The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

APRIL 29, 1854.

yiteraturt.

Julian; or, the CloB6 of an Era. By L. F.
Bungener. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue,
and Co.

The Priest and the Huguenot; or, Persecution in
the Beign of Louis the Fifteenth. From the
French of Louis Felix Bungener. London :
Nelson and Sons.

OUR readers may recollect that we introduced
M. Bungener to their notice in the course of
last year. (PRESS, VOL i., p. 400.) We re-
corded at the time our surprise at the little
attention that had been paid in this country
to his highly-interesting and curious work
called " The Preacher and the King ; or, a Ser-
mon under Louis the Fourteenth." He has
since published two new fictions, brought out
almost simultaneously for English circulation,
in the hope that they may prove acceptable to
general readers.
We fear, however, that of these works, criti-
cised as fictions, we cannot give a very favour
able report. They are neither popular novels
nor historical essays, but literary galleries of
French public characters, interspersed with
acute remarks on the hollowness of Voltairian
philosophy, and the theological errors and
political tyranny of the Church of Rome.
With all the talents that adorn the professor's
chair, M. Bungeuer's wants the subtlety and
pathos required to interest the heart. In-
structing our minds, he cannot sway our feel-
ings, and, while we admire his polemical
powers and approve of the direction in which
he applies them, we could wish that he was
able to vary the profound by the introduction
of the pathetic. He can teach but he cannot
thrill. He wants the wealth of imagination,
that not only creates ideal beings, but
assigns them original and peculiar careers.
Acquirements, analysis, a certain narrative
power, will no more make a novelist than a
poet. To produce a good fiction there must
be combination in the plot along with creation
in the characters.
In his former work, " The Preacher and the
King," M. Bungener succeeded, because the
subject was both real and fresh, and, while
there was reasonable ingenuity in the plot,
some of the characters (especially Bourdaloue)
were portrayed artistically. We were intro-
duced into a little-known corner of the Court of
Louis XIV., and our curiosity was stimulated
with a near view of the mechanics of sermon
making in the days of Bossuet, Bourdaloue,
and Claude. We were taken, as it were, into
the romance of the pulpit, and the throes of
genius struggling for human applause on a
celestial theme were depicted to us with
nicety of remark and rare vigour of style.
But iu "Julian, or the Close of an Era," the
spirits of the French encyclopredists, with
their ghastly phantasms and grinning mock-
ery, are let loose upon us. The Biographic
Universelle is ransacked ; Grimm's correspon-
dence is re-edited and moralised and Protes-
tantised for us ; in place of characters fit for
fiction, we have chapters of censure, and, when
we arrive at the end of these delineations and
disquisitions, we are not half as instructed as
we might be by the perusal of the memoirs of
Mallet du Pan, or that most remarkable of
recent memoirs, the correspondence of Mira-
beau with Count de la Marck. The form is
that of a novel, the matter is that of a history,
and the animating spirit that of a reviewer.
Thus we are asked to admire fiction without
invention, and to accept as reality what has no
authenticity. But we need not proceed with
any criticism on these works. The first few
lines of the "De Arte Poetic& " contain all
that a Lessing or a Schlegel would care to say
about such a misapplication of eminent lite-
rary talent.
We are afraid, also, that the multitude of
general readers are beginning to find the
eighteenth century becoming
na bore.
either They
can anticipate nearly everything that
moralist can utter or novelist suggest about
Parisian saloons, Louis XV., the Misfile, cor-
ruption, seduction, infidel abbes and petits
soupers, reckless young viscounts, and rapa-
cious farmers-general, and the growl of popu-