The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-27 00:00:00

auspices, no matter how suspicious, and then fancy
the possibility of our passing it by with a momentary
sneer of incredulity, or a scarcely perceptible shrug
of indifference. The notion would be preposter-
ous. It would be more than preposterous—it
would be ungrateful. Besides, let it be confessed
at once that our curiosity in regard to anything
which might affect to have proceeded from the pen
of the author of " Waverley " is altogether too
lively in its character to be appeased willingly by
a mere glance of unbelieving superciliousness.
More particularly when the work in question as-
sumes to itself the grandiose dignity of a veritable
historical romance, a romance of the middle ages,
of the alluring days of chivalry, of the times
heroically illustrated by the feats of the crusaders
and immortalised by the songs of the treuveres.
Moredun actually comes before us with this aspect
of twofold attractiveness. It " undertakes" to be
a posthumous tale of the Great Unknown ! It—
" Assumes the God,
Affects to nod —"
and not only affects, unfortunately, but absolutely
does nod (like Homer of old) sometimes--talking
throughout in the grand tone, and with the sesqui-
pedalia verba, sprinkled here and there with in-
genious Scoticisms, flavoured with colloquial plea-
santry. Added to all which the story, such as it
is, proves on perusal to be verily, and, indeed, a
historical romance, a narrative of the thirteen&
century, affectedly intimated so to be, by that
second, or explanatory, title, which teP.s us that
" Moredun" is " A Tale of the Twelve Hundred
and Ten"—the definite article here italicised being
there somewhat indefinitely introduced. A his-
torical romance—fancy this, ye lovers of the
" Talisman" and " Woodstock," of " Ivanhoe"
and "Quentin Durward"—an historical romance by
W (alter) S (cott), introducing us to John Lack-
land of England, and William the Lion of Scot-
land ! The hero, himself—Moredun—being no
less gloriously born than a son of Richard Coeur
de Lion, not as the bastard offspring of
the lion-hearted, like Shakspere's Falcon-
bridge, but as the fruit of an earlier marriage
than that afterwards contracted with Berengeria.
It must be admitted by the least credulous reader
of " Moredun"—so at any rate it appears to us—
that its editor, M. E. De Saint Maurice Cabany,
has introduced it to the world with a profound
belief ix his own mind that it is, in very truth, an
emanation of the genius of Sir alter Scott. Every
syllable of the " Introduction," dated Paris, 15th
April, 1855, goes to attest the sincerity of this con-
viction. As the proprietor of " Moredun," M. Ca-
bany has, of course, an interest in so believing—
but as the editor of it, he affords ample testimony
that something more worthy of note than mere
idle conjectures have conducted him to a conclusion
so very remarkable. His account of the manner
in which the MS. came originally into his posses-
sion is sufficiently extraordinary. But, however
extraordinary in its details, it possesses in its en-
tirety a certain coherent consistency. In examin-
ing into the nature of his statement, it must be
remembered that M. De Saint Maurice Cabany is
no mere obscure literary adventurer, but a man
of considerable acquirements, and of long-esta-
blihed reputation. This he has demonstrated,
during some years past, in his charac-
ter as "Directeur General de la Societe
des Archivistes de.France," as well as in his re-
sponsible position as " Directeur Redactour r
chef du Necrologe, Universel du XIX. Siecle,"
" Boulevard Beaumarchais, No. 91." Besides
which, as M. Cabany tells us in his " Introduc-
tion" (p. lxi.), his profession is essentially that of a
biographer, a circumstance which he declares has
rendered habitual and easy to him " the collecting
and sifting of evidence—the translation and exa-
mination of manuscripts." Wherefore, he really
seems to have been in a measure qualified, al-
.though a Frenchman, to enter into the literary
controversy upon which a curious combination of
circumstances have in the instance before us led
him rather daringly to adventure. As to the
story he tells us—positively—on his faith and
honour as a gentleman, about the rich, elderly,
eccentric German merchant, who aLout thirty
years ago, having retired from business and taken
up his abode in Paris, conceived a strange
longing to possess an original work by Sir
Walter Scott—well, the thing is, of course,
just possible. It is just possible that such a
man had such a longing. It is just possible
—observe ! just possible that Scott, hearing of this
strange monomania of a strange biblio-maniac,
should for purposes of his own comply with the en-
treaties conveyed to him by his bizarre admirer.
