As thus:
Julius Cæsar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard, at Blenheim.
The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
And what have we here?—so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and that Julius Cæsar’s family name had been John Churchill;—the fact would have stood, in history, thus:
‘Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia.’
And why not?—we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated, that:
‘The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and Cæsar, writing home to his mamma, said, “Madame, tout est perdu fors l’honneur.”’
What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names everything; and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning Walker’s Gazetteer, or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the Court Guide.
Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in question—the novelists.
On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked, that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as ‘copies’ and ‘compositions.’ Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them); and, for composition, we intend to favour the public with some studies of French modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of the English public.
Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical, theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a plea—novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and study. And, passing from novels in general to French novels, let us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)—let an English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends he has made? He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say: