532 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[MAT, 



traction and influence, down to the time 

 when she watches by the bedside of her 

 luckless parent, we cannot recollect, in novel 

 or poem, a picture more simple, sensitive, 

 energetic, delicate, and commanding than 

 the author's heroine. Lord Mowbray dies, 

 mid she succeeds to all his large possessions. 

 But soon Lord Cleveland, who had in vain 

 attempted to traffic for her hanrf, gets pos- 

 session of a deed, by which it appears that 

 the ancestor, through whom one-half of her 

 estates are derived, never intended them for 

 a female, but that they should go to the 

 Clevelands, of whom this lord was the re- 

 presentative. The cause comes to trial, 

 when tt appears to the judge that all tlte par- 

 ties are not in court, and tbat the collateral 

 heirs of Lord Mowbray must appear. De 

 Vere and his mother persist in refusing the 

 summons, till the matter becomes evident, 

 that at all events Constance's right cannot 

 be maintained, and that the question con- 

 cerns the male heir only. Then at last he 

 consents; and the estates are finally ad- 

 judged, not to Lord Cleveland, but to himself. 

 The manner in which De Vere and his 

 mother are enabled, by the greatness and in- 

 tegrity of their souls, to keep well with Con- 

 stance, and she with them, through this deli- 

 cate business of the trial ; and the last ex- 

 planation between De Vere and Constance, 

 in which he pours into her ears his long-pent 

 tale of passion, are far above our praise ; 

 and we will not mar either of them by at- 

 tempting the detail, or the eulogium they 

 deserve. 



The story however cannot be said to be 

 vigorously developed its chief interest lying 

 among thefluctuations,s(ratagems, and anxie- 

 ties of public life; but political profligacy is 

 shewn up in a true and strong light ; and every 

 kind and shade of it meets with a reproba- 

 tion, in which our judgment entirely ac- 

 quiesces. It wants the vivid colouring that 

 lives in the Scotch novels ; the figures do not 

 breathe before our eyes, and speak to our 

 ears; the machinery does not stand out in 

 that bold relief, which there so occupies and 

 engrosses every sense of the reader ; but our 

 sentiments and our understandings are kept 

 in constant activity ; and moral truth is 

 elicited with strength and simplicity, and a 

 heart-stirring solemnity. The writer must 

 take rank with the proudest. 



The Life of Grotim, fyc., by Charles 

 Butler, Esq., of Lincoln' s-Inn .; 1826. 

 Mr. Charles Butler makes a miserable book. 

 He is an indefatigable man in his way, and 

 the older he grows the more active he be- 

 comes ; always busy, and, in his own con- 

 ception, always useful ; not illiberal, nor 

 unenlightened though surely not of a liberal 

 or enlightened party but top-full of conceit, 

 and terribly disposed to be garrulous. The 

 history of Grotius and his times is a good 

 specimen of Mr. Butler's manner and his 

 powers, and a strange higgledy-piggledy 

 mess he has made of it. First, we have a 



little account of the Netherlands generally ; 

 then a fragment of Grotius's story, with a 

 scrap of the Arminian one, and something 

 like a discourse on free-will ; then follows 

 a page or two relative to Grotius's profes- 

 sional, and another of his literary labours, 

 with a mite or two of criticism, begged or 

 borrowed, relevant or irrelevant ; then we 

 are told of Grotius's journey to England, 

 but nothing about the object of it ; then wo 

 hear of his arrest and imprisonment, with 

 scarcely any intimation of the real causes 

 which led to that decisive event of his life ; 

 next comes the story of his eleven years' exile 

 at Paris, where he leaves us in almost total 

 ignorance of his occupations during that 

 most important period of his matured age 

 and abilities ; and, finally, we are told of his 

 emph^ment by the court of Sweden, acd 

 embassy to that of France, in the days of 

 of Richelieu and Marzarin, with the barren 

 intelligence tbat he executed the purposes of 

 his mission to the satisfaction of his em- 

 ployers, and the credit of himself. And as to 

 the Civil, Political, and Literary History of 

 the Netherlands, of which he professes in the 

 title page to give " brief minutes;" ^he few 

 remarks relative to the two first points are 

 so disjointed as scarcely to hang together ; 

 and of the latter there is absolutely nothing. 

 A history of Dutch literature, he tells us, 

 somewhere or other, is very much wanted : 

 which no doubt is true enough ; but Mr.^ 

 B. himself contributes positively nothing, 

 "pour servir'' to the supply of this impor- 

 tant want. 



Grotius was a very remarkable man in his 

 day remarkable as a scholar, a moralist, 

 and a statesman, a man of some indepen- 

 dence of character and elevation of sentiment 

 of prompt and practicable talents of great 

 acquirements, and read} 7 application of his 

 acquirements; a man who suffered for the 

 maintenance of principles which he believed 

 essential to the welfare of the country, and 

 certainly of principles which every friend of 

 freedom will approve, though he must feel 

 they fall short of what modern discussions 

 shew to be requisite for the secure enjoy- 

 ment of it. He was born at Delft in the 

 year 1582. His lamily were of high respec- 

 tability : his father a scholar, and a lawyer 

 of some eminence. Very early be felt a 

 passion for literature, and before completing 

 his fifteenth year, an edition of Minutius 

 Capella was published in his name, with the 

 usual display of annotating lore and labour, 

 in the style of an old and experienced critic. 

 What assistance he had of course we know 

 not. For wonders of this kind we are apt 

 to be a little incredulous; but still the fact 

 must be allowed of extraordinary precocity, 

 a precocity which did not, as it usually does, 

 shame the results of his maturer years. At 

 seventeen he was admitted to the bur, and 

 undoubtedly the same year pleaded his first 

 cause. At six and twenty he was made at- 

 torney-general of Holland and Zealand ; and 

 in his thirty-first pensionary of Holland, a 



