It was more various than the Rambler-more in the style of light reading. Hawkesworth, however, was an imitator of Johnson, and the conclusion of the Adventurer has the Johnsonian swell and cast of imagination : 'The hour is hastening in which whatever praise or censure I have acquired by these compositions, if they are remembered at all, will be remembered with equal indifference, and the tenor of them only will afford me comfort. Time, who is impatient to date my last paper, will shortly moulder the hand that is now writing it in the dust, and still this breast that now throbs at the reflection: but let not this be read as something that relates only to another; for a few years only can divide the eye that is now reading from the hand that has written. This awful truth, however obvious, and however reiterated, is yet frequently forgotten; for surely, if we did not lose our remembrance, or at least our sensibility, that view would always predominate in our lives which alone can afford us comfort when we die.' The World was the next periodical of this class. It was edited by Dr Moore, author of the tragedy of the Gamester, and other works, and was distinguished by contributions from Horace Walpole, Lord Lyttleton, Soame Jenyns, and the Earl of Chesterfield. The World has the merit of being very readable: its contents are more lively than any of its predecessors, and it is a better picture of the times. It was published weekly, from January 1753 to December 1756, and reached a sale of 2500 a week. Another weekly miscellany of the same kind, the Connoisseur, was commenced by George Colman and Bonnel Thornton-two professed wits, who wrote in unison, so that, as they state, 'almost every single paper is the joint product of both.' Cowper the poet contributed a few essays to the Connoisseur, short but lively, and in that easy style which marks his correspondence. One of them is on the subject of 'Conversation,' and he afterwards extended it into an admirable poem. From another we give an extract which seems like a leaf from the note-book of Washington Irving: The Country Church. It is a difficult matter to decide which is looked upon as the greatest man in a country church-the parson or his clerk. The latter is most certainly held in higher veneration, when the former happens to be only a poor curate, who rides post every Sabbath from village to village, and mounts and dismounts at the church-door. The clerk's office is not only to tag the prayers with an amen, or usher in the sermon with a stave; but he is also the universal father to give away the brides, and the standing godfather to all the new-born bantlings. But in many places there is a still greater man belong ing to the church than either the parson or the clerk himself. The person I mean is the squire, who, like the king, may be styled head of the church in his own parish. If the benefice be in his own gift, the vicar is his creature, and of consequence entirely at his devotion; or if the care of the church be left to a curate, the Sunday fees of roast-beef and plum-pudding, and a liberty to shoot in the manor, will bring him as much under the squire's command as his dogs and horses. For this reason, the bell is often kept tolling and the people waiting in the churchyard an hour longer than the usual time; nor must the service begin till the squire has strutted up the aisle, and seated himself in the great pew in the chancel. The length of the sermon is also measured by the will of the squire, as formerly by the hour-glass; and I know one parish where the preacher has always the complaisance to conclude his discourse, however abruptly, the minute that the squire gives the signal by rising up after his nap. The Connoisseur was in existence from January 1754 to September 1756. no matter in the Connoisseur, and who had a In April 1758, Johnson-who thought there was very poor opinion of the World-entered again into this arena of light literature, and commenced his Idler. The example of his more mercurial predecessors had some effect on the moralist, for the Idler is more gay and spirited than the Rambler. It lived through 103 numbers, twelve of which were contributed by his friends Thomas Warton, Langton, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Idler was the last experiment on the public taste in England of periodical essays published separately. In the Bee (a miscellany which existed only through eight weekly numbers in 1759), the Busy Body, the Lady's Magazine, the Town and Country Magazine, and other monthly miscellanies, essays were given along with other contributions. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. The Citizen of the World, by GOLDSMITH, was published in a collected shape in 1762, and his Essays in 1765. The former were at first, as they appeared in Newbery's Public Ledger, entitled 'Chinese Letters,' being written in the character of a Chinese philosopher giving his impressions of England and the English. As a light and genial satirist, a sportive yet tender and insinuating moralist, and as an observer of men and manners, we have no hesitation in placing Goldsmith far above Johnson. His chaste humour, poetical fancy, and admirable style, render these essays a mine of lively observation and pleasant satire, happy imagery, and pure English. The story of the Old Soldier, Beau Tibbs, the Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern, and the Strolling Player, are in the finest vein of story-telling; while the Eastern apologue, Asem, an Eastern Tale, and Alcander and Septimius, are tinged with the light of true poetry and imagination. Where the author speaks of actual life, and the 