mical laurels she had worn long, as indisputably her own, not one of the works of fiction then published, with the exception of Swift's admirable productions, of which we will speak hereafter, has escaped deserved oblivion.

It was not till after the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, that two men of genius. Richardson and Fielding, appeared at the same time, to rescue England from the reproach of having brought no offerings to the shrine where intellects of the highest order had sought inspiration and renown,-both keen observers of the existing society; both determined to paint from nature alone; venting only the plots of their dramas, and taking the actors of these out of real life. The casts of their mind were as different as the subjects each of them had chosen as themes of their narratives. One had lived almost exclusively in the society of woman; a married man, unpretending, never suspected even of a platonic love for the loveliest among his female friends, Richardson was allowed to listen to their unreserved conversation as if he were one of their own sex. The Book of their Heart was thrown open before him. Even that mystic page over which no woman ever allows another woman to cast a furtive glance, was often left exposed to his prying eyes. And yet Richardson was not fully initiated! The lovelier traits only were shown to him. An instinct of coquetry taught his fair friends, the confidants of all his thoughts, nay, of those little venial vanities which a man is often more loth to confess than real faults, not to efface from the mirror of his mind the fairy images of celestial beauty, grace, and purity which he had worshipped in the days of his young imaginings. And we rejoice that it so happened; we are glad that some cynical Lady Montagu did not blow away with the breath of blighting irony, the light and fantastic Clarissa of the poetthe poet-we will not blot the word-for with Diderot (a prose poet too), we consider Clarissa as the most wonderful poem of private and domestic life ever produced in any language. Had we not ourselves witnessed, nay, felt the feverish anxiety excited in two worlds by Nelly and the Goualeuse-the heroines of two works of fiction, given out periodically as was Clarissa, in homeopathic doses, lest the human system should not

be able to bear the weird potion administered all at once, according to the old practice-we would find it difficult to give full faith to what we read, in contemporary memoirs, of the excitement of the public mind, while the fate of Clarissa still remained hid in the urn of the author's fancy!

Clarissa became the daughter of every mother, the sister of every chivalrous brother; and when the gallant Mordaunt avenged the wrongs of the sainted victim in the blood of her heartless persecutor, society hailed the blow as expiatory of its own wrongs.

We are aware that Clarissa is no longer read-that the style, once admired for its easy simplicity and unpretending grace, is no longer the fit vestment of thoughts which it does not now express with sufficient vigor for the taste of the day. We confess that, while reading the book, as while looking at the prints which once adorned, and at present disfigure the early editions, the old-fashion style, like the old-fashioned dresses, takes away much of the illusion. But we can bear witness that this damping influence does not continue long to act on the mind; we felt its depression only in the first pages; and it had totally vanished before reading the sixth letter.

A word of advice to the ladies, if they will permit us to become their adviserwhile Bulwer continues silent, while the brain of Dickens remains palsied, while Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, and the fair George Sand, repose from the fatigue of having produced so many master works in quick succession-send to the circulating library for Clarissa. You are certain of getting it there. I see it on some upper shelf, covered with dust, and looking quite Rococo-the night is stormy-no book, no tea-party, no visitor-'tis too late already for any one to come, and yet too early for sleepread on, and, pray! do not throw the book aside with the impatient exclamation, "How heavy, and tedious! Is it possible that this book has been formerly read and admired!”

Richardson is like the larger birds of prey; he rises heavily from the ground; his long wings seem awkward instruments of flight;-wait a while-see! he no longer touches the earth-now he rests on air alone-how gracefully he soars on high! It is only of the canary and sparrow that it has been said with

truth, "even when he walks we feel that the bird has wings!"

Fielding, the rival, too often the envious detractor of Richardson, may be classed among those writers who, after several productions scarcely rising above mediocrity, have astonished the world by producing one master-work. Thus Piron-known only, for years, as the author of dull tragedies and clever epigrams-burning with inspiration unwonted, in four days composed a comedy in verse of unsurpassed harmony and graceful facility-the best play that had appeared in France since "Tartuffe." Thus, Prevost, the manufacturer of thirty volumes, not one of which is now readable, made his name immortal by "Manon Lescot," a tale, which, even since the great novelists, our contemporaries, have accustomed all readers to expect, in works of fiction, not only deep interest in the drama, but style, invention, and knowledge of the human heart, together with the intense emotions, which, of old, poetry claimed exclusively as her own, still holds its rank among the most finished works of French genius. Thus Bernadin de St. Pierre-but we have digressed too long already; we must return to Fielding. His Tom Jones is a bold exploration of modern society-like the companions of Ulysses, his hero drinks deep of that cup which changes the God-like man into the most degraded of animals; like them, too, he eats that fruit which works the forgetfulness of the generous, the kind, the young affectionsthat fruit sweet of smell, with rind of golden and purple hues, but which fills the mouth with bitter and burning ashes. And yet, such the weird art of the author, we continue to feel a deep interest in the fate of the truant lover, the seeming heartless profligate. We know that he has within him a talisman which will always cleanse the fœtid heart-love, unconquerable first love! bears him up amongst the surges of the wildest passions.

