been incapable; his amiable persons being merely good-natured. It is owing to this, we think, that Strap is superior to Partridge; and there is a heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of the scenes between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew which is beyond Fielding's power of impassioned writing. The whole of the scene on shipboard is a most admirable and striking picture, and we imagine very little, if at all exaggerated, though the interest it excites is of a very unpleasant kind. The picture of the little profligate French friar, who was Roderick's travelling companion, and of whom he always kept to the windward, is one of Smollett's most masterly sketches. Peregrine Pickle is no great favourite of ours, and Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of the genius of the author. difficulty to point out, in any author, passages written with more force and nature than these. It is not, in our opinion, a very difficult attempt to class Fielding or Smollett; the one as an observer of the characters of human life, the other as a describer of its various eccentricities. But it is by no means so easy to dispose of Richardson, who was neither an observer of the one, nor a describer of the other; but who seemed to spin his materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been nothing existing in the world beyond the little shop in which he sat writing. There is an artificial reality about his works, which is nowhere to be met with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with the literal minuteness of a common diary. The author had the strangest matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote the oddest mixture of poetry and prose. He does not appear to have taken advantage of anything in actual nature, from one end of his works to the other; and yet, throughout all his works (voluminous as they are-and this, to be sure, is one reason why they are so), he sets about describing every object and transaction as if the whole had been given in on evidence by an eye-witness. This kind of high finishing from imagination is an anomaly in the history of human genius; and certainly nothing so fine was ever produced by the same accumulation of minute parts. There is not the least distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end; every circumstance is made to tell. We cannot agree that this exactness of detail produces heaviness; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of truth, and a positive interest to the story; and we listen with the same attention as we should to the particulars of a confidential communication. We at one time used to think some parts of Sir Charles Grandison rather trifling and tedious, especially the long description of Miss Harriet Byron's wedding-clothes, till we met with two young ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very description for their own private gratification. After this, we could not blame the author. Humphry Clinker and Count Fathom are both equally admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant gossiping novel that ever was written-that which gives the most pleasure with the least effort to the reader. It is quite as amusing as going the journey could have been, and we have just as good an idea of what happened on the road as if we had been of the party. Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite; and his sweetheart, Winifred Jenkins, nearly as good. Matthew Bramble, though not altogether original, is excellently supported, and seems to have been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the Rivals. But Lismahago is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argument is not so delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity, when he finds his fortune mellowing with the wintry smiles of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble. This is the best preserved and most original of all Smollett's characters. The resemblance of Don Quixote is only just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader, without giving offence to anybody else. The indecency and filth in this novel are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings. The subject and characters in Count Fathom are, in general, exceedingly disgusting: the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness in the serious and sentimental parts; but there is more power of writing occasionally shown in The effect of reading this work is like an it than in any of his works. We need only increase of kindred; you find yourself all of a refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count's sudden introduced into the midst of a large address to the country of his ancestors on land- family, with aunts and cousins to the third and ing in England; to the robber-scene in the fourth generation, and grandmothers both by forest, which has never been surpassed; to the the father's and mother's side, and a very Parisian swindler, who personates a raw Eng-odd set of people too, but people whose real lish country squire (Western is tame in the comparison); and to the story of the seduction in the west of England. We should have some existence and personal identity you can no more dispute than your own senses,-for you see and hear all that they do or say. What is still more extraordinary, all this extreme elaborateness in working out the story seems to have cost the author nothing: for it is said that the published works are mere abridgments. We have heard (though this, we suppose, must be a pleasant exaggeration) that Sir Charles Grandison was originally written in eight-and-twenty volumes. He He Pamela is the first of his productions, and the very child of his brain. Taking the general idea of the character of a modest and beautiful country girl, and of the situation in which she is placed, he makes out all the rest, even to the smallest circumstance, by the mere force of a reasoning imagination. It would seem as if a step lost would be as fatal here as in a mathematical demonstration. The develop ment of the character is the most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that it can do, without being the same thing. The interest of the story increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in the heroine. Her sentiments gradually expand themselves, like opening flowers. She writes better every time, and acquires a confidence in herself, just as a girl would do writing such letters in such circumstances; and yet it is certain that no girl would write such letters in such circum stances. What we mean is this. Richardson's nature is always the nature of sentiment and reflection, not of impulse or situation. furnishes his characters, on every occasion, with the presence of mind of the author. makes them act, not as they would from the impulse of the moment, but as they might upon reflection, and upon a careful review of every motive and circumstance in their situation. They regularly sit down to write letters: and if the business of life consisted in letterwriting, and was carried on by the post (like a Spanish game at chess), human nature would be what Richardson represents it. All actual objects and feelings are blunted and deadened by being presented through a medium which may be true to reason, but is false in nature. He confounds his own point of view with that of the immediate actors in the scene; and hence presents you with a conventional and factitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred this truth of reflection to the truth of nature, when he said that there was more knowledge of the human heart in a page of Richardson than in all Fielding. Fielding, however, saw more of the practical results, and understood the principles as well; but he had not the same power of speculating upon their possible results, and combining them in certain ideal forms of passion and imagination--which was Richardson's real excellence. It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual good understanding and comparing of notes between the author and the persons he describes; his infinite circumspection, his