An Indignant Epistle. 27 limited section of the community-was by no means rare in the society of gentlemen. I have in my possession an irate letter, written in 1792,by a young military relative of my own, then residing in London, to his uncle in Scotland, wherein he gives the result of a court-martial at which he and two brother officers were most unjustly accused of various fraudulent transactions, by no less a personage than William Cobbett, who had formerly filled the office of sergeant-major in the regiment to which the three culprits' belonged. He thus proceeds : 'I can only now annex a copy of Sir Charles Gould's letter to me of the 2d inst., from which you will see that the three culprits have been most honourably acquitted, and which has since been approved by his Majesty. In my letter to P- of the 27th ult., I desired her to inform you that the villain who had exhibited the charges against us thought proper to disappear, though not till after he had put us to all the trouble and expense in his power. Report says he has gone to France, and I shall only add that I wish he was in hell, as he fully deserves a warm berth. He only gave in the names of forty-seven non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment to Sir Charles Gould as his evidence to support him in the business, all of whom appeared at the Horse-Guards and before the court, not one of them having a word to say, nor did they know what brought them there. We were also obliged to have all or the greatest part of the officers here who came home with us, with upwards of 28 Published Correspondence. twenty non-commissioned officers and privates; so you can easily judge what trouble the scoundrel has put us to on the occasion, for which I hope he will be damned.' It must be acknowledged that the somewhat strong language of the indignant subaltern was, to a certain extent, justified by the utter falsity of the extraordinary charges-the motive for which I have been unable to discover. Published Correspondence of Eminent The published correspondence of eminent individuals holds a prominent place in modern literature. I.-FRANCE. Thus, in France, during the seventeenth century, we have the letters of Balzac, Voiture, and Madame de Sévigné; while in the following century in England, we can point to the correspondence of Pope, Swift, Addison, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Gray, Cowper, and Horace Walpole. To each of these distinguished letterwriters I propose to devote a few remarks. Jean Louis Guez de Balzac (b. 1594, d. 1655) in his youth filled the office of secretary to Cardinal la Valette at Rome, where he sedulously cultivated his natural taste for elegant compo Jean L. G. de Balzac. 29 sition. On his return to France he became a member of the Academy, and a special favourite of Cardinal Richelieu; and his successful devotion to the refinement of his native language ultimately secured for him a permanent place in the literature of his country. He is usually considered to have formed his style on the magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and Seneca; and his more elaborate productions are strikingly characterized by the stateliness of his language and the harmonious cadence of his periods. Although somewhat stiff in point of diction, and frequently exhibiting a tendency to hyperbole, his 'Letters,' which extend from 1620 to 1653, have been most generally admired, and are still frequently read. 'He passed all his life,' says Vigneul Marville, ‘in writing letters, without ever catching the right characteristics of that style;' and even those addressed to his sister are so laboured and artificial, that they are well described by Hallam as 'smelling too much of the lamp.' A good edition of Balzac's Letters, in three volumes, was published in Paris in the year 1806. Vincent Voiture was born a few years after Balzac (1598), and died at the age of fifty. 30 Vincent Voiture. Remarkable for his brilliant wit and fluency of expression, his society was courted by all the most influential personages in France. After his death, his writings, which are full of vigour and bel-esprit, were collected and published by his nephew, and have been frequently reprinted. His 'Letters' have been translated into English by various authors, including Dryden, whose edition appeared in 1736. They begin about the year 1627, and are addressed to the widow of the Marquis de Rambouillet-the associate of Richelieu, Condé, and Corneille-and to various other persons of both sexes. Although not always so correct, Voiture's letters are considered more natural in point of style than those of Balzac, which, however, are more remarkable for their meaning and good sense. They are full of gaiety and compliment to the person addressed, and are frequently imitated by Pope in his correspondence with ladies. Those written from Spain are sometimes truly witty, and always brilliant and lively. The characteristics of Balzac and Voiture are thus contrasted by Olivet :-'The one inclined always to the sublime, the other always to the elegant (au délicat). The one had a lofty ima Madame de Sévigné. 31 gination, which invested the most insignificant subjects with an air of dignity; the other a playful imagination, which caused a tone of gallantry to pervade all his thoughts. The one, even when he wished to jest, was always grave; the other, on the most serious occasions, provoked a smile.' Marie de Rabutin Chantal, afterwards Madame de Sévigné, was born at Paris in the year 1626. Deprived of both her parents at a very early age, she was carefully educated under the superintendence of her maternal uncle, M. de Coulanges, the abbé of Livry, whose amiable character is pleasantly indicated by the soubriquet of 'Bien-bon,' which she herself applies to him. At the age of eighteen, she married the Marquis of Sévigné, who was killed in a duel about seven years afterwards, leaving a son and a daughter, to whose education the young widow religiously devoted herself. Immediately after her daughter's marriage, in 1669, to the Count de Grignan, Lieutenant-General in Languedoc, she commenced that long-continued correspondence which embraces the greater proportion of her celebrated letters. To read your letters,' she tells her daughter, and to write to you, is |