mental novel may be said to have been almost immediately derived. These works took the name of romances, from the so-called compositions of the Provençal minstrels,* (already described,) which they resembled, in as far as they chiefly related to ancient heroes; but while the characters belonged to remote antiquity, the manners and sentiments were those of the existing court of France, so that they were more like to what we now call novels, than to romances. In general, they were of extravagant length; the Grand Cyrus of Madame de Scudery, who is the most celebrated writer of heroic romances, extended to ten huge volumes, and the perusal of it would serve to entertain a young lady of that time for several months. Though long ago laid aside on account of their intolerable dulness and remoteness from nature, they had the merit of containing much refined sentiment, and generally recommending an exalted line of moral conduct. The French heroic plays, which have already been mentioned as imported into England after the Restoration, were a kindred class of compositions.

The

Admired as they were in their own day, the heroic romances could not long escape being burlesqued. poet Scarron, about the time of the 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 imitation of another class of fictions, became the first of a class of its own, and found followers in England long before there were any writers of the pure novel. A lady named Aphra Behn, who died in 1689, amused the public during the reign of Charles II., by writing tales of personal adventure similar to those of Scarron, which are almost the earliest specimens of prose fiction that we possess. She was followed by Mrs. Manley, whose works are equally humorous and equally licentious. The fictions of Daniel Defoe, which have been adverted to in the preceding section, are an

*The name was derived from the dialect in which the minstrels wrote, which was styled the Roman.

improvement upon these tales, being much more pure, while they at the same time contain more interesting pictures of character and situation. 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 thread of adventure. Little else need be said of the English novels antecedent to the time of Richardson and Fielding, except that they were mean in subject and indecorous in style, and calculated to degrade, while they could not in any respect improve, their readers.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689–1761), author of the first classical work in this branch of composition, was a printer in London, and had reached the age of fifty before he emerged into public notice. Having always been remarkable for his expertness in letter-writing, he was requested by two booksellers, in 1739, to compose a volume of epistles referring to the common concerns of life, which might serve as models for the instruction of persons of ordinary education. After much importunity, he was induced to revolve the subject in his mind; but, on commencing the work, he thought it might be much enlivened if it could be made to convey a story. He adopted for this purpose a tale which he had heard in early life, the persons of which carried on the narrative by means of a succession of letters; and thus was in time produced the novel of Pamela, which appeared anonymously in 1740. Not only on account of the superior literary merits of this work, but from its being the first English novel that inculcated piety and virtue, it immediately obtained a great reputation, and was even recommended by the clergy from the pulpit.

It was nevertheless so questionable, both in its details and in its ultimate moral, that a superior genius of that day was tempted to make it the subject of a burlesque. This was HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754) a young man of good birth, but who had lived for some years as a writer of plays, in which capacity he had met with no great success. While Richardson had all the tame decorum of an elderly and respectable tradesman, Fielding

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displayed the manners of the man of fashion of that time, accustomed to regard lightly some of the vices which Pamela was chiefly designed to censure, and disposed to treat nothing with severity which was not a direct infraction of the laws of honour, or inconsistent with manliness, candour, or generosity. Indignant at the success of what he considered as mere cant, Fielding wrote his History of Joseph Andrews, which, unlike the most of works produced under such circumstances, excelled its original, and immediately assumed a rank which it has never since forfeited. Fielding, indeed, had not aimed at burlesquing Richardson by a grotesque imitation of his manner; he rather endeavoured to overpower him by reviving and illustrating the free style of Cervantes, Scarron, and Le Sage, whose degenerate followers it had been an object with Richardson to throw into the shade. The strength of the novel may be said to lie in the character of Parson Adams, whose simplicity, benevolence, and purity of heart, are so admirably mingled with pedantry, absence of mind, and with the habits of athletic and gymnastic exercise then acquired at the Universities by students of all descriptions, that he may be safely termed one of the richest productions of the Muse of fiction.' In 1747, having meanwhile employed his pen upon several works of inferior note, Fielding produced his Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling, which has been loudly and justly censured for its immoral tendency, while there is but one opinion as to the extraordinary skill and talent with which it is written, and the amusement which it is calculated to afford the reader. It is regarded as a masterpiece of art in the department of humorous fiction, the fable being alike felicitously conceived, managed, and brought to an issue, the characters drawn with the truth of life, and the whole replete with lively sallies of the imagination, and the most acute remarks upon mankind. According to a critic, who judges the work by the rules on which it was constructed, The action has that unity which is the boast of the great models of composition; it turns upon a single event, attended with many circumstances, and many subordinate incidents, which seem, in the progress of the work, to perplex, to entangle, and to involve

