vated letters as a profession. This gentleman produced, in 1793, An Enquiry into the Principles of Political Justice, in which, with much eloquence and ingenious argument, but under many mistaken impressions and views, he endeavoured to show the inadequacy of existing institutions to protect the rights of the citizen. In order to convey his meaning more intelligibly to the minds of the people, he published in the ensuing year his novel of Caleb Williams, which by a series of fictitious incidents exemplifies the main proposition of his political work, in the story of a youth who, though perfectly innocent, is convicted, through the malignity of a really guilty person, of a capital crime. This fiction was read with eager interest, and praised even by those who disputed the conclusions aimed at by the writer. It was followed in 1799 by St. Leon, which professes to be the autobiography of an individual possessed of inexhaustible wealth, incapable of mortality, and from these very causes the most miserable of beings. Fleetwood (1805), Mandeville (1818), and Cloudesley (1830), are other novels by Godwin, but much inferior to his two first tales, which, by their powerful operation on the sentiments of wonder, fear, and pity, seem to possess an excellence which even the author himself has been unable to rival. Mr. Godwin, who possesses learning equal to his genius, is the author of a History of the English Commonwealth, and of two elaborate biographical works, The Life and Age of Chaucer (1803), and The lives of Edward and John Philips, Nephews and Pupils of Milton (1815), besides a composition published in 1834 called The Lives of the Necromancers.

The Canterbury Tales (1797), of MISSES HARRIET and SOPHIA LEE, and Octavia (1798), by MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER, are the only other performances of merit which appeared before the close of the eighteenth century. Kruitzner, one of the Canterbury tales, by Miss Sophia Lee, is a story of deep and touching interest, and had the honour of being dramatised by Lord Byron. Miss Anna Porter has since produced many novels of merit, but yields in genius to her sister, MISS JANE PORTER, whose Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803), and Scottish Chiefs (1810), are written in an elevated and impassioned strain.

OPIE.

-EDGEWORTH.

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The Father and Daughter (1801), was the first of the long series of fictions by which AMELIA OPIE acquired her high reputation. Her principal works are Simple Tales (1806), and Tales of Real Life (1813), which without much originality in incident or character, display a truth and delicacy of sentiment, a graceful simplicity of dialogue, and an art of engaging the sympathy and melting the heart of the reader, in which Mrs. Opie has no superior.

6

MISS MARIA EDGEWORTH, of Edgeworthstown in Ireland, began her literary career by the publication of The Parent's Assistant, a work conveying moral instruction to young people in a pleasing form. Her first novel, Belinda, which appeared in 1801, was designed to expose the heartlessness and misery which prevail in certain departments of refined society. Castle Rackrent (a sketch of a series of Irish landlords), Moral Tales, Popular Tales, Tales of Fashionable Life, Patronage, and other works, followed in rapid succession, and established the reputation of the author. Miss Edgeworth may be described as a moralist, taking the advantage of fiction as a means of conveying and impressing her lessons. 'Her works,' says an eminent critic, are not happy effusions of fancy, or casual inspirations of genius, but the mature and seasonable fruits of powerful sense and nice moral perception, joined to a rare and invaluable talent for the observation and display of human character. It is impossible to read ten pages of her writings without feeling that every part of them was intended to do good-not only to correct fatal errors of opinion, to soften dispositions, and remove prejudices unfriendly to happiness, but to display wisdom and goodness at once in their most familiar and engaging aspects."* Another critic equally eminent, after taking some pains to show that the great end of fiction is simply to gratify the imagination, alleges that the moral aims of these otherwise excellent compositions, are brought so officiously and prominently forward, as to become disagreeable. Miss Edgeworth's novels,' says this writer, 'put us in mind of those clocks and watches which are condemned a dou

* Edinburgh Review, XXVIII., 390.

ble or a treble debt to pay; which, besides their legitimate object to show the hour, tell you the day of the month or the week, give you a landscape for a dial-plate, with the second hand forming the sails of a windmill, or have a barrel to play a tune, or an alarum to remind you of an engagement, all very good things in their way; but so it is, that these watches never tell you the time so well as those in which that has been the exclusive object of the maker.'* With these merits and these faults, if faults they really be, Miss Edgeworth must be allowed to have afforded as much entertainment, united to as much instruction, as any modern writer. There is hardly any good quality which she has not recommended by some pleasing example, or any vice or folly of which she has not illustrated the unhappy consequences.