But, no ! M. Cabany does not appear to us to im-
ply for one instant that Sir Walter believed in the
story about the German merchant. According to
the statement of the matter as put forth by the
French editor of " Moredun" in his Introduction
—it is intimated to us that Sir Walter Scott re-
garded that story about the German wholly as an
ingenious device of his friend, 'William Spencer,
then rather down in the world, and residing in
Paris at the very time when Scott visited the
French capital in his ridiculously hurried search
after stray anecdotes and frivolous memorabilia
wherewith to enhance the value of his voluminous
biography of Napoleon, then on the eve of publica-
tion. William Spencer, we all know, was an int;-
mate friend of Walter Scott's. He was at the pe-
riod specified in exceedingly embarrassed circum-
stances. Scutt was g, even anxious, we
may believe, to befriend him—and at the
same time was eagerly looking out for some means
of extricating himself from the tremendous pecu-
niary liabilities incurred by hire in consequence of
the bankruptcy of the Edinburgh publishers,
who were not only his publishers, but actu-
ally his partners, and for the liquidation of the
debts of whose house the great novelist was then
writing for the bare life, writing himself aetu-
ally, as it proved, alas ! soon afterwards, into a
state of mental imbecility, and through that into
his grave. Sir Walter then, we are tel I, while
winning by his pen of magic thousands upon thou-
sands of pounds sterling wherewith to rid him elf
of the incubus of debt weighing him down to the
very dust' felt within him the old familiar passion
of the story-teller, who yearns to escape from mere
hack-work to the wonted ground upon which he
had in secresy built up his w aidrous reputation.
M. Cabany suggests to us that he seized the appli-
cation made to him by his unfortunate friend, Wil-
liam Spencer, as the anxiously-looked-for oppor-
tunity. That Scott gave Spencer the MS. of tlis
historical romance of "Moredun" to be —eight out
either under the mask of their come,— initials
(W. S.), or under the still more inscrutable dis-
guise of the strictly anonymous. Instead of which
we are informed, the reality of the story about the
wealthy old German merchant, supposed by Scott,
hints the editor of "Moredun," to be purely hy-
pothetical or supposititious, led to the precious
holograph being treasured up in an old desk for
thirty years, instead of being given to the world
forthwith, as a new venture by Scott, for the ac-
quisition of an entirely fresh reputation. 'Well,
all this, we repeat, though to the very last degree
improbable, is, at any rate at the same time, as we
have before observed, just barely possible ! We
all of us remember, for example, how, in our own
time, the Great Genius of Fiction, who is the Sir
Walter Scott, and in many respects even a great
deal more than the Sir Walter Scott of our gene-
ration, we mean, of course, Sir Edward George
Earle Bulwer Lytton, has more than once made for
himself in secresy at first, now in one direction,
and now in another, a perfectly fresh and distinct
series of additional reputations. It was not as the
brilliant author of " Pelham," for example, but
as a new writer that he ga se to the world his
charming tale of " Godolphin." And to do no
more than glance at the covert issue of " The Can-
tons," and "My Novel," through Blacktvood's
Magazine, do we not all of us remember how his
sparkling poem, half love story, half satire, " The
New Timon," and how after " The New Timou," his
magnificent epic, in twelve books, " King Arthur,"
the day-dream of Dryden and of Milton, which it
was left for Bulwer to realise, appeared originally,
in the very strictest sense of the word, anonymously.
Insomuch so that when the reviewers, and foremost
amongst them (at least be it said in point of time)
ourselves, declared that Bulwer, and no other than
Bulwer, could be the writer either of " The New
Timon" or of " King Arthur," the publisher of
those works, with a daring we have never been able
to reconcile with our notions of absolute moral rec:
titude,distinctly announced that he was authorised
to contradict that assertion as to their authossibolnP;
What we know Sir Bulwer Lytton to havmeedlate
more than once, in our
rauPnder the
generation, Sir Walter Scott is °hwerue
as attempting to do in his time—namely,
for himself a
mask of a new secresy, to fabricateta_
bstract, that
fresh reputation. Considered in the imresented
jug, quite con-
purpose, we say, is, strictly sups
the project was
ceivable. M. Cabany tellst
and breathing
according to his ac-
tGheernistaantemmeenr-t
baulked by the simple
mer-
chant was no myth,
count of the transactitniut3,to°
eccentricity. If we are tpihnteg
made by the editor of " Moredun," William
Spencer misunderstood Walter Scott, and vice
Moredun" "
versa—insomuch so that only now,
instead of thirty years ago, sakes its first appear-
ance the production of W. S. It is
as altogether
a mistake, by the way, to suppose, as some appear
to have done, through an inadvertent inattention
to dates, that M. Cabany delayed the issue of
ig Moredun " from the press until the death of
Scott's son-in-law, the late lamented Mr. Lockhart.
That, in justice to M. Cabany, ought not to be over-
looked. It is a circumstance placed entirely beyond
the reach of contradiction by the fact mentioned at
the tenth page of the " Introduction," to the effect
that on the 25th of Noyember 43541 446 0011
$