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constantly in the 'Gargantua.' There is a patriotism for the whole world (if we may say so) in the Frenchman, to which the chagrined and narrow-minded Dean Swift was an utter stranger. He had, again, a follower in the wayward Tristram Shandy,' but Rabelais had none of the heartlessness of Sterne; he had none of his cold licentiousness or still colder sentimentality.

Amongst his own countrymen his influence has been unbounded; his one mind has almost formed the national character and literature of France. The germ of nearly everything mirthful and satirical in French letters may be found in his pages. Molière, Lesage, Lafontaine, Voltaire, Paul Louis Courier, have all belonged to his school, but which among them. has ever obtained the moral dignity of Rabelais when he lays aside the mask and does condescend to be serious?

The world, however, is not likely to have another perfect Rabelais, and for this plain reason, that it is not likely to have the same need of one. As already hinted, if commentators would drop mystery and substitute common sense, the solution of their perplexities would be marvellously facilitated. The rampant wit and humourist was evidently in advance of his age, and like Fontenelle had mastered more truths than to which it

was prudent to give naked utterance. Men must appear mad, or nearly so, sometimes for safety, for irresponsibility in their vagaries. It was the artifice of David before Saul, of the noble Dane, and of the melancholy Jaques. Mankind cannot always help being jealous, envious, and impatient of superiority, and nothing tends more to allay these nervous feelings and soothe their aristocratic morgue than a little semblance of sottisness or extravagance. It was the simulated guise of the eccentric Frenchman, who wore the 'motley' aforethought, that he might exercise the fool's privilege with impunity, of launching at random his rich burlesque, withering sarcasm, and convulsive ridicule. How else could he safely have vented his spleen, his contempt, and his hatred of a bigoted and deceiving age? Perilous would have been his position-dire the vengeance of the Sorbonne, the Holy Church, and other exclusive superiorities-had he openly, and not from a masked battery, shot his missiles at monks, princes, and nobles. The humble and poverty-stricken physician of Montpelier was too wary rashly to confront these overwhelming hostilities, and wisely sheltered himself under the immunities of the droll, whose sallies are received as pointed, not ill-meant or ill-natured. But these subterfuges of genius are less needed, and there is not the same necessity for discoursing in parables and similitudes. Society is healthier in structure, and can bear the truth on most topics, whether secular or spiritual, without much risk of disturbance. There is

hardly any thing now in Church or State-not even members of Parliament-sacred from comment and criticism. Yet it did not use to be so, and that almost within living memory. One indeed could hardly credit the assertion did not a stray octogenarian or so survive to attest its veracity, that the proceedings of our own august legislature were so recently not open to the cognizance of the profane vulgar, and that the learned Dr. Samuel Johnson was obliged to dissemble his version of their sayings and doings under Roman names, the half-concealment of initials, or publish them as the Debates of the Political Club,' or the Senate of Lilliput.' Things were held secret, because false, foolish, or unjust. But the world has turned round many times, and had the benefit of the sun, the rain, and the wind, since the subject of this notice disported on its surface.

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A very shrewd doctor, and perhaps a wicked one, master Rabelais, you were, no doubt; and wisely in your old age did you take shelter in the cure of Meudon, diverting the shafts of malicious construction in dispensing music for the million,' and food and physic for the impotent. It is rather late in the day, we confess, to unearth your almost mediæval remains; but the past throws light on the present, and for this we have essayed to conjure up your grotesque impersonation. We shall take leave of you for the present, making our salaam in your own quaint but significant epilogue:-' Or, messieurs, vous avez ouy uny commencement de l'hystoire horrificque de mon maistre et seigneur Pantagruel. Vous aurez le reste... Bon soir, messieurs. Perdonate mi, et ne pensez tant a mes faultes que ne pensez bien es vostres !"'*

CALIGRAPHY AND CHARACTER.

GOOD penmanship, like all other good things, has its value, but gold may be bought too dear,' and fine calligraghy may be cultivated at too great a cost, that is, at the price of other more important accomplishments. There are doubtless distinguished exceptions, but I never myself knew an intellectual person who wrote a 'good hand,' as it is termed, that is to say, a cramped and systematised form of letters requiring a finepointed elastic pen, with fine up-strokes and strong downstrokes, each letter measuring an equal distance from its preceding one, in short, modelled after the perfect copies of Lang

Book ii., ch. 34.

ford, Arrowsmith, and Menzie. Almost every man of an individualised nature writes a hand of his own, and that hand is always in strict keeping with his own personal character. Educated women, indeed, write so much in imitation of a universally fashionable model, that all character is lost in their calligraphy; there being from the highest to the humblest of the sex, with a few exceptions, not more than three classes of style distinguishable-the lady's hand all angles and a peculiar swing to the tail of the g and y-the milliner's hand, which is the oldschool hand run wild-and the cook and housemaid's hand, which needs no description. Amongst certain classes of men, too, there is considerable uniformity--especially counting-house clerks, legal clerks, and the counter-skippers in general. Leaving, however, these out of the question, long observation has convinced me that the handwriting of men in general is highly characteristic of their dispositions and mental habits.

