facility in expressing his thoughts, that he would at the same time dictate to four secretaries different things, all of them of great importance, and with the same ease and dexterity as if there had been but one.'

UNCERTAINTY.

Vol. 3, chap. 7.—The contentions of passion in the mind of the Duke of Burgundy, after the siege of Louis, are painted with a glowing hand by the novelist; and the parallel passages in Comines would abundantly recompense the attention of the reader, did our limits permit us to embrace them.

Chap. 9.-The meeting of the king and the Duke of Burgundy, in the tower of Peronne, is also powerfully delineated.

THE SALLY.

Vol. 3, chap. 13, 14.-In these chapters the author, with his usual skill in blending history and romance, has mixed up the revenge of the Duke of Burgundy against the Liegeois and the subserviency of Louis with the private fortunes of Quentin Durward. The curious may compare the coincidence or the discrepancy of the various passages of the novelist and the historian with the narrative of Comines. It is, perhaps, unnecessary once more for us to observe, that William de la Marck was perfectly unconnected with the proceedings. We shall conclude these remarks on the novel of Quentin Durward, which will amply repay the time and attention bestowed upon it by the curious and inquisitive reader with the following extract from the Chronicles of Meray :

The badauds (cockneys) of Paris, on this shameful practice,*

* In allusion to storming the town of Liege and the subse

taught their jays, jackdaws, and parrots to repeat," Perrone, Peronne," as their royal master passed the street; a sarcasm which that irritable monarch revenged, by sending detachments into each street, to carry off from the inhabitants not only these chattering birds, but also their stags, goats, kids, fawns, crows, swans and cormorants.'

In perusing the account of the murder of the goodhearted Louis of Bourbon, at Schonwaldt, as related in the novel, in consequence of the combined attack of his rebellious but dismayed Liegeois, and the followers of the Boar of Ardennes, with the fearful punishment that was exacted for the crime, the reader is forcibly reminded of the following passage in 'Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk,' (Letter XII) where the writer is speaking of the Place de Louis Quinze :

'Here, upon the very spot where I now stand, the most virtuous of the Bourbon race expiated, by a violent death, inflicted by his own subjects, and in view of his own palace, the ambitions and follies of his predecessors. There is an awful solemnity in the reflection, how few of those who contributed to this deed of injustice and atrocity now look upon the light, and behold the progress of retribution.'

Comines does not give quite so fayorable a character of bishop (brother of the two dukes of Bourbon, John II and Peter II,) being a man addicted wholly to pleasure and good cheer, and scarce distinguishing good from bad himself.'*

6

It is one very amiable, though very dangerous, characteristic of the Author of Waverley,' that throughout his works we perceive a wish, generally speaking, to veil and extenuate the weaknesses and faults of those

quent devastation that took place, the seizure of Louis and his imprisonment at Perone.

*P. 202 of the Memoirs of Philip de Comines, faithfully translated into English from the edition of Denys Godefroy, Lond., 1674, 8vo.

historical personages whom he has occasion to mention.

It should be mentioned, that Louis of Bourbon did not lose his life until some time* after the death of the Bold Duke of Burgundy; nor was William de la Mark personally concerned in the revolt of the Liegeois which preceded the confinement of Louis XI at Peronne, and was led by a knight called Monsieur William de la Ville, alias, by the French, le Sauvage.' Comines, p. 102. In that disturbance, however, one of the bishop's most confidential domestics was brutally butchered before the face of his master, while the wretches who committed the outrage flung at each other the mangled limbs of their victim. The bishop was led as a prisoner into the city, from which he escaped upon the approach of the king and the Duke of Burgundy. His death is thus mentioned in Bulteel's Mezeray, fol. London, 1688. p. 504; 1482, William de la Mark, called the wild boar of Ardenne, incited and assisted by the king, massacred, most inhumanly, Lewis de Bourbon, bishop of Liege, either in an ambuscade, or after he had defeated him in battle,† and