In the domestic epic of Fielding, as in the poem of Ariosto, the frequent communings of the author with his readers, produce a disagreeable effect. They do away the illusion by bringing too often the writer, instead of the actors, before the reader; like hungry parasites they exhaust the vigor of the beautiful plants on which they have crept; to

use another simile-they are drags, retarding the graceful flight of the car on which we are borne along, through regions of ever varying scenes.

The change of style brought about by scarcely more than one century, is still more striking in the works of Fielding than in those of Richardson. Is it that a delicate mind repudiates coarseness both of expression and of images, even while the taste of the age still admits them? There was a materiality in all the conceptions of Fielding, to express which he needed words that even Swift had already rejected, in the books that bore his name.

Had not Smollet written Humphrey Clinker, we would not have noticed him here, in spite of the vigor, the terseness of style which mark even the worst of his novels. But Humphrey Clinker is a master-work-Smollet is a secondrate painter, in most of his works; but, in this, he has placed himself by the side of the first artists. The idea of presenting to the reader the same characters, the same natural objects, the same scenes of domestic and public life, under the several aspects they are viewed in by a man soured by age and infirmities; by a girl of buoyant sprightliness, just entering the world, not even suspecting its depravities; and by a young man of kind feelings, and, in reality, seeing society and nature through the same fairy prism which shows it to his sister, beaming out the beauteous and vivid hues of the rainbow, but feigning the cynical indifference of one whom, neither nature nor art can any longer amuse, or teach, that idea (an inspiration of genius), Smollet has wrought with a finish of execution which shows him to have possessed powers of the highest order, which ill health, and the moroseness of temper it often induces, prevented him from displaying to the world in their full effulgence.

We know not only the Brambles, who act, speak and write, but Dr. Lewis, too, though his letters are not given to the reader. He is the impersonation of those physicians we have so often met with, whose sympathies for human sufferings have been only heightened by their frequent witnessing and alleviating of them,-the friends, the confidants, often, too, the prudent advisers of families. As for Humphrey, he would have been the squire of Don

Quixote, had Cervantes made the knight to travel over England instead of Spain.

A clergyman, like Rabelais, and with just as little vocation for the church as had fallen to the share of the Rector of Meudon, Sterne, to the great astonishment of his parishioners, published "Tristam Shandy," a book of slow elaboration, under the guise of unpremeditated, desultory composition. Unlike Gerard Dow, who painted with free and ready execution, pictures, bearing the stamp of patient, laborious finish, Yorick's brush was severely tasked to give, to tedious toils, the slovenly appearance of the spontaneous productions of a mind prompt to conceive, and of a hand ready to throw on the canvass the wild imaginings of an exuberant genius.

Fiction departed from England, after showing in her weird mirror, to Richardson, her own loveliest creation, the matchless Clarissa-after dictating to Smollet the nature-instinct letters of the Brambles after teaching to Sterne the art of diluting the glaring colors he found on the pallet of Rabelais, to suit his lighter pictures, and the alchymist process, too, by which the pure gold of Montaigne, dimmed under the dust of three centuries, was made to shine lustrous again in jewels of modern forms. We must be allowed to follow the inspirer of our theme across the Channel, with as little preparation for a journey through France as was made by Yorick, the most unfeeling of all sentimental travellers. We follow her-for it is a weird voice that calls us to Paris. That voice we know, though it never was so strong, so authoritative before; neither when France hailed its accents as the echoes of those of Molière, nor when it spoke from the elfin lips of Asmodeus, with the wisdom of La Rochefoucault, with the wit of La Bruyère.

The appearance of two small volumes had thrown Paris into an agitation never witnessed since the wars of the Fronde. A work of fiction, written in the simplest and most unpretending prose, had taken possession of the public mind. Poetry was unattended to, the stage was neglected-even science had suspended its unwearied toils. "Gil Blas" (such was the unostentatious title of the new book) was the subject of every thought, the theme of every

conversation.

