Nevertheless there is a straggle of pungent sense in it,--like the outskirts of lightning, seen in that dismally wet weather, which the Royal Party had.

Its wit is very copious, but slashy, bantery, and proceeds mainly by exaggeration and turning topsy-turvy; a rather barren species of wit.

Of humor, in the fine poetic sense, no vestige.

But there is surprising veracity,--truthfulness unimpeachable, if you will read well.

What promptitude, too;--what funds for conversation, when needed! This scraggy Piece, which is better than the things people often talk to one another, was evidently written as fast as the pen could go.--"It is done, if such a Hand could have DONE it, in the manner of Bachaumont and La Chapelle," says Voltaire scornfully, in that scandalous VIE PRIVEE;--of which phrase this is the commentary, if readers need one:-- "Some seventy or eighty years before that date, a M.Bachaumont and a M.la Chapelle, his intimate, published, in Prose skipping off into dancings of Verse every now and then, 'a charming RELATION of a certain VOYAGE or Home Tour' (whence or whither, or correctly when, this Editor forgets), ["First printed in 1665," say the Bibliographies; "but known to La Fontaine some time before." Good!--Bachaumont, practically an important and distinguished person, not literary by trade, or indeed otherwise than by ennui, was he that had given (some fifteen years before) the Nickname FRONDE (Bickering of Schoolboys) to the wretched Historical Object which is still so designated in French annals.] which they had made in partnership.