husband's infidelity, jealousy with reason or without, vulgar courtship, the instruction or correction of children, the hiring of servants, scenes in the tavern or at the dice, intrigues and satirical stories of monks and nuns, and sometimes nothing more than a mere pun, or play upon words. In one, a young woman of rather free life is introduced making her confession to the priest, whose remarks thereon are not of the most refined description. In another, a pardoner and a quack doctor dispute on the superiority of their professions, and a taverner is called in to be umpire. In others, the principal hero is a clever cheat, or thief, and some skilful trick is the subject of the plot. The subject of another is the cries of Paris. Sometimes the scene is laid in a court of law. In one of these farces, which is declared to be "nouvelle, très bonne et fort joyeuse," the wives bring an action against their husbands for "les arrerages"-" et les font obliger par nisi." The evidence in this case is, as might be expected, rather laughable. Perhaps the most common subjects are love intrigues, and those of a character which do not speak much for the morals of the age in which they were written. In one, the wife sends her good man to fetch wine, while she enjoys the company of her amoureux; and the repeated return of the husband to ask questions relating to his errand brings many disagreeable interruptions to the confidences of the lovers. In these interruptions the mirth of the piece consists. In another, the lord of the manor sends the husband of one of his pretty villagers on an errand that in the mean time he may enjoy the society of the wife; but the injured husband repairs to the château of the seigneur, and repays the injury in kind. Such incidents as these seem to have been favourite subjects for the farces. One of these "joyeux" entertainments is a mere drinking scene, consisting of a merry dialogue between a preacher and a cook. Another represents to the lif how two coquins stole a tart from a pastry-cook, and how one of them fell into his own snare. We need hardly remark, what the very titles will tell our readers, that no class of the old popular writings throw so extensive and so interesting a light on the manners and sentiments of private life as these early farces. The sotties are much more extravagant than the farces, and hold in literature somewhat the place of the caricatures of Callot in art. The character of the first in the present volume may perhaps be guessed at by the characters who perform in it-they are, Le roi des sotz (the king of the fools), Triboulet, Mitouflet, Sottinet, Coquibus, Guippelin. In the sottie of the Trompeurs (deceivers), the personages are Sottie, Teste Verte (green-head), Fine Mine (cunning-look), Chascun (every-one), and Le Temps (time). It will be seen that the Sotties partook of the character- or rather were only more extravagant and caricatured forms of the Moralités. The first of the latter class of productions which presents itself in this collection is entitled, "A new morality of the Children of Now-a-days" (Maintenant), who are the scholars of Once-good (Jabien), who shows them how to play at cards and at dice, and to entertain luxury, whereby one comes to Shame (Honte), and from Shame to Despair (Desespoir), and from Despair to the gibbet of Perdition, and then turns himself to Good-doing. The " personages" in this piece are, Le Fol, Maintenant, Mignotte, Bon Advis, Instruction, Finet (the first child), Malduict (the second child), Discipline, Jabien, Luxure, Honte, Desespoir, and Perdition. The title of another of these Moralités is given in verse as follows:— "Moralité nouvelle contenant Comment Envie, au temps de Maintenant, Et tout leur temps vivre en communion." The personages in this play are the Preco (crier), the father, the mother, the three sons, Fraternal Love, Envy, and Remorse of Conscience. The personages in another Morality are three, Tout, Rien, and Chascun (Everything, Nothing, and Everybody!) The idea of personifying nothing on the stage is certainly ingenious. The Moralities are in general much longer than the farces, and sometimes they contain a good deal of dull preaching and allegory, but mixed with abundant illustrations of contemporary manners. The very remarkable volume of which we have been speaking, had no sooner come into the possession of the British Museum, and its existence been thus made known, than it became an object of considerable interest among those in all countries who study the literature of the past. The first attempt to make people better acquainted with it produced the Description Bibliographique, printed privately and in a small number in 1849, the title of which stands second at the head of our article. It is understood that we owe this volume to one of the distinguished antiquaries of Belgium, M. Delpierre. In a complete catalogue of the dramatic pieces in the volume in the British Museum, with analyses and extracts, M. Delpierre has given us a very good general notice of their character and interest; but still, for such a remarkable collection as this, scholars asked for something more, and that has now been given them in the complete edition of the whole collection which is contained in the three rather thick little volumes, of which the title is given above. This title is itself, however, calculated to deceive, but this we believe is the mere result of an accident. M. Jannet had announced as a part of his Bibliothèque Elzevirienne, a collection of the most remarkable dramatic productions in French, from the time of the Mysteries to that of Corneille, under the title of Ancien théâtre François. It was determined by an after-thought to commence this series with the farces and other dramatic pieces contained in the volume in the British Museum; and M. de Montaiglon (not M. Viollet le Duc), after having visited London in person for the purpose of making a carefully correct copy, edited the whole in these three volumes. To M. Viollet le Duc we owe only the brief and not very striking introduction. We must therefore speak of it as M. de Montaiglon's