ary as well as his personal vanity. She
proposed to translate the novels which Tin composes in his native tongue,
and which he might expect to prove as popular in France as some other
fictions of his fatherland have done in times past. So they were
married. Tim, though on pleasure bent, had a frugal mind, and after a
wedding-breakfast, which lasted all day, he went to a theatre to ask for
two free passes. When he came back his bride was gone. He sought her
with all the ardour of the bridegroom in the ballad of "The Mistletoe
Bough," and with more success. Madame Ling was reading a novel at home.
Mr. Carlyle has quoted Tobias Smollett as to the undesirability of giving
the historical muse that latitude which is not uncommon in France, and we
prefer to leave the tale of Ling's where Mr. Carlyle left that of
Brynhild's wedding. {37}

SIEUR DE MONTAIGNE.

The French National Library has recently, as it is said, made an
acquisition of great value and interest. The books, and better still the
notes, of Montaigne, the essayist, have been bought up at the not very
exorbitant price of thirty-six thousand francs. The volumes are the
beautiful editions of the sixteenth century--the age of great scholars
and of printers, like the Estiennes, who were at once men of learning and
of taste. It is almost certain that they must be enriched with marginal
notes of Montaigne's, and the marginal notes of a great man add even more
to the value of a book than the scribblings of circulating library
readers detract from its beauty. There is always something
characteristic in a man's treatment of his books. Coleridge's marginalia
on borrowed works, according to Lamb, were an ornament of value to his
friends, if they were lucky enough to get the books back again. Poe's
marginalia were of exquisite neatness, though in their printed form they
were not very interesting. Thackeray's seem mostly to have taken the
shape of slight sketches in illustration of the matter. Scaliger's notes
converted a classic into a new and precious edition of one example.
Casaubon's, on the other hand, were mere scratches and mnemonic lines and
blurs, with which he marked his passage through a book, as roughly as the
American woodsman "blazes" his way through a forest. "None could read
the comment save himself," and the text was disfigured. We may be sure
that Montaigne's marginalia are of a very different value. As he walked
up and down in his orch