in those days fastened upon Joan of Arc; and at the age of eight-and-twenty, not long after his visit to North Germany in company with Wordsworth, when the young English poet paid his visit to Klopstock, Coleridge was the translator of Schiller's 'Wallenstein." The spirit of German literature attracted many to its study, and it became a concurrent influence in the literature of England. So, indeed, it has to this day continued; but its influence has at no time been dominant. Never perhaps was there a writer less under foreign influences than Sir Walter Scott. He had begun his career of literature in 1796, at the age of five-and- Walter Scott. twenty, as a translator of Bürger's "Lenora" and “Wild Huntsman"; two years afterwards he translated Goethe's drama of old knightly romance, "Goetz von Berlichingen"; but his pleasure in the union of strong feeling with simplicity, that characterises all good ballads and romances, was not to be satisfied alone with the romantic element in modern German literature. He went back to the Border Minstrelsy of his own country, and published his three volumes of it, which a critic said contained "the elements of a hundred historical romances." Then he grasped hands with Thomas of Ercildoune, who, in the thirteenth century, was carried to her own land by the Queen of Faerie, and lived with her for three whole years. From Thomas the Rymer, Scott at once, in 1805, passed to his own bright imagining of a "Lay of the Last Minstrel," that was the first of half-a-dozen modern gleeman's songs. Speech from the heart, and freedom from conventional restraints, of which men had grown weary, these songs had to recommend them. There was then refreshment in the simple, animated flow of story, whereof every turn was warmly felt and expressed in the light, variable ballad metre. The metre itself breathed joyous defiance of the literary formalism that had delighted in trim evenness of couplet and nice balance of antithesis. Here were bold borderers who never wore peruke, and could have ridden to the field with Goetz of the Iron Hand himself: "They quitted not their harness bright, They lay down to rest With corslet laced, Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred.” When these metrical tales lost influence before the growing fame of Byron, Scott broke with rhyme, and began, in 1814, to pour out his prose romances. At least one, often two, in in a year, and in one year three, appeared for the next seventeen years without intermission, except in the single year 1830. Then the occasional historical and other work for which Scott found time, in addition to that spent on his romance-writing, had for once the whole year to itself, and he produced only two dramas, the Letters on Demonology, the fourth series of the "Tales of a Grandfather," and the second volume of the "History of Scotland." Nowhere in print was Scott so much a poet as in the earlier of his romances. His bright, cheerful fancy, his quick humour, his honest warmth of feeling, that aroused every healthy emotion without stirring a passion, exercised, in these incessantly recurring novels, an influence as gradual, as sure, and as well fitted to its time, as that which had been exercised by Steele and Addison in constantly recurring numbers of their "Tatler" and "Spectator." There was a wide general public now able to fasten upon entertaining volumes. Scott widened it, and purified its taste. By Fenimore Cooper, the best of his imitators, we have the former strains caught up in a recurrence of the restless dream of an escape from civilisation to imagined virtues of the undrilled savage in his state of nature. In Scott there is no form whatever of romantic discontent. His world was the same world of genial sympathies in which, individually at least, we may all live if we will, and do live if we know it. He enjoyed the real, and sported with the picturesque. As he felt, he wrote, frankly and rapidly. His kindly Toryism was a wholesome influence. The Jacobites, so real to Defoe, amused the public now as the material of pleasant dreams; and the sunlight of Scott's fancy glistened upon rippling waters where the storm had menaced wreck. Develop journalism. Scott's novels were for seventeen years as so many parts of a great influential family periodical, fairly punctual. to its half-yearly appearance. But a true journalism was then being developed into adequate ment of expression of the English mind. To Newbery's "Public Ledger," started in 1760, Goldsmith contributed his "Citizen of the World." In 1763 Wilkes, in the "North Briton," honestly printed all the letters in the names of persons commented upon, and suffered for his comments in No. 45 on the prorogation Speech after an unpopular peace. Of the Letters of Junius, in the "Public Advertiser," the first appeared in April, 1767, the last in January, 1772, and these set an example of very bold political newspaper criticism. In trials that arose out of these letters Lord Mansfield sought in vain to deny to the jury the right of deciding what was libel, and what not, by confining its function to the question of publication. This question was not settled properly until the passing of Mr. Fox's Libel Bill in 1792. In 1769 the “ Morning Chronicle" was first brought out by William Woodfall, who was especially the ear of England in the House of Commons. Victualled with a hard-boiled egg, he could sit out the longest debate, and next day write out for his paper, which he both printed and edited, the pith of all that he had. heard. In 1772 appeared the "Morning Post," of which the editor, in 1780, seceded to found a new paper, the "Morning Herald." At this date there were no weekly papers. On the 13th of January, 1785, appeared a paper in four pages, "The Daily Universal Register," afterwards published, on the 1st of January, 1788, under the new name of "The Times," which, as its proprietor announced, "being a monosyllable, bids defiance to corruptors and mutilators of the language." The "Morning Advertiser" first appeared in 1794; and in the year following there were in London fourteen daily papers, ten published three times a week, two twice a week, and twelve weekly; while the distribution of newspapers throughout the country had been increased sixfold by the introduction of mail-coaches. In 1797 Canning and his friends started, as a weekly paper, the "Anti-Jacobin," which had a brilliant career of eight months, with William Gifford, afterwards editor of the "Quarterly Review," for manager. These journals had learnt to speak boldly upon public questions, in the face of distinct peril to their writers. In the first year of "The Times," its proprietor was sentenced to fine, imprisonment, and pillory for speaking his mind out upon the Duke of York. In the year following he was again prosecuted. The English journalists were, in fact, like the poets, bent upon full natural utterance, and upon the breaking down of all undue restraints. They were all more or less in earnest, and by their variety of temper and opinion represented then, as now, though less completely, the various interests and humours that contribute their tones to the common voice. To such continual discussion there was added the new element of a representation of the deliberate thought of the most cultivated class upon all public questions, whether of politics or literature, by the establishment of "The Edinburgh Review" in the year 1802, and of the "Quarterly Review" in 1808. Truth comes only of full argument by honest advocates of differing opinion. Of each Review the true use was almost doubled by the existence of the other. Their influence has been felt throughout the whole extent of English journalism. Partly by their example, monthly, weekly, daily writers, and as the reading public enlarged while more interests claimed representation, fresh groups also of good quarterly essayists, have been taught to aim at careful, polished criticism upon men and books. And so our English writers in a thousand forms win for the English people liberty and full communication of thought, not by their own separate skill, but simply by action for and with the English people, of which they are part. Readers So now, and always more and more, the strongest influence on English Writers is that of the English people which has learnt, or is learning to read. The Writers and reading is, no doubt, much larger than the thinking public; but there is continuous advance in reading power. The mere habit of reading that must be acquired by the illiterate adult, or by the child, may come more easily by the free use of a literature level to the mind whose powers of attention are untrained. John Foster, the essayist on "Popular Ignorance," thought it strange that any man whilst there lay within reach of his hand treasures of wit, should leave them untouched, and prefer to starve upon ephemeral and worthless books. The reason is, that the worth of a book lies in original thought, in independent play of fancy, in a delicate truth of expression that can be fully enjoyed only by those to whom it is not more natural to read than, when they read, to fasten upon their author with a habit of sustained attention. Many people do not apply such a habit even to the common occupation of their |