The story of "Jocelyn" is avouched by the author to be almost a series of actual occurrences. This assertion, to those familiar with Lamartine's style in asserting, will not be quite so conclusive as on its face it appears. At any rate, if "Jocelyn" be truth, Lamartine has made truth read like fiction, and fiction of a highly improbable sort. The story, true or fictitious--and which it is, as nobody now knows, so nobody now cares--we need not detain our readers to report. The poet staggered his public by printing on the title-page to his "Jocelyn" the words, "An Episode," as much as to say that a certain "Epic of Humanity," which he might finally (but which, as a matter of fact, he never did) produce, would be large enough to make shrink into the dimensions of a mere episode this poem of ten thousand lines more or less! Now for an extract or two. In the "Edinburgh Review," of a date not far from fifty years past now, we find our translation. A day of festival, followed by a long evening of out-door dancing to music, has just closed. The breaking-up is described, with the sequel of young Jocelyn's pensive and yearning emotions: Then later, when the fife and hautboy's voice Began to languish like a failing voice, And moistened ringlets, by the dance unstrung, Close to the cheek in drooping tresses clung, And wearied groups along the darkening green Gliding, in converse soft and low, were seen, What sounds enchanting to the ear are muttered! Adieus, regrets, the kiss, the word half uttered-- My soul was stirred; my ear with sweet sounds rife Drank languidly the luscious draught of life; I followed with my step, my heart, my eye, Each maiden that with wearied eyes went by, Thrilled at the rustle of each silken dress, And felt that each that passed still left a joy the less. At last the dance is hushed, the din at rest, The moon is risen above the mountain's crest; Only some lover, heedless of the hour, Wends homeward, dreaming, to his distant bower; Or, where the village paths divide, there stand Some loitering couples, lingering hand in hand, Who start to hear the clock's unwelcome knell, Then dive and vanish in the forest dell.