest and purest of doctrines, served to 

 assimilate it to their own minds, and to ensure easier reception to principles 

 calculated in the end to elevate, to purify, and to correct. In a worldly point of 

 view it did much more ; it added an imaginary dignity, in the eyes of the people, 

 to the real dignity of devotion, and a holy life ; and by making the clergy re- 

 spected and reverenced, it called those who were great and powerful, not only to 

 embrace the faith, but, on interested motives, to solicit those stations in the 

 church, which added to their consideration with their countrymen, in an age 

 when the multitude of followers and adherents was the only means of safety. 

 Thus, we find the various bishoprics of Gaul, as strenuously solicited and in- 

 trigued for, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, as any mundane honour of 

 our latter days ; and the writers of those ages, in general, state all the great dig- 

 nitaries of their church to have sprung from families which they qualify as pos- 

 sessing senatorial rank, or great wealth and possessions." 



We think we cannot give a more favourable specimen of Mr. James's powers 

 of description than his account of the celebrated battle of Roncesvalles, 



" When Charlemagne and all his peerage fell." 



" The Pyrenees, extending in a continuous line from the Bay of Biscay to the 

 borders of the Mediterranean, rise in a long straight ridge, the superior points 

 of which are but a few yards lower than the summit of Mont Blanc. In the 

 highest part of the chain, there are" occasional apertures ; and from the main 

 body of the mountains, long masses of inferior hills are projected into the plain 

 country on either side, decreasing in height as they proceed, till they become im- 

 perceptibly blended with the level ground around. Between these steep natural 

 buttresses, narrow valleys, sometimes spreading out into grand basins, some- 

 times straitened into defiles of a few yards in width, wind on towards the only 

 passes from one country to another. The roads, skirting along the bases of the 

 hills, which, to the present day, are frequently involved in immense and trackless 

 woods, have always beneath them a mountain torrent, above which they are 

 raised, as on a terrace, upon the top of high and rugged precipices. A thousand 



