delicate traits that test the fine critic, pass either without observation or are ignorantly and almost insolently treated. A feeling of the beauties of an obscure author of merit is as rare in the world of books, as the honest appreciation of a worthy man, who lives out of the world, and is, perhaps, underrated by the few to whom he is known, is in the circles of society. Not only candor but also ingenuity is wanted, in a critic of this description. The critic has candor, but is by no means an ingenious man in any of his works, and, we apprehend, not so well informed on these very topics as he ought to be. On this latter suggestion alone can we account for several false reports and very inadequate decisions. We have marked many instances, but shall at present quote but a few.

"His sen

Mr. Hallam writes thus of Jeremy Taylor: tences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not always reducible to grammar." Of Donne and Cowley, he gives the old Johnsonian criticism, which has been amply refuted over and over again. He speaks of South as he is currently mentioned, merely a witty court preacher, and says not a word of his vigorous eloquence. Of Hammond's biblical annotations he treats at length, but adds not a syllable of the sermons of the English Fenelon. Of Marvell, says Hallam-" His satires are gross and stupid ;" (!) while the critic writes this sentence of Crashaw, "It is difficult in general to find any. thing in Crashaw that bad taste has not deformed"(!!) Among the Shaksperian commentators he mentions Mrs. Montague, and others inferior even to her, but omits altogether any reference to Hazlitt or Lamb. One of the most flagrant instances of a want of proper reverence for the finest writers of the finest period of English literature,

is to be seen in his notice of the Mermaid tavern: "the oldest and not the worst of clubs." The circle in which Mr. Hallam moves is perhaps more courtly and aristocratical. His idol, Mr. Hookham Frere, possesses "admirable humor," but poor Owen Feltham, forsooth, who wrote the first century of his Resolves at the age of eighteen, and lived the life of a dependant, is a harsh and quaint writer, full of sententious commonplaces. This young man, who was also poor, offers a striking example of an early maturity of judgment, and of the union of genuine pathos and fanciful humor. His little volume will be read with gratification a century hence, and by a larger class than now peruse it, and we dare affirm with more pleasure than the long and inaccurate volumes of Hallam.

Mr. Hallam's judgments, often assuredly caught from second sources, are, when original, those of a critic with the taste of Dr. Blair; a strange union of French criticism and reverence for classic models current in the early part and until almost the close of the last century. He gives an opinion of Addison, to which no reader of varied acquisition, or of broad views of the present day, could by any possibility assent. After Lamb and Hazlitt's admirable criticisms, we cannot read with patience the labored cautiousness of Mr. Hallam, on the old English dramatists. Our author's notices of the old divines are too much a history of their polemical works, and the views of their pulpit eloquence either borrowed or else confused.

Lest the popular admiration for genius of the popular sort should run wild, he sneeringly alludes to a certain class of critics, who would erect the John Bunyans and Daniel Defoes into the gods of an idolatry. The historian would himself peradventure substitute Dr. Lingard and Sharon

Turner, his brother historians, or a pair of biblical critics, or High Dutch commentators. There are critics who measure an author's works by the company he keeps, or the clothes he wears. We suspect Mr. Hallam to be one of them, who would treat Sir Harris Nicholas or the head of a college with unfeigned respect, but not allow himself to be ensnared into the vulgar society at Lamb's Wednesday evening parties, where Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Hunt, and a host of the most brilliant men of the age, met to converse freely, like men, and not like litterateurs or namby-pamby followers of noble lords.

The history of English literature alone is much too comprehensive a subject for any one man. Mr. D'Israeli, who advertised his intention of attempting it, has been wisely disappointed. The curiosities of literature he has a more real love of, than for the simple beauties of prose or poetry. He might have compiled merely a collection of rare facts and curious fragments, valuable for their suggestive matter to the student, but quite inadequate for a philosophical history of literature. The best criticisms are contained in classic lives, in letters, and the ablest review articles, in the lectures of Hazlitt, and the essays of Lamb and Leigh Hunt. With these writers Mr. Hallam may in nowise compete, and we trust he will follow the bent of his natural inclinations, in turning over state papers and government documents, and display his peculiar ability in sifting the measures of a party, and following up the consequences of a bill or a statute. For literary criticism, his cold temperament and negative taste are ill adapted. They incline him to look on the frank relation of an author's feelings as offensive egotism, and wholly obscure his perception of characteristic individuality or marked personal

traits.

IV.

RELIGIOUS NOVELS.

A CERTAIN class of prose fictions is included under the above general term, which, from Bunyan to Brownson, is and ever has been exceedingly popular. They are, for this reason, to be closely scrutinized, as their scope and tendency may prove productive either of great good or considerable injury, not only to the cause of literature, but even to the cause of vital religion and Christian morality. The phrase, "Religious Novels," comprehends equally those works written professedly to favor or satirize particular sects and creeds, and those works which, with a more general and popular interest, still aim to take a high stand on all questions of morality, and to be, in effect, text-books of ethics and political casuistry.

A general objection that strikes us at once, on the very face of the matter, is with regard to the intention and spirit of these and similar productions. Is a novel, we would ask, the proper vehicle for religious sentiment and moral instruction? We would not be misunderstood. We sincerely believe that every good book, even of the lightest character, should carry its moral with it, and that a good moral. What we doubt is, whether the morality of the book should be made offensively prominent,-should stand foremost, casting all its other merits into the background;

or whether it should not lie covert and unpretendingly under a cheerful face of humble docility. Pope has wisely advised us that

“Men should be taught as if we taught them not;

And things unknown, as things forgot."

The skilful man of the world—the Sir Politic Would-be of this generation,-always reminds and never informs directly. "The agreeable man is he who agrees." So the judicious moralist, if at the same time a writer of fiction, conceals his moral under a veil of fancy's weaving, and impresses a solemn truth on our hearts, whilst he is delighting the imagination or instructing the reason. This palpable error of overdoing the matter, being "too moral by half" (always smacking of hypocrisy), has been remarked by the ablest critical and æsthetical philosophers; but it is a vulgar error of such frequent occurrence as to call for as frequent animadversion. It is not necessary that every book should contain a confession of faith, nor comprehend a code of religious precepts. Every biography is not of a good man; some histories must relate the successes of bad men and evil principles. Novels, of all books, are permitted to be least didactic and hortatory (to employ a Johnsonian phrase). We hate misnomers. A book of devotion, a tract of controversial divinity, a sermon, a moral essay, are all well in their proper place; but a book professing to be a novel, but which is, in fact, a sham novel, a mere cover for the introduction of a work of another class, under its name, is a forgery, a falsehood, a contemptible piece of deception. The title may be assumed to gain a wider circle of readers (it may be a fetch of the author's, or a trick of the publisher's), but that affords no just excuse