cess.

a pamphlet on the use of Medical Waters, but did not meet with sucIn 1753 he published The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom; in 1755 his Translation of Don Quixote, based upon that of Jarvis, and in 1757-8 his History of England. The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, in imitation of Don Quixote, appeared in 1762. His Translation of Gil Blas appeared in 1771; in 1771, the year of his death, appeared also Humphrey Clinker. Besides these larger works, Smollett published a few plays, only one of which, The Reprisals, was successful, and two volumes of Travels through France and Italy. His History and Adventures of an Atom, published in 1769, was a satire upon the Government. Smollett was editor of The Critical Review, and also started The Briton, a Tory organ, which was crushed by John Wilkes's North Briton.

Character.-Smollett was involved in several literary and other quarrels, and was imprisoned for three months for a libel on Admiral Knowles. Smollett appears to have been a man of warm and generous feelings, but easily provoked, and not over tolerant of contradiction. He never courted the favor of the rich and great, but worked and fought his way through life in perfect independence. He is permanently associated with Fielding and Richardson as one of the trio of great English novelists of the eighteenth century, and like them he has the merits and the vices of the age.

Novels.-Smollett's writings are even more licentious than those of Fielding. In judging the novelist, however, it should be kept in mind that he merely reflects the spirit of the age. The gentlemen and ladies of those days indulged in actions and language which would not be tolerated in the present century. If we would blame Smollett for writing of intrigues and amours, we have only to remember that a lady of quality, Lady Vane, paid him for the record of her deeds. It seems quite certain, at least, that the works of Smollett, Fielding and Richardson were no worse than their readers, but probably much better, and that their general influence upon those readers was wholesome. Whether the readers of to-day would be benefited by their perusal is quite another question.

Literary Merits.- Smollett, like Fielding, is a vigorous and skilful depicter of life and character. He has not Fielding's profound insight into human nature, but he has an equal eye with Fielding for the vagaries and vicissitudes of society, and as nimble a pen to record them. His plots are not so elaborate as Fielding's, and his style is by no means so sustained. But Smollett delights without wearying. He is a fascinating story-teller. The characters of Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random, Strap, and many others, have been placed in the great English gallery of characterpieces.

"The novel of Humphrey Clinker is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages to come; and in their letters and the story of their lives there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter as inexhaustible as Bladud's Well."-Thackeray.

Smollett is also the author of several poems which, in the opinion of Campbell, possess more delicacy than his novels, but have less strength.

Sterne.

Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768, is celebrated as a humorist and sentimentalist. His two chief works, Tristram Shandy and The Sentimental Journey, are among the best known of all the works of this period.

Early Life. Sterne was born in Ireland, of parents who had just emigrated to that country from Scotland. His father was lieutenant in the army. Young Sterne was put to school at Halifax, and afterwards sent to Oxford, where he took his degree of B. A. in 1736. He entered the Church of England, and obtained the living of Sutton, in Yorkshire, where he passed twenty years in rural obscurity. He had to preach on Sunday, but the rest of the week was spent in "reading, painting, fiddling, and shooting."

Works. In 1759 appeared the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, and Sterne had become famous. He was the literary lion of London. Henceforth his parish was quite neglected, and he spent nearly all his time in London or on the continent, leading a life of idleness and gayety and even of dissipation. Tristram Shandy was not completed until the year before the author's death. The Sentimental Journey appeared about the beginning of 1768. Sterne had also published in the meanwhile four volumes of sermons. He died at his lodgings in

London, comparatively deserted by his numerous admirers.

Character as a Writer.—There are not many similar instances in English literature of a man's becoming so suddenly and so generally famous by his first work of fiction. Everybody laughed and wept alternately over the wit and pathos of the new author, and the modest closed their eyes to the licentiousness that disfigured the pages. Many generations have come and gone since then, and sentimentalism is long since out of favor, but Old Shandy, Uncle Toby, and Trim have become standard names in English literature. Sterne has been accused and convicted, again and again, of having stolen from Rabelais, Montaigne, Scarron, Bacon, Donne, and the entire body of French and English authors; his style has been shown to be borrowed, his sentiment weak and thin, his wit affected. Yet somehow he still survives, he is still read and enjoyed by each successive generation of readers, and no one of his judges has ever yet succeeded in showing satisfactorily how an author, who stole every idea, and had no positive merit of his own, has nevertheless succeeded in holding his ground against all criticism and anathema. The truth is that Sterne was a prodigious reader, but had the happy gift of recreating his gathered materials into entirely new forms. There never was anything like Tristram Shandy before in English letters, and there certainly has been nothing since.

His style is at times the most rapid, the most happy, the most idiomatic, of any that is to be found. It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of morceaux,— of brilliant passages. I wonder that Goldsmith, who ought to have known him better, should call him a 'dull fellow.' His wit is poignant though

artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork of some of them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them: - Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow Wadman. In these he has contrived to oppose, with equal felicity and originality, two characters, one of pure intellect and the other of pure good nature, in My Father and My Uncle Toby. There appears to have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humor, and of extreme tenderness of feeling; the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel, but at other times pure and without blemish. The story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the English language. My Father's restlessness of body and of mind is inimitable. My Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature. He is the most unoffending of human creatures; or, as the French express it, un tel petit bon homme. Of his bowling green, his sieges, and his amours, who would say or think anything amiss."— Hazlitt.

