cellor and those of the priest; but the "Tom Moore" of those days was a writer of undoubted originality, incapable of publishing as his own the opinions of another. I could have wished to give Melancthon, the friend and admirer of Erasmus, a place in this paper worthy of that accomplished and delightful character; but my allotted limits prelude the indulgence of my wishes in this respect. Neither can I afford to notice the career and genius of Hans Holbein, of whom our scholar was the first patron, and whose earliest efforts were woodcuts to adorn the "Praise of Folly." Erasmus took up his abode for the remaining years of his life in the town of Bâle, where he had found an intelligent printer in the person of Jerome Frébon : there, with a press at his command, he pursued to the last his career of utility, "Hic illius arma Hic currus fuit." The edition of St. Jerome occupied ten years, and is a noble monument : Basil, Athanasius, and Chrysostom, Isocrates, Plutarch, Lucian, and Demosthenes, alternately issued from his hands. Nor was he sparing of original composition on various themes-philology, criticism, pulpit eloquence, Greek pronunciation (for it was he who established the received mode, known in our universities as the "Erasmian "), leaving scarcely a topic in the wide range of literature untouched and unadorned. There are few examples among les gens de lettres" of brilliant talent combined with such untiring industry, and devoting its energies in silent and unostentatious toil to the editorial drudgery of so many years. Erasmus set a noble example. It was a favourite joke of the martyred chancellor on his friend's name, that it conveyed the notion of his having been formerly, in the Pythagorean theory of pre-existence and transmigration, a very inferior animalERAS-MUS. The idea might be easily worked up into an illustration of the old fable concerning a lion, who, when enclosed in a hunter's net, was set free by the indefatigable teeth of a field-mouse, as related by my esteemed friend Phædrus, sound learning and classic taste being typified by the "lion," who, liberated from the meshes of scholastic entanglement, was enabled thus to walk the earth and roam abroad through every European land. To speak in Miltonic strain : Worn out in the cause, and spent with fatigue, this eminent scholar expired on the 12th of July, 1536, in the sentiments of sincere piety which have animated his whole life. The last letter we have from his pen is dated but a fortnight previous, and expresses his firm perseverance in the religious convictions he had always professed. It is also interesting from the peculiarity of the signature, Desiderius Erasmus Rot. aegra manu.' Three days after his death, Charles V. and his army entered Bâle; the body was solemnly disinterred, and again recommitted to the earth with extraordinary pomp. By none was he more sincerely regretted than by that emperor; but regret was universal among all the friends of piety, meekness, genius, liberality, and elegant scholarship. "Fatalis series nobis invidit Erasmus XV. Victor Hugo's Lyrical Poetry. (Fraser's Magazine, July, 1835.) -0 [Immediately between the fourteenth and fifteenth of the Prout Papers—that is, the one on Erasmus in the May number and the one on Vida's "Poem of the Silkworm," in the August number of Fraser for 1835-there appeared three choice specimens of the incomparable lyrics of Victor Hugo, "La Grandmère," "Le Voile," and "Le Repas," upset into English by Mahony. Prefixed to them, with an unmistakable Proutean flavour about it, was a discursive criticism on the poet's recently-published historical romance"Notre Dame de Paris," transformed by the English translator of it into the "Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Deformed Bell-ringer Quasimodo." Croquis' portrait in the number of Regina containing this double-barrelled discharge in honour of Victor Hugo depicted Lord Francis Egerton, the translator of "Faust," brother of a duke, and possessor of a small competence of £90,000 a year, delicately sealing a billet-doux.] Φολκος ἔην χωλος τ' έτερον ποδα· τω δε οἱ ὡμω Iliad, B' 21k. Lame of one foot, this elf, of stature brief, IN the venerable chest of "Prout Papers," which is still in our safe keepingalbeit, acting on the plan of the Cumaan sibyl, we have latterly withheld its treasures from a giddy generation that did not seem sufficiently to appreciate their value there is a voluminous essay, indeed a regular historical work, to which the learned divine, with that fondness for alliteration which he so frequently manifests, has affixed the title of "Gesta Gibborum; or, The History of Hunchbacks." He appears, from some cause or other, to have been ambitious of figuring as the chronicler of that very neglected but highly intelligent class of individuals (who have not hitherto had their Plutarch); and, in the execution of this laudable undertaking, he has left a proud memorial of his industrious philanthropy. Such, however, is the distaste for rational and elaborate compositions of this nature, and such the predilection of the reading public for light and unsubstantial literature, that this grave historical performance would not probably at the present