CHAPTER XV.

SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS, ESSAYISTS, NOVELISTS, AND PHILOSOPHERS.

1. Tobias Smollett.-2. Laurence Sterne.-3. Joseph Warton; Thomas Warton.4. Richard Hurd.-5. Horace Walpole; Lady Mary Montague.-6. Samuel Johnson. -7. David Hume.-8. William Robertson; Edward Gibbon.-9. Thomas Reid.-10. Adam Smith; Sir William Blackstone.-11. Edmund Burke.-12. William Paley.-13. Joseph Priestley; Thomas Paine; Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.-14. Sir Joshua Reynolds; Gilbert White; Edmund Malone; Anna Seward; Hannah More; Henry Mackenzie; Frances Burney; Sophia and Harriet Lee; William Beckford; Clara Reeve; Ann Radcliffe.

1. Tobias Smollett, born in 1721, in the parish of Cardross, was left dependent on his grandfather, Sir James Smollett, of Bonhill, was sent to school at Dumbarton, where he wrote satirical verse, and a poem on Wallace, went from Dumbarton to Glasgow, where he studied medicine and was apprenticed to a surgeon, the Potion of his first novel. He came to London with a tragedy, "The Regicide," written before he was eighteen. It was rejected by managers, but several years afterwards was published with a preface. In 1741, when "Pamela" was a new book, Smollett, aged twenty, was surgeon's mate on board a ship of the line, and sailed in the expedition to Carthagena. This experience of life was also used as material for his first novel. He quitted the service when in the West Indies, lived some time in Jamaica, and met the lady whom he afterwards married. He was back in London in 1746, and then published anonymously "The Tears of Scotland," expressing from his heart, though no Jacobite, his just indignation at the cruelties that disgraced the suppression of the Rebellion of 1745; also " Advice," a satire which gave offence. He wrote "Alceste," an opera, for Covent Garden, quarrelled with the manager, published in 1747 "Reproof," a sequel to " Advice," married, and produced in 1748,

when his age was twenty-seven, his first novel, "The Adventures of Roderick Random." This work, written in the form of autobiography, was a bright story, rich in mirth and a quick sense of outside character, that painted life as Smollett had seen it, blending his own experiences with his fiction. It became immediately popular, and helped much in establishing the new form of fiction in which writers dealt immediately with the life of their own time, and the experience in it of common men and women.

In 1750 he graduated as physician, at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but was a doctor with few patients. In the summer of 1750 he visited Paris, and probably wrote there his "Peregrine Pickle," published in 1751. Its brightness, and the hearty fun of many of its chapters, like that which describes an entertainment in the manner of the ancients, made the book widely popular, and Smollett famous. This book was followed, in 1753, by a study of depravity in an adventurer chosen from the purlieus of treachery and fraud, the "Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom." In 1755 he published a free translation of "Don Quixote," then visited his mother and friends in Scotland, and, when he came back, accepted the invitation of booksellers to edit the "Critical Review," set up in 1756, to oppose the Whig "Monthly Review," that had been started in 1749. Smollett was genial, but irritable, and now submitted himself to vexation by the irritable race of the small authors. At this time Smollett began "A complete History of England, deduced from the Descent of Julius Cæsar to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, containing the Transactions of One Thousand Eight Hundred and Three Years." He is said to have written it in fourteen months. It was published in four volumes in 1757-58, and reprinted afterwards in numbers, extending to eleven volumes, with a weekly sale of twelve thousand. For a paragraph in the "Critical Review" Smollett was fined a hundred pounds, and imprisoned for three months, at the suit of Admiral Knowles, and worked in prison at "The Adventures of Sir Lancelot Greaves," an imitation of Cervantes, published in the "British Magazine" in 1760 and 1761. Simollett then worked at the "Continuation of the His

tory of England" to 1765, published in 1769, in two volumes. After the loss of his only child, Smollett had travelled for health, and in 1766 he published his "Travels through France and Italy." In 1769 appeared his "Adventures of an Atom," dealing, under Japanese names, with English politics, from 1754 to 1768. In 1770 he went to Italy with broken health, and while there published, only a few months before his death, his last, and perhaps his best novel, "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker." Smollett died, at the age of fifty, near Leghorn, in October, 1771.

2. Laurence Sterne (b. 1713, d. 1768), grandson of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, and son of Lieutenant Sterne in a marching regiment, was born at Clonmel barracks. After education at Halifax in Yorkshire, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, he obtained, in 1738, the vicarage of Sutton, near York, and in 1741 a prebend in York Minster, with a house in Stonegate. In that year Sterne married. The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy" were published at York, in December, 1759, witty and whimsical, suiting the spirit of the time in their defiance of convention, and sometimes of decency. Their success brought Sterne to London, and he thenceforth weakly sacrificed himself to the shallow flatteries of London society. The second edition of this part of "Tristram Shandy" was followed at once by two volumes of the "Sermons of Mr. Yorick." Oliver Goldsmith, in his "Citizen of the World," condemned Sterne's affectations of freedom in dashes and breaks, with the worst license of indelicacy, and was so far displeased by the superficial tricks of the book that he was unjust to the true genius of the writer, and missed the charm of his Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim. In 1761 appeared the third and fourth volumes of "Tristram Shandy; in 1762, the fifth and sixth; in 1765, the seventh and eighth ; in 1767, the ninth and last. In 1768, after a visit to France and Italy, appeared Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," of which the style reminds us that 1761 and 1762 were the dates of the chief sentimental writings of Rousseau. In the same year Sterne died, on the 13th of September, at lodgings in Bond Street, with no friend near; the only sign of human affection

