be provided for in the sum that parliament was expected to grant to uphold the hero's name and family, kept the codicil in his pocket until the day 200,000l. was voted for that purpose; on that day he dined with me in Clarges-street: hearing at table what was done, he took the codicil out, threw it to me, and said, with a very coarse expression, that I might now do as I pleased with it: I had it registered the next day at Doctors' Commons, where it rests for the national redemption."

Lady Hamilton mentions the laudable zeal of Commodore Trowbridge to obtain provisions from Sicily, when the British fleet was bound to Egypt; but she does not mention the horrible treatment of the Neapolitan patriots in 1799, the violation of the treaty made with them, nor the sang froid which dictated the answer of Lord Nelson to their moving address, presented from their floating dungeons in the bay of Naples. "I have," said Lord Nelson, "shown your paper to your gracious king, the best and only judge of the merits and demerits of his subjects" as if the King of Naples could be the only judge of a treaty by which the faith of four nations was pledged to see it fulfilled; but against the faith of this treaty, fifteen hundred patriots were detained till they were reduced, by death, to five hundred, who, stripped of all their property, were permitted to go to France.

The author of the History of Geo. III. treating of this transaction, says, "All the dungeons of the forts being filled with prisoners, floating prisons were formed of old dismasted vessels. Around the British admiral's ship, on board of which was the King of Naples, the sea was covered with those watery bastiles, where the unhappy prisoners were so closely stowed, that they seemed to form one immoveable mass. Without shelter, and almost without food or clothing, they stood exposed to the burning rays of a meridian and solstitial sun, suffering in silence the brutal insults of the Calabrian ruffians, placed over them as guards; the king himself, from the deck of the admiral's ship, not unfrequently satiated his royal vengeance with gazing on this dreadful display of human misery."

But, speaking of Lady Hamilton, the historian says, "What still more, perhaps, affected the feelings of these unfortunate victims, was the extraordinary spectacle of the British ambassadress, gallantly attended, like another Cleopatra, rowed along the bay in nautical magnificence before these floating tombs, which contained all that Naples could boast of science, of patriotism, and of virtue."

When Rome, in the course of a few months after, was surrendered by the French to the Russians and the British, many Neapolitan patriots being there, Commodore Trowbridge took

an anxious interest in their departure from Civitta Vecchia; and, on their being unavoidably forced back to that place, inflexible in his humanity, he again enabled the vessel to put to sea, and the proscribed fugitives were at length happily landed at Toulon. Like the French General Garnier, who positively refused to deliver up these patriots demanded by the court of Naples, he scorned to become the executioner of the vengeance of the queen, or her advisers; and thus the honour of the British name was vindicated, and Commodore Trowbridge, who was charged with blocking up the port of Civitta Vecchia, during the seige of Rome, was repaid by those grateful tears of admiration which are shed over noble deeds.

ON THE AUTHOR OF GIL BLAS.

Or some of the most interesting authors in whose domestic life and character we should take the most lively interest, our biography is lamentably deficient. Of Cervantes and of Butler, the accounts are meager; and of Le Sage, the most popular of all writers, we can discover no express biography. Some things have been, however, recorded occasionally of the latter,* in regard to his literary character, as well as to his domestic habits. I have found among my collections many things concerning Le Sage, which are not generally known.

Of the author of the immortal Gil Blas, that elementary book of fictitious history, which first initiates us into the secret windings of the human character, and whose scenes and actors are, by their truth of design and chaste colouring, still the delight of mature age, the domestic life seems little known. It appears, however, to have been a very active one; he lived by his pen, and his fertile imagination was continually adding to the most agreeable works of the age. He composed for the French comic theatres, sometimes with a coadjutor, near ninety pieces; most of them are those comic operas which sometimes do not exceed a single act. All these were successful, and some the most popular favourites. His natural humour seized on temporary or on fanciful subjects with singular facility. He has erected a new feature in these minor dramas, by employing the fairy machinery as a frame work for the Eastern fables which delighted his audience. The truth is, that Petit de la Croix, the orientalist, who translated what we call the Persian and Turkish

To an edition of Gil Blas, published by Sharpe, in 1809, is prefixed some account of the life and writings of Le Sage, written, as the initials indicate, by Mr. Stephen Jones.-EDIT.

Tales, was a modest scholar, who doubted his own talent for popular composition, and, in consequence, intrusted his translations to the charming pen of LE SAGE. Our author valued the treasures confided to him by his friend, and exhibited all these tales at the Opera Comique in a dramatic form; and they produced the finest effects from their novelty and the graces of the poet's imagination. The nine volumes of the Theatre de la Foire, in fact, exhibit the Persian tales in a new form to us. Our author also adapted to the taste of his nation some of the best Spanish and Italian works of fancy. His genius does not seem to incline towards invention; even his greater work originates in a Spanish original; but the attic simplicity of his style, the vivacity of his ideas, and the felicity of adapting himself to his prototypes, rather than his prototypes to him, remain without an imitator-so well has he imitated! So true was he to nature, and to character, in all his novels, that of one of them, not known to the English public, the Adventures of the Chevalier de Beauchene, a French critic observes, he has left the matter doubtful whether they were not drawn from the memoirs furnished to him by the widow; with such correctness has he preserved the costume, and so forcibly delineated the character of this adventurer: like the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, it is now difficult to decide whether it partakes more of fiction than of fact. The Chevalier de Beauchene was a bucanier.

