the first specimen that comes to your hand you will light upon the portraits of kings, reproduced by the cheapest of processes, and intended to ease the light burden of study. Even those who are too lazy to decipher large type are brave enough, perhaps, to scan blurred picture now and again, so that here you have something to suit all tastes. And then to read of real kings and queens, real poets and painters, has a pleasant suggestion of culture. With no more labour expended than would devour a novel, a reader may appear to have studied the past or gained some knowledge of literature. Of course it is an appearance only; but the age is not critical, and with no better sustenance than a piece of confectionery you may pose as an oracle of the dinnertable.

And the purveyors of this literary plum-cake are kind to their patrons. They spice their wares so highly that they are grateful to the coarsest palate. Cupid is their god, not Mars. The episodes of their "history" pass as often as possible in the Court of Love. If you might judge them by their exclusions, you would be forced to believe that the great ones of the earth passed their lives in nothing but love-making. To this general level all the talent, all the splendour of the world are reduced. The whole past is dragged down to the level of a society journal. Foiled in the attempt to discover the romances "" of their

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eaves

contemporaries, droppers go back to an earlier century and pretend to overhear what was said behind the arras. Familiarity is the first habit of their kind. They invent the paltriest scraps of talk, and set great names about them. Here is a choice specimen culled from a work dealing with the Court of Queen Anne: "Well hopped, madam! . . Mind that pool. . . . Egad, you're into it right up to your knees. Ahem! ankles!" Such are the terms in which the humorous historian of the suburbs pretends that a great courtier and poet addressed his Queen. Is it strange, then, that the supremacy of the novel is at last threatened?

Poets are even better game for this kind of fowler than kings and queens. Think of the rich harvest the indiscretions of Byron and Shelley have yielded! And there is much still left for the gleaner. The quarrel of Byron with his wife has furnished forth a shelfful of books. His sojourn at Venice has suggested a pleasant chapter of indiscretion, and the the only fault of his friendship for the Countess Guiccioli is that it was conducted in accordance with all the rules of a loyal propriety. Shelley would be still nearer to the heart and hand of our confectioners, if their work had not been anticipated. But Harriet is already familiar in the board-schools, and the encounter was perhaps too serious to receive a proper coating of sugar. Jane Clermont was

made of other stuff, and half a dozen stout volumes (with illustrations) may still be dedicated to her unhappy life. Nor is the energy of our biographers confined to this side of the Channel. There is something in the air of France which marvellously suits their purpose. For instance, George Sand was evidently born into the world for their peculiar gratification. Whether she was a great novelist matters not a jot. Her novels are nothing to these gentry; her rather squalid life is precisely what they want. How many times, we wonder, has the melodrama of Venice, in which George Sand and Alfred de Musset played a part, been set before us? It was a Frenchman who first discovered the literary value of the episode, and who drew for us a plaintive picture of Alfred de Musset, ill and neglected, while La Sand turned her lustrous eyes upon Dr Pagello, who, fifty years after the event, was found still mumbling over the tea-cup once touched by the vampirehand of the novelist. But the Frenchman's discovery has been bravely followed up in England, and George Sand has at last found her place, not as a novelist but as the heroine of a sentimental biography, "the book of a season.

No period, then, and no personage are sacred from the touch of these light-fingered historians. The love-affairs of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, have filled a plump volume. The Court of Charles II. is

unexhausted and inexhaustible. What title could allure more cunningly than 'The Love Affairs of the Vatican'? There you have both guilt and splendour. Simpler tastes may be satisfied with a 'Duchess Derelict' or an 'Imperial Victim.' But the supply, as always, ingeniously follows the demand, and nobody need and nobody need go away from the literary banquet unsatisfied. And as these works are easy to read, so they are easy to write. They require no training, and very little research. They are made up at hazard out of memoirs and of the books of others. They contain no intelligent criticism of politics or literature. All that is asked of them is what is called in the "trade" a strong love-interest. That is their point of contact with fiction, and the source of their dulness and monotony. Love affairs are interesting chiefly to those who engage in them. Even to them they may be mere episodes in a various life. And they do not differ from the general rule, merely because they are the love-affairs of poets or kings. To draw back the veil seems to us an unpleasant and unprofitable business. If a broken heart changed a dynasty or inspired a sonnet, the breakage deserves a record. But old intrigues are as faded as old gloves, and they are made no better because great names are attached to their participants. The new kind of printed matter, therefore, does not seem to possess much value or interest, and an examination of a few specimens

