translation of the Kalila and Dimna is extant in print, made by a converted Jew, named John of Capua, as he states, from the Hebrew, between the years 1262 and 1278. In his prologue he states that these tales were originally Indian, that they were translated into Persian, thence into Arabic, thence into Hebrew. It is probable that this Latin Pilpay is the source from whence many of the oriental tales met with in Western literature were derived, and even of some tales which have become naturalized in the West and clothed in an European dress. The incidents of. Shylock and his bond are eventually traced to a Persian tale, the Cazi of Emessa; there is also a version of it in Gladwin's Persian Moonshee. Professor H. H. Wilson, in his Analysis of the Pancha Tantra, observes, that the oriental origin of most of the tales which first roused the inventive faculties of our ancestors is universally admitted.

The notes of M. Deslongchamp's volume are no less interesting than the text, and the whole is a complete library of reference on the subject.

ART. VIII.—1. La Pucelle de Belleville, par Ch. Paul de Kock. 4 tome. Paris, 1834.

2. Zizine, par Ch. Paul de Kock. 4 tome. Paris, 1836.

3. Un Tourlourou, par Ch. Paul de Kock. 4 tome. Paris, 1837. 4. Mœurs Parisiennes Nouvelles, par Ch. Paul de Kock. 4 tome. Paris, 1837.

5. Moustache, par Ch. Paul de Kock. 4 tome. Paris, 1838. 6. Le Barbier de Paris. 4 tome.

We have already, and upon more than one occasion, noticed the peculiar characteristics of M. Paul de Kock's novels; and as his genius, gaiety, exactitude and closeness of observation, together with their natural concomitant, diversity of powers, are sufficiently obvious in themselves from the extracts already furnished, (see F. Q. R. Nos. 10 and 20,) we need dilate but little on these topics to the readers of our journal. But there are other considerations, and scarcely less germane to the general question before us, to which we shall request their serious attention for a while.

Life, the great principle of our existence, as few thinking persons require to be informed, is bestowed upon us for the double purpose of thought and action; and since the former is

but a continuous preparation for the latter, and itself requires to be fed by a constant supply of subject-matter; and further, as the material on which it feeds ought to assimilate as nearly as possible to the object of such sustentation, it follows, by synthesis, that novel-reading ought to be the great aim of our thoughts.

Life, indeed, was clearly given to man for two especial purposes-first, to read novels; and secondly, to act them. If, however, there should by possibility be found in this world any one sufficiently hardy to deny, or even sufficiently sceptical to doubt in his secret soul the truth of our axiom,-and the wildest extravagances of imagination do at times enter the human brain: -if then, and we can only admit the case hypothetically, it were possible that such unbeliever could be found, before seeking to enamel him with the unfading hues of truth by the simple operation of the pile and the faggot, after the most approved authorities, and even previous to stamping in persuasion by the arm of flesh, as practised in China, Turkey, England, and all other enlightened countries, we would first point out to his erring judgment that theory and practice are both opposed to his heretical unbelief. In the first place: just as we eat food for the sake of prolonging existence, so we read novels for the sake of enlarging philosophy. We take these, as we take all cudgellings, cuffs and kicks, because they are given us unstintedly, and without our asking for them; and if we judge of the former à priori and of the last à posteriori, the same principle applies in both cases; for to what purpose are they bestowed, if not for our especial use, benefit, and delectation?

Disposing thus satisfactorily of the theory in favour of novels, we come to the question of their practice: and this in its consequences, we do not hesitate to affirm, indisputably establishes that Lying is the great law of nature and the bond of all civilized society that therefore it is the first of the social virtues. A little consideration will develope this important truism.

It is unquestionable that, in the case of the soul, the universality of belief in its existence is an unaswerable argument; and this is found with the vulgar and the enlightened of all countries and ages, from the New Hollander, the most degraded, to the Frenchman, the most sublime, of mankind; from the Tatar savage to the German sage, his genuine lineal descendant. Is falsehood less universal?

Let us just glance at its philosophy as the best evidence of

theories.

The idealisms of Plato, and the Greek philosophy, prove that those mighty ancients were far from satisfied with the forms of

actuality and its real influences. The Brahmin, whose wisdom all the world admits, since he reserves to himself all the good things in it, affirms in his invaluable Vedanta philosophy, that nature is MAYA; according to Vans Kennedy, a delusion; according to Colebrook and Haughton, an illusion; that is to say, either an impression, which does not exist, of realities, which do exist; or else an impression which does exist, of realities that do not exist. This system is well worth preserving for its conclusiveness. The Buddhist insists that all existence is absorption; and his staunchest advocates are the friends of the bottle. Antiquity affirmed all and doubted all, till at length Berkeley in England demonstrated that the world without was the world within, and that this was nothing; in contradistinction to the ancient theory, that external nature was everything, and no part of it anything. The German philosophers, fortunately, have set the question fairly at rest. Kant proves that though nature exists, we know that we do not know it: however that may be :-and this was a great improvement upon the idealism that had previously affirmed, that we know nature does not exist because we have impressions that it does. These theories have one great advantage, viz. that they all differ; which clearly is the proof of their mutual corroboration and Matter, in spite of Leucippus, does not exist, because it occupies space; and Space does not exist, because it is extension; and Extension does not exist, because it is an idea in motion; now an idea cannot have motion, for the former is immaterial, this material; but an idea may have an idea of motion, which therefore stands still, and is not motion; and this is refining as far as we can go; and therefore when we think we exist, we do not exist, and we do not think; whatever we think to the contrary.

