204 Monthly lieviav of Lilernlurc. [August, 



the aid of Humphry of Gloucester, then protector, she negotiated with one of 

 the rival popes for a divorce. A compact had been entered into between them — 

 he was to solicit the divorce with all his influence, and she was to give him her 

 hand, and a title to her possessions on the receipt of it. Before this was 

 accomplished, his well-known intrigue with Ellenor Cobham commenced, and 

 his zeal in favour of Jacqueline's wishes cooled. In the meanwhile she returned 

 to Holland to make what friends she could, to repel the continued aggressions 

 of Burgundy — waiting, with equal anxiety, for the arrival of Duke Humphry 

 with the divorce from the pope, and the forces from England to enforce her 

 rights. 



The piece opens in Zealand, with a scene between Jacqueline and Gloucester, 

 where she detects Gloucester's alienated feelings ; and a hunting-match, in 

 which she is exposed to great danger from the attack of a formidable orox, and 

 rescued by a young gentleman, with whom she falls desperately in love, and he 

 with her. Large space is then occupied with the factions of Holland — the 

 Hoeks and the Kabblejaws — the former the partizans of Jacqueline, and the 

 latter of Burgundy. Hoeks and Kabblejaws mean hooks and cod-fish ; and the 

 nick-names originated in a memorable dispute, a century before, among the 

 learned Hollanders, whether the hook catches the cod, or the cod the hook. 

 Much, as usual, could be said on both sides, and the Dutch would take part in 

 the squabble. Parties once generated, do not readily break up ; and when one 

 subject of dispute fails, another is readily discovered. It was so with the Hoeks 

 and Kabblejaws ; and when they had done quarrelling about hooks and bites, 

 they went to loggerheads about Jacqueline and Burgundy. Burgundy was 

 finally triumphant ; Gloucester was bewitched into a marriage with Ellenor ; 

 Jacqueline lost her sovereign rights, and married the youth who had rescued her 

 from the orox — twice the size of the largest bull — of the Dutch swamps and 

 forests. The scene in which Ellenor Cobham's agents — Bolingbroke and Mother 

 Jourdain, whom Shakspeare has made familiar — work up the philter for Glou- 

 cester, though one of the most elaborate in the story, is all but a failure. The 

 details are too distinct, precisely where vagueness was especially demanded. 

 Generally, there is a want of distinctness. The author, like many other novel- 

 ists, depends too much upon scenes, and is too apt to leave them to connect 

 and dove-tail, as they may, in the mind of the reader. Humphry, who seems 

 destined to play a conspicuous part, is, after the first scene, as good as forgotten. 

 But Mr. Grattan has qualities to counterbalance all his defects, and will yet 

 find admirers — and ourselves among them — for half a score more Dutch and 

 Flemish pictures. 



Essays and Orations, by Sir Henry Halford, Bart. 



Sir Henry makes but a poor figure as a writer in these days of voluminous 

 scribble. A man, however, is nobody now, unless he writes a book of some 

 sort — it matters very little what ; and Sir Henry, as might be expected, partakes 

 of the vulgar ambition of being enrolled among the Uteratiores. In the course 

 of a long life of distinction he has had some half-dozen occasions for reading 

 speeches or papers before the College of Physicians ; and these speeches and 

 papers, collected together, make, by the cunning of the printer, a nice little 

 volume of something short of 200 pages, (one page of our own would take in 

 half a score,) not enough to weary hlo most fastidious patients, and quite enough 

 to convince them he wants only leisure to be as voluminous as he is decorous. 

 The first scrap is to shew that what are known as the climacteric changes, and 

 usually regarded as steps of decay, are not the elfects of decay, but symptoms of 

 disease, accessible to remedial measures. Another, on the tic-douleureux, 

 amounts to a suggestion, that this torturing disease is the effect of some " pre- 

 ternatural growth of bone, or a deposition of bone in a part of the animal eco- 

 nomy, where it is not usually found, in a sound and healthy condition of it, or 

 with a diseased bone" — that is. Sir Henry has in a few cases found some bony 

 excrescence, or some unusual ossification, in the regions falling within the range 

 of the disease — the jaws, or the frontal bones. A third enjoins, with great 



