The Sun.
London, England, 1818-12-02 00:00:00

Boonapar te tlik Mr. Ilobliouse puts for q) the
whole force of his pleasantry ; H-nrl,•ris every Man
1,4 fond of doing often that which be dies welt—
his irdriic;al praises of Napoleon occupy a great
Proportion of !.he two volumes.

I have now s.:en Ilim twice—the first time. on Sunday at
the review of the National Guards; the eectnui tine at
the Theatre Frang:tis on the following- 17,iday, At His srst
visit to that Theatre since Hiq return.'—vol. ii. p.
This. designation of Buonnparte, by-air-awful
and respectful pronoun, as if he was the n illy Lie
on earth, is certainly 41 good imitation of the pro-

- •
'.fane adulation of his followefs ; but we snspert
that Mr, lioblionse had in his eye a trait of that
great master of ridicule, Rabelais : he certainly
k has caught the spirit of the Curd of Mention. and
IrTilzzes his pretended friend, the Emperor, in very
much the sane vein that Rabelais laughs at a
,:" great personage of his day. The passage is, to
, be found in the 48th chapter of the 4th book, in
which Pantagmel and his companions put into
the blessed island of the Papemanes ; and as the
/
original language is somewhat obsolete, we shall
venture to present it to the Reader in our trans-
lation. . .
As soon as the natives came alongside the ship, they all
cried Out oth one voice—" Have you seen Him, strangers,
have you seen Hint ?" " Seen whom ?" answered Panta-
gruel.—" Him," replied thee. " Who is he ?" cried Friar
John : " 'Shlood. and 'onus, I'll heat him to mummy ;" for
he thought that they were inquiring :titer some rubber, mur-
xlerer, or church-breaker. " How!" said they," do not you
know the One ?" " Gentlemen," replied Epistemon, "Sec
Rdo not understand you, have the goodness to explain your-
selves, and we will answer you fairly and without equivoca-
tion, IVho is it that you ask for?" " He that is," replied
they; " hare you ever seen Him ?" " He -that is," re -
0 joined Pantagruel, " according to our creed, is God. In
-. trot h, we never saw him, nor can he be seen of mortal eyes."
" Put, tut !" cried they, " we do not speak of the Ghd who
rules.in heaven ; hot of the God that reigns on earth : have
you ever seen Him ?" " Upon mv honour," interrupted Car-
-1 pelim, " they mean the Pope." " Yes, yes," exclaimed
Panurge, " yes, in truth, Gentlemen, I have seen him often;
kby the same token that I never reaped much advantage froM
a the §ightl"'
It is quite evident that Mr.llobhouse has close-
'• ly copied the first part of this extract ; we think
he. might have gone on to the close, and, avowed,
with Pannrge, .that he had reaped no great ad-
vantage horn the sight. - -

On other occdsions Mr. Hohhouse catches the

true spirit of the Sebastianis *. and Savarys ;
and mimics, admirable ridicule, the blind

land pompous servility of the flatterers of Na
When present at the Review on the Carousel,
be can see nothing but the Jacobin idol.
In the first gaze of admiration, I sawinothing hut Napo-
'.lcon.'—col. i. p. 36.
When Napoleon is forced to pronounce his ab-
dication,' Mr. liobhouse affects, with a most lu-
dicrous gravity, to he quite inconsolable.,
, ' , I know not how you feel, hut his expression, ma vie pi-
' htique est trrnshiee, CUT ME To THE II EART.'--NCA;ii p. 9.
There is something .irresistibly comic in the
affectation of pathos and the puling sensibility with
which the author pretended to see Napoleon re-
" ceive a petition from a.soldier.
h'r , I see Napoleon at this moment. The unruffled calmness
of his countenance, and the first movement of the soldier, re-
Vi lazing softly into a look or attention and of kindness, will
tf, never be erased from my memory. We are nut stocks, nor
ts4.nes, nor Tories! I am not ashamed to, say, :that on re-
tcovering from my first surprise, I found my eyes sontewl,st.
,tiroolstenerl ; a weakness, that never fails to overpower some
%person s, wh,n.alooe and unrest rainedby ridicule, at the pe-
irusal of any trait of unmixed heroism, especially of that
i un-
-4
rldatinted tranquillity of mind, which formed and finished the
'itionster-spirits of antiquity:'—vol. i. p. 39. -
''4, We have never met a better instance of the
...,itranchant style of the litionaparte school than
{'kthe following :—The: Allies took Palls in 1814,
INapoleon being still 'living and reigning, and at
the head of 80,000 men ; it was of course Tether
is difficult point for his admirers to represent this
*vent as favourable to the military credit of the
;usurper; yet Mr. Hohhimse contrives to do it
;with admirable-art in one short sentence.
The Allies found themselves at Paris—they knew nut
how !'—vol. i. p. 83. _

