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ticism to which they give occasion. A biographer on this side of the channel is contented with relating what may be related; while on the other side that which was never intended to be recorded forms an equal, and unhappily the more entertaining, part of the story. Not to mention the real frankness of La Montaigne, the affected frankness of Rousseau, the natural and ungarnished history of Marmontel, the avowed and unblushing infamy of Richelieu, and the naïveté of a Stahl, who were both the subjects and the authors of their histories, we may trace the same desire to reveal the man, and the whole man, in the Memoirs of Grammont, written by an English apostle of the French school; and yet more prominently displayed in the gallery of portraits bequeathed to us by St. Simon. Of all biographers, this last is possibly most true to nature of all servitudes, that of a despotic court is possibly the most degrading to the heart and mind; and if the "caractère haineux," attributed to the Duc de Saint Simon, has not misguided his pen, of all courts since the pagan courts of Tiberius and Nero, that of Louis XIV. in his latter days abounded most in the monotony of human misery. The perfect portraiture of the master and his slaves, by the severe but vigilant Saint Simon, will descend to posterity together with the unjust eulogies of partial historians and biographers, and act as a corrective on minds that are liable to be dazzled by false glitter or deluded by false taste.

No country has produced a harvest of biography so copious or so excellent as France ;-to seize and delineate a character exactly, neither to exaggerate nor extenuate, neither to omit nor to set down aught in malice, is the pride of French biography. This may not have been avowed, although, from the increasing and never satiated demand for French memoirs, it is evidently though silently admitted; and indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, we question whether any human invention can devise and string events together, as agreeably as they spontaneously fall in the chequered life of a man of enterprize. Still, with all due respect to the Sieur GOLDONI, we do not class his memoirs with those which have given interest to this style of composition. A decent writer of the language, in the early part of his memoir he is a clumsy copyist of Hamilton and Marmontel; while, a stranger to their natural and easy graces, he seeks an antithesis in almost every sentence, and an unseasonable pleasantry in almost every paragraph. The larger part of the two volumes which we have before us forms an almost continued tissue of successful or unsuccessful levities; and, as the unsuccessful are ninety and nine against one, the value of the work must rest not on style or sentiment, but on the events of a varied life, and on the light thrown by it (in 7

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a most unpleasant manner) on the progress of that theatrical talent of which the development has obtained for the author a considerable share of popularity. The very appearance of the pages, arranged as they evidently are by the author's direction, in so many divisions, presents a certain idea of unconnection, or, to use a French term, a décousu of manner, which, although attempted for the purpose of alluring, succeeds only in fa tiguing the reader. We have no continued narrative; all is ambitious, all is scintillation, digression,- àpropos, and consequently disappointment. Not to speak of that vulgar tone which is contracted by habitual intercourse with the greenrooms, and with the prémières amoureuses of so many strolling and stationary companies, we cannot but reprobate a certain light and trifling mention of actions and sentiments that are too important to be converted to a jest.

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We are far from denying that Italy is much indebted to this writer for attempting the reform of her comic theatre; neither can the author, who has witnessed in his life-time eighteen editions of one hundred and fifty comedies in prose and verse, be in need of much apology for presenting to the world his por trait, drawn by his own hand:-but, besides the propriety of giving some account of himself, M. GOLDONI was influenced by another motive yet more forcible, viz. self-interest. Perceiving that several of his works were printed without his permission, (a larceny admitting no redress in a country like Italy, which is divided against itself,) the injured author, to put a stop (as far as he could) to future pillage, resolved to preface every subsequent volume with a detached morsel of his biography: which should serve the triple purpose of sign-manual to the genuineness of the edition, as a preface, and also as a farther advance to the history of his whole life; and, as it appears to have been his intention to live writing, he conceived that his last comedy for the stage would contain for its introduction nearly the last of its author's history. The dissipation of Paris, in which capital he passed his latter years, interrupted this scheme; and, contenting himself with translating from the Italian the part which was already finished, and making a few additions, he has furnished us with the present work.

GOLDONI was born at Venice, as he tells us, in a grand and noble mansion,' but his family was originally of Modena. His grandfather, Charles, consoled himself for the loss of his first wife by espousing a widow, one of whose daughters he consigned in marriage to his son. My mother,' says the author, was a pretty brunette: she was a little lame, but very inviting.' His grandfather, devoted to a life of pleasure, hired a magnificent country-house, six leagues from Venice, where he excited the

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envy of all the neighbourhood by the splendor of his entertainments but, being deprived of this house by the artifice of an envious man, he settled at Carrara, farmed all the possessions belonging to the Prince at Venice, increased his expences, represented comedies and operas at his own house, and attracted thither the best actors and most famous musicians of the day. Visitors also flocked from every quarter. I was born,' says GOLDONI, during all this bustle, and in this abundance; how could I despise the theatre? How could I dislike gaiety?" -My mother' (he continues, in the character of a comic writer, we suspect, rather than truly) brought me forth almost without a pang, and she loved me for it the better. I did not announce my entrance into the world by cries, and this gentleness seemed to give presages of my pacific character, which from that hour have never been belied. I was the jewel of the house; my nurse declared that I had wit; my mother charged herself with my education, and my father with my amusement. He constructed a puppet-shew: he directed the motions of the figures with his own hand, assisted by one or two of his friends; and at four years old I thought that the amusement was most delicious.'

