reformers of the British Novel. His Pamela, which appeared in 1740, two years before the Joseph Andrews of Fielding furnished at once, a most prominent contrast to the mawkish trash of false sentiment and preposterous metaphysics which filled the romances of that day. No higher proof can be furnished of the fidelity with which Richardson has copied nature, in this simple and affecting tale, than the fact, that notwithstanding the extent to which public taste had been corrupted by those romances, Pamela rose into immediate favour and unparalleled popularity. Of the extraordinary favour which this original writer found in the admiration and applause of his countrymen, we ought, perhaps, to say countrywomen—that highly amusing and instructive, though often ridiculous and sometimes disgusting record, called his Correspondence, affords the most authentic testimony. He certainly lived with the chastity of a Joseph in the paradise of women, of whom he was the idol. The pulpit, usually at open war with works of fiction, nevertheless lent its holy sanction to the perusal of Richardson's novels. But where is his popularity now? Who reads Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, and we might also ask, Clarissa Harlowe? Is the solution to be found in the very beautiful speculations of a mighty master of the art himself, “that he (Richardson) may in the present generation, be only paying, by comparative neglect, the price of the very high reputation which he enjoyed during his own age. For, if immortality, or anything approaching to it, is granted to authors and their works, it seems only to be on the conditions assigned to that of Nourjahad in the Eastern Tale, that they shall be liable to occasional intervals of slumber and oblivion." We think not. We fear the slumber of Richardson will be longer than the refreshing naps of the Eastern Princess-and for this plain reason, that he too often puts his own readers to sleep. Nothing better describes his prolixity, repetition and detail than the anecdote (which Sir Walter Scott relates) of the old dowager who used always to insist when she took, in her armchair, her afternoon's doze, (somewhat longer than Dr. Kitchener's forty-wink naps) "that Sir Charles Grandison should be read to her, because if she dropped asleep in the course of the reading, she was sure when she awoke to have lost none of the story, and to find the party where she left them, conversing in the cedar parlour." This infirmity, as Dean Swift has it, of never knowing "when to have done," resulted somewhat from the mode by which his narrative is evolved through the intervention of epistolary correspondence, the most liable to fall into heaviness, as all the letter-writers have to dwell, more or less,

on the same incident, or to labour under the imputation of being cursed with the most extraordinary blindness and insensibility to everything around them. But this fondness for gossip and detail was the infirmity of Richardson's nature; it is betrayed every where in his correspondence as well as in his fictions. He is sometimes disposed almost to stop in the midst of a murder to describe the shoe-buckle of the homicide. Lady Mary Wortley Montague (no mean judge) will not allow him the credit of describing with accuracy or discrimination, the manners of high life, even in his own day. With her usual irony, her ladyship says, "his Anna Howe and Charlotte Grandison are recommended as patterns of charming pleasantry, and applauded by his saint-like dames, who mistake folly for wit and humour, and impudence and ill-nature for spirit and fire. Charlotte behaves like a bumoursome child, and should have been used like one and whipped in the presence of her friendly confederate Harriet. He (Richardson) had no idea of the manners of high life. His old Lord W talks in the style of a country justice, and his virtuous young ladies romp like wenches round a may-pole. Such liberties as pass between Mr. Lovelace and his cousin, are not to be excused by the relation. I should have been much astonished if Lord Denbigh had offered to kiss me, and I dare swear Lord Trentham never attempted such an impertinence with you." And we must be allowed to say, that his principal hero, Sir Charles Grandison, appears to us to be as much out of the pale of human nature as the hoydens Lady Mary describes, were out of that of bon ton. This faultless monster is, nevertheless, a very amiable gentleman, whom Richardson is said to have conceived for the purpose of throwing even the splendour of Lovelace's heroism and generosity of spirit into the shade. But, after all, he is a very tame personage in spite of (shall we say in consequence of?) his being manufactured out of the "porcelain kind of human clay," and withal so excessively precise in sentiment and conduct, that his morals look like a German system of ethics or natural law, arranged upon mathematical principles. That a character so much better than the rest of his species, should be very didactic in his discourse, and, consequently, a little prosy at times, is not at all wonderful, and still less that his virtues being beyond ordinary competition, should have less effect on us than the worth and infirmities of those poor mortals, whose merits blended with the failings of our common nature, enable them to excite and retain our sympathy and interest. But after all this criticism of qualification and exception, enough remains to establish on an enduring basis, Richardson's claim to be considered

as one of the fathers of the English Novel. If he had adopted uniformly a different form of narrative, and used what in this age of economists, political and otherwise, is so essential in mechanical philosophy-condensation-his popularity would have sustained as little fluctuation as that of any writer in our language. That he painted with great force and discrimination a society, (although it might not have been the highest) which existed in England in his time, there can be no doubt, and that he mingled with these representations many of the great and instructive truths of human nature, is equally certain; nor can we be insensible to the moral scope and design of his writings, which is to make virtue uniformly triumphant in the midst of ail the desolation, adversity and distress by which she is so frequently surrounded. In scenes of this description, he has had no equal; we mean in what may strictly be called the tragedy of prose fiction. There is a peculiar agony in the distresses of Clarissa and Clementina, the effect of which is infinitely augmented by the pictures of matchless loveliness which he gives us of both, nor is the triumph of Pamela the less affecting because there is cast around her none of the glare of worldly splendour which adorns what we may well call the apotheosis of female virtue-the fate of the celestial victim of Lovelace's villainy and crimes. We will, however, conclude our estimate of this old English novelist, in words that are better than our own: "The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into that of Lovelace; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness. It was in the power of Richardson aloue, to teach us at once esteem and detestation, to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence which wit, and elegance and courage naturally excite, and to lose at last the hero in the villain."

