political agent, traveller, tradesman, brickmaker, projector, and prisoner in Newgate. He had an inexhaustible store of miscellaneous reading ; he delighted especially in travels and adventures; he had extraordinary aptitude for minute and realistic detail; he had an indefatigable habit of the pen. For all these gifts the experiences of Selkirk, as developed in Robinson Crusoe, afforded a favourable field, while its very limitations and restrictions tended to control and concentrate his 'thick-coming fancies.' Moreover, it is supposed that certain affinities-of which too much may easily be made, but which he certainly desired should be recognised -between the circumstances of his imagined castaway and his own solitary and self-reliant career, gave a subjective note to his work, which, save in the Farther Adventures and the Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, it does not attain elsewhere. It is certainly not equally perceptible in Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roxana, and the rest of the fictitious narratives that followed his admitted masterpiece, books which are nevertheless characterised by the same exactitude of trivial particulars, the same intentional negligences and repetitions, the same homely, pedestrian, and even flat phraseology. For the most part, they are chronicles of such careers as, in real life, would have fallen to the recording pen of the Ordinary of Newgate, from whose historiographic efforts they differ mainly by their greater variety of incident, their practised pencraft, and their faculty (in their writer's own words) of forging a story.' In this last art Defoe is unrivalled. By the mental stenography and systematic stocktaking of a lifetime, he had accumulated so vast a reserve of facts and illustrations that, in the absence of thing to 'report,' in journalistic phrase, he could concoct a report of such astounding verisimilitude that to this day it remains debatable whether some of his performances are true, or partly true, or not true at all, in the sense that the events which they profess to narrate were never combined in the experiences of one and the same individual.

any

From the fact that Hogarth makes Moll Flanders the chosen literature of his 'Idle Apprentice,' it may be presumed that many of what Lamb calls the 'secondary' fictions of Defoe, though professedly didactic in their intention, were directed at readers not more illustrious than the apple-woman whom Borrow's Lavengro found studying the same absorbing work on London Bridge. But there were other

reasons why they might be expected to appeal to the people more than to the cultivated classes. It was Defoe's boast that his tales were true histories, always an additional attraction to the humbler reader; and that, being true, they had no connection with such novels and romances as then existed. It was not with the Oroonoko of the warm-blooded Aphra Behn, or the Cassandra of the sempiternal Sieur de la Calprenède, that he wished them to be compared: his fitter analogue in unrelieved veracity, had he sought for it, would have been more easily found in Bunyan's sombre and relentless Life and Death of Mr Badman. But if, in addition to his singular gift of 'lying like truth,' he had combined with his work any appreciable plot to be unravelled or problem to be solved; if he had included any material admixture of passion, or any delineation of the domestic life of his day, he might fairly have claimed-what is sometimes claimed for him-to rank as the Father of the English Novel. These things, however, he did not do. His invented biographies of rogues and pirates and bona robas differ from those which are not invented only in being fictitious as wholes; and they no more entitle their author to priority in fiction as we now understand it than if he had been the author of the wonderful book-not a little indebted to his own Robinson Crusoe-which seventeen years later was given to the world by the maimed and melancholy genius of Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels, that unique and unclassable masterpiece, must be left for treatment in the special pages on Swift that follow. In tracing the history of the Novel, it is nevertheless impossible not to refer to it, if only on account of the circumstantiality in fiction in which Swift rivals Defoe; but it has little or nothing to do with the development of the form.