the knock of a footman, sent by some of his grand friends from a neighboring dinner-party to learn how Mr. Sterne was. A single mourning-coach, with two gentlemen inside, one of them his publisher, followed his body to the grave. It was dug up after burial, and recognized in a few days on the table of the Professor of Anatomy of Cambridge. Sterne left no provision for his widow and daughter at York, but died in debt, and his family were aided by a collection made at the next York races. His daughter, Lydia, married a Frenchman, and is said to have been among the victims of the French Revolution.

3. Joseph Warton, born in 1722, son of an Oxford professor of poetry, was educated at Winchester School and at Oxford. He wrote verse; went to France, in 1751, as companion to the Duke of Bolton, having previously obtained from him the Rectory of Wynslade, to which that of Tunworth afterwards was added. In 1755 he became second master of Winchester School, and was head master from 1766 to 1793. He published, in 1756, an "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope," to which a second volume was added in 1782. In his latter days he had more church preferment, and he died in 1800. His brother, Thomas Warton, six years younger, was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, wrote poems, and, in 1753, aided the reviving taste for our best literature by critical "Observations on the Faery Queen of Spenser." In 1757 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford for ten years; and, in 1774, produced the first volume of his " History of English Poetry," followed by a second volume in 1778, a third volume in 1781, and later a fragment of the fourth volume. Thomas Warton succeeded William Whitehead as poet-laureate, in 1785; published in that year Milton's Minor Poems, with notes; and died in 1790.

4. Richard Hurd, born in 1720, who became Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1775, and died in 1808, was a friend of Warburton; and, among other works, wrote, between 1758 and 1764, his "Dialogues Moral and Political," and "Letters on Chivalry and Romance."

5. Horace Walpole, born in 1717, had a large income from posts given him by Sir Robert, his father. He entered Parliament in 1741, but seldom spoke, though for many years a member. In 1747 he bought the estate of Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, and lavished money upon its adornment. There he set up a printing-press, from which, in 1757, Gray's odes on "The Bard," and "The Progress of Poesy," were the first works issued. In 1791 he became Earl of Orford, and he died in 1797. His chief works were "A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England" (1758); "Anecdotes of Painting in England, with some accounts of the principal artists," by George Vertue, digested

from his MSS. (1762-71); "The Castle of Otranto," a romance, published in 1765; and "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third" (1768). Publications of Horace Walpole's "Letters" began to appear in 1818, and were finally arranged in nine volumes in 1857. The small talk of their time is also illustrated by the letters of Lady Mary Montague, born in 1690, eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston. She married, in 1712, Addison's friend, Edward Wortley Montague, went with him, in 1716, to Constantinople, and after their return lived near Pope, at Twickenham. In 1739 Lady Mary left her husband and connections, to live abroad, and did not return to England for twenty years. She was in Venice when her husband, with whom she had corresponded, died in 1761. She came home in January; and died in August, 1762. There was, in the following year, an unauthorized publication of her letters. Her letters, with her poems and essays, were published in 1837, edited by Lord Wharncliffe.

6. Samuel Johnson was born on the 18th of September, 1709. His father was a bookseller at Lichfield, and he was named Samuel, as godson of a friendly lodger in the house, Dr. Samuel Swinfen. He was born scrofulous, and as in his earliest days the Tory party was re-asserting the doctrine of Divine right, by reviving in the person of Queen Anne the pretence to cure scrofula, therefore called "king's evil," by touch of a royal hand, he was taken to London to be touched by Queen Anne. The disease remained, and it was part of the hard work of Johnson's life to battle with it. In 1716, at the age of seven, he was sent to Lichfield Grammar School; and in 1724, aged fifteen, to a school at Stourbridge, as assistant pupil. In 1726 he came home for two years, and in October, 1728, went, by Dr. Swinfen's advice, and with some assistance from him, to Pembroke College, Dr. Swinfen's own college, at Oxford. There the hypochondriacal oppression of the brain, to which he had been subject, increased. Johnson's scrofulous constitution made itself felt by him chiefly in the brain, and might have reduced another man to the insanity of which he never lost the dread. He feared it at college, and wrote in Latin for Dr. Swinfen an account of his symptoms. Dr. Swinfen, proud of the Latin, and forgetting that Johnson was revealing to him a very secret dread, showed the report to others, and made Johnson less willing to accept help from him. Johnson