t the foot of it, we might well
have begun to turn over the leaves with some prejudice against the
anonymous author. But a very casual glance informs the reader, in this
case, that he has to deal with a highly intelligent man of the old
school, with plenty of caustic humour in him. The author appears to be a
gentleman advanced in years, and the "Memoirs" consist of recollections
of incidents in his father's life and his own, going back at least as
far as the days of Cribb and Molyneux, and taking in some pleasant
scenes of Continental travel. There is something exceedingly quaint,
almost ludicrous, in the author's way of employing the Spenserian
stanza, and as it is not always clear that he is conscious of the humour
there is in it, the reader's attention is kept on the alert in the very
last way that would commend itself to a critic:--

"The matron of the house obligingly
Led him to two large rooms on the first floor,
Where he would have more light and liberty,
With a good walk along the corridor;
Besides which, they expected one or more
Nice gentlemen to-morrow afternoon.
The gentleman who left the day before--
Poor man! he had a cough would kill him soon--
Ten months he had been with them on the twelfth of June."

This is certainly odd, and the puzzle is that though the author, as we
have said, has true and biting humour in him, he never drives his stanza
with the conscious _lilt_ that you find in, for example, Byron's use of
a substantially kindred measure in "Beppo," or "Morgante Maggiore." Take
the first lines that occur to one's mind in the latter:--

"There being a want of water in the place,
Orlando, like a trusty brother, said,
Morgante, I could wish you in this case
To go for water. You shall be obeyed," &c.

Here Byron is making the flat prose of the metre (so to speak), a source
of humour in itself: but we cannot find that the author of these
"Memories" intends anything of the kind. We agree with some of our
brethren in finding the occasional lyrics good, and the opening lines of
the seventh canto contain hints of genuine poetic quality. Altogether
the book is a noticeable budget of gossip in verse, with not a few
strong, pointed passages to relieve the effect of the flat or weak
pages; which latter are, to speak the truth, too numerous. We should
guess the author to be a very "clubable man."

* * * * *

This is a very pleasant