But

That development came suddenly and unexpectedly, nine years after Defoe had been laid to rest in the Dissenters' burial-ground at Bunhill Fields. And it came from a most unhopeful source. It would have been as easy to predict that a middle-aged printer should become the author of Pamela as that a sexagenarian journalist should sit down and write Robinson Crusoe. There are indeed certain superficial resemblances between Richardson and Defoe. Both belonged to the lower middle classes; both posed as moralists; both wrote the English of common speech; both were circumstantial in manner and copious in style. But

there the likeness ends. If Defoe gives little evidence of constructive intention, Richardson, on the contrary (at his best), works steadily to a foregone conclusion; if Defoe cares nothing for the affections, Richardson, on his side, is intensely preoccupied with them; if Defoe eschews sentiment and tearful emotion, Richardson revels in both, and cries as he writes. The one discovered an uninhabited island, the other the very-much-inhabited female heart; and, as far as the modern novel is concerned, the latter is the more notable achievement. With his wonderfully sympathetic insight into feminine character, Richardson's success might have been more signal if the accidents of his early habits had not led him to conduct his tale by correspondence. His biographer, Mrs Barbauld, holding an honest brief for her author, contends that this is the 'most natural' way, which is arguable; but she is also constrained to admit that it is the least probable,' which can scarcely be denied, above all in our day, when letter-writing no longer flourishes. That, notwithstanding his insupportable vehicle -for Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, his remaining novels, are on the same plan as Pamela-Richardson was able to enchain his public, must be attributed partly to the fact that its appetites were more unjaded and less impatient than ours, and partly to the extraordinary manner in which the writer's prolix but cumulative minuteness insensibly and irresistibly compels and subjugates the student who fairly adventures upon the text.

But it may

safely be affirmed that if no better model of fiction had been found than what Fielding calls the 'epistolary Style,' the early Novel, in spite of its psychology, must have perished speedily of its own perverted method.

With Fielding's Joseph Andrews, however, the new form quitted the confined (and slightly stuffy) atmosphere of Richardson's cedar-parlour for the open air and the cheery bustle of the Georgian high-road. The range of Richardson's characters is not great, and in his last two novels he scarcely travels beyond the personages of genteel comedy. But Fielding makes his draft upon Human Nature at large, and crowds his stage with men and women of all sorts and conditions, inclining by choice to the middle and lower classes rather than to 'the highest Life,' which he considers to present 'very little Humour or Entertainment.' With the precise connection of Pamela and Joseph Andrews it is not necessary to deal here, as it is sufficiently

discussed hereafter. But, apart from mental analysis, the difference between Richardson and Fielding is practically the difference between Richardson and the modern Novel. Few now write novels in Richardson's fashion. But even to-day many books bear manifest traces of the form that Fielding gave to Tom Jones and Amelia. Jones and Amelia. In the first place, he tells his story directly, in his own person, instead of letting his hero tell it, or allowing his characters to unravel themselves in letters. He pays minute attention to the construction and evolution of his plot, carefully excluding characters and episodes which do not advance the fable or contribute to the end to be attained. Rejecting Sensibility, which he regards as more or less unmanly, he substitutes for it Humour and Irony, in the latter of which attributes he is as great a master as Swift. In his character-drawing he puts forth his full strength. Without much parade of psychology, he manages to make his dramatis personæ extraordinarily real and vivid, placing them before us in their habit as they lived, and with their fitting accessories. Finally, while painting Humanity as he finds it, by no means composed of 'Models of Perfection,' but rather of very frail and fallible personalities, he is careful-no doubt with perfect sincerity-to proclaim a moral purpose. The main objects of his satire, he declares, are Vanity and Hypocrisy. It is his intention to exhibit Vice as detestable, and never successful. It is his 'sincere endeavour,' he affirms in the Dedication of Tom Jones, 'to recommend Goodness and Innocence,' and to promote the cause of religion and virtue. Perhaps, in these more decorous days, it is sometimes difficult to see that he has rigorously adhered to his principles; but, in any case, when fair allowance is made for altered times and manners, his programme differs but little, in plan and purpose, from the plan and purpose of the modern novel. There are, indeed, but two characteristics in which he has not always been imitated by later practitioners of the art. In the first place, he writes, in general, most excellent, unlaboured English-simple and clear and strong the English of a gentleman and a scholar. Secondly, it is his peculiarity to introduce each fresh division of his book by an initial chapter (probably suggested by the Chorus of Greek drama), in which, in his own person, he gossips pleasantly about his method and his characters. To his admirers these pro

legomena, one of which is printed at page345, are the most delightful part of his work. But they are practically confined to Tom Jones, as they are only partially employed in Joseph Andrews, and in Amelia not at all.