the whole in difficulties, and lead on the reader's imagination with an eagerness of curiosity, through scenes of prodigious variety, till at length the different intricacies and complications of the fable are explained after the same gradual manner in which they had been worked up to a crisis; incident arises out of incident; the seeds of every thing that shoots up are laid with a judicious hand, and whatever occurs in the latter part of the story, seems naturally to grow out of those passages which preceded; so that, upon the whole, the business, with great propriety and ability, works itself into various embarrassments, and then afterwards, by a regular series of events, clears itself from all impediments, and brings itself inevitably to a conclusion.' A novel of smaller dimensions, entitled Amelia, published in 1751, was the last work of any importance produced by Field: ing, who died prematurely of gout at Lisbon, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His greatest fault as a writer is his imperfect or incorrect morality. His works are certainly not deficient in pictures of moral excellence, and he generally represents vice as followed by punishment, or at least inconvenience; yet he is greatly blamable for too often sheltering folly and guilt under the plea of goodness of heart, and for gratuitously and needlessly introducing scenes, which, though perhaps but too consistent with the manners of the period, and with human nature, cannot be contemplated in literature with any advantage.

Undeterred by the satire of Fielding, the author of Pamela proceeded with another and more elaborate novel, of which the first four volumes appeared in 1748, and the remaining four a year or two later, under the title of Clarissa Harlowe. He here adventured upon events and characters of a higher order, and met with still greater success. This work, of which the principal charm lics in the saint-like purity of the heroine, is written, like its predecessor, in letters; but the style makes a considerable advance in dignity and accuracy, qualities in which Richardson, with all his merits, is upon the whole considerably deficient. The interest which Clarissa excited was greater than even that which attended Pamela; and it met with the highest approba

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tion both in England and on the continent. Between the publication of the first four and the last four volumes, the comfort of the reading world seemed suspended on the result of the story; and on a report being circulated that it was to end tragically, though that was the only way in which it could appropriately terminate, remonstrances poured in upon the author from all quarters, beseeching him to reclaim his profligate hero, and unite him in wedlock to Clarissa. Sir Charles Grandison, the latest performance of Richardson, appeared in 1753, in seven volumes, being intended to depict a gentleman remarkable for every Christian virtue. In this design the author only succeeds too well; for the product of his imagination is correct to tameness, and tires by its solemn and unimpassioned dignity. This novel, however, contains a female character (Clementina) which equals any creation of the author's fancy. All the characters in Richardson's works are drawn with minute care and fidelity, and the interest of his story generally depends on a series of details which at first sight appear tiresome, but, after the perusal of a few pages, engage the reader inextricably in his task, and cause him to take up volume after volume with increasing pleasure. Long as Clarissa and Grandison are, it is understood that the author wrote them at first in a much more extensive form, and found it necessary to retrench them before publication. There is a tradition, that the former was originally calculated to fill twenty-eight volumes!

Meanwhile, a new and formidable rival to Richardson and Fielding had sprung up, in the person of TOBIAS SMOLLETT (1721-1771,) a native of Dumbartonshire in Scotland, who, after entering life as a naval surgeon, became an author by profession in London, and in 1748 published his Adventures of Roderick Random, a work of stronger, though less polished humour than Tom Jones, but equally abounding in happy delineation of character, and possessing, in short, many of both the same faults and the same beauties. This was followed in 1751 by The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, which, with less easy and forcible humour, is more carefully laboured as a work of art, exhibits scenes of greater interest, and