'fashion of our estate,' we see the workings of experience and a finely meditative mind. The History of Animated Nature, is imbued with the same graces of composition. Goldsmith was no naturalist, strictly speaking, but his descriptions are often vivid and beautiful, and his history is well calculated to awaken a love of nature and a study of its various phenomena. There is no exaggeration in the statement made by Johnson in his epitaph, that whatever Goldsmith touched he adorned. Beau Tibbs. Though naturally pensive, yet I am fond of gay company, and take every opportunity of thus dismissing the mind from duty. From this motive I am often found in the centre of a crowd; and wherever pleasure is to be sold, am always a purchaser. In these places, without being marked by any, I win in whatever goes forward, work my passions into a similitude of frivolous earnestness, shout as they shout, and condemn as they happen to disapprove. A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour. Attracted by the serenity of the evening, my friend and I lately went to gaze upon the company in one of the public walks near the city. Here we sauntered together for some time, either praising the beauty of such as were handsome, or the dresses of such as had nothing else to recommend them. We had gone thus deliberately forward for some time, when stopping on a sudden, my friend caught me by the elbow, and led me out of the public walk: I could perceive by the quickness of his pace, and by his frequently looking behind, that he was attempting to avoid somebody who followed; we now turned to the right, then to the left; as we went forward he still went faster, but in vain; the person whom he attempted to escape, hunted us through every doubling, and gained upon us each moment; so that at last, we fairly stood still, resolving to face what we could not avoid. hold a thousand guineas, and say done first, that"- When he left us, our conversation naturally turned upon so extraordinary a character. His very dress,' cries my friend, 'is not less extraordinary than his conduct. If you meet him this day you find him in rags; if the next, in embroidery. With those persons of distinction, of whom he talks so familiarly, he has scarcely a coffee-house acquaintance. However, both for the interests of society, and perhaps for his own, Heaven has made him poor; and while all the world perceives his wants, he fancies them concealed from every eye. An agreeable companion, because he understands flattery, and all must be pleased with the first part of his conversation, though all are sure of its ending with a demand on their purse. While his youth countenances the levity of his conduct, he may thus earn a precarious subsistence; but when age comes on, the gravity of which is incompatible with buffoonery, then will he find himself forsaken by all; condemned in the decline of life to hang upon some rich family whom he once despised, there to undergo all the ingenuity of studied contempt, to be employed only as a spy upon the servants, or a bugbear to fright the children into obedience. Adieu. Beau Tibbs continued. I am apt to fancy I have contracted a new acquaintance whom it will be no easy matter to shake off. My little beau of yesterday overtook me again in one of the public walks, and slapping me on the shoulder saluted me with an air of the most perfect familiarity. His dress was the same as usual, except that he had more powder in his hair, wore a dirtier shirt, a pair of Temple spectacles, and his hat under his arm. Our pursuer soon came up, and joined us with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance. My dear Drybone,' cries he, shaking my friend's hand, where have you been hiding this half-century? Positively I had fancied you were gone down to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country.' During the reply, I had an opportunity of surveying the appearance of our new companion; his hat was pinched up with peculiar smartness; his looks were pale, thin, and sharp; round his neck he wore a broad black riband, and in his bosom a buckle studded with glass; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist; he wore by his side a sword with a black hilt; and his stockings of silk, though newly washed, were grown yellow by long service. I was so much engaged with the peculiarity of his dress, that I attended only to the latter part of my friend's reply, in which he complimented Mr Tibbs on the taste of his clothes, and the bloom on his countenance. Pshaw, pshaw, Will,' cried the figure, 'no more of that, if you love me; you know I hate flattery, on my soul I do; and yet to be sure, an intimacy with the great will improve one's appearance, and a course of venison will fatten; and yet, faith, I despise the great as much as you do; but there are a great many honest fellows among them, and we must The oddities that marked his character, however, not quarrel with one half because the other wants soon began to appear; he bowed to several well-dressed weeding. If they were all such as my Lord Muddler, persons, who, by their manner of returning the complione of the most good-natured creatures that ever ment, appeared perfect strangers. At intervals he drew squeezed a lemon, I should myself be among the out a pocket-book, seeming to take memorandums before number of their admirers. I was yesterday to dine at all the company, with much importance and assiduity. the Duchess of Piccadilly's; my lord was there. "Ned," In this manner he led me through the length of the says he to me," Ned," says he, "I'll hold gold to silver I whole walk, fretting at his absurdities, and fancying can tell where you were poaching last night." "Poach-myself laughed at not less than him by every spectator. ing, my lord," said I, "faith, you have missed already; for I stayed at home and let the girls poach for me." That's my way; I take a fine woman as some animals do their prey; stand still, and swoop, they fall into my mouth.' Ah, Tibbs, thou art a happy fellow,' cried my companion, with looks of infinite pity. I hope your fortune is as much improved as your understanding in such company?' 