to be in paradise." Nowhere in popular fiction will you match the exquisite sensibility of these words. Even when the discord of the Court perturbed the immaculate Agnes, with ready tact "he turned the conversation to more personal matters, and for a while Agnes was happy." And she had every reason to be. "Since the love of kings must always transcend that of ordinary mortals," says Mr Hamel proudly, "the passion of Charles for Agnes was a thing apart." There is no democratic nonsense about this historian. He does not belong to the school of Macaulay and the Whigs. He declares that kings love more deeply, as well as more freely, than common mortals; and as he is a specialist in these matters, he may not be gainsaid. There is, in truth, no point of amatory etiquette which he does not understand. "It was a thousand pities," he saysand he ought to know,-"that Louis did not restrain his feelings and think twice before taking action in the matter of his father's loveaffairs. Such interference is rarely successful. In his case it was positively disastrous." What a magnificent generalisation! Mr Hamel has surveyed all the known instances of filial interference with the loveaffairs of the prodigal father, and has come to the conclusion that it is seldom successful. Thus he sets history upon the lofty height of didacticism, and gives a timely warning to the thousands of sons ready to

give their fathers superfluous advice. Thus he calls the past to the aid of the present, and permits plain, simple folk to profit by the experience of kings.

His masterpiece, perhaps, is the chapter headed "Maîtresse en Titre." This gives him an opportunity for writing a learned treatise upon the friends of kings. Here he is,

SO to say, upon his native heath. La Vallière, Gabrielle d'Estrées-he knows all their names. With a rare insight he perceives reasons of state and policy that make "one mistress, if she be modest and well-behaved, a preferable alternative to a round of debauchery.' There speaks a true Machiavelli, who understands the ways of monarchs. "The king," says he, regarding him as Machiavelli regarded the Prince, "gloomy and restless, wearied with bought pleasures, turns a jaded eye upon those who surround him and sees amongst them a fair face, a beautiful figure, charming manners, a modesty and coyness which urge him to attempt a capture. He is inspired indeed with a deep passion."

These words,

no doubt, have sent a thrill through every suburb, where Mr Hamel is received, we are sure, as a most learned historian and a profound critic of the human heart.

Yet if for a moment we may take this portentous production seriously, we can wonder only that it was ever written, and if written that it ever was published.

The

author has no sense of construction, and but a rudimentary knowledge of the English tongue. He puts down his facts with the brusqueness which you might tolerate in a book of statistics or in a collection of newspaper paragraphs, but what is intolerable in what pretends to be an historical biography. There is but one justification for 'The Lady of Beauty.' It is a piece of confectionery which seems to suit the popular taste. It is marked by all the impertinences of a commercial novel, and lacks its invention. Moreover, the antics of Mr Smith and Miss Jones need never affront us. There is an outrage in every vulgar word set in the mouth of a great personage, and the familiar talk of Charles VII. and Agnes Sorel, here written down, brings history to contempt. That there should be a demand for such books as this is a sad comment upon the Act of Parliament which makes reading and writing compulsory. And the worst of it all is that the idle men and women who devour Mr Hamel's

confectionery, take credit to themselves that they are not wasting their time upon fiction, but are making a sincere attempt to pierce the mysteries of the past.

Mr Francis Gribble's work, 'The Comedy of Catherine the Great' (London: Eveleigh Nash), is better in all respects than Mr Hamel's. It is written with more force, and structed upon

con

a wiser plan

He

than 'The Lady of Beauty.' But then Mr Gribble is the acknowledged chief of the popular experts in the love-affairs of kings and poets. He has already anatomised Shelley and displayed George Sand. has looked upon the Romantic movement with the exclusive eye of an amorist, and has discussed it as though poetry was not and painting had never been. But though Mr Gribble does this job of expertise better than the others, we would not imply that the job was worth doing. All save the very young and the very simple must find this tearing away of the veil a very tedious process. The young and simple, however, are evidently numerous enough to have a literature of their own. Mr Gribble knows his public, as he knows his pocket. He understands precisely what it wants, and gives it. Otherwise he would not call his last work 'The Comedy of Catherine the Great.' Of few monarchs could the word "comedy" be used with less propriety. We shall search the great Empress's career in vain for any episodes, or encounters, which might be called comic, unless indeed it be an article in the new creed that love itself is comic. She was not comic when she ascended the throne and connived at the murder of her drunken husband. She was not comic when she played a great part in the policy of Europe, and once foiled even the great William Pitt himself. He who