Here then the military character of Bnonapnrte
and the French army is not only preserved from
:imputation, hitt the very success of the allies
:attfdly turned into a proof tit their, ignorance and
)nca pa y.
The feelings with which Mr. Hobhouse des
scribes himself, as assisting at the pantomime of
the Champ de Mai are quite excellent tor- their
ludicrous inconsistency and stupid amazement.—
Buonaparte himself, with liberty itt his mouth
and the sword in his hand, could hardly have made
a more characteristic declamation.
4 My friend and 'myself pressed backwards to the outward
Circle of the amphitheatre, and surveyed a scene more mag-
nificent than any pen can describe. The Monarch on his

'pen Throne, which seemed a glittering pyramid of eagles,
and arms, anti military habits, crowned hy his own white
plumes—an immense plain, as it were, of soldiers, flanked
with multitudes so innumerable that the sloping banks-on
path side presented but one mass of heads—the man-L—the
cotispired to surprise Lts,into a most unqualified,
ntiphilosophical admiration of the 'whole spectacle, before
p. 413.
The sante appearance of devotion to the Napo-
leon (‘'nasty is pleasantly continued to the very
end !" the second surt•ender of Paris, withonr a
battle, extinguished all the hopes Of•the lovers of
carnage and Boonaparte4 Hear how admirably
Mr...Hoblionse mimics their language.
,•At.four o'clock the battle had not begun. I was t builder-
Struck with the news. 'lie Lientenant-General had just left
the army ; all Was lost—Paris had surrendered, with a de-
6ted army of 80,000 soldiers befoie her
p. 122.
When Napoleon abandons, for the fifth time,
Eris army after the battle of Waterloo, Mr. Hob-
house, its the words of his admirers, states, us his

excuse, that the same course had succeeded atter
rhe Russian campaign ; and then he tender:y adds,
in-his own voice, ' But, alas ! times are ehanged P
\or is the seeming candour with which Mr. Hob--
iionse finds in, this dsesertion some little matter to
Blaine les dexterously managed.
cannot he concealed there is in the flight of Napoleon
ai-precipitaney whi,ch nothing can excuse; and we roust sigh,
as Montesquieu . did over the suicide of Brutus, to see the
educe of liberty so easily abandoned.'—vol. ii. p. 13.
By this ingtmionS allusion; Buonapatte, even
in his most blameable conduct, is placed on a
level with BrOtos; and his cause dexterously con-
tsimnded with the cause of the liberties of the
sou id.
But it is not in his-imitation of a passion for
Napoleon that Mr. Hobhouse • excels ; his vehe-
[tient indignation against all British statesmen
%Om retused to bow the knee to this Corsican
Baal, is a fac-simile of the old diatribes of the
Nluniteur, and might have flowed from the pens
Regnault or Caulincourt ; and this, we own, is
tlie'part of Mr. Hobbouse's work which we 4ve
reed with the greatest satisfaction. The blind
01. See nn account of Sehastiani's adoration'of the Emperor
in the third article of our last number.

• Our readers are award that, in allusion to the sorrows
and piety of the-Antigone of antiquity, the Parisians ;-c ailed
the Duchess of Angoulcine by, this name, which had been
rendered familiar lo them by their tragedians. ,

shops, or even hare gone the greater length of forbidding-
the masquerade of the 'mi-caretne (Lent, she might cherish
the town of Nismes, and its vow of a silver baby for God Al-
mighty, as the lure and promised reward of her conception of
a man child.—These offences might hare been forgotten or
been condemned to ridicule, with the gaiters of
.his Majesty,
and 11ml:tigrish tonnet of Madame, but,' &c. &C.—col i.
pp. 103, 104. _ _ .

