Review of Tableaux de Famille by Fontaine
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: 1802

Elizabeth Moody Art. XVI. Tableaux de Famille, &c. i.e. Family Pictures, or the Journal of Charles Engleman. Translated from the German of Augustus de la Fontaine , by the Author of Caroline of Litchfield (Madame de Crousaz ). 12mo. 2 Vols. Paris. 1801. Imported by de Boffe, London. [This review article appeared in the Foreign Appendix to The Monthly Review , second series, vol. 37, Foreign Appendix, 1802, pp. 531-533. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Montly Review, Second Series, 1790-1815: Indexes of Contributors and Articles , Clarendon Press, 1955. This edition of the article was produced by Emma Wiley and Mary A. Waters.]

I n the preface to this work, Madame Crousaz gives an animated and ingenious description of that difficult though humble province of literature,—translation; and she thus replies to a friend, who compliments her on her peculiar excellence in this line: Yet I know nothing so ungrateful and thankless as the task of the translator. If the version be good, it is the author alone to whom the reader feels himself obliged; if the work be bad, the translator alone is accused: if the version be liberal, it is said to want grace and elegance; if it be diffuse, it is deficient in strength and spirit. The difficulty of exactly catching the genius of one language which is not familiar to me, and which differs so materially from my own, of preserving inviolate the strength of the one and the purity of the other; and the obligation to alter nothing, to rigidly impart an idea in which I do not accord, or to copy an incident which is displeasing, when conscious that it might be improved: all these circumstances induce me to think that it is easier to compose than to translate. Madame de Crousaz pursues this subject even to the region of Parnassus; and she recounts to her friend the following jeu d'esprit, which was prefixed to one of her former publications:

Vain is the effort to engrave
Colours that a Reubens gave,
Breathing tints and glowing hues;
Like the lyre, at second hand,
Stript of all it proud command,
Torn from Genius and the Muse.
So labor'd versions oft efface
All the poet's fleeting grace,
Which a single touch inspir'd;
Like the rose that winds have tost,
Fading when the stem is lost,
Which its beauteous form required.

We have before observed [See M.R. Vol. xxiv. N.S. p. 565, &c. [Moody's note].], respecting the writing of M. De la Fontaine, that one of his qualities is to rise in the reader's estimation by gradual and progressive advances; and this is surely preferable to the art of sinking, in which so many are equal proficients. The first chapter of the volume before us is intitled, by the journalist, 'My Commision of Biography,' and contains a whimsical relation of the circumstances whence he derived the commission, with the manner of his being invested with it. It is a painting of the Shandean school, and not a bad copy of the mock solemnity of Sterne's affected pathos: This infant (added my father, pointing to me,) shall inherit this Bible after my death; and promise me, my Charles, that you will fill all these blank leaves with the actions and occurrences of your life, be they good or bad:— promise me, my child,— My father rose from his seat, his eye was animated, his voice had something of peculiar solemnity,—my uncle rose also, and laid down his pipe,—my mother clasped her hands. This scene, and the solemn silence which accompanied it, impressed my mind with awe; I advanced—I gave my hand to my father—he took off his cap—my uncle held out his hand—and my mother embraced me with tears in her eyes—while, to my father's benediction, which accompanied the Bible , every one said—Amen.

From the hour of this pathetic ceremony, the young Charles (then twelve years old) determined on being his own biographer; the charms of authorship captivated his youthful imagination, and the first thing which he wished to see was—a printing press. Instead of playing at marbles, like other boys of his age, he was continually ruminating on the task which his father had enjoined to be performed in the Bible ; he prepared for it with the same speculation which many authors exercise when they set out on travels, for the purpose of making a book; and he availed himself of every little incident in his own family. Apprehensive, however, that a journal barren of misfortunes would be insipid, he earnestly wished that his life might be in some degree chequered with sorrow, in order to afford just such a number of unhappy adventures, that a spring of tears might not be wanting to water the dry ground of his narrative.

A love-story soon presents itself; and the journal improves (as Charles very rightly conjectured it would) with the melancholy history of the beautiful Susette; who is dismissed from her father's protection for a fault perhaps unpardonable, but certainly not so unnatural as the conduct of her parent who, in consequence of her frailty, abandons for ever his only child. We must not, however, give too much attention (partial as we are to beauty) to this picture. Le Vaut-rien is another equally interesting; the mournful incidents of his life, it seems, were derived from his parents conceiving an aversion to him because he was born with red hair; and Le Vaut-rien (the good for nothing) owed this disgraceful name, with ten thousand calamities, to the fatal influence of these ruddy locks.

The character of the artful Julia is the best sketch of the painter; in which the triumph of vice over virtue, and of virtue over vice, with the struggles between ambition and love, are touches of an animated and ingenious pencil. In the picture of the school, we are amused by the master's whimsical method of classing his scholars according to the impression which his ideas receive from their infantine physiognomy; and we smile at the conceit of the aquiline noses being characteristics of distinguished birth, seldom to be found among the vulgar.

In taking leave of this journalist, we much acknowledge that we have been much amused with many parts of his narrative: but we cannot close our remarks without a hint of congratulation to our fair countrywomen, that they have not German despots for parents. If the national character of the German father be accurately portrayed in the features of Le grand Bailli, and in those of my Uncle (who is a very bad copy of Uncle Toby), our English wives and daughters may bless those kind stars which were the ascendants at their birth, and commanded it to be on this side of the Northern Ocean.