'Improved!' replied the other, you shall know, but let it go no farther-a great secret-five hundred a year to begin with. My lord's word of honour for it-his lordship took me down in his own chariot yesterday, and we had a tête-à-tête dinner in the country; where we talked of nothing else.' I fancy you forget, sir,' cried I, 'you told us but this moment of your dining yesterday in town!' 'Did I say so?' replied he coolly, 'to be sure, if I said so, it was sodined in town; egad, now I do remember I did dine in town, but I dined in the country too; for you must know, my boys, I eat two dinners. By the by, I am grown nice in my eating. I'll tell you a pleasant affair about that. We were a select party of us to dine at Lady Grogram's, an affected piece, but let it go no further a secret. Well, there happened to be no assafœtida in the sauce to turkey, upon which, says I, "I'll As I knew him to be a harmless, amusing little thing, I could not return his smiles with any degree of severity; so we walked forward on terms of the utmost intimacy, and in a few minutes discussed all the usual topics preliminary to particular conversation. When we were got to the end of the procession, 'Hang me,' said he, with an air of vivacity, 'I never saw the Park so thin in my life before; there's no company at all to-day. Not a single face to be seen.' 'No company!' interrupted I peevishly; 'no company where there's such a crowd! why, man, there's too much. What are the thousands that have been laughing at us but company?' 'La, my dear!' returned he, with the utmost good-humour, you seem immensely chagrined: but, hang me, when the world laughs at me, I laugh at all the world, and so we are even. My Lord Trip, Bill Squash the Creolian, and I sometimes make a party at being ridiculous; and so we say and do a thousand things for the joke. But I see you are grave, and if you are for a fine grave sentimental companion, you shall dine with me and my wife to-day; I must insist on't. I'll introduce you to Mrs Tibbs, a lady of as elegant qualifications as any in nature; she was bred, but that's between ourselves, under the inspection of the Countess of All-night. A charming body of voice; but no more of that, she will give us a song. You shall see my little girl, too, Carolina_Wilhelmina Amelia Tibbs, a sweet pretty creature; I design her for my Lord Drumstick's eldest son, but that's in friendship, let it go no further; she's but six years old, and yet she walks a minuet, and plays on the guitar immensely already. I intend she shall be as perfect as possible in every accomplishment. In the first place I'll make her a scholar: I'll teach her Greek myself, and learn that language purposely to instruct her; but let that be a secret.' Thus saying, without waiting for a reply, he took me by the arm, and hauled me along. We passed through many dark alleys and winding ways; for, from some motives to me unknown, he seemed to have a particular aversion to every street. At last, however, we got to the door of a dismal-looking house in the outlets of the town, where he informed me he chose to reside for the benefit of the air. We entered the lower door, which ever seemed to lie most hospitably open; and I began to ascend an old and creaking staircase, when, as he mounted to shew me the way, he demanded whether I delighted in prospects, to which answering in the affirmative, 'Then,' says he, 'I shall shew you one of the most charming in the world out of my windows; we shall see the ships sailing, and the whole country for twenty miles round, tip-top quite high. My Lord Swamp would give ten thousand pounds for such a one; but, as I sometimes pleasantly tell him, I always like to keep my prospects at home, that my friends may see me the oftener.' By this time, we were arrived as high as the stairs would permit us to ascend, till we came to what he was facetiously pleased to call the first-floor down the chimney, and knocking at the door, a voice from within demanded: Who's there?' My conductor answered that it was he. But this not satisfying the querist, the voice again repeated the demand; to which he answered louder than before; and now the door was opened by an old woman with cautious reluctance. When we were got in, he welcomed me to his house with great ceremony, and, turning to the old woman, asked where was her lady? Good troth,' replied she, in a peculiar dialect, 'she's washing your two shirts at the next door, because they have taken an oath against lending out the tub any longer.' 'My two shirts!' cries he, in a tone that faltered with confusion, 'what does the idiot mean?' 