Poetry !-what was it in France before Hugo, De Beranger and Lamartine had unbound the young Muse, and set free the beauteous limbs of the fair virgin! The stage!-what were its stale tragedies, its pigmy heroes, half Greek, half French, and bearing no more resemblance to either than some hybrid flower does to the parent plants out of whose unnatural union it has sprung, lacking both the perfume of one, and the bright colors of the other?— what was the stage, when compared with that built by Genius, where the complex drama of the human life was acted by actors instinct with all the feelings, the motives of the existing society?

Science! ever modest, unassuming, she stepped aside when the inspired master came forward-the teacher of the age!

The success of Gil Blas was prompt, but, unlike the lives of plants of quick growth, its existence has not been ephemeral;-for as it portrayed man such as his passions will ever make him, when the same circumstances bring them into action, time, which only changes what is conventional and artificial, has wrought no alterations in the matchless delineations of Le Sage. Countless literary reputations have had their birth, their precocious growth, and arrived to premature senility, and sank into oblivion, even before the pupil of Sangrado had reached the full height of his fame. At that full height of renown, after Gil Blas had attained it, it has remained for a century and a halfa bright star, shedding its rays not over France only, but throughout the civilized world. Such indeed is the opinion of mankind as to the author of that master-work, that Walter Scott, in his Lives of British Novelists, has placed the name of Le Sage first in his book, adducing as the reason of his doing so, "that the author of Gil Blas belongs to the world, and not to any one nation."

In Spain, where Le Sage has laid the scene of his motley drama, the success of the book was even greater than in France. The enraptured Castilians fancied their own Cervantes risen from the dead, and again making immortal, as Sancho did of old, each village where Gil Blas wandered, was cheated, or swindled-each city where he cheated or swindled in his turn; where he

cringed to the great, pandered to the vile passions of princes, and brow-beat the humble and the poor!

It was not long, however, before Spanish pride suggested the idea that no one but a Spaniard could so faithfully have depicted Spanish manners; and that, therefore, the French Gil Blas was but a translation of a Spanish original. Absurd as appears the assertion, it has prevailed all over Spain, where the translations in Spanish bear the title, "Gil Blas, restored to the Spanish."

Instead of attempting a refutation of a paradox so strange, we will close the debate as Franklin did frequently debates of a graver cast, by telling you an anecdote! happy indeed, could we imitate, together with Franklin's practice of using anecdotes instead of syllogisms in polemics, the graceful simplicity with which he told thein.

Voltaire, while in England, was at the Opera in the box of an old Duchess. On the rising of the curtain, a lovely débutante bounded on the stage, but stopped suddenly. Her comb had fallen at her feet and her hair descending almost to the ground, covered her like another Danaë, with a golden shower. The house rang with loud cheers-all admired-all applauded. All, save the Dowager, who, turning to Voltaire, said scornfully, "Poh! These are not her own hair." "But are they real hairs," exclaimed the Poet. "Certainly,” replied her grace. "Well!" resumed young Arouet," they must have grown on some one's head-and why not, pray! on that beautiful head which they become and adorn so admirably?"

Desultory here, as the writer is too wont to be in unpremeditated speaking, not having, indeed, even thought of observing chronological order, while bringing before the reader, as they presented themselves to our memory, the works of the great masters of fiction, we return to England.

The production there which now claims our notice, is one which the name of its author, the singularity of his character, and the wonderful perfection of its execution, place in a high rank among the happiest efforts of human genius. The legitimate legatee of the wit, of the coarseness, too, of Rabelais, but not of his wondrous attainments, of his erudition so varied and yet so profound; so rife and yet often so playful; so mature, and yet so recently quaffed

from the pure streams of ancient learning, which, from Constantinople, where they had remained stagnant for ages, had began to flow over delighted Europe, but far more skilful than was his master, and inspirer in all the arts of practised composition, Swift published Gulliver, before Richardson had written Clarissa, and Fielding, Tom Jones. No modern book had ever come from the hand of its author, in which, with an air of utter neglect of art, the powers of a mind of the highest order shone more lustrous. Language was never before selected with such exquisite discernment to render thoughts intelligible to the meanest capacities, at the same time that it delighted both the learned and the tasteful by its terseness and manly strength. The austere sarcasm, the sear irony, of the selfish misanthrope, which filtrate through the amusing tales, seem but the natural offspring of the circumstances narrated.

We have often thought that, had the Travels of Gulliver been published with the necessary changes of names, as additional voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, even an intelligent reader might have proceeded to the sixth page before perceiving that he had laid hold of a spirit far mightier than any of those raised by the spells of the African magician; And that instead of a tale of wonders to amuse childhood, he had in his hand a splendid, but humiliating evidence of the powers of exquisite humor, wildest invention, unrivalled humor, mingled with all that vitiated feelings can throw of filth over the generous affections, the bright imaginings of the human mind in its young purity and freshness.

