of the personal gossip of Scarron, with the licentiousness of Bussy Rabutin. These "novels " are more after the Spanish novellas, light, sparkling tales and adventures, than our present laborious works of art, and resemble the little episodical narratives of our present magazines in everything but their moral tendency. Pope truly remarked of Mrs. Behn, under the name of Astræa, that her comedies were only to be noted for their licentiousness.

Happily this immorality had not any wit, nor much invention to keep it alive; it is now fairly dead, although an odd volume of Mrs. Behn's works turns up now and then on a bookseller's stall. Mrs. Manley, another hard-working lady author, fairly ran Mrs. Behn neck-and-neck in the race for impropriety; and it is probably to them and to other pens wielded by women, that we owe, as much as to any other cause, the deeplyrooted antipathy to works of fiction which has so long and so steadily distinguished the English middle class. It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the manners of the age, that these two ladies found an excellent market for their wares, and that their novels, full of intrigue and debauchery as they are, were read, even in the family circle, while the ladies worked. Sir Walter Scott's grandmother once feeling arise within her memory some remembrance of an old story, begged him to get her one of those tales which were so popular and so pleasurable in her youth. Blushing as he read, Sir Walter passed as lightly as he could over a few pages, when the old lady indignantly told him to "Tak' awa' yer bonnie buik," remarking at the same time how differently society was then constituted. It is certain that the habits and thoughts of Englishmen

and Englishwomen a century and a half since were so different from those of the present generation, that what would now shock us, did not then offend even female delicacy.

Arising from such a cloud of foolish flies as were these women novelists and their imitators, who are only here mentioned for the purpose of presenting the excellences of better writers in their true light, we now come to Daniel Defoe (or Foe, for, like Beranger, he added the De) who lived a troubled life from 1664 to 1731, working honestly as a tradesman, a speculator, and improver of English manufactures; then as a journalist, when his wages were poverty, contempt, abuse, neglect, and imprisonment; afterwards as a novelist, politician, poet, and theologian; an earnest man, excellent as a citizen, a husband, and a father, and notably one of those unknown martyrs who never gain the palm of the hero, nor wear the golden nimbus of the saint. An old Scotch theologian, when dying, said that he had worn himself out "in work which God had not required of him, and for which man would not thank him." This, which may be said of many quick, restless, and inventive geniuses, who do too much, cannot be said of Defoe. Man has indeed to thank him for his "Robinson Crusoe," the delight of everybody, the wonder of every student, full as it is of true moral lessons of manly wisdom and sound piety, written in pure and simple English, intelligible even to children; nor should the history of "Colonel Jaque," "The Adventures of Captain Singleton," the "Journal of the Plague Year," and one or two other works of this great master, be omitted from the list of books especially worthy to be read. The fertility of Defoe was

66

rage

" with col

enormous, and his industry was equal to it. No man,
though his works have become a
lectors, has ever gathered a complete library of them,
although he may have spent a life in collecting them.

His was a various pen, that freely roved
Into all subjects, was in most approved :
Whate'er the theme, his ready muse obey'd―
Love, courtship, politics, religion, trade;
Gifted alike to shine in every sphere,-
Nov'list, historian, poet, pamphleteer.

In his day the Church of England was a persecuting Church, and the great battle of religious freedom had to be fought. It is not too much to say that few men, scarcely perhaps one, by pamphlets, poetry, ("The True-born Englishman" has some very vigorous lines) and satire did more than Defoe to free and better the condition of his fellow-dissenters. Unfortunately, his satire was mistaken, and he offended both parties, the Tories and the Whigs, was put in the pillory, had his ears cropped, and was otherwise maltreated. But, shorn of his ears, he wore a magnificently flowing wig. He was not defeated; ruined in his estate, he was never bankrupt in spirit; and he merits, but in its most favourable sense, the full meaning of the participle applied so contemptuously by Pope

Earless on high stood unabash'd Defoe.

He was 66 unabashed" till the death of his hero, King William III., the increase of age, and the misconduct of his children, brought him to his grave. The Non-conformists are sometimes wrongly regarded as a body wanting in enthusiasm ; but they have two brave, noble men, confessors and martyrs, whose lives, if properly known, would excite an admiration equal in its

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

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intensity to that felt for any saint in the Romish Calendar: these men are Defoe and Bunyan. Another admirable quality in Defoe is his unaffected piety, his constant acknowledgment of the power and goodness of God; but that which distinguishes him above all other writers is his wonderful minuteness and reality in description. In the island of Crusoe the reader feels in spite of himself that what he reads is true. Each scene is as plainly described and as minutely pictured as if the writer had set down all that he saw in the catalogue. This gift, which Defoe possessed more than any other writer of his class, is so strong, that the fictitious"History of the Plague" was for years quoted as the authoritative narrative of a personal witness; and his "Memoirs of a Cavalier" has been cited by a grave historian as historic truth.

Samuel Richardson is a novelist who must not be omitted from the list of the worthies who have adorned our English literature. It is not often that an actor writes a good play, or that a bookseller and publisher becomes a capable author. There are, however, a few notable exceptions to the first-Shakespeare, Macklin, and others and to the second in Richardson, who, apprenticed to a printer, rose to be the master of the Stationers' Company. A "womanly" man, of strict probity, and of a prosperous industry, he seemed, in his youth, even while a Blue-coat-boy, capable of inspiring a certain confidence in the fair sex, which was then not so well educated as it is now. Richardson, to this quality of inspiring trust, owes his fame. His fair young friends asked him to write their love-letters, and his retentive memory retained their method and phrases. Hence (he was above fifty) when certain publishers,

anxious to secure a book which should cost them little and produce them much, asked the vain Master Stationer to pen them a volume of model letters for the various concerns in life; he complied, and the letters insensibly grew into the novel of " Pamela," which the author, with a glance of virtuous indignation at the stories of the day, hoped "would turn his young readers into a course of reading very different from the pomp and parade of romance writing." What Richardson meant by the "pomp and parade," unless he glanced at the "Arcadia" and the "Grand Cyrus,”—the former of which was then little read-one can hardly say; but his novel was an immense success, and it deserved it. It ran through five editions in the year it was published (1741). It became the rage of the town. Ladies had Pamela hats and Pamela fans, and in the park and opera held the book up in triumph to each other, to show that they had it. Pope praised it as likely to do more good than twenty sermons, and Dr. Sherlock lauded it from the pulpit.

Now, when we read it, we find it dry, full of long disquisitions, some descriptions out of place in a book for ladies, and a certain dull pomposity; " but we must remember," says Sir Walter Scott, "that it in some degree requires a reader to be acquainted with the huge folios of inanity over which our ancestors must have yawned themselves to sleep before we can appreciate the delight which they experienced at this unexpected return to nature and truth." In 1748 Richardson's second and greatest work, the memoirs of Clarissa, since known as "Clarissa Harlowe," appeared, and in 1753 his "Sir Charles Grandison," designed to represent the "beau ideal of a Christian and a gentleman."

All Richardson's novels were wonderfully and de