lence, wit, virtue, and good sense that makes the admirable portrait of him, Daguerreotyped in the memoirs of his friend and disciple Boswell, the most interesting and living portrait which literature exhibits of a great and good man-the perfect embodiment of the ideal of the English character, with all its honesty, goodness, and nobility, rather individualised than disfigured by the few and venial foibles and oddities which alloy its sterling gold.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE GREAT NOVELISTS.

History of Prose Fiction-in Spain, Italy, and France-The Romance and the Novel-Defoe-Robinson Crusoe-Source of its Charm-Defoe's Air of Reality-Minor Works-Richardson-Pamela-Clarissa Harlowe-Female Characters-Sir Charles Grandison-Fielding-Joseph Andrews-Jonathan Wild-Tom Jones-Amelia-Smollet-Roderick Random-Sea Characters -Peregrine Pickle-Count Fathom-Humphry Clinker--Sterne--Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey-Goldsmith--Chinese Letters--Traveller and Deserted Village--Vicar of Wakefield--Comedies-- Histories.

We are now arrived at that point in the history of British literature where, in obedience to the ever-acting laws which regulate intellectual as they do physical development, a new species of composition was to originate. As in the material creation we find the several manifestations of productive energy following a progressive order, the lower, humbler, and less organised existences appearing first, and successively making way for kinds more variously and bounteously endowed, the less perfect merging imperceptibly into the more perfect, so can we trace a similar action of this law in the gradual development of man's intellectual operations. No sooner do certain favourable conditions exist, no sooner has a fit nidus or theatre of action been produced, than we behold new manifestations of human intellect appearing in literature, in science, and in art, with as much regularity as, in the primeval eras of the physical world, the animalcule gave way to the fish, the fish to the reptile, the reptile to the bird, the beast, and ultimately to man.

Spain, France, and Italy had all possessed the germ or embryo of prose fiction before it can be said to appear as a substantive, independent, and influential species of literature in Great Britain; and in each of these countries it manifested itself under a different form, modified by the character of the respective peoples, the

nature of their language, the character of those antecedent types of literature which gave birth to or suggested it, and the state of society whose manners it reflected. In Spain, for example, arising among a romantic, religious, and chivalrous people, whose memory was full of the traditions of Moorish warfare, and possessing the acute, impressible, and yet profound intellect usually resulting from physical well-being, a considerable degree of political freedom, and a delicious climate, we find it taking the form of the romance, full of adventure, and with a splendid prodigality of incident; showing traces of its mixed origin in the European delicacy of its humour and exquisite sense of the ludicrous, and retaining with the numerous episodes (one inserted within the other, as in the Thousand and One Nights') much of the peculiar Oriental structure, together with the Oriental richness of imagination, and Oriental profusion and laxity of style. Here we have the union of the Castilian hidalgo and the Abencerrage, the Goth and the Moor, the lofty sierra and the smooth and luxuriant vega. In Italy, again-the Italy of the fifteenth century-we find a people highly civilised, elegant, commercial, exquisitely sensitive to comic ideas, penetrating, questioning everything, applying to their government and their religion the dangerous test of ridicule, yet at the same time in the highest degree sensuous, with a wonderful and petulant mobility of imagination-at once childishly superstitious and audaciously sceptical. Among them arises Boccaccio, immortalising himself by a collection of tales, short and pointed-alternately drawing the deepest tears and moving the broadest laughter-full at once of the grossest indecency and the highest refinements of romantic purity.

In France, again, we find first the lofty chivalric romanceinterminable in length, unnatural and exaggerated in sentiments, but bearing a general impress of dignity and magnificence-which cannot but be held as of Spanish origin. Of this the works of Scudéri and D'Urfé are memorable examples. Secondly, we find another variety, no less imitated from the Spanish, in which the meanest persons of ordinary life are put in motion and pass through a long series of amusing though often rather discreditable adventures, having no involution of intrigue, and connected together only by the slender thread of their being supposed to happen to one person. In this species of fiction (founded upon works which the Spaniards call stories "de vida picaresca"-of ragamuffin life-from the general character of the persons and adventures) the French have surpassed their masters; for much as a careful comparison with the Spanish originals will induce us to detract from Le Sage's originality, it will be more than compensated by his genius, when we reflect how far that admirable

writer is superior to Quevedo, Mendoza, and Aleman, and others from whom he so freely borrowed.

From the above remarks it results that we can establish two important and distinct forms of prose fiction,-the one treating of elevated persons, either imaginary or historical, and delineating serious or important events; the other dealing with men and actions of a more ludicrous, mean, or everyday character-the romance, in short, or the novel. The former species derives its name from the long narratives which form the bulk of MiddleAge poetry, which were generally written in the Romanz dialect; the other from the short prose tales so popular in Italy and France at the revival of letters. It is obvious that both these designations have almost completely lost their original signification. In England, the romance, besides the qualities just assigned, is generally the vehicle of a more artfully constructed and regular plot; while the novel by no means implies a shorter work, though one of a less grave and ambitious character. In a word, though this distinction may be taken as a general guide to the student, and will aid him perceptibly in classing these works of fiction, he must by no means take it in too rigid and invariable an acceptation; or, rather, he must not be surprised to find works partaking of both characters.