moment attract a whit more notice than the stillborn chefs-d'œuvre of the same kind that are monthly brought forth by the 'Cabinet Cyclopædia; " and which are duly buried, after having been properly christened by the Rev. Dionysius Lardner. We have no wish to send Prout's work to "Limbo" in that fashion, although the Doctor has applied to us for it, promising that, like the rest of the series, it would be, in the language of his advertisement, "translated into all the continental languages." France and Europe, he tells us, will be enraptured with the very announcement of "La Biographie des Bossus," forming the 69th volume of the Lardnerian " Sighclopagia." We have no doubt it would help to get off a copy or two of his unsaleable collection, but we have declined the proposal. We needed not, it is to be hoped, the testimony of Homer, as quoted above, to establish, for the satisfaction of the Royal Antiquarian Society, the remote antiquity of that singular configuration of the dorsal spine in the human subject; the simple proverbial comparison "as old as the hills" being quite conclusive on the point to the mind of any reflecting F.R.A.S. We only regret that the father of poetry has thought proper to confer so honourable a distinction on so unworthy a character as Thersites. In truth, the blind bard of Mæonia seems to have felt that he had made a faux pas in this matter; and we may remark, that he never again mentions, in the whole course of the "Iliad," the personage who figures in our quotation, as if conscious of having blundered in depicturing such a scoundrel possessed of this badge of eminence. Esop nobly redeemed the feature; and, in truth, from that ingenious fabulist to the incomparable Scarron--from the husband of Madame de Maintenon to the profound and philosophic Godwin, the bump of genius seemeth to have been the rightful inheritance of hunchbacks. Richard III. and the great Frederic of Prussia owed not a little of their energetic disposition to this peculiarity of structure; and as to its evincing in its owner a thirst for inquiry and investigation, there was more philosophy than meets the eye in the discovery of some wit of Queen Anne's day, who compared the figure of Pope to a note of interrogation. These crooked specimens of humanity seem to have been marked as it were, by the hand of nature in italics, lest they might be confounded with the rest of men, and passed over without due attention to their recondite significance: the hump seems to be a sort of acute accent placed upon them, not without a sly meaning of its own. We might here refer to the Cours de Belles Lettres" of Abbé "Bossu," but we do not wish to accumulate instances of eminent men similarly distinguished; in sooth, to heap up all the examples were an useless attempt-imponere Pelio Ossam. A French writer of considerable ingenuity has, in our opinion, made a sad mistake when he wrote the following epigram against the poet Desorgues : it was no doubt intended as a sarcasm, but had he given himself the trouble of considering the thing soberly, he would have seen that he had paid his enemy the most delicate compliment imaginable: Desorgues might have answered his less favoured antagonist, by quoting the well-known sonnet of Cardinal Bembo, which, though originally addressed to one of the Apennines, would be far more appropriately applied to the promontory in question: "Re degli altri sacro superbo monte We could readily enlarge on this curious topic, and swell it out, but that U we do not wish to anticipate on Prout's historico-philosophical work, which will be published in due season; nor will our readers accuse us of travelling out of the record, in ushering in the Hunchback" of Victor Hugo with a few words on dwarfs in general: such practice being established as the oldest and most received method of reviewing an author's work, which is generally considered only as a peg whereon to hang up the critic's wig of miscellaneous learning. We greatly admire Mr. Bentley's sagacity in the case before us. Hugo, in the simplicity of unsophisticated genius, had called his book, in the original French edition, by the mere title of Notre Dame de Paris," fancying, probably, good easy man! that the old cathedral was the real hero of the story, and that the minor personages of flesh and blood were but secondary and subservient to the giant of stone, who, from beginning to end, holds his ground, and sways the destiny of all around him. The bellringer Quasimodo, he no doubt thought (as we do) a fine creation among the other dramatis personæ; but Notre Dame herself was to be, in his cast of the characters, the unrivalled prima donna. However, under Bentley's management, this was found not to be judicious catering for a British auditory. It was deemed expedient before an English public to put the best foot foremost, to sink the building, and to invest the misshapen dwarf with the "leadership" of the romance. Hence the liberty taken with Hugo's title-page by the traditore;" hence, instead of a hero of stone, if we be allowed to speak in the language of Cornelius à Lapide, the translator has given us a son of Abraham. A hunchback, or a lusus naturæ of some kind or other, in modern works of