To the minor romance or English Novel, must Smollet also be technically assigned, although he was the painter of three kingdoms, and searched through the greater part of civilized Europe for the scenes of his fictions. He was emphatically national, and drew largely both on the peculiarities of his own countrymen and the raciness of the Irish character, for the finest and most piquant of his pictures. In 1748 he brought forth his Roderick Random, in which it was supposed he had depicted the adventures of his own life. This work, with some offensive and revolting features, and among these, the character of the hero himself, displays an extraordinary knowledge of human life and manners, and at once placed its author by the

side of Fielding, where he has ever since remained, with an unsettled question of relative excellence between them. We have never hesitated in assigning the superiority to Fielding, although his fame rests on one chef d'œuvre, and that of Smollet on many. Smollet's great excellence is in the portraits which adorn his fictions, and which certainly possess wonderful graphic fidelity and verisimilitude. His narrative is often disconnected and sometimes feeble, and his incidents too frequently made up of a sort of malicious school-boy mischief exhibited in torturing others with ingenious and vindictive combinations of the petty ills of life. His two heroes are at best but well-dressed blackguards, who, in neglecting many of the essential duties of life, seem to think that in their coarse gibes and jests they furnish an ample atonement for the want of gratitude, sobriety, honour, and sometimes even common honesty. Nothing can surpass the barbarity of Random in his treatment of poor Strap on several occasions; nor can anything exceed the debasing grossness of that mauvais sujet Peregrine. But in spite of these defects, and many others which we have neither time nor inclination to enumerate, Smollet has displayed the powers of a mighty painter of human nature. In the terrific, he is greatly superior to his rival, Fielding, of which we need scarcely cite any other example than the scene of the engagement off Carthagena―whilst in the tender and pathetic, he is very little his inferior. Of his power in the last, the meeting in Paraguay between Random and his father, is an abundant exemplification; and the touching interviews between Roderick and his uncle Bowling, are scarcely less affecting. Notwithstanding the loveliness and accomplishments of Smollet's own wife, he has failed, except in the character of Aurelia Darnel, to give us anything like a picture of intellectual female worth. Narcissa and Emilia are insipid enough except as the objects of a single passion. But in his sea characters, Smollet is without a rival, and Trunnion, Hatchway, Bowling, Pipes and Ratlin, will long remain unapproached and unapproachable chefs d'œuvre. The most beautiful however, and most interesting of Smollet's works, signalized the closing scenes of his life-The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker-which was written at Monte Novo, near Leghorn, whither he had retired in 1771, with an exhausted constitution and broken fortune, under the painful conviction that he should never again see that lake preferred by him for the verdant isles that seem to float upon its surface, to Lago di Garda, Bolsena or Geneva, or the banks of that beautiful stream immortalized in his Arcadian song. Whether the rays of Smollet's setting sun cast a tender and mellowing light upon this last

effort of his muse we know not, but the cynicism which pervades all his other productions, is here softened down into the effervescent but agreeable sub-acid spirit of Matthew Bramble, which character, take it for all in all, we think the finest picture of racy and original humour which Smollet has left us. It is a portrait purely and essentially national, in which genius, learning, benevolence, wit and high honour are united with the peculiarities of a sensitive and sarcastic temper. Humphrey Clinker, of whom it has been amusingly said, that he is merely honest Strap turned Methodist preacher, is very little behind the caustic Welchman in the interest he excites-the whole group of the tourists, from Matthew Bramble down to Winifred Jenkins, forms such a rich variety of character, the peculiarities of each are so accurately sustained throughout, the incidents of their tour are so perfectly natural, and told with such a playful vein of wit and humour, that the reputation of this charming book is forever established as one of the finest national pictures of the manners and society of Great-Britain, which has ever been delineated in fictitious composition.

However brief our summary may be of the national novelists of England, it is impossible to omit the mention of Goldsmith, although he has contributed to this department of literature but a single tale—but this is a pearl of inestimable price. His Vicar of Wakefield is a view of John Bull's fire-side in quiet life, in the aspect where its forms and images borrow most from the loveliness of simplicity and tranquil virtue. This work could have been written no where else but in England, nor can it be fully relished by any but those who are of English origin. It has so happened that most of her eminent novelists have been distinguished by painting with peculiar felicity, some one of those characters which distinguish the Anglo-Saxon race. Goldsmith's English Curate is his chef d'œuvre. In the conception of this character, he is said to have been powerfully assisted by the living example of his own brother, to whom he consecrated more than one enduring testimony of his genius and affection.

The Vicar of Wakefield, is the standard of the legitimate English Novel of rural life. It has produced many beautiful imitations, but not a single rival. We do not know a book which most people read so often, and remember so well, as this simple and affecting tale. If we read it in childhood, we return to it as life advances with a fond and unalienated feeling, not unlike that with which we revisit the scenes of our early innocence and joyous sportiveness, and whether life ebbs or flows, we take up VOL. IV.-No. 8.

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