Aware, as we all are, both of the true character of the book, and of that of its author, which his own letters have portrayed in colors of darker hues than those used by his most hostile contemporaries in their delineations of his propensities, we yield, nevertheless, at once, to the charm of his narrative; but the pleasure we feel is alloyed with occasional pain. As the veil of fiction becomes gradually removed, a darkness creeps over the scene-the little elfs who had amused us at first, we find to be the dwarfed fiends of Milton. There is no joy in their laughter, no mirth in their playfulness. Nay! woman herself, touched by their fatal wand, loses, by peacemeal, her form divine. Here, falls a grace; there, fly away some charms; and in

their places are seen to rise vile turpitudes. Nature, too, is disrobed of her loveliness; her flowers have no perfume; her breeze no freshness; her summer burns instead of ripening; her autumns have merged into long and dreary winters! Youth seems bold and malignant; beauty is faded, degraded by the shameless revelation of all its innocent arts; even age is made loathsome by the exposure of its infirmities.

Wearied, at last-sinking under the burthen of the sadness it sends to the very heart-we would fain lay down the book; but, like the old man of the sea, the imp's legs seem still pressing across our shoulders and breast. The ghastly form it had evoked, disturbs our sleep! Let not the lover read Swift, lest he should fancy some secret defect in the woman he adores, even while basking in the blaze of her beauty! The ancients were wont to sacrifice to each deity, together with the plant they thought symbolical of its attributes, some animal they believed antagonistical to these. Had Swift lived in Greece he would have run the risk of being burnt, an expiatory sacrifice to the Queen of Beauty, and to the Graces, whose shrines the squalors of his fancy had defiled.

We breathe more freely now, and like Eneas emerging from darkness, after breaking the spell woven by the fiend who inspired the Gulliver, we hail with rapture the lustrous light beaming over the cerulean page on which Goldsmith, with a brush dipped in the brightest hues of the rainbow, has painted enchanting scenes of domestic innocence and purity. We did not name the author of the "Vicar of Wakefield," when we alluded to writers known only by a single book, because we do full justice to the other productions which have placed him deservedly high, among the great masters of English prose; and those British poets too, who, though lacking the sublimer promptings of the muses, have excelled in all that consummate art of versification, and exquisite taste, can infuse into poetry, in the place of what comes to the Bard from heaven alone. And yet, in spite of the charm, the grace, the winning simplicity of his prose, of the facility, the sweet melody of his verses (except the Hermit, a sapphire enchased with the purest gold), the works of Goldsmith, always found in due order among he "British Classics and Essayists,"

are but rarely deranged by inquisitive readers, while "that small volume, ine Vicar of Wakefield, translated into every modern tongue, retains everywhere, to this day, the early popularity it obtained on its first appearance. As long as natural feelings, expressed in the language of the passions, but always expressed with simplicity and grace, are appreciated, this unpretending book will endear the name of its author to the memory of all who, in the season of young sensibility, have given the tears of sympathy to the heart-rending griefs of age, and to the sorrow of betrayed innocence and beauty.

During the reign of Louis XV., there arrived in Paris a man above forty years of age. He was a citizen of Geneva. In early youth he had left that city, where his father had bound him apprentice to an engraver. The spirit within him, though not impatient of birth, was wayward and restless. It was its voice that whispered to the boy to spurn the graver: promising that the pen, not steel, would write his name indelibly on the records of fame. Obedient to his elfin adviser, the child wandered long amidst Alpine sceneries-a truant boy at Vevay-an idle youth at Chamberya feigned convert to the Catholic faith at Turin-he reached manhood uncer tain of his purpose, undecided in the choice of his future pursuits. To his most partial friends, even to the women who loved him, his genius continued unrevealed. Nay, himself at times, doubted the accomplishment of the oracles of early aspirations; but he continued to sow profusely in his memory the seeds of ancient learning, however strong his misgivings as to their ever germinating there. With Plato, he fearlessly explored the abyss of the human mind; guided by Montaigne, he examined the deepest recesses of his own wayward heart; nor was he neglectful of preparing himself, by the study of the great writers of France, to present his own thoughts to the world, after they had reached maturity, in the language that makes truth, nay, error itself, lovely to man. In the Provinciales, in the works of Voltaire, at that time the monarch of opinions, he learnt, as he tells us himself, the art of that French prose, of which they have left both the precepts and the models to posterity.

Love, music, letters, like antagonistical winds fiercely contending for the