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doubles the pleasure we derive from them. To the man who resigns himself to feeling, without interposing any judgment, poetry, music, painting, are mere pastime. In the prime of life, indeed, they are delightful, being supported by the force of novelty and the heat of imagination; but in time they lose their relish, and are generally neglected in the maturity of life, which disposes to more serious and more important occupations. To those who deal in criticism as a regular science, governed by just principles, and giving scope to judgment as well as to fancy, the fine arts are a favourite entertainment, and in old age maintain that relish which they produce in the morning of life.

Lecture the Forty-Third.

SAMUEL

RICHARDSON-HENRY FIELDING-TOBIAS GEORGE

SMOLLETT-HENRY BROOKE-LAURENCE STERNE-CHARLES JOHNSTONE-HORACE WALPOLE-HENRY MACKENZIE-CLARA REEVE-SOAME JENYNS-THOMAS BIRCH-DAVID HARTLEY

-ABRAHAM TUCKER-JOHN CAMPBELL-WILLIAM GUTHRIE.

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In real life in prose

the period now under consideration, the English novel assumed a defi

prose fiction were given, as has already been observed, by Defoe, who, in his graphic details, and personal adventures, all impressed with the strongest appearances of truth or probability, has never, in his own walk, been excelled. That walk, however, was limited; of genuine humor or variety of character, he had no conception; and he paid little attention to the arrangement of his plot. The gradual improvement in the tone and manners of society, the complicated relations of life, the growing contrast between town and country manners, and all the artificial distinctions that attend commerce, wealth, and luxury, banished the old heroic romance, and gave rise to the novel, in which the passion of love still maintained its place, but was surrounded by events and characters, such as are witnessed in ordinary life, under various aspects and modifications. The three great founders of this improved species of composition-this new theatre of living and breathing characterswere Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, who even yet, after the lapse of more than a century, have had no superiors, and, if we except Sir Walter Scott, no equal.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON, the pioneer of this band, was born in Derbyshire, in 1689, and was the son of a joiner, who could not afford to give him more than the ordinary elements of education. When fifteen years of age, he was apprenticed to a printer, in London; and by good conduct he rose to be master of an extensive business of his own, and printer of the Journals of the House of Commons. In 1754, he was chosen master of the Stationers' Company, and in 1760, purchased a moiety of the patent of printer to the king, which greatly increased his emoluments. Thus raised to celebrity and opulence, his elevation was still adorned by all the humble virtues which rejoice in the

opportunity of doing good, and of disseminating blessings wherever human nature is capable of improvement. Surrounded by the natural attendants of wealth, and the flattery of admiring associates, he was still the kind master and hospitable friend, and never forgot to add exemplary conduct to religious appearances, and sincere devotion to pious exhortations.

From a very early period of his life, Richardson was a fluent letter-writer: at the age of thirteen he was the confidant of three young women, whose love correspondence he carried on without any one knowing that he was secretary to the others. Two London publishers having urged him, when he was about fifty years old, to write them a book of familiar letters on the useful concerns of life, he undertook the composition of his Pamela, as a warning to young people; and with a hope that it would turn them into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romance writing.' The work was written in about three months, and published in 1741, with such success, that five editions were exhausted in the course of one year. 'It requires a reader,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'to be in some degree acquainted with the huge folios of inanity, over which our ancestors yawned themselves to sleep, ere he can estimate the delight they must have experienced from this unexpected return to truth and nature.' 'Pamela' became the rage of the town ladies carried the volumes with them to Ranelagh Gardens, and held them up to one another in triumph. Pope praised the novel warmly, and said it was likely to do more good than twenty volumes of sermons; and Dr. Sherlock recommended it from the pulpit!

In 1749, appeared Richardson's second and greatest work, The History of Clarissa Harlowe; and four years after his novel, designed to represent the beau ideal of a gentleman and Christian, The History of Sir Charles Grandison. The almost unparalleled success and popularity of Richardson's life and writings were at length clouded by nervous attacks, which rendered him delicate and feeble in health. He was, however, to the last, flattered and soothed by a number of female friends, in whose society he spent most of his time, and after reaching the good old age of seventy-two, he died on the fourth of July, 1751.

Richardson's works are all pictures of the heart. No man ever understood human nature better, or could draw with greater distinctness the minute shades of feeling and sentiment, or the final results of the passions. He wrote his novels, it is said, in his back shop, in the intervals of business; and he must have derived exquisite pleasure from the moral anatomy in which he was silently engaged-conducting his characters through the scenes of his ideal world, and giving expression to all the feelings, motives, and impulses, of which our nature is susceptible. He was the happiest in the delineation of female characters. Much of his time had been spent with the gentler sex, and his own retired habits and nervous sensibility approximated to female softness. He well repaid the sex for all their attentions to him, by his character of Clarissa, one of the noblest tributes ever paid to female virtue and honor. The moral elevation of this heroine, the saintly

purity which she preserves amidst scenes of the deepest depravity and the most seductive gayety, and the never-failing sweetness and benevolence of her temper, render Clarissa one of the brightest triumphs of the whole range of imaginative literature. Perhaps the climax of her distress is too overwhelming too oppressive to the feelings—but it is a healthy sorrow. We see the full radiance of virtue; and no reader ever rose from the perusal of those tragic scenes without feeling his moral nature renovated, and his de testation of vice increased.