The great principle of falsehood, thus established in Nature, is illustrated by the practice of social life; we see it in every act of our own, our friends, our kindred, country, and the human race. The child steals a cake, tells a falsehood to hide it, gets another cake for good conduct, and the parents are happy. A friend belies you in your absence, reports it as praise to your face, and you love him for his worth, which you depreciate when his back is turned. Your own dissipation abroad you represent at home as martyrdom, and your wife, who never goes out, always believes you to the letter; for women rarely distrust you and never deceive. The statesman and the general soften unpleasant facts and exaggerate successes; each man deceives himself and every body else; thus all are satisfied with delusion, and the bond of society is falsehood. Display but the truth, and all go by the ears: the cat begins to kill the rat; the rat begins to gnaw the rope; and so on ad infinitum, till social order is dislo

cated at once. In practice as in theory then we trust we have proved that lying is the great principle of Nature, and the bond of social life. If Truth be valuable, how much more valuable is lying: for LYING IS THE ECONOMY OF TRUTH; and therefore the FIRST OF THE SOCIAL VIRTUES.

Once conscious of this great bond of union we directly perceive the value of novels to mankind, and discover the striking fact that the nations who earliest possessed these became the most civilized in consequence. The mind, intent on truth, starts off from it with an hypothesis, or fiction, and thus fiction is the key of fact, the calculus of all its problems, the assumed term in mental Progression, itself the arithmetical "rule of false," or wilful assumption of a known error to aid the most matter-of-fact sciences.

We have seen, first, that Philosophy or the love of Truth leads man to deny the undeniable truth; and now find Fiction, or the love of Falsehood, operating to banish Falsehood altogether.

Thus, then, we apply novel-reading to life; and by imagining what never happened prepare ourselves for what may really happen; and, since this prevision is the business of life, the business of life is, first to read novels; and secondly, to act them on the real stage.-Q. E. D.

We have devoted an ample space to so new and important a proposition. We now return, like true philosophers, to the spot whence we started, namely, to M. Paul de Kock.

The excessive facility wherewith this gifted writer produces these light and pleasing efforts of imagination, appears, somewhat as in the case of Sir Walter Scott, Cooper, and others, to have misled the world as to the means by which such sustained labours are effected. It is not merely, nor even principally, from external observation, we suspect, that these pictures of truth and reality are drawn; let us examine as we may those who surround, or those who are thrown near us in the perpetual changes of life, and we shall ever find them, however possessed of what is generally termed character, deficient in the multitude and variety of characteristics that are indispensable to fill effectively a prominent part upon the novelist stage. The changes of chance and circumstance that affect such persons are by no means always, or often, of a strength to develope in any great extent the peculiarities of temperament. Let truth be ever so much more romantic than fiction, still its incidents, generally speaking, are so wide apart from each other;-so thinly scattered over the whole scene of life; and with so much to interpose, modify, and correct the impressions and passions roused by one event before another presents itself, that the character of yesterday, which might be justly anticipated as to its action to day, and calculated on with

some certainty for to-morrow even, grows often in the course of months and years entirely out of knowledge, since we cannot follow in all his steps; consequently when we predicate of his conduct in certain circumstances of real life exactly as we would of a similar character in a novel, we are almost invariably deceived; and however true to nature the tale may be in itself, it continually disappoints us when we run the parallel into reality. The novelist then does not seek altogether in life the originals of his sketches; he does not confine himself to the mere practical before him; if he does, his characters are cold and flat, his incidents wire-drawn and few, and his readers fewer. It is perfectly like life we confess, and therefore feel it has much of its insipidity; for the common haunts of men are level grounds.

Another class of writers run into the opposite extreme, and make their story one tempest of violent excitements from all the points and all the winds of the compass at once or in close succession; just as in the Italian proverb, "one devil drives out another." But in any thing above the very lowest class of readers, such efforts produce speedily a degree of lassitude the more difficult to shake off, inasmuch as the same mind that induced has to dispel it, and by similar means, thus becoming its own rival. Now as the powers of every mind, however gifted, have their limit; and as those which particularly affect the more violent emotions and deeper springs of the soul, are, from the very nature of their studies and pursuits, concentrated and condensed in that severer sphere, they can the less easily hope to vary their range, and give the jaded reader a totally novel impulse; such as would be done at once by any other mind than their own, for each has its proper bias. The result is that they go on, generally, in the same course, adding stimulant to stimulant to force excitement out of languor, till they insensibly lose all relish for the simple, and nature with them is one tornado, drowning all the milder breathings of humanity: the sky is darkened with clouds, the earth deluged with torrents; and the gentler feelings of mankind, when brought out reluctant from their hiding-places, are exhibited in furious rapture or agonies of repose, or else, like the peasants of the Landes, tread the long intervals of humanity upon stilts if they would seek to preserve a proportionate existence. Rage and horrors of every kind, possible and impossible, thus succeed each other till the charms of fiction become a Newgate Calendar, and the hero, and the author, deservedly finish their biography at the gallows.

Writers of this last class are generally in themselves men of great amiability as well as ardent imaginations, that seek provocatives to give themselves strength and sustain these formidable