'I ken what I mean well enough,' replied the other; 'she's washing your two shirts next door, because ' 'Fire and fury! no more of thy stupid exclamations,' cried he. Go and inform her we have got company. Were that Scotch hag to be for ever in the family, she would never learn politeness, nor forget that absurd poisonous accent of hers, or testify the smallest specimen of breeding or high life; and yet, it is very surprising too, as I had her from a parliament man, a friend of mine, from the Highlands, one of the politest men in the world; but that's a secret.' a husband, 'his lordship drank your health in a bumper.' Poor Jack,' cries he, a dear good-natured creature ; I know he loves me; but I hope, my dear, you have given orders for dinner. You need make no great preparations neither; there are but three of us; something elegant, and little will do; a turbot, an ortolan, or 'Or what do you think, my dear,' interrupts the wife, 'of a nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping hot, and dressed with a little of my own sauce.' The very thing,' replies he, 'it will eat best with some smart bottled beer; but be sure to let's have the sauce his grace was so fond of. I hate your immense loads of meat; that is country all over; extreme disgusting to those who are in the least acquainted with high life.' By this time my curiosity began to abate, and my appetite to increase; the company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails to render us melancholy. I therefore pretended to recollect a prior engagement, and after having shewn my respect to the house, according to the fashion of the English, by giving the old servant a piece of money at the door, I took my leave. Mr Tibbs assured me that dinner, if I staid, would be ready at least in less than two hours. On the Increased Love of Life with Age. Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living. Those dangers which, in the vigour of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for a continued existence. Yet Strange contradiction in our nature, and to which even the wise are liable! If I should judge of that part of life which lies before me by that which I have already seen, the prospect is hideous. Experience tells me that my past enjoyments have brought no real felicity, and sensation assures me that those I have felt are stronger than those which are yet to come. experience and sensation in vain persuade; hope, more powerful than either, dresses out the distant prospect in fancied beauty; some happiness in long perspective, still beckons me to pursue; and, like a losing gamester, every new disappointment increases my ardour to continue the game. Whence, then, is this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years? whence comes it, that we thus make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a period when it becomes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the senses of every We waited for some time for Mrs Tibbs's arrival, dur-pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil? Life would ing which interval I had a full opportunity of surveying be insupportable to an old man who, loaded with infirmthe chamber and all its furniture; which consisted of ities, feared death no more than when in the vigour of four chairs with old wrought bottoms, that he assured me manhood; the numberless calamities of decaying nature, were his wife's embroidery, a square table that had once and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure, would been japanned, a cradle in one corner, a lumbering at once induce him, with his own hand, to terminate cabinet in the other; a broken shepherdess, and a the scene of misery; but happily the contempt of death mandarin without a head, were stuck over the chimney; forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudi and round the walls, several paltry unframed pictures, cial, and life acquires an imaginary value in proportion which he observed were all his own drawing. What as its real value is no more. do you think, sir, of that head in a corner, done in the manner of Grisoni? There's the true keeping in it; it's my own face, and though there happens to be no likeness, a countess offered me a hundred for its fellow: I refused her, for, hang it, that would be mechanical, you know.' Chinvang the Chaste, ascending the throne of China, commanded that all who were unjustly detained in prison during the preceding reigns should be set free. Among the number who came to thank their deliverer on this occasion there appeared a majestic old man, who, falling at the emperor's feet, addressed him as The wife at last made her appearance, at once a follows: Great father of China, behold a wretch, now slattern and a coquette; much emaciated, but still carry-eighty-five years old, who was shut up in a dungeon at ing the remains of beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as she had staid out all night at the gardens with the countess, who was excessively fond of the horns. 'And, indeed, my dear,' added she, turning to her the age of twenty-two. I was imprisoned, though a stranger to crime, or without being even confronted by my accusers. I have now lived in solitude and darkness for more than fifty years, and am grown familiar with distress. As yet, dazzled with the splendour of that sun to which you have restored me, I have been wandering the streets to find out some friend that would assist, or relieve, or remember me; but my friends, my family, and relations are all dead, and I am forgotten. Permit me, then, O Chinvang, to wear out the wretched remains of life in my former prison; the walls of my dungeon are to me more pleasing than the most splendid palace: I have not long to live, and shall be unhappy except I spend the rest of my days where my youth was passed-in that prison from whence you were pleased to release me.' The old man's passion for confinement is similar to that we all have for life. We are habituated to the prison, we look round with discontent, are displeased | with the abode, and yet the length of our captivity only increases our fondness for the cell. The trees we have planted, the houses we have built, or the posterity we have begotten, all serve to bind