1830.] [ 465 ] 



MONTHLY REVIEW Of 1 LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 



De L'Orme, 3 vols. 12mo., by the Author 

 of Darnley, &c. This is a manly and 

 masterly production, skilfully conceived, 

 and executed with more than the writer's 

 usual spirit, and shews him familiar with 

 the scenes and times and characters he 

 describes. He has taken a just measure 

 of the style and taste in which the intel- 

 ligence of the day requires such matters 

 to be handled. His outlines are clear 

 and definite, and the fillings up not 

 over-crowded ; he is not circumstantial 

 enough to be perplexing, nor is his pro- 

 pensity to dialoguing indulged to bab- 

 bling all tends closely and directly to 

 the point before him, and every line 

 and this is a distinguishing quality may 

 be read. 



The story is auto-biographical. The 

 hero is a Bearnois, and the son of a 

 seigneur of the province, a noble of dimi- 

 nished rights, but undiminished preten- 

 sions. The youth is a little ardent in tem- 

 perament, and precipitate in conduct 

 secluded from society, but panting for 

 sensation, and not finding opportuni- 

 ties for action, speedily makes them. 

 His adventures begin early. Returning 

 from the college at Pau, he gets into a 

 tilting match with a certain marquis, no- 

 torious for not sticking about the means 

 of gratifying his passions : in particular, 

 he was said to have killed the Count 

 d'Bagnoles and got possession of his es- 

 tates. Nobody doubted he would take 

 his revenge; and a neighbour, about 

 whom there was a good deal of mystery, 

 urged upon his parents the prudence of 

 removing him out of the way for a time, 

 and being himself on the point of start- 

 ing for Saragossa, takes him under his 

 own win^. At Saragossa he quickly gets 

 into a singular scrape, and loses the 

 friendship of his protector by a little 

 misunderstanding arising out of the said 

 scrape. Compelled to quit Saragossa, and 

 finding also the apprehended storm blown 

 over, he ventures home again. While 

 idling there his mother meanwhile so- 

 liciting a commission from the Count 

 de Soissons he falls in love with a beau- 

 tiful girl, his mother's protegee, and 

 while in the act of expressing his admi- 

 ration, is suddenly pounced upon by her 

 brother, and forced to fire in his own de- 

 fence. Thinking he had killed the lad, 

 absconding becomes imperative ; and he 

 luckily falls in with the chief of a band 

 of smugglers, and accompanies the party 

 across the Pyrenees. Approaching Le- 

 rida, he separates from his conductor, 

 who was going to Lorida with a resolu- 

 tion to rescue an imprisoned comrade, 

 and turns off towards Barcelona mean- 

 ing to get to Paris, solicit his pardon, and 

 M.M. New Series VOL. X. No. 58. 



pay his respects, on the strength of his 

 mother's communication, to the Count 

 de Soissons. Before, however, he reaches 

 Barcelona, he gets involved in the sud- 

 den rebellion of the Catalonians escapes 

 through the influence of his friend the 

 smuggler, who proves to be one of the 

 rebel chiefs is taken for an agent of 

 Richelieu's, and, finally, to his great de- 

 light, is commissioned to carry des- 

 patches to the cardinal. No time is lost 

 in obtaining an interview ; and a long 

 conversation follows, not about the Cata- 

 lonian rebels, but, such was the cardinal's 

 taste, about Ovid's Metamorphoses, and 

 he is dismissed with an assurance that he 

 would shortly hear from him. Weeks, 

 however, pass away without any notice, 

 when he is visited by De Retz, then 

 young, but already a busy plotter, who, 

 as he knew every body's affairs, also 

 knows all about De L'Orme's. After a 

 little characteristic manoeuvring on the 

 part of De Retz, De L'Orme is finally 

 engaged to join the Count de Soissons at 

 Sedan who was then collecting forces 

 to oppose, in open conflict, the cardinal ; 

 and the whole, down to the battle of 

 Marfee, in which the Count was killed, 

 is well and distinctly told. De L'Orme 

 falls into the hands of Richelieu, is recog- 

 nized, and death seems inevitable. He 

 is, however, rescued by his old friend of 

 the Pyrenees, who had before reappeared 

 on several critical occasions, and now 

 turns out to be a man of importance 

 the Comte de Bagnols, in short, and 

 father of De L'Orme's mother's beau- 

 tiful protegee. He has also the good for- 

 tune to serve his noble friend in return 

 he again encounters the revengeful 

 marquis fights with and kills him', and 

 recovers important papers which ena- 

 ble De Bagnols to recover his estates, 

 Throughout there is an air of life and 

 reality, and fehe scenes where historical 

 characters figure, are exhibited in ex- 

 cellent taste. The author has chosen 

 well : his materials have the freshness of 

 novelty in them. 



Lord Byron's Cain, with Notes, <|-<?., 

 by Harding Grant, Author of " Chancery 

 Practice.'''' There is no readily charac- 

 terizing this singular work so entirely 

 out of the common beat is it of any 

 thing we have ever met with. It is a 

 kind of running commentary upon Lord 

 Byron's '" Cain" the author taking the 

 piece not as a drama, the literary pro- 

 duction of Lord Byron, but as the actual 

 dialogue of real personages, whose senti- 

 ments he sifts and discusses and " values,'* 

 sedulously avoiding involving Lord By- 

 ron in the participation of certain offen- 



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