edition. This gentleman has entered upon his task with intelligence as well as zeal, and he has boldly and wisely undertaken to perform the true duty of an editor, that of presenting the text in a legible and intelligible form. We have no feelings in common with those who, in representing an old book, would give a mere facsimile of the original, and preserve religiously even the printers' errors, particularly where those errors are so numerous and gross as we find them to be in the original editions of the more popular literature of the sixteenth century. In these farces, for example, the measure of the verse is often entirely lost sight of, and the lines are often wrongly divided and sometimes printed as prose; words are transposed, omitted, or interpolated; and the omission or interchange of letters occurs on every page. Many parts are thus rendered perfectly unintelligible to an ordinary reader. M. de Montaiglon has remedied this in his edition. He has restored the verse wherever it was practicable, has omitted wherever it might be done with safety, superfluous words and letters, and supplied those which have been omitted. This, too, has been done without at all depriving the critical student of the power of con sulting the text as it stands in the original edition; for M. de Montaiglon has given in notes at the foot of the page, the omitted words, or such as in correcting he has altered considerably from the original, and he has always inserted between brackets the words or letters he has felt it necessary to add. We approve entirely the system which M. de Montaiglon has adopted in this respect, and after a very careful perusal of the three volumes, we feel that we are indebted to the care of that gentlemen and to the zeal of M. Jannet, for an extremely well-edited text of a series of most interesting literary monuments. All the sixty-four dramatic pieces composing the volume in the British Museum are given entire; and we have been informed that it is proposed to publish in companion volumes a complete collection of the other similar dramatic pieces known to exist, and also a series of the Mysteries and Miracles, so as to form together a complete body of the French dramatic literature of the middle ages. Every one who is at all acquainted with that literature, and who takes an interest in these studies, will look forward with great pleasure to the fulfilment of this promise. ART. VII.-The “Historiettes of Tallemant des Beaux,” Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux. Troisième édition. Entièrement revue sur le Manuscrit original, et disposée dans un nouvel ordre, par MM. de Monmerqué et Paulin Paris. TOME PREMIER. Paris: Chez J. Techener, Libraire, Place de la Colonnade du Louvre. MDCCLIV (8vo.) WE are glad to see a new and handsome edition of this work, which is far less known in this country than might be expected, considering the great light which it throws upon the personages and intrigues, during a long and interesting period of French history. Tallemant des Réaux was born at La Rochelle about the year 1619; rich in the intellectual accomplishments which were in that age most valued in the higher society in France, and into which he was thrown by the circumstances of his birth and education, and with extraordinary talents of observation and appreciation of character, Tallemant was eminently qualified to be a writer of the memoirs of an age when society was so brilliant. Like our own Pepys, he mixed personally in the weaknesses and vices of the society of his age, as well as in its nobler characteristics. In some respects, indeed, Tallemant de Réaux might be called the Pepys of France, although his "Historiettes" are totally different in form, from the Diary of our now celebrated countryman. Tallemant possesses much of Pepys' naïveté and of his habits of minute observation, but he possesses also far more refinement and literary taste. In Tallemant, as in Pepys, we are brought into the most intimate familiarity with the people of his age individually; but in the former that intimacy is conveyed to us in perfect and finished sketches, while in the latter we only meet them accidentally and by snatches. In Pepys we have no finished characters. Moreover, the majority of the personages commemorated by Tallemant have individually far more attractions for us than those into whose society we are introduced by Pepys, and the period through which his "Historiettes" extend is far more extensive. In his youth Tallemant lived at the Hôtel de Rambouillet among those who had been intimate with the court of Henri IV, and who were still so with that of Louis XIII, and he was thus enabled to collect and preserve the private anecdotes of a period with which he was not personally acquainted; while his own life extended till at least near the end of the seventeenth century, for we find him alive in 1691. The exact date of his decease is not known. Tallemant's "Historiettes" were not published by himself, or in his own time, but the original manuscript was preserved, and was in 1833 in the possession of the Marquis of Chasteaugeron. In that year an edition was published in Paris, in six small octavo volumes, by M. de Monmerqué, a name too well known in French literature to need any further remark from us. A new edition, which we believe was a revision of the former, was published by M. Monmerqué in 1840, and was then sufficiently popular to be pirated in Belgium; its form was smaller than than the former, and every one felt that, even on this account only, another editiou was wanted, which should serve as a library book. A third edition, printed in a much handsomer form than the others, has at length been undertaken, and is now in the press, to which, in compliment to the former editor, his name is joined on the title with that of M. Paulin Paris, although the latter is really the editor. Of M. Paulin Paris's high qualifications for the task nobody will doubt, and he appears to us to have entered on the undertaking with great zeal. The original manuscript, now in the possession of the Comte Lanjuinais, has been placed in his |