MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 209 



ROBERT D'ARTOIS, OR THE HERON Bow. 3 vols. WILLIAM 

 MARSH. LONDON, 1834. 



THIS work, we presume, comes under the denomination of an historical 

 romance. We confess that we are rather surprised that any author should 

 be rash enough, or any publisher sufficiently courageous, to enter this field 

 at the present time. The halo of fame round the works of Scott is still too 

 splendid to permit any very small orient star from being seen, and though 

 there is a craving demand for novelties, the public taste has been so highly 

 stimulated by the glorious romances of the northern minstrel, that any 

 thing less savoury palls, and is at once neglected. The author of " De 

 1'Orme" pleads, indeed, some exemption, but then his is a peculiar case, as 

 he manufactures his romances from scraps of old tapestry, which he very 

 ingeniously contrives to paste upon his pages in a kind of mosaic. Besides, 

 he is privileged, as we understand he has taken out a patent for his 

 invention. 



The style of the romance before us is singularly repulsive. There is an 

 affectation of quaintness that sets ill in a modern dress, and there are a 

 a multitude of oddities of language which are really quite unpardonable. 

 Thus we have <c he affectioned him" for he loved him ; " 'twixt, 'twould, 

 th'accused, 'haviour," and others really quite beyond our comprehension. 

 The work, too, is curiously broken into several strands, that have little 

 or no connection with each other, and for which it is impossible to account, 

 as the straggling portions have not the merit of being interesting. Again, 

 the author has a most culpable way of thrusting in personalities, and scraps 

 of moralizing, which have not the slightest reference to the incidents of his 

 story. His chief heroes on such occasions are himself, Lord Byron, and 

 Napoleon. This last is repeatedly introduced in this way, " as Napoleon 

 was used to say ;" and this is followed by some truism which we are quite 

 sure Napoleon was not used to say. Poor Byron is treated still more 

 scurvily, as he hauls him in a neck-or-nothing fashion whenever he has a 

 a bit of sentimentality to dispose of. A passage to this'effect occurs at the 

 end of a chapter in the midst of what ought to be exciting events, and 

 is fit only for the pages of the various scribblers who hope to acquire re- 

 flected fame from the glory of Byron. It is also a specimen of the author's 

 style, and any thing more roundabout and involved it has never been 

 our lot to encounter ; " like a wounded snake it drags its slow length 

 along/' and one actually forgets the leading nominative of the sentence 

 before the verb is reached. 



We have another grave fault to find, and that is that he does not know 

 the female heart. One of his principal characters is Inez, who becomes 

 the mistress of Philip ; he paints her as more than once yielding not from 

 passion, but from reason. No woman ever did this in the way detailed by 

 the author of " Robert D'Artois." 



The character of Robert, though it has been evidently much elaborated, 

 does not please us, inasmuch as it is out of nature. His wife Jeanne, is, 

 however, well drawn, arid there are some good touches about her. Ed- 

 ward of England, his Queen Philippa, and Sir Walter Manny, make of 

 course a figure, and amongst the rest, the historian of "knights and 

 dames," Froissart, plays his part. We first find him in Hamault, and we 

 let the book before us explain why he was there. Froissart had been pro- 

 moted to be chaplain to Philippa of England, and for a rondel had been 

 brought under her Grace's jurisdiction as la reine d* amour. ^ 



How far the message from her Grace of England was likely to lead to 

 its object, we do not pretend to say ; but we fully agree with the author 

 " that it cannot be thought to tell strongly for the morality of the age. 

 M.M. No. 2. 2 E 



