reign of Charles II., but never had been carried to its height of humour and reality till Fielding, Smollett, and Richardson, each in his peculiar and unrivalled way, displayed its utmost capabilities of painting men and manners as they are.

These were followed by " numbers without number," and without name, that peopled the shelves of the circulating libraries with the motley progeny of their brain. But from the time of the irruption of Southey and his irregulars into the region of Parnassus, where all had been torpor and formality before, with the exception of the little domain of Cowper, poetry rose so rapidly into fashion as to share the patronage of sentimentalists and other idle readers, till the Lady of the Lake and Childe Harold bore away the palm of popularity from the most renowned of their contemporaries—the ladies and gentlemen that live in novels, and no where else. There was indeed a long and desperate resistance made on the part of the novelists against the poets; and their indigenous resources failing, they called in to their aid, not German tales only, but to confound the enemy with their own weapons-German tragedies and German epics, of such portentous size and character as to excite astonishment, which many of those who felt it mistook for admiration, but which ceased even to be astonishment with the most stupid, when the inebriating effects of the first draught of the Teutonic Helicon had gone off, and left the reader in his right mind. Few of these exotics have been naturalised among us, except the Oberon of Mr. Sotheby, which leaves no room

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for regret to those who cannot read the exquisitely fine and fanciful original; and some of the best dramatic works of Schiller and Goethe.

It has been already intimated, that one of the greatest of living poets had embarked his wealthy capital of thought, and inexhaustible stores of memory, into a more profitable channel of literary commerce. I alluded to Sir Walter Scott as the author of "the Waverley Novels," as they are now significantly called," the Great Unknown" having disappeared in the person of "the Mighty Minstrel of the North," as the worthy baronet had been previously called in his character of poet. These, as the productions of one mind, exuberant beyond example in this cold climate, are undoubtedly the most extraordinary works of the age; and it might perhaps be added, the most faulty that in any age have exercised despotic dominion over readers of every kind, in such various ways, and for so long a time. A higher tribute cannot be paid to the sovereignty of genius, than is implied in this censure; for what must that excellence be which can afford such a foil, or endure such a drawback! It is no small merit in these to have so quickened the cloyed appetites of circulating-library readers for purer entertainment, that the dulness, froth, and sentimentality which were previously the staple ware of Leadenhall Street, and other wholesale manufactories of novels for the spring and fall fashions, are no longer tolerable, and fictions of far nobler and more intellectual character are substituted, though, of course, the mass is not wholly purified, and the million are the vulgar still.

The principal literary objections to these inimitable tales (for I meddle not with their morality) in after-times will be, that the author, in his best performances, has blended fact and fiction both in incidents and characters so frequently, and made his pictures at once so natural to the life, yet often so contrary to historical verity, that henceforward it will be difficult to distinguish the imaginary from the real with regard to one or the other; thus the credulity of ages to come will be abused in the estimate of men, and the identity of events by the glowing illusion of his pages, in which the details are so minute and exquisite, that the truth of painting will win the author credit for truth of every other kind, and most, it may be, where he least deserves it.

The Periodical Press.

But it is in the issues from the periodical press that the chief influence of literature in the present day consists. Newspapers alone, if no other evidence were to be adduced, would prove incontrovertibly the immense and hitherto unappreciated superiority in point of mental culture, of the existing generation over all their forefathers, since Britain was invaded by Julius Cæsar. The talents, learning, ingenuity, and eloquence employed in the conduct of many of these; the variety of information conveyed through their columns from every quarter of the globe to the obscurest cottage, and into the humblest mind in the realm, render newspapers, not luxuries, which they

might be expected to be among an indolent and voluptuous people, but absolute necessaries of life the daily food of millions of the most active, intelligent labourers, the most shrewd, indefatigable, and enterprising tribes on the face of the earth. Compare an ordinary provincial journal of last week, with the best that was published in the metropolis fifty years ago, and the step which refinement has made in the interval will at once appear. The periodical publications of the first half of the last century, the Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and their successors, did much towards increasing an eager relish for elegant literature, as well as rendering the more useful and popular kinds of knowledge accessible to every body. But, except in their masterpieces, which may be equalled, though never excelled, there are hundreds of articles in every week's newspapers, which may at least rival the common run of essays in some of the most celebrated works above alluded to. The Literary Gazette, the Spectator, and several other weekly journals, are decidedly literary, and exercise no slight jurisdiction in affairs of criticism and taste.

Of higher rank, though far inferior potency, are Magazines. A few of these, indeed, have considerable sale; but they rather reflect the image of the public mind, than contribute towards forming its features or giving it expression. As amusing miscellanies, they are in general far superior to their predecessors, before the establishment of that which bears the title of Monthly, and which, whatever may have been its merits or delinquencies in past

times, had the honour of effecting as glorious a revolution among the compilers of these, as Southey and Wordsworth effected among the rhymers of 1796. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, at this time, probably takes the lead among the fraternity, and by the boldness, hilarity, and address with which it is managed, it has become equally formidable in politics and predominant in literature. In both these departments, the New Monthly and the London assume a high station. *

Yet there are no publications whatever, which at once exemplify the advancement and the perversion of mind at this particular time, by such decided symptoms of both, as the magazines already named, which are at the head of their class. In the leading articles of these, there is scarcely a line of natural writing from month-end to month-end. Let this sweeping censure be admitted with what qualification it may, the general truth of the assertion may be established by an appeal to any page of any one of them opened at random. That admirable talents are in full exercise there, will be instantly acknowledged; but then all is effort, and splendour, and display. It is fine acting, which only falls short of nature; but it is not nature, and therefore cannot quite please, even at its best: we feel there is something wrong; we may not know exactly what it is, but this we do know, that all is not right. The con

And, since this Essay was composed, the Metropolitan, Frazer's Magazine, and others.