Louis -began his reign by saying mass for the soul of his
brother; (monstrous!) he next instituted a fate similar to
that of the day (the Martyrdom of King Charles) " when
every sovereign in Europe rises with a crick its his neck."—
Then was parlor med the last office of fraternal piety by this
hone-collecting court. Between these acts there was a'per-
Pet"! Playing off of court horrors and antipathies at the
very sound or smell of regicide. The Duchess of Angouleme
never !oohed at a Parisian crowd without shuddering,- as if
beholding the children.and champions of revolution. If at the
-Tuileries she saw a lady of the imperial court, she- passed
over on the other side. Her jealousy descended upon the
children of those that had hated her father;' Ste.
pp. 175, 176.
We have no admiration for the ceremonial of
the.church.of Rome; but we are too much con-
vinced that in all countries, but more particularly
in France, there is one thing needful,' and that
this one thing is faith,.--to tolerate, even in sport,
an attack on a national religion ; and revering
and loving our own establishment, we do not like
to see the religious establishments of other people
reviled. Mr. Hoblionse is a wag:---but he should
recollect that' there is one class of subjects, at
least, with which (even with, good intentions) a
wag should not intermeddle ; and to call a transfer
of tire mortal remains of a martyred king to con-
seerated ground, •‘ a grubbing up of bones'—to
describe the terror with which holuan !wore
shudders at murder, and the deeper horror which
morality and policy feel at regicide, as playing
off court horrors at the very Sound or smell of
revicide'—to qualify the cutting oil the head of
an innocent and blameless sovereign as only
baring' him-7.4nd to ridicule as a pettish '
jea-
lousy' 'he involuntary horror with which the or-
phan views the murderers of her parents,—are,
we presume to think, expressions which Mr.
Hothouse could not justify his using to an Eng-
lish pnhlic, if he could even chew that he bor-
Io‘‘ed or imitated them from Marat, Hebert, or
Courtiron ; but if, as we believe, the madness and
wickedness even of the Septembrist•rs were never
pushed'to these horrible extremes, we fear that
Mr. -Hohhonse runs some risk of implicating his
own charader by such thoughtless. and licentious

IVe have good reason to think that Mr. Hob—
house himself feels a little with us on this point,
• and that he has suppressed a great deal of what
he had at first written in this strain. The volumes
before us evince that about 100 pages of the first,
and about 70 of the second (as well as we can
reckon them), have been cancelled ; this, per-
haps, we should explain to readers not versed in
the manual art of the press, is a term which is
used when, after a sheet haS been printed off, it
is found to contain something which the author
wishes to suppress. In this case, a new page
with the necessary- alterations is reprinted, and
stitched in the place of the cancelled leaf.. To
have been obliged to incur the delay and expence
of cancelling so large a proportion of his work,
proves that Mr. Hobbouse's first sketch contained
at least one bundeed .and seventy passages which
were not fit to see the light. Of what a deep
shade these passages must have been, may be
judged of by the colour of thoie which he has
not thought it necessary to suppress : but as Mr.
Hobhouse shews that he is himself convinced that
even raillery may become atrocious, we recom-
mend him to consider whether there are not a
great majority of the remaining pages which
might also be improved by the same process.
On the whole,we cannot recommend air. Hob-
house's book : if Any reader werd doll enough to
mistake it for seriousness, it would certainly ap-
pear one of-the most infamous libels ou the name
and character of an Englishman that ever was
written ;' and, what is not in general the fault of
libels, it would he found so tedious, so dull, and
withal so laboriously impudent, that our contempt
for the author's talents would almost equal our
abhorrence of his principleS : and even when a
reader of discernment takes up the work for the
-purpose of [at:itching at it, in its trite character of
a mere drollery, we still think that the great
length of the whole will be found to defeat the
pleasantry of the particular passages. Parcdies
and irony do not bear to he wire-drawn and spin
out to the length of nine hundred octavo pages.
Pleasaniry• most be scarcely perceptible when
spread .over such an immense space ; and the
terseness and condensed wit of the Anti-Jacobin
are, though in the same line, perfect contrasts to
the.ponderous levities and the laborious trifles of
Mr, Hohhouse.

We cannot conclude without warning Mr. Hob-
house from a fault to which we have already al-
luded, but which, as it seems to us the most im-
portant whirls he has committed, we wish to
press upon hiss consideration ;it is this,--t hat
irony exaggerated, and parody pushed to extra
vagance, are as dull as when they fall dead short.
Mr. Hobbouse should not out-Herod Herod ; and
in affecting to imitate the language and principles
of such monsters as Marat, Murat, Maret, Buo.
naparte, and the Pie de Chene, justice as well
as decency—good manners as well as good taste,
forbid a writer from- exaggerating the faults of
his models. Subjects of this nature are not, its
the best hands, very susceptible of gaiety ; but
the inflamed and swolen imitations of Mc. Hob=
house leave us in a confused and painful state of
mind ; we are often at a loss to know whether
he be in jest or in earnest ; and we cannot help
feeling, as it is somewhere said one does in look-
ing at a picture by Spagnoletto, that he who was
capable of painting a murder so horribly, was capa-
ble of committing one."

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.—A few days ago,
young man named %Vigram, a coal-dealer, %rho
resideS in Saffron-hill, Clerkenwell, suspended
himself by ft cord in the cellar of his house. After
he had hung a short time, a person went down
the cellar, and cut lihn down ; and proper means
being resorted to, animation was restored.
SUlClDR.—Sunday a young man, named Ed-
ward Isell, who resided in Paternoster-row, oppo-
site the watch-house, put an end to his-existence
by hanging himself. fie bad been dead some time
when
.discovered.

In the course
.of last week, George Cotton. a
,
youth of 15, "Was'committed 'to Stafford &aol, for
the wilful murder of.his mother,