But, in the department of prose fiction, we hope to be able to establish for the English literature a claim to a degree of originality (originality of the highest order, which is exhibited in the separate creation of a distinct type) not inferior to that which our country incontestably exhibited in many other departments of intellectual development-in the romantic drama, for instance. The father of our romance and novel was Daniel Defoe, the son of a London butcher, born in 1661, and educated with considerable care for the profession of a Presbyterian pastor, but which he renounced for trade, having during a long and eventful life unsuccessfully engaged in a great variety of commercial occupations-at one time a hosier, at another a tilemaker, and ultimately a dealer in wool. His real vocation, however, was that of a writer, for he produced an enormous mass of compositions, generally pamphlets, either on temporary and local subjects of political interest, or narratives adapted to suit the passing taste of the day-in fact, what would be styled by a French critic "brochures de circonstance." In 1699 he published his True-born Englishman,' a vigorous poetical effusion, written in singularly rough and tuneless rhymes, containing a powerful defence of William of Orange and the Dutch nation; and in 1702 appeared his celebrated pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,' an inimitable piece of sarcastic irony, in which, to exhibit in a hateful light the unjust and unconstitutional persecution of the dissenting sects, he puts on the mask

of an adherent of government, and gravely advises parliament to make a law punishing with death any minister convicted of exercising an unorthodox worship. The government, infuriated by the bitter satire, prosecuted the author of the pamphlet, and the uncompromising writer was punished by fine, imprisonment, exposure in the pillory, and the loss of his ears. This suggested to Defoe the strong and excellent poem called 'Hymn to the Pillory,' a powerful expression of the feelings of outraged liberty and patriotism. During a two years' confinement in Newgate, our indefatigable writer conducted a periodical publication entitled 'The Review,' in which he boldly attacks the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of government, and gallantly pleads the cause of liberty and the constitution. That Defoe must have had a high reputation for honesty and ability is established by the fact that he was afterwards commissioned by Queen Anne's government to go to Scotland, in order to influence the Union between that country and England; and he appears to have acquitted himself in this delicate mission with remarkable skill, zeal, and dexterity. Of this event he afterwards wrote a history. Continuing his course as a pamphlet-writer, we cannot be surprised to find him, after this temporary blink of sunshine in his fortunes, again imprisoned and fined 8007. This confinement, however, did not last so long as the former, for he was liberated after two months; and he now appears, either disgusted with the dangerous and ill-requited profession of a political writer, or more probably anxious for the welfare of his own family, to have directed his great powers to a different line of literary exertion-one in which he could encounter no such persecution as had so frequently overwhelmed him, and in which present advantage and popularity were more likely to be attained.

In 1719 appeared the first part of Robinson Crusoe,' one of the most truly genial, perfect, and original fictions that the world has ever seen. It may be said that some of the high and peculiar merits of this tale have been the very cause of our not appreciating its extraordinary qualities as they deserve. It is almost universally put into the hands of the very young, and the avidity with which its pages are devoured by the childish reader, and the never-failing permanency with which its principal scenes, events, and characters remain graven on the memory of all who have ever read it, prevent us from recurring to its perusal, and thus hinder us from applying to the fiction which enchanted our childhood the test of the more critical judgment of after life. Were such a test to be generally applied, and were we to examine into the means by which those intense impressions-among the intensest which the memory of childhood can recall-were produced, Defoe's name would be regarded with veneration, as that

of him who gave our infant curiosity its healthiest and sweetest food, and our infant sensibilities their most legitimate and improving action.

Attempts have been made to deprive Defoe of the glory of having invented the subject and outline of Robinson Crusoe ;' and some have even suggested that the novelist merely expanded the narrative of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman, left (as was a not uncommon punishment among the rude navigators of that time, technically called "marooning") by his shipmates upon the island of Juan Fernandez, where he passed a long series of years in a solitary existence, somewhat resembling the supposed life of Crusoe. But apart from the circumstance that the leading idea of the work (a shipwrecked solitary in an uninhabited island of the tropics) implies no very great stretch of invention, and that such an event is at all times exceedingly possible, and was then not unfrequent, Selkirk's narrative is extant, and, if compared to the fiction of Defoe, triumphantly disproves the accusation above stated, and shows us the immense difference between a meagre statement of bare facts and the powers of creative genius. Where shall we find in Selkirk's narrative (the most striking circumstance of which is the savage and almost bestial state to which the unfortunate solitary was reduced) the inexhaustible prodigality of contrivance by which Robinson alleviates his long reclusion, his attempts at escape, his hopes, his terrors, his sickness, his religious struggles, his sorrows, and his joys? In Defoe we associate with the persons, places, animals, and things of which he speaks a reality as absolute and intense-nay, often much more so-as we do with the true recollections of things and people which surrounded us in childhood. If we examine our own memory we shall find that the images of Crusoe, of Friday, of Friday's father, of the goats, the cats, the parrots, of the corn which Crusoe planted, of the canoe which he makes and then finds too heavy for him to launch, the cave in which he stows his gunpowder, the creek in which he lands in his raft, and in general the whole topography of the island-we shall find, we repeat, that these images are as strong, as intense (and surely, therefore, as real) as our recollection of the playthings which we broke, the little plot of ground which we cultivated, the nurse who took care of us, or the woods in which we went a-nutting. What then is the artifice by which genius has worked-for even the divinity of genius must work by secondary means-to do this miracle? We reply, the admirable causality of Defoe's mind, the courage with which he renounces the supernatural, the extraordinary-the intensity of good sense which fixed the work in a low key, as it were, dealing with the most ordinary elements of human character and the most everyday operations of nature. He might have made