us closer to earth, and imbitter our parting. Life sues the young like a new acquaintance; the companion, as yet unexhausted, is at once instructive and amusing; its company pleases, yet for all this it is but little regarded. To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend; its jests have been anticipated in former conversation; it has no new story to make us smile, no new improvement with which to surprise, yet still we love it; destitute of every enjoyment, still we love it; husband the wasting treasure with increasing frugality, and feel all the poignancy of anguish in the fatal separation. Sir Philip Mordaunt was young, beautiful, sincere, brave, an Englishman. He had a complete fortune of his own, and the love of the king his master, which was equivalent to riches. Life opened all her treasures before him, and promised a long succession of future happiness. He came, tasted of the entertainment, but was disgusted even at the beginning. He professed an aversion to living, was tired of walking round the same circle; had tried every enjoyment, and found them all grow weaker at every repetition. If life be in youth so displeasing,' cried he to himself, 'what will it appear when age comes on? if it be at present indifferent, sure it will then be execrable.' This thought imbittered every reflection; till at last, with all the serenity of perverted reason, he ended the debate with a pistol! Had this self-deluded man been apprised that existence grows more desirable to us the longer we exist, he would have then faced old age without shrinking; he would have boldly dared to live, and served that society by his future assiduity which he basely injured by his desertion. A General Election (about 1760). The English are at present employed in celebrating a feast which becomes general every seventh year; the parliament of the nation being then dissolved, and another appointed to be chosen. This solemnity falls infinitely short of our [Chinese] feast of the lanterns, in magnificence and splendour; it is also surpassed by others of the east in unanimity and pure devotion; but no festival in the world can compare with it for eating. Their eating, indeed, amazes me; had I five hundred heads, and were each head furnished with brains, yet would they all be insufficient to compute the number of cows, pigs, geese, and turkeys, which upon this occasion die for the good of their country. To say the truth, eating seems to make a grand ingredient in all English parties of zeal, business, or amusement. When a church is to be built, or an hospital endowed, the directors assemble, and instead of consult ing upon it, they eat upon it, by which means the business goes forward with success. When the poor are to be relieved, the officers appointed to dole out public charity assemble and eat upon it: nor has it ever been known that they filled the bellies of the poor till they had previously satisfied their own. But in the election of magistrates, the people seem to exceed all bounds; the merits of a candidate are often measured by the number of his treats; his constituents assemble, eat upon him, and lend their applause, not to his integrity or sense, but to the quantities of his beef and brandy. And yet I could forgive this people their plentiful meals on this occasion, as it is extremely natural for every man to eat a great deal when he gets it for nothing; but what amazes me is, that all this good living no way contributes to improve their good-humour. On the contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose their appetites; every morsel they swallow, and every glass they pour down, serves to increase their animosity. Many an honest man, before as harmless as a tame rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner, has become more dangerous than a charged culverin. Upon one of these occasions I have actually seen a bloody-minded man-milliner sally forth at the head of a mob, determined to face a desperate pastry-cook, who was general of the opposite party. . But you must not suppose they are without a pretext for thus beating each other. On the contrary, no man here is so uncivilised as to beat his neighbour without producing very sufficient reasons. One candidate, for instance, treats with gin, a spirit of their own manufacture; another always drinks brandy imported from abroad. Brandy is a wholesome liquor; gin a liquor wholly their own. This then furnishes an obvious cause of quarrel, whether it be most reasonable to get drunk with gin, or get drunk with brandy? The mob meet upon the debate; fight themselves sober; and then draw off to get drunk again, and charge for another encounter. So that the English may now properly be said to be engaged in war; since, while they are subduing their enemies abroad, they are breaking each other's heads at home. NOVELISTS. The decline of the tragic drama was accompanied by a similar decline of the heroic romances, both being in some measure the creation of an imaginative and chivalrous spirit. As France had been the country in which the early romance, metrical or prosaic, flourished in greatest strength, it was from the same nation that the second class of prose fictions, the heroic romances, also took its rise. The heroes were no longer Arthur or Charlemagne, but a sort of pastoral lovers, like the characters of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, who blended modern with chivalrous manners, and talked in a style of conventional propriety and decorum. This spurious offspring of romance was begun in the seventeenth century by an author named Honore d'Urfé, who was followed by Gomberville, Calprenede, and Madame Scudery