1828.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



who accumulates all such, and has them 

 bound every year in a portfolio, from which, 

 when in a good humour, and among his old 

 comrades, he reads after dinner, for their 

 entertainment and his own. Among the 

 many receipts thus collected, we have one 

 from no less a personage than the celebrated 

 M. de Voltaire, who was whipped for having 

 written some poetical lampoon upon his ma- 

 jesty. Is this credulity, or mere folly ? Be 

 the case which it may, it is enough to damn 

 the book. 



The Baron de Somebody's Memoirs now 

 come in in general excessively stupid 

 relating to a later period the occupation of 

 Berlin by the French. Soult's conduct is 

 highly lauded, perhaps justly, and Davoust's, 

 though a man of more severity, equally so. 

 Some anecdotes are related of Blucher, and 

 the author speaks of having met him some 

 years afterwards, at Frankfort, at the White 

 Swan, where, in the course of conversation, 



bear joking on the subject with the same philoso. 

 phical complacency as was exhibited by Lord M > 

 who was occasionally thus addressed by Lord E , 

 when riding in Hyde Park" Good morning, my 

 Lord ; how are your wife and my children?" 

 Every man in his humour. 



A series of the coarsest allusions follows, 

 relative to Marchesi, a soprano singer, whom 

 the lady calls the unfortunate noun adjective. 

 At Naples, however, the writer speaks in 

 very proper terms of the Queen, Lady Ham- 

 ilton, Lord Nelson, and of the victims of the 

 violated treaty and gives a sketch of the 

 characters of the chief of them. 



The second volume is wholly relative to 

 Napoleon, and amidst a great deal of idle 

 detail of ceremonies, furnishes many interest- 

 ing particulars of his private habits. The 

 account extends, from his assumption of the 

 imperial throne, to his exile at Elba. Among 

 other circumstances are a very minute account 

 of Napoleon's reception of Charles and Fer- 



he asked him his opinion of the battle of dinand, at Bayonne of the divorce from Jo- 

 Waterloo. " Would you, my friend," said sep hine_the marriage of Maria Louisa Ali 



Bey, and the Fenelon Papers. The author 

 accompanied Napoleon into Spain and to 

 Moscow : he evidently leans to the favourable 

 side, but never oversteps the bounds of pro- 

 bability there are no palpable lies, like those 

 of the lady under whose auspices the publisher 

 has placed M. de Bausset's journal. 



The Pelican Island, by James Mont- 

 gomery., 1827 The subject of the "Pelican 



Island" was suggested by Captain Flinders' 

 Voyage to Terra Australis, describing one of 

 those numerous gulfs which indent the coast 

 of New Holland, and are thickly spotted with 

 small islands " upon two of these," says 

 Captain Flinders, "we found many young 

 pelicans, unable to fly. Flocks of the old 

 birds were sitting upon the beaches of the la- 

 goon, and it appeared that the islands were 

 their breeding places. Not only so, but from 

 the number of skeletons and bones there scat- 

 tered, it should seem that for ages these had 

 been selected for the closing scene of their 

 existence." 



This passage Mr. Montgomery has chosen 

 for the foundation of his Pelican Island, and 

 has built on it an edifice of many glowing 

 thoughts, fashioned throughout its various 

 parts by the facile hand of experience ; and 

 simple in that best simplicity of style, which 

 always comes in its own good time, where 

 there is wisdom in the head and Tightness in 

 the heart. We are not speaking of simpli- 

 city, as it concerns the design and scope of the 

 poem, for that being philosophic, is con- 

 sequently enigmatical philosophy in the 

 hands of a poet is usually confusion worse 

 confounded ; but of its parts, independently 

 of all adjustment, as the sacred emanations 

 of a genuine child of song, who must take 

 his own methods, and will not be dictated to 

 of pouring out from his soul, that incense, 

 which it has been accumulating from every 

 corner of the universe, ever since it breathed. 



2 L 



Blucher, " learn the facts of the case ? If so, 

 let me tell you, that neither Wellington nor 

 myself gained the battle. Napoleon lost it ; 

 and what is very extraordinary, this same 

 Napoleon, who is one of the greatest tac- 

 ticians in our day, has lost it from a false step 

 in tactics. Grouchy and Bulow, Bulow and 

 Grouchy these are the wheels upon which 

 turned the fortunes of the day." By the way, 

 these Memoirs of the Baron de God-knows- 

 who, must be of very recent manufacture, 

 for mention is made of the late lamented Mr. 

 Canning, who it seems " formed a part of a 

 great embassy, sent by his Britannic majesty 

 to Berlin, in 1804." Much, we are afraid the 

 greater part, is the manufacture of famous 

 London town. 



This same nameless Baron has also some- 

 thing to say of Gustavus's illegitimacy, and of 

 Bernadotte's appointment, to the same pur- 

 port as the lady who precedes him with the 

 addition, that being intimately acquainted 

 with the Count de Munck, and knowing the 

 person of Gustavus, he can speak to the fact 

 of there being a striking resemblance between 

 them. 



At page 385 re-appears the authoress of the 

 Memoirs of the Princess de Lamballe, at the 

 Court of Naples, and the narrative takes 

 again the the old tone. Speaking of one Alviso 

 Moncenigo, she details, with the coolest 

 effrontery 



During this worthy's absence on some of his 

 commercial expeditions, he was, evidently 

 (through that awkward practice of keeping dates) 

 without any trouble on his part, blessed with an 

 heir to his name and property. Alviso was not, on 

 his return, however, so easily reconciled to this 

 kind of thing as General D s is said to have been, 

 who coming back to England from the continent, 

 and finding a similar circumstance had taken place 

 in his own family, merely observed, with an air of 

 vexation, that his wife's company had drunk al- 

 most all his old wine. Neither did the Venetian 