Fielding more than once refers to the pains he had taken in composing these prefatory chapters. Like Richardson, he professed also to foresee that he was inaugurating a 'new Province of Writing; and it must be admitted that he has no real rival in his own line until the days of Waverley. But he had more than one contemporary of genius. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, indeed, thought, upon its first anonymous appearance, that Smollett's Roderick Random was written by her clever kinsman-a supposition which proves her ladyship to have been a better judge of merit than of style. It would be hard to compare, say, the visit to Parson Trulliber (see p. 342) with any page of Roderick Random and fail to see that they are from different pens. But Smollett's three best novels abound with incident and character, however grotesque; and he deserves the credit of being the first, since Congreve, to depict the British seaman, a task for which his own experiences as a ship's surgeon in the Carthagena expedition had given him exceptional facilities. In Humphry Clinker, too, he contrived to write a novel in letters which (without any appreciable plot) is amusing from beginning to end; but then he cleverly avoids the tedium of the plan by never having his epistles answered. His method in fiction, however, is the method of Le Sage, and so far retrograde; but his racy, if reckless, genius has given him many successors. Sterne, again, with his two great books, would add distinction to any epoch. But the Sternesque humour stands by itself, defying the imitator and the disciple alike. He is alone, and he has no school. 'My Uncle Toby' and Yorick, Mr Shandy and Corporal Trim, have passed into the national 'study of imagination;' but the genius of the author, vacillating between tears and laughter, between sentiment and sheer polissonnerie, between method and madness (the word must out), is too unique and several a thing to influence the production of any writer not correspondingly endowed by nature. To write a Tristram Shandy or a Sentimental Journey there is no way but to be Sterne; and Sternes are not turned out in bakers' batches. Of other novels of the period which owe their existence to the fashion set by Fielding and Richardson,

although they are too strongly marked by their writers' individuality to resemble them, are Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield and Johnson's Rasselas. Rasselas. But Johnson's Rasselas is scarcely a novel at all; it is an expanded Rambler, without scheme or beginning, and derives its import mainly from its magisterial manner, and its resigned and lugubrious philosophy of life. Goldsmith's exquisite little story has this peculiarity-it is at once both local and cosmopolitan. Dr Primrose and his family are English types; but at the same time they belong so completely to humanity at large that they can be transferred to any other country without sense of incongruity-that is, to any country where there is a recognised Church and the family is an established institution. In the matter of plot the Vicar of Wakefield can scarcely be said to be constructed at all. Neither Goldsmith nor Johnson, therefore, any more than Sterne or Smollett, contributed greatly to the evolution of the Novel-form; and in this connection, the Evelina and Cecilia of Mme. D'Arblay, which did introduce variations in the matter of social portraiture-variations important enough to make their writer the admitted precursor of Jane Austen-must_be held to lie more properly within the scope of the present summary.

But if to found a school be the surest test of novelty, such a triumph must certainly be conceded to Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. In 1764 that accomplished virtuoso, after a prolonged flirtation with the painted windows and plaster battlements of Strawberry Hill, dreamed that, on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase, he saw a gigantic hand in armour, and straightway fell to scribble a story on the subject. He began (and ended) without a plan; but discovered (in his second edition) that he had combined the old supernatural agencies of Scudéry and the rest with the new personages of Tom Jones and real life; and, in other words, had invented Gothic romance. 'The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days,' he declared, 'were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion.' He would make his heroes and heroines natural in all these things, borrowing only from the elder school some of the imagination, invention, and fancy which, in the literal reproduction of life, he thought too much neglected. The blend proved a popular one. To the Castle of Otranto, with its sighing portraits, and

