As some lone man, who in a desert hears
The music of his home:-unwonted fears
Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,
And faith and custom and low-thoughted cares,

Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space

Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling place.

Truth's deathless voice pauses among

mankind!

If there must be no response to my cry-
If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
On his pure name who loves them,-thou and I,
Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity
Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,-
Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by,
Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight,
That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

When the elements of the moral and political world were in a state of high commotion, a work entitled the "Pursuits of Literature" was published anonymously. It was a severe and an indignant satire upon the wild and unprincipled writers of that period. Its tone was high and manly, but its severity was directed by no party spirit. The author struck down the sciolists and charlatans of that period with a strong hand. He neither courted nor feared those in power. In the pride of a man of letters, he assumed the bold, but true doctrine, that on literature, well or ill conducted, depends the fate of a nation. He spoke of literature in its broadest sense. He brought great stores of learning to his aid. He had drank deeply of the sweet waters

This

of the Pierian spring. If he was sometimes guilty of affectation, it could do no harm to any one but himself. The author of the Pursuits of Literature was a learned man, if his pedantry was at times too apparent. If this composition was not equal to the pretensions of the writer, it most certainly was a learned production. The notes were more valued than the verse. work did much to put down the host of spurious politicians and writers of affected importance, if the author did, in hasty moments, throw his arrows somewhat too promiscuously. The author plumed himself, like Junius, on concealment, but was not like him, capable of keeping his secret. The author was found to be Mr. Mathias a learned man. Canning, in his poem called "New Morality," speaks of the author of the Pursuits of Literature, then unknown, with no small share of praise:

"Thou too!-the nameless bard,-whose honest zeal
For law, for morals, for the public weal,
Pours down impetuous on thy country's foes
The stream of verse, and many languaged prose;
Thou too!-though oft thy ill-advised dislike
The guiltless head with random censure strike,-
Though quaint allusions, vague and undefined,
Play faintly round the ear, but mark the mind :—
Through the mix'd mass yet truth and learning shine,
And manly vigour stamps the nervous line:
And patriot warmth the generous rage inspires,
And wakes and points the desultory fires!"

From Mathias the lake poets received a serious castigation. Perhaps, he was too intent upon extirpating

the pitiful gnats and fire-flies of literature that were buzzing and stinging about him, while he should have been dealing his ponderous blows upon the monsters and dragons of mischief. Though full of classical allusion, and heroic examples, he forgot that of Hercules. Had this hero stopped on his journeys to abate every little nuisance, or to have crushed every tarantula and viper in his pathway, the Augean stable might never have been cleansed, nor the Nemean lion slain. Great efforts should be directed to great ends.

Fiction is now the rage in the republic of letters. The history of fiction is one of deep philosophy and curious incident. Fiction has always been natural to man, and has claimed a share of his attention in every age and country. The popular fictions of the English came from the north, and are derived from the Hunswho obtained them from the east, where they had existed almost from the birth of man. In passing through the coarse, warlike Huns, they lost something of their Oriental coloring, but nothing of their strength or exaggeration; their eastern features are still always discernible. It is not difficult to trace fiction in every age or nation; it has been the extended shadow of the mind of man at all times, which kept a strong resemblance to the features of his character. The Greeks did not cultivate as we now do. The golden age of fiction was among the Arabs from the ninth to the fourteenth century, when those lovely tales, the Arabian Nights, were invented, or collected and burnished up by the devotees to Arabic learning. In these tales superhuman agency is employed to more than human purposes. If genii appear, they have something worthy of their powers to perform; they are mostly inclined

to virtue. If a demon is called to act, he is never supreme; some talisman can control him,-some good spirit is his master.

The early ages of poetry and fiction in England, have been traced with care by Warton, in his history of English poetry; but the first of happy fiction, as it is now understood, was the Utopia, by Sir Thomes More, whose writings have been named in a previous chapter.

A work of fiction, or a novel, to take the language of the times, is an exhibition of action or passion, and incident, such as belongs to nature, and is a dark, or bright or beautiful picture of human life; although there never existed a precise prototype of it, still all must be after nature. In the hands of a master such a composition may be made attractive and useful. It is compounded by blending such matters as have the spirit of public or private history, with such remarks put into the mouths of those who did, or did not exist; or by giving to ideal characters the air, manner, and words of real ones. In modern times, also, some characters, as in ancient novels, are drawn with superhuman powers, suited to mortal purposes. Godwin has taken this liberty in his admirable novel, St. Leon. In this work the fable of the elixir of life, that gave immortality to all who drank it, and the philosopher's stone, that changed all metals into gold by the touch, are worked up to a high and commanding purpose,-to throw colors upon the scenes of life, to diversify them at will, and to lead the mind through the wonderful to a just sense of the true. In his Caleb Williams, and other books from his pen, he works only in mortal agencies, and brings about ends by natural means.

Among the first of English novelists is Mrs. Radcliff.

Her imagination was of a high order. She brought into her works a spirit of Italian history, which was always full of romance and taste. There was a current of blood running through it, more often of patrician than plebeian fountains. Crime, sentiment, daring, inexplicable conduct, abounding in the quietest walks of life, and superabounding in the upper circles of society, made Italy one fertile field of novel incident, which the "great magician of Udolpho" improved and embellished.

If we lay aside excitement, passion, and the wonderful, and come to just and powerful exhibitions of human life, Miss Edgeworth has no superior. She deals in nothing but probable events, which are full of instruction, and are well calculated to teach all classes their duties. Her great good sense was soon discovered by an intelligent community, and the cant and fustian, and mawkish sensibility which was deluging the land, at once, in a measure, disappeared, and a better taste was cultivated. Her PATRONAGE would afford lessons for the profound statesman. It is a mirror of nature. It flatters no one, nor gives any unnatural image. Hosts of similar productions were thrown off for the public, and many of them were well intended, and some of them well written. The knight errants in the fields of literature were numerous, and they coursed here and there without superior or master, until Walter Scott appeared. At first he was the great unknown. At the onset he bore away the palm from all his rivals with ease, and then becoming a little jaded, he seemed to gallop over the course as one careless of the victory; but when some cried out that he was exhausted, the next moment he was seen recruited, dash