D'Urfé had, episodically, and under borrowed names, given an account of the gallantries of Henri IV.'s court, which rendered his style more piquant and attractive; but generally, this species of composition was harmless and insipid, and its productions of intolerable length. The Grand Cyrus filled ten volumes! Admired as they were in their own day, the heroic romances could not long escape being burlesqued. The poet Scarron, about the time of our Commonwealth, attempted this in a work which he entitled the Comique Roman, or Comic Romance, which detailed a long series of adventures, as low as those of Cyrus were elevated, and in a style of wit and drollery of which there is hardly any other example. This work, though designed only as a ludicrous travesty of the romantic tales, became the first of a class of its own, and found followers in England long before we had any writers of the pure novel. Mrs Aphra Behn amused the public during the reign of Charles II. by writing tales of personal adventure similar to those of Scarron, but loosely constructed. She was followed by Mrs Manley, whose works are equally personal and equally licentious. Other models were presented in the early part of the century by the French novelist Le Sage, whose Gil Blas and Devil on Two Sticks, imitating in their turn the fictions of certain Spanish writers, consist of humorous and satirical pictures of modern manners, connected by a series of adventures. In England, the first pictures of real life in prose fiction were given by Defoe, who, in his graphic details, and personal adventures, all impressed with the strongest appearance of truth or probability, has never, in his own walk, been excelled. That walk, however, was limited; of genuine humour 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 crowd in with commerce, wealth, and luxury, banished the 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 characters-were Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, who even yet, after the lapse of more than a century, have had no superiors. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. SAMUEL RICHARDSON was born in Derbyshire in 1689, and was the son of a joiner, who could not afford to give his son more than the ordinary elements of education. In his seventeenth year, he was put apprentice to a printer in London, served seven years, and was afterwards five or six years a compositor and corrector of the press. He then set up for himself in a court in Fleet Street, whence he removed to Salisbury Court. He became master of an extensive business, and printer of the Journals of the House of Commons. In 1754 he was chosen master of the Stationers' Company, and in 1760 he purchased a moiety of the patent of printer to the king, which greatly increased his emoluments. He was a prosperous and liberal man-mild in his manners and dispositions--and seems to have had only one marked foible-excessive vanity. From a very early period of his life, Richardson was a fluent letter-writer; at 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 above the age of fifty, to write them a book of familiar letters on the useful concerns of life, he set about 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 as first published in two volumes was written in two months, and published in 1740, 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 as likely to do more good than twenty volumes of sermons; and Dr Sherlock recommended it from the pulpit! A second part of Pamela was added in 1742, but, like all such continuations, it was greatly inferior to the first, and was quite superfluous as regards the story. In 1748 appeared, in eight volumes, Richardson's second and greatest work, the History of Clarissa Harlowe; and in 1753, in six volumes, his novel, designed to represent the beau-idéal of a gentleman and Christian, the History of Sir Charles Grandison. The almost unexampled success and popularity of Richardson's life and writings were to himself disturbed and clouded by nervous attacks, which rendered him delicate and feeble in health. He was flattered and soothed by a number of female friends, in whose society he spent most of his time, and after reaching the goodly age of seventy-two, he died on the 4th of July 1761. The works of Richardson are all pictures of the heart. No man understood human nature better, or could draw with greater distinctness the minute shades of feeling and sentiment, or the final results of our passions. He wrote his novels, it is said, in his back-shop, in the intervals of business; and 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 happiest in female characters. Much of his time had been spent with the gentler sex, and his own retired habits and nervous sensibility approximated to feminine softness. He well repaid the sex for all their attentions by his character of Clarissa, one of the noblest tributes ever paid to female virtue and honour. The moral elevation of this heroine, the saintly purity which she preserves amidst scenes of the deepest depravity and the most seductive gaiety, 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 feelingsbut 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 detestation of vice increased. Pamela is a work of much humbler pretensions than Clarissa Harlowe it is like the Domestic Tragedy of Lillo compared with Lear or Macbeth. A simple country-girl, whom her master attempts to seduce, and afterwards marries, can be no very dignified heroine. But the excellences of Richardson are strikingly apparent in this his first novel. His power of circumstantial painting is evinced in the multitude of small details which he brings to |