cowled skeletons, and monstrous helmets, followed, a few years later, the Old English Baron of Miss Clara Reeve, who made her marvels slightly more credible, an innovation which Walpole, perhaps not unnaturally, regarded as insipid. After Miss Reeve came the greater Mrs Radcliffe, and the closing century 'supp'd full with horrors.' Clanging portals, echoing corridors, hollow voices, haunted chambers, moth-eaten manuscripts, and daggers that dripped blood became the order of the day. To make the Gothic compound more heady, the tear of sensibility was freely mingled with the goblet, and the sophisticated draught held the drugged public captive until the secret was explained, generally and in this Mrs Radcliffe, too, differed from Walpole-by simple and natural causes. A quiet home-keeping lady, who described Switzerland and Italy without visiting those countries, Ann Radcliffe must have possessed considerable powers of imagination, and certainly moves a terror skilfully. The influence of The Italian and The Mysteries of Udolpho is to be traced in Lewis, Maturin, and others, and even in the great Wizard of the North himself. As might be anticipated, Gothic romance did not escape the satirist. It was broadly burlesqued in the Heroine of E. S. Barrett, and, with a finer touch, in the admirable Northanger Abbey of Jane Austen, which, although not published until 1818, had been actually written very soon after the first appearance of The Italian.

The Novel, as the chief gift of the Eighteenth Century to English letters, has, of necessity, occupied exceptional space; and, for its further modification under the pens of Holcroft and Godwin, Henry Mackenzie and Moore, the reader must be referred to the different accounts of those writers.

We may

now turn to another development of the plainsailing, prosaic spirit, which, through all its permutations, remains the leading characteristic of the epoch. Hitherto History in England had been little but chronicle and compilation, uncritical and unscientific. In the Eighteenth Century, however, there arose three writers who raised it at once to a definite art. The first of these, in point of time, was Hume. For research, as we understand it now, he cared but little. But he gave to his History of England the charm of a sequent narrative and an effortless style which was as pleasant to read as a fairy-tale. After Hume comes Robertson

with histories of Scotland, of Charles V., of America, a writer whose style was almost equal to that of his predecessor, and whose standard of investigation was somewhat higher. But both Hume and Robertson are only pioneers of the greater Gibbon. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with its majestic march, its splendid sonority, and its sustained accomplishment, rises far beyond the flight of either, and perhaps even now constitutes the greatest gift of Clio to our literature. Patient inquiry, insight, breadth of view, and minuteness of detail are all united in this twenty years' labour. It was a new thing when it appeared; it is a new thing still: and it is not easy to conceive that a labour so concentrated and so continuous, so sustained and so single-minded, can fail of length of days.

From the history of a people to the history of one person, whether recounted by himself or by another, the transition is easy. That the Eighteenth Century can claim to have originated any particular form of Biography or Autobiography, in the sense that it can claim to have originated the modern Novel or the modern Essay, would be too much to contend. But that, in an age of prose, biographies and memoirs should abound is not surprising; and, from Anne onwards, they were not to seek. There were short biographies such as Goldsmith's Nash and Johnson's Savage,--to say nothing of the admirable Lives of the Poets; there were lengthy biographies such as Hawkesworth's Swift and Hawkins's Johnson; there were respectable and academic performances such as Middleton's Cicero, Carte's Ormonde, Lyttelton's Henry II., and Harte's ill-fated Gustavus Adolphus; there were also personal records as dissimilar as Cibber's Apology and Hume's account of My Own Life. But in the last decade of the century appeared two works, each of which, in its special kind, remains unrivalled. One is Gibbon's Autobiography, as compiled by his friend Lord Sheffield from the different sketches left by the historian, and since (1896) separately published. The version which has been so long familiar will, however, probably retain its charm, in spite of the editing to which it now appears to have been subjected; and what its writer calls 'the review of his moral and literary character,' although incomplete, must survive many memoirs that are professedly finished from headline to imprint. Nothing can be more interesting than Gibbon's account of the cir

