1826.] 
broken;with, De Bearn.on-private accounts, 
is besieged, at one: moment on, both, sides of 
his castle, by. De, Foix on the one hand and 
De Bearn ,and,Montpensier on the other; 
all, three: parties mutually hostile, ‘The cas- 
tle is taken, and. Armagnac slain.. Eustace 
is presented with Isabel by his old patron, 
the repentant, De|Foix, whose life he had 
saved:im the scuffle... As for Jane of Bou- 
logne, | she} may not marry Montpensier, 
because De Foix, once in ‘a passion made 
an oath against it. |The Duke de, Berry 
therefore; father. of Montpensier,. with a 
loying eye to. the: lands, demands. her. for 
himself; and the wily De Foix is well con- 
tent to, purchase such an alliance with the 
resignation: of his.son’s claim to her. 
The professed’ object of the novel is to 
give an account of the manners and customs 
of the fourteenth century, and accordingly, 
throughout the three volumes, ;we are not 
allowed above one page of genuine story to 
two of tiresome, entangled and foolish des- 
cription of the exterior and interior of build- 
ings, with all their confused. intricacies, 
together with the paraphernalia of monkish 
devotion and chivalric rites. Surely there 
is a full abundance of conventional, eti- 
quettes of this. present day tobe gotten by 
heart, without:an additional load upon the 
memories of youth of a mass of exploded 
ceremonial. 
What importance the author attaches to 
these transient peculiarities of past times is 
sufficiently manifested by her weaving them 
into a story, the main! and declared object 
of which is an elucidation of them. But, 
although there can be no objection to an 
acquaintance with chivalrous and monkish 
usages, or the cobwebbed corners and pas- 
sages of abbeys or’ feudal ‘castles; and 
although one gifted pen has graven their de- 
tails like spells about our hearts and memo- 
ries ; yet we must deprecate the cold study 
of a thing so evanescent, and’so little ap- 
plicable to our universal wants and interests, 
for the supply of which, universal and per- 
manent truth alone can suffice. We con- 
sider the able representation of human 
character, under whatever conventional 
forms it may be moulded, or in whatever 
garb arrayed, as of the nature of universal 
truth; but the present novel has no claim 
to ability upon such a score, or indeed upon 
any grounds at all ; and our duty alone, and 
the sweet consciousness of discharging that 
zealously and impartially, has enabled us 
to wade through the book. 
Sir John Chiverton, a Romance. 1826.— 
In some dedicatory verses of great tender- 
néss and smoothness, the author announces 
the present work as his first and last at- 
tat fiction. He succeeds too well, 
notte ‘break his word.» He plainly pos- 
sessés some of the right qualities for story- 
_ telling.! “Natural scenery, ‘and ‘the move-' 
ments of living Objects, he describes’ with 
th, taste, and distinctness; and some © 
touches, as elicited in the conflicts of 
M.M. New Series,—Vot. Il. No. 9. 
Domestic and Foreign. 
321 
action, afford us: oceasionally/a glimpse: of 
some real power of observation, and’ con- 
siderable felicity of language... |), 
The character of Chiyerton, who. seems 
to be a villain almost. of necessity, and that 
of his physician, retainer, and adyiser-gene- 
tal, Scymel, who is one by. choice, ‘are 
cleverly contrasted. ow 
Chiverton, a high-spirited youth “of th 
time of Elizabeth, retains the’ family: inhe= 
ritance to the prejudice of his only’sister, 
who, by a peculiar custom of descent in 
favour of females, is the legal proprietor. 
The minutiz of contrivance by which this 
sister is still strangely made to love, to 
confide in, and to live with her unjust bro- 
ther, all unwitting of the fraud, are not 
sufficiently detailed, or rather are left quite 
undeveloped. A young man, however,. of 
family, fortune, and honour, who has been 
for years attached to her, and. who has 
been treacherously kept in other countries 
by Chiverton’s artifices, to prevent a dis- 
closure to his sister of the real state of 
things, manages, nevertheless, finally to re- 
turn to,see her, and to divulge the full 
complexities of the plot—not only to her, 
whom. it principally concerned; but to Chi- 
verton’s own. betrothed, whom and whose 
father he had most unaccountably imposed 
upon with respect to the succession. ‘The~ 
physician, however, and Chiverton,; with 
the aid of a certain Moor (who we strongly 
suspect, not only from his hue, but his 
wiles, must be a lofty personage in the 
lower realms), defeats the defeater, and to 
a great degree the ends of poetical justice 
also. The sister’s life is sacrificed to the 
dilemma in which their iniquity has in- 
volved them; and although the fate which 
they have violently brought upon her does 
extend at last to themselves), it does so 
unsatisfactorily. J a9 
‘ Unusual events, when the order’ of 
causes do not affront @xperience, cease ‘to 
be monstrous; but we must either have 
only every-day occurrences, or else special’ 
good reasons for extraordinary ones;'/and 
these, the author has been too lazy to trace 
through all their steps. 5D) Die 
Seymiel’s character, perhaps not’an! im- 
possible one, is stretched to the éxtvemeést’ 
point of improbability—a man of ‘the noé~ 
blest mental and personal endowments, 
who has reasoned and philosophized’dbwn 
all sympathies, passions, and propensities, 
save faithfulness to his employer, ‘and*love 
of stratagem. HEN, ESI O88 
On the whole, we should say, the ‘inci- 
dents, the characters and conversations, do 
not go hand in hand sufficiently. Scymel 
is far too full of his own’ notions—too fond 
of descanting upon his infidelity, fatality, 
and self-subjugation, ‘for one who" so en- 
tirely acts in accordance with these ‘princi 
ples as he seems to do! | People who 
have to this fearful’ degree’ ‘mastered’ the 
strongest impulses of nature, are’ not so 
* loose : a ;” and the writer shews 