fiction, is a sine quâ non-an essential ingredient in the romantic cauldron. Banim's first and best work, "Croohoore of the Bill-Hook' is a proud evidence of what can be made out of a scarecrow. Need we refer to Scott's Black Dwarf,' or the splendid "Hunchback" of our admired friend Sheridan Knowles? And here let us observe, that we do not agree with the notorious sceptic Hobbes, in his definition of a vicious man-malus, puer robustus. Are not the Leprechauns of Crofton Croker a pleasant race of beings, and is he not himself a notable Leprechaun? In truth, Crofty hath therein selected a fitting subject for his pen-parvum parva decent. The adjective parvus (but not the verb decent) brings Tom Moore to our recollection. His "veiled prophet," ugly and stunted though he be, makes decidedly the most interesting character in that long-since-forgotten Oriental romance called Lalla Rookh." It must be admitted, however, that Tommy's monster is an exception to the general good character of such personages; being, in fact, an instance of unqualified and unmitigated malignity : Those who have strolled through the Vatican palace must have remarked, in the fresco of Raphael that adorns the Sala di Costantino, with what peculiar care the painter has delineated the muscular urchin, a dwarf of Pope Julius, in the attitude of trying on a helmet. Such figures are by no means unfrequent in the grandest efforts of the historical pencil; and whether introduced for the sake of contrast, or to gratify a secret feeling of self-complacency which is apt to rise in the breast of the beholder, they are standing jokes of art with the craft. We have an antique statue of the favourite bossu of Augustus among the remains of Roman sculpture; and it appears, from unquestionable autho rity, that the Emperor Domitian* became highly popular for a week at Rome by introducing on the arena of the amphitheatre two pigmy gladiators, homunculos gibbosos. Punch and Judy are old-established candidates for unbounded applause; the former, doubtless, because of his bump,-for deprive him but in thought of that dorsal protuberance, and Polichinello at once merges into a vulgar commonplace member of the buffoon fraternity. We remember, before the passing of the Reform-bill, there used to be about the purlieus of the House of Coinmons a very remarkable little fellow, closely answering the description of Quasimodo, and performing about Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's Chapel pretty nearly the functions ascribed by Hugo to the hunchback of Notre Dame. He would pilot "strangers from Yorkshire" through the labyrinth of dark passages that then led to the two houses. He would be equally useful in indicating of the narrow door that leads to the "Poets' Corner" in the Abbey. During the session he would be occasionally seen holding the horse of some M. P., by the toleration of the servant, when it was curious to watch with what an astonished eye the captive quadruped would scrutinize his keeper. There was an air of dignity withal about the urchin, and a sense of his important attributions quite becoming. For the last thirty years he has been known as an integral part of "his majesty's high court of parliament holden at Westminster," but latterly he has disappeared. Whither has he flown? Like the "petit homme rouge," of whom Béranger singeth, and who haunted the Tuileries, was he the fairy guardian of the pile, and is his sudden evanescence ominous of evil? We fear he was burnt in the late fire with the Exchequer tallies. Charles Lamb, who saw all manner of things with the shrewd eye of philosophy, and to whom every feature of the metropolis was the subject of much internal soliloquy, as musing he passed through her busy streets, has a remarkable passage in that profound essay of his called "A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars; " which we here subjoin on the triple principle of Horace, viz. "Et sapit et pro me facit, et Jove judicat æquo." He complaineth thus: "These dim eyes have in vain explored for some months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man who used to glide his comely upper half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood--a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a sailorlike complexion; and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and hearty heart of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident which brought him low took place during the (no popery) riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born, an Antæus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment-as good as an Elgin marble. The nurture which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts. He was as the man part of a Centaur, from which the horse half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting, and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this out-of-door trade; and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction.' *In his Life, by Suetonius, we further learn that this emperor once had a dream, in which he fancied himself transformed into rather a novel species of hunchback, fertur somniasse gibbam auream poné cervicem sibi enatam fuisse !-In Vit. Domit. ad finem. |