'Pamela' and 'Sir Charles Grandison' are works of less merit than 'Clarissa Harlowe;' but they both inculcate the most pure and elevated moral lessons. In them is found the same accumulation of details as in 'Clarissa,' all tending to heighten the effect, and produce the catastrophe, hurrying on the reader, with breathless anxiety, till he has learned the last sad event, and is plunged in unavailing grief. Richardson is one of the most powerful and tragic novelists in the language; and that he is so, notwithstanding much tedious description, much repetition and prolixity of narrative, is the best testimony to his art and genius. His works too are eminently original, which is always a powerful recommendation. They show an intimate acquaintance with the human heart, and an absolute command over the passions; they are, in fact, romances of the heart, embellished by sentiment, and as such possess a deep and enchaining interest, and a power of exciting virtuous emotions, which blind us to blemishes in style and composition, and to those errors in taste and manners, which it were difficult to avoid in works so voluminous and confined to domestic portraiture. From this author we shall offer no extract, though we so highly commend his works.

Fielding's novels form a striking contrast to those of Richardson. Coleridge remarks that, 'to take up one of them after one of Richardson's, is like emerging from a sick-room heated by stoves, into an open lawn on a breezy day in May.' That the transition from excited sensibilities and overpowering pathos, to light humor, lively description, and keen yet sportive satire, is agreeable, and even pleasant, no one will deny; but this by no means derogates from the power of Richardson as a novelist. The same change may be realized by turning from tragedy to comedy. The feelings can not remain in a state of constant tension, but must seek relief in variety. Perhaps Richardson stretches too violently and too continuously; his portraits are in classes, full charged with the peculiarities of their master. Fielding has at broader canvass, more light than shade, a clear and genial atmosphere, and groups of characters finely diversified. While Richardson 'made the passions move at the command of virtue,' Fielding bends them at will to mirth and enjoyment.

HENRY FIELDING was of high birth, his father being a grandson of the Earl of Danbigh, and a general in the army, and his mother the daughter

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of a judge. He was born at Sharpham Park, in Somersetshire, on the twen ty-second of April, 1707. The general had a large family, and was not a good economist, and Henry was early familiar with embarrassments. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards studied law two years at Leyden. In his twentieth year his studies were stopped, 'money bound,' as a kindred genius, Sheridan, used to say, and the youth returned to England. His father promised him two hundred pounds a year, but this, the son remarked, 'any one might pay who would.' On his mother's death, which occurred a few years after, he inherited a similar sum; and he also obtained fifteen hundred pounds by his marriage with a lady of Salisbury, of great beauty and worth.

Having previously subsisted by writing for the stage, in which he had little success, Fielding now gladly retired, with his wife, to the country. Here, however, he lived extravagantly; kept a pack of hounds, and a retinue of servants, and feasted all the squires in his neighborhood. In consequence of these extravagances he was in three years again penniless. He then returned to London, renewed his legal studies, and qualified himself for the bar. But his practice was insufficient for the support of his family, and he was, therefore, compelled again to write for the stage to supply the deficiency.

In 1742, Fielding's first novel, Joseph Andrews, appeared. This work at once stamped him as a master of the art, uniting to genuine English humor the spirit of Cervantes. To ridicule Richardson's 'Pamela' our author made his hero a brother of that renowned and popular lady; and even introduced her as Mrs. Booby, with the airs of an upstart, whom Parson Adams is compelled to reprove for laughing in church. The ridicule was certainly unjustifiable; but as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, 'how can we wish that undone without which Parson Adams would not have existed.' Fielding's next works were A Journey from this World to the Next, and The History of Jonathan Wild. A vein of keen satire runs through the latter, but the hero and his companions are such callous rogues, and unsentimental ruffians, that we can not take pleasure in their dexterity and success.

In 1749, Fielding was appointed one of the justices of Westminster and Middlesex, and was a zealous and active magistrate; but the office of a trading justice, paid by fees, was as unworthy of the genius of Fielding, as Burns's provision, as an exciseman. This appointment, according to his own statement, did not bring him in over three hundred pounds a year. In the midst of his official drudgery, and, unfortunately, too frequent dissipations, our author produced Tom Jones, unquestionably the finest novel in the English language. He received six hundred pounds for the copyright, and such was its success, that the publisher afterwards presented him one hundred pounds more. Two years after the publication of 'Tom Jones' appeared Amelia, for which he received one thousand pounds. Dr. Johnson was a great admirer of this novel, and read it through without stopping. Its domestic scenes moved him more deeply than heroic or ambitious adventures; but the conjugal affection and tenderness of Amelia are but ill

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