'au

* From the narrative of Comines, it would appear that he perished in the year following the death of the duke, who lost his life before Nanci, 6th Jan. 1477. Mezeray, as will be seen, does not mention it until the year 1482: his words are, mesmes temps encore il donna trois mille hommes à Guillaume de la Mark, dit le sanglier d'Ardenne, pour le deffaire de l'Evesque du Liege, trop affectioné à ce qu'il soupçonnait, au party Bourguignon. Ce Guillaume, de son chef, gardoit une cruelle inimitiè contre cet Evesque parce qu'il avoit chassé de sa Maison, où peu de temps auparavan til avoit este en grande faveur. Tellement que l'ayant pris par la trahison des Liegeois, comme il estoit sorty du Liege pour le combatre, il le massacra inhumainement de sa propre main, et le fit trainer tout nud dans la grande place de la Ville devant le Temple de S. Lambert. Mais peu de temps après, Maximilien l'ayant atrapé, luy fit avec justice trancher la teste.' Ed. 1685, tome ii. pp. 744.

Comines, page 280, tells us, that he slew the bishop with his own hands in battle, and caused his body to be thrown into the river, where it was found three days afterwards.

soon after himself, being taken by the lord de Horne, brother to the bishop, successor to Lewis, had his head cut off at Mastrict.' From Comines it appears that de la Mark, who is styled a brave person, and a valiant gentleman, but cruel and malicious,' had an idea of placing his own son in the bishopric, with the assistance of the king of France.

as

A more

The anachronism caused by thus antedating the death of the bishop may not be without excuse, deepening the interest of a fictitious narrative. strange oversight is committed in the rifaccimento of the king's prayer to the lady of Clery, as given by Brantome, where the author of Quentin Durward (vol. iii. ch. v. p. 128) has retained the passage respecting the death of Charles the duc de Guienne, who was personally interested in the treaty of Peronne, and was not poisoned until three or four years after, viz. in 1471. Mezeray thus tells the story, which is not a little romantic :

'He loved a lady, daughter of the Lord Monserau, and widow of Lewis d'Amboise, and had for confessor a certain Benedictine Monk, Abbot of St. John d'Angely, named John Favre Versois. This wicked monk poisoned a very fair peach, and gave it to that lady, who, at a collation, put it to steep in wine, presented one half of it to the Prince, and eat the other herself. She, being tender, died in a short time; the Prince, more robust, sustained for some while the assaults of the venome, but however could not conquer it, and in the end yielded his life to it.

'Such as adjust all the phenomena of the Heavens to the accidents here below might have applied to this same comet of extraordinary magnitude, which was visible fourscore days together from the month of December. Its head was in the sign of the Balance, and it had a long tail, turning a little towards the north.'— P. 404. Bulteel.

The duke died on the 12th of May. The king was very anxious to get the perpetrator of the crime out of the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, who had been thrown into inexpressible rage on hearing the catastrophe of Charles. 'The monk was found dead in prison, the devil, as was said, having broken his neck the night before that day wherein they were to pronounce his sentence. This was what the king desired, that so the proof of the crime might perish with the poysoner.' P. 495.

In Dr. Dibdin's 'Tour,' vol. iii. p. 591, there is a very beautiful miniature figure of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at prayers: it is taken from a manuscript breviary on vellum, of the fifteenth century, executed for his use. A more hard-featured and truculent-looking visage is scarcely to be imagined than that prefixed to one of the four portraits intended to adorn the frontispiece of the edition of the Mémoires de Comines.'

*

We presume that the courtly and martial' Galleotti was himself a memorable example of the vanity of his science, as to the personal fortunes of its professors: it being his fate to break his neck at Lyons in 1476, at his first interview with Louis XI, owing to his dismounting too precipitately from his horse, in order to salute his new patron. Others, among whom is, we believe, Paulus Jovius, relate that he was seized with a fit of apoplexy at Padua.

At the close of his own life, Louis placed all hope in his physician, James Coctier, who received 10,000 crowns by the month for the last five months. (See Comincs, b. vi. xii. and Mezeray, p. 505.) He summoned also from Calabria, a holy hermit whom Comines, b. vi. 8.) calls friar Robert; but according to

*Even Apollo was compelled to exclaim'Nec prosunt domino, quæ prosunt omnibus, artes!'Ovid Met. i. 524.