III. THE POETS.

Goldsmith.

Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774, is one of the most conspicuous ornaments of the period now under consideration. He excelled about equally in poetry and prose. Of the vast mass of his prose writings, however, the greater part has ceased to be of interest. The only one, in fact, that is now generally read is The Vicar of Wakefield. But his poems, though inconsiderable in amount, have a perpetual charm. There are, indeed, few poems in the language that have a better prospect of a permanent place in its literature than The Deserted Village.

Early Life. Goldsmith was a native of Ireland, the son of a clergyman of the Established Church. In boyhood he had the small-pox, by which his face was permanently disfigured. At the age of seventeen, through the liberality of a kind-hearted uncle, he entered Trinity College, Dublin. Here he gained few distinctions, his habits of study, like all his other habits, being wrecked by improvidence. On one occasion, however, he won a small prize, of the value of thirty shillings: "This turn of success and sudden influx of wealth proved too much for the head of our poor student. He forthwith gave a supper and dance at his chamber, to a number of young persons of both sexes from the city, in direct violation of college rules. The unwonted sound of the fiddle reached the ears of the implacable Wilder [the tutor]. He rushed to the scene of unhallowed festivity, inflicted corporal chastise

ment on the 'father of the feast,' and turned his astonished guests neck and heels out of doors."-Irving. Mortified at this indignity, Goldsmith left College, but lingered in Dublin until reduced to the extremity of destitution. His last shilling and most of his clothing gone, hungry and half naked, he set out for Cork, and on the way was saved from actual starvation by a handful of gray peas given him at a wake by a kind-hearted peasant girl. He declared afterwards, when in the height of his renown, and revelling at the luxurious banquets of the great, that he had never tasted anything equal to those gray peas.

Various Other Experiments. By the kind interposition of his brother, Oliver was reinstated in College, and remained there two years longer, at the end of which time he managed to take his degree. By the persuasion of his uncle, he began studying for the church, and at the end of two years presented himself to the Bishop for examination, “but appearing in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected." The Bishop probably had an intimation that the indiscretions of the candidate extended to other things than the color of his breeches. The persevering benefactor, his uncle, then procured him a position as private tutor, but Oliver quarrelled with one of the family over a game of cards, and lost his position. He had, however, at the time of his dismissal, thirty pounds in cash, which seemed to him a mint of money. But in the course of six weeks he squandered it all, and returned to his mother without a shilling in his pocket. Once more the patient uncle conceived that the young spendthrift might perhaps succeed at the law, and supplied him accordingly with fifty pounds, wherewith to make a beginning. The fifty pounds were spent at the gaming-table, and Goldsmith was again at the verge of ruin. The next experiment of Oliver's friends was to set him up as a Doctor of Medicine. They put together what few guineas they could spare, and sent him to Edinburgh. Here he did not entirely throw away his time, but attended some lectures during the eighteen months of his residence. He could, however, tell a good story and sing a capital Irish song, and he shone accordingly in social circles more than in the halls of science.

Travels. A roving disposition impelled him to travel, and he is next found on the continent, sometimes at seats of learning, picking up scraps of knowledge at the lectures of great scholars, but more frequently travelling through the country on foot, and getting his meals and lodgings by making himself agreeable to the peasants with his musical abilities and his other skill in the arts of entertainment. When he left Leyden for the purpose of making a journey through Europe, his finances, wardrobe, and furniture amounted to a guinea

in his pocket, a shirt on his back, and a flute in his hand." During this nomad life, he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at one of the foreign Universities.

Career as an Author. - Returning to England in 1756, at the age of twenty-eight, Goldsmith made his way to London, only to meet starvation in the face. For the next two or three years his struggles for the means of bare subsistence were extreme. He did all kinds of book work for the publishers, — whatever would bring a few pounds or even shillings. His first work of any note was An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. It was savagely attacked by one of the critics, but it made the author known, and on the whole was well received. In 1760, he wrote for a popular periodical a series of letters purporting to come from a Chinese philosopher living in London, and giving his countrymen an account of what he was seeing there. These are known as The Chinese Letters. They were collected and published in a book with the title: The Citizen of the World, or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher residing in London to his friends in the East. The work displayed unusual ability, and brought the author offers of employment of a somewhat more lucrative kind. The first decided lift that he received, however, was his making the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. Johnson took to Goldsmith almost from the first of their acquaintance, and he never faltered in the friendship which was the result. The occasions of Goldsmith's needing help were seldom long wanting. One of these led to Johnson's interposition for the sale of the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield. The incident is thus told by Johnson himself:

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begged that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means whereby he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.”— Boswell's Johnson.

The Traveller, his first considerable poem, followed soon after. Notwithstanding its extraordinary merits, and the zealous efforts of Johnson to bring it into notice, it won its way to public favor by only slow degrees. Its success, however, was steady and sure, and in the end