The earlier years of the present century, produced, in MISS JANE AUSTIN, a novelist combining great skill in the construction of a natural series of events, and the delineation of natural characters, with moral aims less prominent, but perhaps more effectual than those of Miss Edgeworth, and with that nice delicacy of feeling which female writers alone seem able to give to their compositions. Her Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma, are novels which, for these reasons, may be placed in the hands of any reader. Self-Control and Discipline, by MRS. BRUNTON of Edinburgh, are sound moral lessons happily conveyed through the medium of fiction. The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), by MRS. ELIZABETH HAMILTON, has the merit of being the first of those just and lively pictures of Scottish humble life, which have assumed so prominent a place in modern literature. In 1809, MRS. HANNAH MORE, who had distinguished herself by many writings in prose and verse, of a religious and moral kind, published Calebs in Search of a Wife, in which she endeavoured to exhibit the dispositions, manners, attainments, and principles necessary to ensure domestic happiness. The merit of this composition, and its novelty as a combination of religion with the usual qualities of a work of

* Quarterly Review, XXIV., 358.

LEWIS.-MATURIN.-MORGAN.

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fiction, attracted much notice. Mrs. More died in 1833, after a life of eighty-eight years, employed with more extensive benefit to her species than that of perhaps a y preceding miscellaneous writer.

The novels of Opie, Edgeworth, Austin, Brunton, Hamilton, and More, form a remarkable class of compositions, both as the production of a set of female writers, who for a time seemed to monopolize this department of literature, and on account of the fine and amiable morality by which they are in general characterised. By the exertions of these ladies, the novel was in a great measure redeemed from its ancient popular character, of a narrative calculated rather to bewilder and mislead than to instruct or improve the minds of ordinary readers. The views of life, of characters, and of manners, imparted by these books, are almost without exception consistent with truth, and cannot be perused without profit as well as amusement. The novels alluded to have another merit, in as far as they served to render public taste intolerant of the works of inferior talent and morality, which, down to that time, were constantly issuing from the press.

Among the numberless productions of the minor writers, no small portion were imitations of the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. Hundreds of volumes had appeared with romantic Italian titles, and filled with gloomy castles, cruel barons, and mysterious monks, but entirely destitute of those powers of description and imagination, and of that command over the wonder and fear of the reader, for which The Mysteries of Udolpho were so remarkable. The only individuals who showed any portion of the same genius were MR. MATTHEw GreGORY LEWIS, whose tales, however, were disgraced by their licentiousness;-MR. ROBERT MATURIN, already mentioned as a tragic dramatist, whose Fatal Revenge (1807), Women (1818), and Melmoth (1820), in defiance of irregularity of structure, and many blemishes in point of taste, manifest strong powers of imagination and language;-and LADY MORGAN, who, with still greater faults, cannot be denied the possession of much brilliancy of fancy, and sway over the feelings of her readers, though she unfortunately wants those noble

presiding aims which have recommended the works of her female contemporaries.

Such were the individuals who had cultivated prose fiction, when, in 1814, public attention was arrested by the appearance of an anonymous novel entitled Waverley, in which there was conveyed a striking delineation of the transactions which rendered the year 1745 so memorable in Scotland, together with descriptions of real and fictitious characters, connected, or supposed to be connected, with those events, and sketches of contemporary manners and circumstances, which it was evident could have been produced by none but a master in fictitious literature, though it was difficult to say who that master was. The publication of the work in Edinburgh, and the skill which it displayed, in common with the poems of Mr. Walter Scott, in awakening the associations which are entertained respecting the history of past times, and the recent traces of a ruder and more romantic state of society; led to a general surmise that that gentleman, having found his popularity as a poet on the decline, had sent forth this composition as an experiment in a different department of fiction. Without disclosing his secret, the author proceeded to take advantage of the favour which was bestowed upon his first attempt, and next year published Guy Mannering, a tale unconnected with history, but displaying the same skill in depicting Scottish character and manners, and the same art in engaging the sympathy of the reader. To this succeeded in rapid succession The Antiquary and Rob Roy, Tales of My Landlord (three series), The Monastery, and The Abbot; all of which were designed to illustrate the state of society in Scotland at various important periods of her annals. The graphic force with which he brought both historical and imaginary beings before the mind of the reader; the singular interest which he gave to the proceedings and relations of these persons; the humour, the pathos, the fine spirit of benevolence which pervaded every page, had, long ere the last of these works was published, raised their unknown author to a reputation not only exceeding that of Fielding, Smollett, and all the great masters of prose fiction, but equalling the reverence which