nourish wit, not to furnish an opportunity for
ostentatious gabble about age and price. How he revels in the
description of good cheer! There rises from his pages _fumet_ of game
and the _bouquet d'un vin exquis_.

"Et des perdrix! Morbleu! d'un fumet admirable
Sentez plutot, Quel baume! Mon Dieu!"

Why are American authors so commonly wan and gaunt, with none of the
external marks of healthy gayety? Is it the climate, or the lack of
out-door exercise, or hot-air furnaces, or rascally cooks? They look as
if, like Burns's man, they "were made to mourn." If they conceive a
joke, their sad, sharp voices and angular gesticulations make it
miscarry. Now and then they rebel against their constitutions, poor
fellows, and try to imitate the jovial ancestors they have read of;
babble shrilly of _noctes coenaeque Deum, petits soupers_, and what
not. It is mostly idle talk. They know too well that digestion does not
wait upon appetite in the evening,--and that they will feel better for
the next week, if they restrict their debauch to dandelion coffee and
Graham bread. Moreover, the age of conviviality is gone, as much as the
age of chivalry. _Petits soupers_ are impossible in this part of the
world. Let us manfully confess one reason: they cost too much. And we
have not the wit, nor the wicked women, nor the same jolly paganism.
Juno Lucina reigns here in the stead of Venus; and Bacchus is two
dollars a bottle.

But these and other good things Regnard had in abundance, and so lived
smoothly and happily on, defying time,--for he held, with Mme. de
Thianges, "_On ne viellit point a table_" until one day he overheated
himself in shooting, drank abundantly of cold water, and fell
dead,--Euthanasia. He died a bachelor, and, if we may judge from many of
his verses, seems, like Thackeray, to have wondered why Frenchmen ever
married. But he had a keen eye for "the fair defect of Nature."
Strabon's description of young Criseis before her glass could have been
written only by an amateur:--

"Je la voyais tantot devant une toilette
D'une _mouche assasine irriter ses attraits_."

Neither Moliere, Regnard, nor Le Sage was a member of the Academy.

Beranger thinks it remarkable that the _improvisations folles et
charmantes_ of Regnard should now be neglected in France. We do not
recollect to have met with him even in the "Causeries" of Ste. Beuve,
who has ransacked the French Temple of Fame from garret to cellar for
_fe