74 



Monthly Review of Literature , 



[JULY, 



nerally has consulted the dictates of a 

 very sound understanding, and kept her 

 imagination in check. 



Assuredly Miss Roberts's performance 

 is a very creditable one. It is not merely 

 Hume's admirable sketch dilated ; she has 

 searched for herself. The British Museum 

 has opened to her its precious stores j the 

 Archicologia, possessing 1 many curious ar- 

 ticles, very ably discussed, and little 

 known to the reading world, has been 

 enlisted in her service; Mr. Nicholas has 

 lent his aid in the battle of Azincourt j 

 and Dr. Meyrick has drilled the fair writer 

 in the mysteries of ancient armour, till he 

 has impressed her with a deep sense of its 

 ^i-e-eminent importance, and taught her to 

 talk of it with the zest of an antiquarian, 

 and the skill of a knight-errant. The 

 printed materials, accessible to every one, 

 she has also diligently consulted, from the 

 cotemporary chronicles of our own coun- 

 trymen to the foreign memoirs of Froissart, 

 de Comines, and Monstrelet. The Paston 

 Papers also have furnished useful and un- 

 expected information. 



But though, acting with a laudable in- 

 tegrity, she has stuck close to her autho- 

 rities, the very different aspect given to 

 the circumstances of some events we are 

 not speaking generally from what they 

 have usually borne, will naturally excite 

 some inquiry ; and the result of such in- 

 quiry will sometimes shew the new ver- 

 sion originating not in superior accuracy 

 on her part, nor in the superior authority 

 of her materials ; but because, finding dif- 

 ferent representations, she has hastily 

 adopted them, more on account of that 

 very difference than because they were 

 of higher value. Of this, her representa- 

 tion of Joan of Arc is a conspicuous in- 

 stance. 



' In the village of Domremi," says 

 Hnme, " near Vaucouleurs, on the borders 

 of Lorraine, there lived a country girl, of 

 twenty-seven years of age, called Joan 

 d'Arc, who was servant in a small inn, and 

 who, in that station, had been accustomed 

 to tend the horses of the guests, to ride 

 them without a saddle to the watering- 

 place, and to perform other offices which, 

 in well-frequented inns, commonly fall to 

 the share of the men-servants. This girl 

 was of an irreproachable life, and had 

 not hitherto been remarked for any sin- 

 gularity ; whether that she had met with 

 no occasion to excite her genius, or 

 that the unskilful eyes of those who con- 

 versed with her had not been able to dis- 

 cover her uncommon merit." 



The Maid of Orleans (says Miss Roberts, giving 

 the whole a touch of romance, and stripping it of 

 it* coarseness) was born at Domremi, a small ham- 

 let situated between Neufchateau arid Vaucoleurs, 

 in Champagne; her youth was spent in tending 

 heep for her Barents, who were poor mid simple 



people. From the earliest age she had mani- 

 fested great sweetness and gentleness of disposi- 

 tion, a taste for the beauties of nature, and the 

 warmest and most unaffected piety. She shunned 

 the joyous revel, the song and the dance, when all 

 the village poured out its rustic throng into the 

 street, and would retire to a holy edifice to chaunt 

 hymns to the virgin. Constant in prayer, when 

 her occupations did not permit her to attend the 

 bell, which summoned her neighbours to church, she 

 would kneel down and offer up her fervent orisons 

 in the fields. At a short distance from Domremi 

 there was a magnificent beech-tree, which had 

 long been an object of veneration to the surround- 

 ing villagers. It was called the fairy-tree, and 

 every year in the month of May, it was the custom 

 for gay troop? of tlie young of both sexes to hang 

 wreathes of spring flowers on its boughs, and to 

 dance beneath its luxuriant foliage to the music 

 of their own voices : a fountain welled .up beside 

 it, -and tue bright waters and the green shade 

 were reported to have been in elder times the syl- 

 van haunts of fairies, who it was believed even 

 now still lingered, though invisible, around the 

 spot. This delicious place, and a small chapel 

 dedicated to the virgin, called the Hermitage of 

 St. Mary, often> invited Joan to their solitudes, 

 when her neighbours sought relaxation from toil 

 'in social converse with each other; and here at 

 the age of thirteen she first gave the reins to an 

 imagination, which shaped out glorious visions in 

 the sun-beams, and heard voices in the sighing 

 gales and rippling waters, &c. 



Hume refers to Hall, Monstrelet, and 

 Grafton ; while Miss Roberts reliessolely 

 on the " Mem. de Jeanne d'Arc" where 

 the author's fancy was evidently in con- 

 stant activity. 



But with regard to a multitude of per- 

 sons, Miss Roberts has been indefatigable ; 

 and her account of Sir John Holand, the 

 elder uterine brother of Richard II. ; of 

 Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick ; of 

 Cardinal Beaufort, and Whittington and 

 Walworth are very agreeable results of 

 her diligence. Sir John Falstolfe, parti- 

 cularly, of whom nothing would ever proba- 

 bly have been known, but for Shakspeare's 

 use of his name a circumstance which 

 has long excited the curiosity of critics, 

 and the Paston Papers have at last luckily 

 gratified it. Owen Tudor, again : rt Ca- 

 therine of France, Henry V.'s widow,' 7 

 says Hume, " married, soon after his 

 death, a Welch gentleman, Sir Owen Tu- 

 dor, said to be descended from the ancient 

 princes of that country : she bore him 

 two sons, Edmund and Jasper, of whom the 

 eldest was created Earl of Richmond, the 

 second Earl of Pembroke." This is all 

 Hume tells us. 



Queen Catherine (says Miss Roberts) who with 

 the characteristic gaiety of her country, mourned 

 not long for her gallant and accomplished hus- 

 band, suffered her admiration of the personal 

 beauty of Owen Tudor, a simple Welch knight, to 

 subdue the pride of birth ; the fair and royal 

 matron became the wife of a commoner, who had 

 charmed her eye* at a ball : for it i said, that 



