Another remarkable question which I feel a wish to touch upon before closing this communication, is that of impromptus.  Your correspondent MR. SINGER (p. 105.) supposes Malherbe the poet to have been “ready at an impromptu.”  But, to say the least, this is rather doubtful, unless the extemporaneous effusions of Malherbe were of that class which Voiture indulged in with so much success at the Hotel de Rambouillet—­sonnets and epigrams leisurely prepared for the purpose of being fired off in some fashionable “ruelle” of Paris.  Malherbe is known to have been a very slow composer; he used to say to Balzac that ten years’ rest was necessary after the production of a hundred lines:  and the author of the Christian Socrates, himself rather too fond of the file, after quoting this fact, adds in a letter to Consart: 

“Je n’ai pas besoin d’un si long repos apres un si petit travail.  Mais aussi d’attendre de moi cette heureuse facilite qui fait produire des volumes a M. de Scudery, ce serait me connaitre mal, et me faire une honneur que je ne merite pas.”

Malherbe certainly had a most happy influence on French poetry; he checked the ultra-classical school of Ronsard, and began that work of reformation afterwards accomplished by Boileau.

As I have mentioned Voiture’s name, I shall add a very droll “soi-disant” impromptu of his, composed to ridicule Mademoiselle Chapelain, the sister of the poet.  Like her brother, she was most miserly in her habits, and not distinguished by that virtue which some say is next to godliness.

  “Vous qui tenez incessamment
    Cent amans dedans votre manche,
  Tenez-les au moins proprement,
    Et faites qu’elle soit plus blanche.

  “Vous pouvez avecque raison,
    Usant des droits de la victoire,
  Mettre vos galants en prison;
    Mais qu’elle ne soit pas si noire.

  “Mon coeur, qui vous est bien devot,
    Et que vous reduisez en cendre,
  Vous le tenez dans un cachot
    Comme un prisonnier qu’on va pendre.

  “Est-ce que, brulant nuit et jour,
    Je remplis ce lieu de fumee,
  Et que le feu de mon amour
    En a fait une cheminee?”

GUSTAVE MASSON.

Hadley, near Barnet.

* * * * *

KONGS-SKUGG-SIO.

(Vol. ii., p. 298.)

The author of the Kongs-skugg-sio is unknown, but the date of it has been pretty clearly made out by Bishop Finsen and others. (V. Finsen, Dissertatio Historica de Speculo Regali, 1766.) There is only one complete edition of this remarkable work, viz. that published at Soroee in 1768, in 4to.  Bishop Finsen maintains the Kongs-skugg-sio to have been written from 1154 to 1164.  Ericksen believes it not to be older than 1184; while Suhm and Eggert Olafsen do not allow it to be older than the thirteenth century.  Rafn, and the modern editors of the Groenlands