exact process of ratiocination and calculation, which gives such an appearance of coldness and formality to most of his characters,—which makes prudes of his women, and coxcombs of his men. Everything is too conscious in his works. Everything is distinctly brought home to the mind of the actors in the scene, which is a fault undoubtedly: but then, it must be confessed, everything is brought home in its full force to the mind of the reader also; and we feel the same interest in the story as if it were our own. Can anything be more beautiful or affecting than Pamela's reproaches to her "lumpish heart" when she is sent away from her master's at her own request-its lightness when she is sent for back-the joy which the conviction of the sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the coming-on of springthe artifice of the stuff gown-the meeting with Lady Davers after her marriage-and the trial scene with her husband? Who ever remained insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina except Sir Charles Grandison himself, who was the object of it? Clarissa is, however, his master-piece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in herself, she is still finer in his account of her. With that foil, her purity is dazzling indeed: and she who could triumph by her virtue and the force of her love over the regality of Lovelace's mind, his wit, his person, his accomplishments, and his spirit, conquers all hearts. We should suppose that never sympathy more deep or sincere was excited than by the heroine of Richardson's romance, except by the calamities of real life. The links in this wonderful chain of interest are not more finely wrought, than their whole weight is overwhelming and irresistible. Who can forget the exquisite gradations of her long dying scene, or the closing of the coffin-lid, when Miss Howe comes to take her last leave of her friend; or the heart-breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on what was to have been her wedding-day? Well does a modern writer exclaim "Books are a real world, both pure and good, Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness may grow!" Richardson's wit was unlike that of any other writer; his humour was so too. Both were the effect of intense activity of mind;-laboured, and yet completely effectual. We might refer Spring o'er the eastern champaign smiled, As Spring parades her new domain, Three months are fled, and still she reigns, Exulting queen o'er hills and plains; The birds renew their nuptial vow, Nestlings themselves are lovers now; Fresh broods each bending bough receives, Till feathers far outnumber leaves; But kites in circles swim the air, And sadden music to despair. The stagnant pools, the quaking bogs, Team, croak, and crawl with hordes of frogs; The matted woods, the infected earth, Are venomous with reptile birth; Armies of locusts cloud the skies; With beetles hornets, gnats with flies, Interminable warfare wage, And madden heaven with insect-rage. The flowers are wither'd;-sun nor dew The corn-fields shoot:-their blades, alas! The tainted flocks, the drooping kine, And where the soil his victims strew, Corruption quickens them anew. But ere the year was half expired, Spring saw her folly, and retired; Yoked her light chariot to a breeze, And mounted to the Pleiades; Content with them to rest or play Along the calm nocturnal way; Till, heaven's remaining circuit run, They meet the pale hybernal sun, And, gaily mingling in his blaze, Hail the true dawn of vernal days. JAMES MONTGOMERY. BROKEN LINKS. BY WILLIAM SAWYER. I. The house was thoroughly embowered. From the road, looking through the trees, you saw nothing but a quaint gabled end, bright with honeysuckle, and, perhaps, a swinging casement should the wind be high. But this was enough to suggest how sweet a place it was, and strangers would sigh as they looked for envy of its beauty, its quiet, and the placid repose and happiness of which it seemed the retreat. In all the village there was nothing like the Grange for picturesqueness, and with this it lacked nothing in point of comfort. It was a home. To those who lived in it a pleasant home. They loved its quaint old rooms, gloomy from foliage at the windows, and the bright garden, in which all things flourished with a sweet luxuriance. They loved it for itself and for its memories; for to them it had been a world in which much of their lives had been gladly spent: a narrow but a pleasant world of abundance and of infinite quiet and repose. The rumour in the village went that the early life of Colonel Horlock of the Grange had been a stormy one. He had seen service in the Peninsula. Had been somewhat of a fire-eater, it was surmised; a ready duellist, certainly, if only in keeping with the fashion of his day, and there were not wanting rumours of some meeting of romantic interest. Was it true that he had shot the lover of the Spanish lady whom he afterwards made his wife, and had in consequence been obliged to flee from Spain and seek seclusion in that village home? None knew for certain why it was that Horlock threw up his profession in the face of brilliant prospects. None knew for certain why he to Lovelace's reception and description of Hickman, when he calls out Death in his ear, as the name of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen in love: and to the scene at the glove shop. What can be more magnificent than his enumeration of his companions-" Belton so pert and so pimply-Tourville so fair and so foppish," &c.? In casuistry he is quite at home; and, with a boldness greater even than his puritanical severity, has exhausted every topic on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson, not perhaps so uncommon, which is, his systematically preferring his most insipid characters to his finest, though both were equally his own invention, and he must be supposed to have understood something of their qualities. Thus he preferred the little selfish, affected, insignificant Miss Byron, to the divine Clementina; and again, Sir Charles Grandison, to the nobler Lovelace. We have nothing to say in favour of Lovelace's morality; but Sir Charles is the prince of coxcombs, whose eye was never once taken from his own person and his own virtues; and there is nothing which excites so little sympathy as this excessive egotism. It remains to speak of Sterne;-and we shall do it in few words. There is more of mannerism and affectation in him, and a more immediate reference to preceding authors;-but his excellences, where he is excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual and inventive, like Richardson's-but totally opposite in the execution. The one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of touches; the others, by rapid and masterly strokes, and graceful apposition. His style is equally different from Richardson's-it is at times the most rapid, the most happy, the most idiomatic of any of our novel writers. It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of morceaux,of brilliant passages. His wit is poignant, though artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork has 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: and 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 humour, 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, both of body and mind, is inimitable. It is the model from which all those despicable performances against modern philosophy ought to have been copied, if their authors had known anything of the subject they were writing about. My Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature. He is the most unoffending of God's creatures; or, as the French express it-un tel petit bon homme! Of his bowlinggreen, his sieges, and his amours, who would say or think anything amiss? THE REIGN OF SPRING. Who loves not Spring's voluptuous hours, The carnival of birds and flowers? -Who loves not Winter's awful form? Spring, in possession of the field, Compell'd her sisters soon to yield: They part,―resolved elsewhere to try A twelvemonth's empire of the sky; And-calling off their airy legions, Alighted in adjacent regions. |