cumstances which moulded his career and determined the course and progress of his magnum opus. The other work referred to, which preceded the Autobiography by a few years, is Boswell's Life of Johnson, which also remains typical in its class, since it is the highest praise of any new biography to bring it within measurable distance of Boswell's book. Yet it may be doubted whether, except under analogous conditions in regard to author and subject, its success could ever be exactly repeated. The peculiar relations of biographer and biographee; the strongly-marked individuality of Johnson and the extraordinary quality of his conversation; the mimetic faculty which enabled Boswell, given the heads or minutes of an interview, to reproduce that interview with a fidelity more characteristic than shorthand, just as selective Art is more convincing than the camera-all these things, combined with a patience, an enthusiasm, and a devotion that no obstacle could daunt, produced a result which, seeing that it is impracticable to reproduce it without similar advantages, must always remain sui generis.

In an age favourable to prose, and withal exceptionally leisured and unhurried, it is not surprising that what was somewhat pompously described as Epistolary Correspondence should be found to flourish. And, as a fact, the development of Letter Writing is one of the manifest features of the period. Not only Maids of Honour who could spell, to vary Swift's jibe, but Maids of Honour who could not, resorted freely to this means of communication; and before Swift was an old man he recorded a considerable advance. The ladies in general,' he told Mrs Delany, were 'extremely mended both in writing and reading since he was young; and he goes on to speak of a woman of quality, formerly his correspondent, who scrawled and spelt like a Wapping wench.' Hardly a month now passes by without some testimony in the shape of Diary or Miscellaneous Correspondence (the recent Francis Letters are an excellent case in point) to the activity with which our ancestors plied their pens under Anne and the Georges

an activity which modern appliances and modern manners have long since diverted into different channels. And if the OldWorld in general was given to letter writing, literary men and women were also given to it. Swift himself, in the diary to Esther Johnson, commonly known as the Journal

to Stella, has left a series of utterances which remain, and must remain, unapproached as examples of the chronique intime. Pope, too, has a goodly budget of epistles; but they are, in general, too artificial, and too obviously arranged for the public eye, to serve as models. Goldsmith's legacy, on the other hand, is too slender, since the few examples which have been preserved have all the simple charm and fluency of his other work. Steele, Gray, Johnson, Sterne, Burke, Gibbon, and many minor authors, all wrote voluminously-the letters of Gray and Sterne especially being hall-marked with their particular idiosyncrasies. But the epistolary reputation clings chiefly to one or two authors, who, like Madame de Sevigné, either did nothing but write letters, or at all events did that best. One of the first of these is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose dispatches from abroad reveal not only her own shrewd impressions of travel, but her absolutely honest and unvarnished views of contemporary society and literature as she knew them. Another who is best remembered by his letters is Lord Chesterfield. The curious strand of moral insensibility which runs through them has seriously prejudiced their other merits, for, apart from this, and the fact that their main doctrine is the converse of Esse quam videri, they are everywhere packed with a very varied criticism of life, and a close, if cynical, observation of human nature. After these, and ranging over sixty years of the century, comes the correspondence of Horace Walpole. If Chesterfield dictates the conduct of life, Walpole exhibits the practice of it. Never was there a wittier, a more vivacious, a more amusing, a more original chronicler; never (as Thackeray says) 'such a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us.' Lastly must be mentioned the admirable, and in some respects more admirable, letters of Cowper, the most natural, most unfeigned, most easy of English letter-writers. In the art of shedding a sedate playfulness over the least promising themes, in magnifying the occurrences of his 'set gray life' into incidents worthy of record, in communicating to his page all the variations of mood that sweep across him as he writes, he has no equal. But these qualities will doubtless be treated at large hereafter, and it is time to turn once more to the poets.

It was in the year 1764-the year when Walpole wrote the Castle of Otranto-that