Such is the coxcomb-style which pervades the early part of these memoirs. The death of the writer's grandfather, as we might naturally expect, unhinged a family subsisting on the riot of his house. Profusion was followed by penury; his father, although not deficient in wit,' had neglected his son's education, and a second child increased the embarrassment: but, as he was by no means fond of dwelling too long on sad reflections, he left Madame with a small part of the wreck of their finances, and took a journey to Rome for a little diversion. At four years of age, GOLDONI says, 'he read and wrote, knew his catechism by heart, was placed under a preceptor, and was fond of books; and, although the sentences follow with an epigrammatic rapidity which confounds time and circumstance, at an age scarcely more advanced, we suppose, he was learning his grammar with facility, and the principles of geography and arithmetic: but his favourite reading was comedy.' His first author was Ciccoguini; and, as "the sports of children satisfy the child," he found great delight in the trivial scenes of the Florentine author. At eight years of age, he had frequently perused and began to imitate his model by a comedy of his own growth; and a copy of this infantine production was forwarded to his father, who, it appears, had been metamorphosed into a physician. "If," said Dr. Goldoni, charmed by this premature proof of genius, and calculating on the princi ples of arithmetic, "if nine years yield four carats of wit,

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eighteen years should yield a dozen carats; and, by successive progression, he may arrive at perfection."

The author takes advantage of a visit to his father to describe his agitation on first mounting a horse. This is done. in the style of farce, and is as unfortunate as, we think, most of his attempts at wit have proved through these volumes. The meeting took place at Perugia:

My father made me remark the citadel built by Paul the Third, at a time when Perugia enjoyed republican liberty, under the pretence, of benefiting the Perugians with a hospital for their sick, and for pilgrims. This pious successor to the chair of St. Peter, on finishing the work, introduced cannons into the place in carts covered with straw; and, when the Chi viva was uttered from the battlements, the citizens found it necessary to make answer, "Long live Paul III."'

It would be an idle attempt to follow GOLDONI through his examination at the Jesuits' college of this city; and yet more idle to discover the reason of that sudden illumination, which, though he was the dullest in the school, on one happy day gave him the prize over all his competitors :- but so we suppose it was. A play and a play-house were his rage. His father, to gratify this darling desire, fitted up a theatre in a hall of the Hôtel of Antinori; and, as females are not allowed to act in the states of the Pope, the part of a lady and the prologue were conferred on our hero. The style of this prologue was the style of the Italian drama of that day; metaphor, hyperbole, antithesis, inflation, and bombast, had usurped the place of common sense on every stage in Italy: but his father was accustomed to it. The commencement is a fine relic of the art:

Most benign heaven,' (this was the name given to the auditory,) to the rays of your most refulgent sun, behold us, like butterflies, expanding the tender wings of our conceits, and raising our flight to your meridian radiance.' This charming prologue brought me a bushel of sugar-plums, with which the theatre was filled, and I was almost blinded. This is the usual applause in the papal territories. The piece in which I played was La Sorellina di Don Pilone; and I was much commended: for in a country in which such spectacles are uncommon, the spectators are not nice.',

On his way from Perugia to Venice, the author embarked in an expedition with a company of comedians at Rimini, in whose society he performed the journey thence to Chiozza. Their assemblage is thus described: Twelve persons, actors and actresses, a prompter, a machinist, a keeper of the wardrobe, eight servants, four chamber-maids, two nurses, children of all ages, dogs, cats, monkeys, birds, pigeons, and a lamb: it was the ark of Noah. Our readers will perceive in this description

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scription nothing beyond the ordinary oddity of a Margate hoy; yet it must be converted into an effort to raise a laugh; - and then a poor attempt at continuing the laugh is made by the description of a quarrel between the conductor of the boat and the première amoureuse, for not having prepared a bouillon, without which the lady could not dine. This sally is succeeded by another, about a cat belonging to the same interesting lady, which was pursued by a sailor. We notice these follies as characteristic of the Memoirs, and without any intention of doing violence to the dramas of GOLDONI. Indeed, the same pen is to be discovered, and nearly the same manner, in all his works: but that which, when " submitted to the eye," is more pleasant, is frequently known to fail in description; more particularly when description professes truth for its canvass. We approve the rule of transferring scenes in real life to the theatre, which should be its shadow: but to reverse the rule would be to offend grossly against all the decencies and probabilities. The ground-work of these memoirs may be true: but the language of the first volume, at least, has always a dash of the theatre, a certain air of insincerity, which proves to us that every scene is not represented exactly as it passed. Thus, when his father returns unexpectedly, and rushes into the apartment of Mad. GOLDONI, complaining of his son, the latter is during the whole time a listener in an adjoining closet; and the stale theatrical practice of dragging the young culprit from his hiding-place is repeated in the history of real life.

At Venice, GOLDONI was articled to an attorney; and it will excite no small degree of surprize to hear that the first dramatist, who introduced the better school to the notice of his countrymen, began his literary career in the fortieth year of his age.— It cannot be expected that persons at our advanced time of life are possessed of sufficient agility to accompany this versatile author from Venice to Rome, and thence to Venice again, to Pavia, to Milan, and through all his mazy pilgrimages; neither do the events that occur on the several roads appear worthy of much remark. As he grew older, he became more and more sensible that his country had lost the true comic spirit. During his residence at Pavia, where he received the tonsure, he applied himself with attention to the Greek and Roman drama, and to the modern comedies of France, England, and Spain. To the method, style, and precision of the antient, he wished to add the interest and character which are to be found in many of the modern pieces. In the course of his vacations, some new light was thrown on his darling subject by the Mandragore of Machiavelli: which profligate but humorous piece was inadvertently lent to him by a monk, who was unacquainted with the wit and

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