The author of "Calamities of Authors" has confined his views to his own country: but he might have produced a more entertaining variety had he extended them to foreign authors. He has written a useful work, and his materials offer the youthful adventurer instructive lessons, and discriminations in the literary character, which will be best felt by those who are most deeply concerned in them. Should this writer extend his researches to foreign authors, he will have to record in his book the name of LE SAGE, the most industrious and the finest genius of France.

It is melancholy to think that an author so fertile and so charming as LE SAGE, was one of "the martyrs of genius ;" and having lived to his eightieth year, exhibited not only the awful spectacle of a singular decay of his faculties, but solely existed by the care and filial charity of one of his sons. His genius was not recompensed by any other wealth than its native treasures; and had he not enjoyed one of the most affectionate of families, the author of Gil Blas, he to whom the public were indebted for their multiplied enjoyments for half a century, might have pined away in his helpless age in a garret, or perished in a workhouse!

Le Sage was happy in his own house; a scene not common

in the chronicles of literature, as the author I have referred to might be inclined, I fear, to show us by a dash of his sombre pencil. Le Sage had three sons and a daughter. His wife watched all his simple wants, and the rest of her time was devoted to the education of her children. A good mother must be singularly unfortunate if she does not rear an affectionate offspring. Le Sage rarely quitted home, and never returned to it but with delight. The happiness of our author's life seemed, however, to be interrupted by one of the sons, who most loved him. Le Sage designed his eldest son for the bar; but his genius, doubtless, insensibly bent by the father's perpetual dramatic studies, had fixed its choice in the theatre, and, to the grief of the father, adopted the profession of an actor. He concealed his name, but appeared on the stage, and soon ranked among the first class of the histrionie troop. His father could never patiently listen to the applause he was daily acquiring, nor even to that moral character and decent habits the son preserved, though on the stage. Did Le Sage conceive that a vast space in the road of honour separates the man of genius who composes for the theatre from the man of genius who treads on its boards? Genius dignifies any profession-but Le Sage was a father and he wished a counsellor at the bar, and not an actor in a provincial theatre, for the inheritor of his name.

The example of his eldest son was, indeed, dangerous, for unintentionally, it had seduced the third, who followed the same profession without any genius for it: he had the prudence to conceal his disgrace under an assumed name. But if example influences our conduct, it serves sometimes to correct it; and the second son devoted himself to the church. He became a canon in Boulogne, with all the virtues of his profession. The daughter of Le Sage united with the canon to console the father for the volatile conduct of the brothers.

When our author felt his genius on its decline, after his "Bachelor of Salamanca," and the translation of D'Avellanada's Quixote, he became reconciled with his elder son, who, indeed, except in his irresistible impulse for the stage, was ever most affectionate and attentive to his filial duties. When the father had retired to Boulogne to live with the canon, the actor visited his family-and could never afterwards quit them. His most intimate friend was his father-the society he most loved were his mother and his sister-and Le Sage himself was now only happy when by his side. When the son was at the theatre, the father would go to the coffee-house; there a circle was instantby formed about the author of Gil Blas and the Diable Boiteux; and fortunate was the man who could get a place near him; some would stand on chairs or tables to listen to him; and the old

man still preserved a sonorous voice, luminous ideas, and a delightful style. He excited, says one, who was a frequent auditor of Le Sage's at the coffee-house, the same attention, and often the same warmth of applause, which his son was receiving at the theatre. This son, who had at first occasioned him some sorrow from his theatrical attachments, became now the most lively source of the happiness of his old age; but Le Sage was doomed to pay that severe penalty of extended age, in seeing himself outlive his dearest connexions. This son died suddenly, and Le Sage became inconsolable. The true life of his old age, the vivacity of his genius, he had indulged with the versatile talents of his son the actor, whose comic excellence was unrivalled in the characters of peasants and valets, and infinitely more congenial to the temper of Le Sage than the graver dispositions of the good canon. Our author now quitted the coffeehouse, and, confining himself to the domestic circle, gradually sunk into a most miserable state of extreme debility. He died in 1747, on the verge of his eightieth year.

Of his last days, the following account is extremely interesting, and is given in a letter by the Count de Tressan to a friend :

"You request me to give some account of the last days of the celebrated author of Gil Blas.

"In 1745, I was the commandant in Boulogne. Having learnt that M. Le Sage, aged about eighty years, and his wife, nearly of the same age, inhabited this town, I hastened to see him, and to discover their present state. I found that they lodged at their son's, a canon of the Cathedral of Boulogne. Never was filial piety occupied with more love to watch and to charm the last days of a father and a mother, who had scarcely any other resource than the very moderate income of this son.

"The Abbe Le Sage enjoyed at Boulogne the highest regard. His talents and his virtues endeared him to all. I never saw a more striking resemblance than that of this Abbe with his brother the Sieur Montmenil, (the comic actor.) He was even endowed with a portion of his talents and his graces; no one read verses with more effect; he possessed that rare art of modulating his tones, of making short pauses, which, without being actually declamation, impress on the auditor the feeling and the beauties which characterize a work.

"I lamented the loss of him, for I had known the Sieur Montmenil, and felt both esteem and friendship for his brother; and the late queen, on my having represented to her the situation and the little fortune he enjoyed, granted him a pension.

"I had been warned not to visit M. Le Sage till about noon; and this old man gave me an opportunity, for the second time,