2?<» S. VII. Jak. 29. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



99 



Arms assumed during the Commonwealth (2"* S. 

 vi. 526.)— Concerning the arbitrary assumption of 

 arms, and the disorder prevailing in " armourie " 

 during this period, the following may be worthy of 

 note from Sir Wra. Dugdale's tract on The An- 

 Uent Usage in hearing of Arms : — 



" It cannot be denyed, but that in the best times good 

 order was not by every one exactly observed : for I find that 

 in the reign of Q. Elizabeth there were some unjustifi- 

 able practices in this kind. But, in this last age, through 

 the liberty taken by divers mechanicks since the com- 

 mencement of the late unparallel'd Rebellion, the disorder 

 herein is so far spread, as if greater care be not speedily 

 taken, such a confusion must inevitably follow, that the 

 true use of arms will be utterly forgot; most people, 

 though of never so mean extraction, if they obtain a little 

 wealth, intruding themselves into these Marks of Honour, 

 and usurping what doth justly belong to others, espe- 

 cially if their name ,doth sound any thing like that of a 

 gentleman." 



G. W. W. M. 



MONTHLT FEUILLETON ON TRENCH BOOKS. 



" Maucroix. CEuvres diverges (ses Lettres et ses Me'- 

 moires, 1667 — 1694), publi^es par Louis Paris, sur le 

 raanuscrit de la bibliothfeque de Reims, avec une Notice 

 couronn^e k I'academie de Reims. Paris, 1854, 2 vols. 

 Jn-12. Paris, J. Techener." 



Maucroix belongs to what may be called the enfants 

 perdus of literature. He has not composed many works, 

 nor are his productions of very great importance ; but he 

 was connected with the best writers of the seventeenth 

 centurj", he had been a favourite at the hotels of the Mar- 

 chioness de Rambouillet and of the Prince de Conti; 

 finally, he was La Fontaine's intimate friend : all these 

 circumstances are more than enough to throw some in- 

 terest about the name of Maucroix, and to entitle him to 

 a short notice in the pages of this journal. 



Before M. Louis Paris had published the editio princeps 

 of the (Euvres diverses owned by our author, all the in- 

 formation we possessed respecting him was derived from 

 the celebrated historiettes of Tallemant des RSaux. Now, 

 any one at all acquainted ^vith that amusing chronique 

 scandaleuse, must be aware that the anecdotes inserted 

 there are by no means of an edifying character; indeed, 

 the honour of a place in Tallemant's gallerj' was seldom 

 bestowed except upon those who had distinguished them- 

 selves by some juvenile pranks, and given unequivocal 

 proofs of feats a la Don Juan. Maucroix in such com- 

 pany! A Churchman, canon and seneschal of Notre 

 Dame de Reims, acquainted with Bossuet, and numbering 

 amongst his companions even an archbishop, to wit, 

 Charles-Maurice- Le Tellier ! ! ! The case is too gross, and 

 Christian charity commands us to believe that Tallemant 

 was led by sheer love of scandal, when he hung up in his 

 historical museum the very unclerical portrait to which 

 he aflBxed the name of Maucroix. 



M. Louis Paris, like another recent critic, M. Walcke- 

 naer, had long hesitated to believe, on the mere authority 

 of an anecdote-monger, that the " good old canon " was 

 really a man of very loose morals, and he was still con- 

 vinced that in this case, at least, calumny had been at 

 work, when on examining, some time since, a MS. volume 

 which he had purchased for the public library at Rheims, 

 he discovered that it contained the unpublished works of 

 Maucroix. " Nous esp^rions," says M. Paris, " y prendre 

 Tallemant en flagrant d^lit d'imposture, et puiser la ma- 



tifere a r<?habilitation pour notre aime Maucroix. II nous 

 faut avouer que nous n'eumes point cette satisfaction; 



tout au contraire parmi les CBUvres de Francois 



Maucroix, inesp^r^ment recouvrees, nos yeux tombferent 

 pr&is^ment sur des pieces qui justifient, et au delk, les 

 contes facetieux du Moderne Lucien." 



M. Paris, however, resolved at least upon rescuing from 

 oblivion the work of his hero, and there they are now be- 

 fore us in the shape of two small duodecimos containing a 

 miscellaneous farrago both of prose and poetry. An in- 

 troduction, extending to no less than 232 pages, and 

 occupying half the first volume, gives us very minutely 

 the history of the life and writings of Maucroix. Bom at 

 Noyon, Jan. 7th, 1619, he died at Rheims on the 9th of 

 April, 1708, after a very long life more worthy of an Epi- 

 curean than of a dignitary of the Church. He had left 

 all his property to the chapter of the church in which he 

 occupied for sixty-one years a canon's stall, and yet one 

 of his biographers remarks that " on attend son ^pi- 

 graphe." Without wishing at all to excuse this act of 

 ingratitude on the part of Maucroix' fellow-Churchmen, 

 we can say, as a slight apology for them, that it would 

 have been rather diflScult to exalt on a funeral tablet 

 either the piety or the virtues of the deceased ; and at 

 the same time to laud him as a bon vivant and a "jolly 

 old soul " would, though nearer the truth, have sounded 

 rather indecorously. The following wretched stanza, 

 written by a Rhe'mish litterateur, yclept Thierry Jes- 

 sonot, is, besides a paragraph from the pen of the Abbe 

 d'Olivet, the only Sloge with which Maucroix appears to 

 have been honoured : — 



" Maucroix vient de passer 1' Acheron et le Styx, 

 Mais ces fleuves d'onbli ne lui font point outrages : 



II est des savants le phenix, 

 Puisqu'il renait enfin par tous ses beaux ouvrages." 



In Molifere's play, Le Misanthrope, Oronte, speaking of 

 his sonnet, says, — 



« je n'ai demeure qu'un quart d'heure k le faire." 



For the credit of M. Thierry Jessonot, we hope that this 

 gentleman did not spend more time in his doggrel rhymes 

 on the death of Maucroix. 



In these our feuilleton on French literature, our great 

 object is to state as concisely and yet as completely as 

 we can the relative merit of the authors we discourse 

 about, to assign their place in the history of literature, 

 and to point out the importance of their works as illus- 

 trating the events and habits of the time they lived in. 

 As far as Maucroix is concerned, this task has been ad- 

 mirably performed by M. Louis Paris, whose biographical 

 introduction seems to us a model of what such writings 

 should be. The reader will also do well to consult M. 

 Sainte-Beuve's article in the Causeries du Lundi, vol. x. 

 Although Maucroix has tried his hand at compositions of 

 a more serious cast; although he has left behind him 

 theological works, translations from the classics, and re- 

 marks on Seneca, Cicero, and Demosthenes ; yet his re- 

 putation rests entirely and exclusively on the fugitive 

 pieces now for the first time edited by M, Paris. They 

 assign to the Canon a distinguished place amongst the 

 small band of writers who, keeping up the esprit Gaulois 

 under the formal, precise, regular siecle de Louis XIV., 

 virtually protested against the stately school of litera- 

 ture represented by Boileau and Racine. The literary 

 ancestors of Maucroix are Rabelais, R^gnier, and the 

 authors of our old fabliaux ; his most sympathetic con- 

 temporaries are Chapelle, Segrais, Chaulieu, La Fontaine, 

 and all the merrj' enfants sans souci who were wont to 

 assemble round the fireside of the Prince de Conti. In 

 examining the works of our author, we are also struck 

 with the truth of M. Paris' remark (^avertiss. pp. vii. viii.) 

 that the general licentiousness which pervaded French 



