STERNE-GOLDSMITH.

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In the characters of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, he has, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, exalted and honoured humanity, and impressed upon his readers such a lively picture of kindness and benevolence, blended with courage, gallantry, and simplicity, that their hearts must be warmed whenever it is recalled to memory.' In the last year of his life, Sterne published his Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, which is constructed with less eccentricity, and contains chapters of equal tenderness.

The Vicar of Wakefield, written in 1761 by OLIVER GOLDSMITH, then an obscure literary adventurer, residing in a mean part of London, is perhaps the very happiest, as it is certainly one of the least exceptionable, of the novels of the last century. It narrates, in the first person, the history of an amiable and simple-minded clergyman, during a series of domestic misfortunes, that severely try, but never subdue, his moral courage, and over which he is finally triumphant. With some defects in point of probability, it is a singularly beautiful and interesting picture of the middle class of English rural society; combining great knowledge of human nature and of the world, with the mildness of one who is too sensible of his own weaknesses to treat those of his neighbours with undue severity. The Fool of Quality, published in 1766 by Mr Henry Brooke, is a work of much greater extent, but may be ranked beside the Vicar of Wakefield, as affording many pleasing sketches of contemporary manners. It appears to have been chiefly designed for the young, for whose education it presents many excellent hints. The Adventures of a Guinea, by Charles Johnstone, published about this time, was another successful delineation of existing society, but deeply tinged with satire. The four writers last mentioned were natives of Ireland.

The series of the novelists of the period is closed by HENRY MACKENZIE (1745-1831), a native of Scotland, who, in 1771, published anonymously his celebrated Man

of Feeling, which was followed in the course of a few years by The Man of the World, and Julia de Roubigné. Mackenzie is distinguished by refined sensibility and by exquisite taste. His Man of Feeling is designed to show, in a few fragmentary chapters, exhibiting little coherence, a hero constantly obedient to every emotion of his moral sense, and apparently almost too sensitive and tender-hearted for contact with the world. His second novel aimed at exhibiting a person who, rushing headlong into guilt and ruin, spreads misery all around him, by the pursuit of selfish and sensual pleasures. Mackenzie, with more delicacy, possesses much of Sterne's peculiar pathos; he has great fancy, and incomparable taste; his characters, however, have the fault of being only representatives of certain ideas, instead of genuine pictures of individuals existing, or who might have existed. His works, it may be said, are moral treatises in narrative.

This period witnessed the commencement of that kind of fiction which at present bears the title of the Romance. The earliest example of it was the Castle of Otranto, by the Honourable HORACE WALPOLE, published in 1764. Walpole (1717-1797), a younger son of the celebrated prime minister, having devoted himself to the study of Gothic architecture, by degrees his imagination became filled with appropriate ideas of the chivalry of the middle ages. A dream at length presented to him the groundwork of what he thought could be wrought up into a romantic fiction, and the result was this elegant tale of superstition, the scene of which is laid in the south of Italy in the eleventh century. The Castle of Otranto immediately acquired great popularity, and was successfully imitated by MRS CLARA REEVE, in a story entitled The Old English Baron, which appeared in 1777. It was not, however, till the ensuing period of literary history, that the Romance was carried to its utmost perfection.

The era now under notice may be not improperly termed the Augustan age of historical composition in Britain.

In the early part of the century, history was written laboriously, but without elegance. The best compilation of the history of England was that of Echard, already mentioned; or, as an alternative, the reader might choose the three folios published in 1706, under the title of The Complete History of England, in which the space preceding the reign of Charles I., was given in the language of various authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while the subsequent reigns were the composition of White Kennett, bishop of Peterborough, celebrated for his controversial writings on the Whig side of Church politics. In 1725, a voluminous history of England, written in the French language, was printed at the Hague, being_the composition of Monsieur Rapin, a refugee French Protestant. Of this work, two translations appeared in England, where it obtained the credit of presenting much solid information, in a manner upon the whole impartial, though rather more favourable to the Whigs than to the Tories. There were other compilations, but so deficient in all the important requisites of history, as to be unworthy of notice.

In surveying the historical productions of the period, we are first attracted by the voluminous productions of THOMAS CARTE (1686–1754), originally a clergyman of the Established Church, but who, being prevented by his Jacobite predilections from taking the oaths to George I., assumed the lay habit in 1714, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. Carte was a laborious inquirer, but by no means an accomplished writer, and too strongly swayed by political prejudices to be a fair and just historian. His first work was The Life of James Duke of Ormond, published in 1735-6, in three large volumes, and embracing much of the general history of the latter part of

the preceding century. He then commenced researches for a history of England, in which he was encouraged by the chiefs of the Tory party and others, among whom were the common council of London, who voted him an annuity during the time he should be occupied in the undertaking. The first volume appeared in 1747, and would have been well received, if its credit had not been shaken by an absurd story thrust in at the end, respecting a man who was said to have been cured of the king's evil by the touch of the Pretender in the year 1716. The fourth volume, published after the death of the author, brought the history down to the year 1654; it is still esteemed as a great collection of facts, though the style is inelegant and the reflections unphilosophical. The Roman History of NATHANIEL HOOKE, published in four large volumes, between 1733 and 1771, is a work in some respects similar, but written more clearly, and with more critical acuteness in the choice of materials.

The public possessed only these ungainly compilations, when DAVID HUME (1711-1776), by birth the younger son of a Scottish country gentleman, and who had distinguished himself by some metaphysical writings, took advantage of his situation as librarian to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, to commence a history of England, in which a judicious selection of events should be treated in a philosophical manner. The first volumes, embracing the reigns of the Stuart sovereigns, appeared in 1754-6; and the work was completed before 1761, by the addition of the earlier periods. It was the first example of the highest kind of historical composition which appeared in English literature, and it has ever since been the standard work upon the subject, notwithstanding the superior erudition, accuracy, and even elegance, of subsequent writers. Its acknowledged defects are carelessness both as to facts and style, and deliberate partiality towards the cavalier party in the contests of the seventeenth century; to which may be added one of greater importance, for which, however, the author is not blamable,

HUME ROBERTSON.

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its want of the inestimable advantages which are now derivable from state documents and other genuine materials of history. The merits of this writer are, however, so great, so singular is the charm which his vigorous mind has imparted to the narrative,-and so enlarged and philosophical are the greater part of his views of events and characters, that he promises, with the aid of a judicious commentary, if such can be obtained, long to continue superior to all rivalry.

The compilation of such a work by an author who could hardly be said to speak the language in which it was expressed, was one of the most remarkable circumstances connected with it. Scotland had hitherto afforded hardly any writers of English who approached classical excellence; and the surprise was accordingly great, when a piece of composition, so graceful amidst all its negligence, was produced on the northern shores of the Tweed. The truth is, that, during the reign of George II., a considerable number of learned persons in Scotland had been studying English literature with the greatest zeal; insomuch that, about the time when Mr Hume's history appeared, societies existed in more than one of the university towns, for the purpose of encouraging not only the writing, but as much as possible the speaking of pure English. The country was now accordingly prepared to produce that brilliant cluster of writers, embracing Hume, Blair, Robertson, Smith, and others, which occupies so prominent a place in the literary history of the period.

WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1721-1793), a country clergyman, enjoying comparatively few advantages for historical study, published in 1759 his History of Scotland during the reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI., which was at once pronounced to be a still finer specimen of English composition than the work of Hume, though wanting the nervous philosophy of that writer. Encouraged by the success of this effort, Dr Robertson ventured upon a task requiring far more research and greater grasp of mind, and gave to the world, in 1769, his History of the