I have before me numerous autographs of distinguished persons in English history, and history tells of them the same story that their calligraphy does. For instance, take a few of those of the time of Elizabeth, and refer only to those which are easy of access, and with which we are tolerably familiar. The virgin queen' herself is displayed in her careful and commanding signature. This style of writing is not seen in one accustomed to other obedience than her own sweet will.' The hand of her favourite Leicester is marked by studied grace-an evident desire to play the prude to a prudish mistress. The dash of Frobisher, the ruthless and the brave, contrasts finely with that of Hawkins, the mean and avaricious officer of the Admiralty, and the shuffling courtier of Elizabeth. The fine regular Italian hand of the courtly Cecil, who retained the queen's favour when others lost their heads, and who was a married man in the train of a mistress who could not endure that her courtiers should marry, is sufficiently characteristic of him whose very shake of the head' meant much, and who never said a word or did an act which was impolitic. The pompous grace of Howard of Effingham, who commanded the fleet in the memorable contest with the Duke of Parma and the Armada, is finely characteristic of the importance which he attached to himself. In fact, whilst the Elizabethan signatures bespeak careful men and polished courtiers, there is in every one of them enough to enable an experienced observer to point out the general character of the respective individuals who penned them.

If we look at the series of autographs downwards from that period, we shall find much similarity of air and style prevailing

VOL. I.-NO. VII.

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between those of the concurrent monarch and his subjects-a general spirit, if I may so say; but becoming less and less marked as we advance nearer our own time. It is sufficient for our purpose to notice, therefore, two or three of our sovereigns. Who does not recognise, in the sprawling and fantastic caligraphy of Jamie the Saxt,' the essential character of the royal buffoon, alternately playing at polemics with the Puritans, and arbitrarily declaring it too great a luxury for a subject' to avail himself of the benevolence of his countryman, the oftblessed Duke of Argyle?'

Who does not recognise the elegant mind and somewhat reckless, versatile, and unstable disposition of the ill-fated Charles the First, in his usual signature as well as in his usual writing? Look, again, at the signaturess to the death-warrant of this faithless yet much-to-be-pitied monarch, and we see in all of them the characters of men who wrote under the influence of determined hate, as though they would have driven the pen itself into the very heart of their victim, and dispatch the Stuart' each with his own right hand! His two sons, how strikingly they display their characters in their signs-manual! The licentious Charles-insouciant, extravagant, and elegant ; the rigid, bigotted, gloomy, James-all cool, determined, and self-devoted enthusiasm! But enough: we pass on.

All, or nearly all the children of George the Third wrote what is called a good hand.' They were all taught by the same master, and some of them wrote a cramped and stingy hand; each of them, however, had a character in caligraphy, which may be easily recognised, and identify the conclusion by a reference to authentic history. They all possessed the off-hand dogmatism of the 'good old king,' and few of them, if any, inherited the truly German spirit' of their mother. There is, however, a very painful history attached to this subject, upon which we would rather not enter-it is one which shows that queen-mothers can condescend to do a wrong, a grievous wrong to a poor 'professional' man.

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Were we to look with the slightest attention at the caligraphy of the public men of our own memory, we shall be led to the same conclusions. The Duke,' for instance-a hand formed on the copy-slip model before he went to Eton, and moulded there on the imposition' system; turned adrift as a subaltern to write as he liked and act as he liked, so that he was on parade in time and went through his duties' with sufficient nonchalance towards the men,' and sufficient deference towards his superior officers; thinking much, acting much, and writing little-never entirely forgetting the beau ideal, yet always writing as though he felt every stroke of his pen to be in

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the imperative mood-clenching the nail by the very blow that drove it. Is he not the same at the age of seventy-four?

But mark the hand of the other great leader in the fearful Belgian strife-that of Napoleon. Who that has once seen can forget it? His characters are digged into the paper as with the point of a blunted bayonet, charged with an amateur composition of gore and gunpowder! In Napoleon's caligraphy we can realize the veni-vidi-vici' of Cæsar himself!

Again, look at the hand of Lord Brougham. He is 'hewing Agag in pieces.' Every movement of his pen dissevers a headlops an arm-amputates a leg! Show nie the man who would not quail under his indignant denunciation in the senate, or his withering sarcasm in the Old Edinburgh! That man has a tougher hide than the Liberator' himself!

The present Chancellor, the son of that man who painted that picture! Chatham himself not more lucid than Lyndhurst; the force of Copley's pencil not more telling than that of Lyndhurst's tongue or Lyndhurst's pen. Clear, confident, predisciplined; his subject mastered before he speaks; his diction all-powerful and incapable of disputation. Worthily a senior wrangler in the senate as in the senate-house! His masterly, free, unconvulsed hand bespeaks all this.

The Lord Chancellor Eldon (going back a step for the sake of contrast) had a character for doubt, indecision, coldness— for profound learning in the statutes and precedents of equityfor the preference of technicalities to justice, and of antiquity to truth-and for a special degree of the contraction of all the sympathies of human nature within the pale of his own political jealousies. His very signature is written with hesitation, as though every stroke of his pen were intended to obliterate the preceding one, and he wished for an opportunity of revoking the judgment he was about to authenticate for the pleasure of starting new doubts, and the addition of new fees and refreshers to the gentlemen of the Chancery-bar.'

Turn we, now, to the leaders of the two great parties in the House of Commons -if, indeed, they be leaders in any thing material beyond the leaders of nominal parties-Lord John and Sir Robert.

In the noble scion of the house of Bedford, the very caligraphy bespeaks a man wide awake'-a weasel that never sleeps, or perchance it dreams,' with one eye at least keeping vigilant watch. Such a hand as his, though it bespeaks both worth and ability, would predoom his tragedy; and the fiat of the public upon his Don Carlos' has justified the prophecy. Its character is that of a man of plain integrity, without indication of exalted intellect.

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