it was followed by Peregrine Pickle, and in 1753 The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom, a counterpart to Fielding's Jonathan Wild, appeared. Previous to this Smollet had become discouraged with his small success as a physician, and had resolved to concentrate his energies in the efforts of his pen. He became active in political controversy; and although the vigor of his style and the patriotic ardor of his convictions made his writings effective, his rashness and vehemence of personal feeling often brought him into collision with the law. Assuming the management of The Critical Review, he used the columns to reveal his knowledge of naval abuses. A fierce attack upon the commander of the expedition to Carthagena subjected him to a suit for libel. He was heavily fined and was imprisoned for several months. He continued to edit the Review, however, and exercised his literary censorship so vigorously as to provoke the abuse of a host of angry politicians, authors, and doctors. The activity of his pen was indefatigable; he produced in rapid succession a translation of Don Quixote, a fourth novel entitled Sir Lancelot Greaves, and a History of England, in which he displayed his partisan prejudices. The experiences of two years spent in foreign travel were narrated, in a Tour in France and Italy. His last political work was a satirical attack upon Lord Bute, entitled The Adventures of an Atom. At fifty years of age his health was completely broken down by agitation and incessant labor, and he was ordered to try the effect of a more genial climate. He resided a short time at Leghorn, and there, in spite of exhaustion and suffering, his genius gave forth its most pleasing flash of comic humor. This was the novel of Humphrey Clinker, the most genial and truly humorous of his works. Like Fielding, Smollett died and was buried in a foreign land. The two most intensely national of the great group of English character-painters were doomed to lay their bones, nearly at the same time, under the soil of the stranger.

The plots of Smollett's novels are not unfolded with the slow and exquisitely logical coherence of Richardson, nor are the incidents combined and grouped with that masterly knowledge of effect which distinguishes Fielding. Each of his novels is a series of scenes striking, grotesque, farcical, pathetic-with no bond of union save their common connection with two or three chief actors. Yet the lively succession of persons and events is a

constant stimulus to the attention; what is coarse and repulsive in description is life-like; while freshness and earnestness offset an occasional tendency to florid expression and sentimental exaggeration. Smollett's characters are numerous and sketched with great animation, but they are not analyzed with a profound knowledge of passion and motive. Having seized some prominent feature, or having placed some oddity of mind or person in a strong light, he ceased to care for development and consistency. Many of his most laughable scenes depend for their effect upon physical humor,-blows and kicks and extravagant terrors; but, unlike Fielding, he fails to make such episodes throw light upon interesting traits of human nature. With the laugh they have excited, Smollett's use of them is at an end. He "excels most as the lively caricaturist; Fielding as the exact painter and profound metaphysician."

Of Smollett's novels Roderick Random is in some respects the most vigorous. It is full of transcripts from the author's personal experience; the hero's miseries at school, his apprenticeship to the apothecary, his sufferings on board ship, bear every mark of pictures from life. The same may be said of his inimitable and exquisitely varied sailor-characters. As a rule his heroes have but little to attract the reader's sympathy, being generally hard, impudent, and selfish adventurers; but in the subordinate persons, and especially in those of whimsical but faithful dependants, he shows a greater warmth of sentiment. Humphrey Clinker, though running over with fun and grotesque incident, exhibits a riper and mellower tone of character-painting than is to be found in his preceding works. This novel contains much that is merely descriptive; it purports to be the travelling-journal of the droll and original party whose letters make up the work. The modern reader may gather many interesting details of life in the eighteenth century from Smollett's picturing of the various localities in England and Scotland which were visited in the imaginary tour.

We have already referred to Smollett's work as a political writer. He also possessed considerable poetical talent. His best effort in this department is entitled the Tears of Scotland. It expresses the patriotic indignation of a generous mind, horror-struck by the cruelties perpetrated by the English troops after the battle of Culloden.

The character of Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) was as eccentric as his works. He was born in Ireland, but received his education at the University of Cambridge. He entered the church, and through the influence of his relatives enjoyed considerable preferment. To the living of Sutton he added a prebend's stall in the Cathedral of York, and he was ultimately advanced to the rich living of Coxwold. His private life was little in harmony with his profession; he appears to have been fanciful, vain, and self-indulgent, perpetually at war with his brother churchmen, and to have been masking caprice and selfishness in his domestic relations under a pretence of extreme sensibility. In 1761 he published the first two volumes of a novel entitled Tristram Shandy (196). The freshness and oddity of his style captivated popular taste, and two more volumes which appeared in the following year, instantly attained the height of public favor. Sterne became the lion of fashionable society in London. For a time he indulged his morbid appetite for flattery and his propensity to sentimental intrigue in the brilliant circles of the capital. He then went upon the Continent; and during his travels through France and Italy accumulated the materials for his charming Sentimental Journey. This was his best and last production; he took up his residence in London for the purpose of superintending its publication, and died in desolate lodgings, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.

Sterne's works consist of the novel of Tristram Shandy, of the Sentimental Journey, and of a collection of Sermons, written in the odd and fantastic style which he brought into temporary vogue. Tristram Shandy, though nominally a romance in the biographical form, is intentionally irregular and capricious. The hero makes no appearance on the scene of action, and the story consists of a series of episodes which introduce the reader to the home-life of an English country family. This family is one of the most amusing collections of odd individualities that ever genius has delineated. The mythical Tristram and Yorick, a humorous clergyman in whom Sterne has idealized his own character, alternately carry on the narrative; and other prominent personages are Walter Shandy, a retired merchant, the father of Tristram, his wife, his brother, Toby Shandy, a veteran officer, and his servant, Corporal Trim. These are all conceived and executed in the finest and most Shakespearean spirit of humor and tenderness; and they are supported by a crowd of

minor, yet hardly less individual portraitures. Mr. Shandy, the restless crotchety philosopher, is drawn with consummate skill, and is admirably contrasted with the simple benevolence and professional enthusiasm of the unequalled Uncle Toby, a creation of the order of Sancho Panza and Parson Adams. Acute observation of the minor traits of human nature seems to have been Sterne's strongest quality. He portrays his characters not by description, but by allusion, and fascinates the reader by incidental and unexpected revelation of their amiable eccentricities. He also shows himself a master in combining the humorous and the pathetic. Both his humor and his pathos are often truly admirable; although the one sometimes degenerates into indecent buffoonery, and the other into sickly sentimentality. The Sentimental Journey was intended by its author to form a sequel to Tristram Shandy. It has glaring faults, both in taste and in morality; yet it abounds in charming descriptions and passages of quaint pathos. Much may be forgiven the author, in consideration of the candor and appreciation of his tone in treating of foreigners and foreign institutions. Such a tone was equally rare and laudable, at a time when Englishmen regarded all other nations with the most bigoted prejudice and hostility.

In Sterne's writings there is a parade of obscure and quaint erudition. This tends to give an original flavor to his style, and at the time of his writing, when the elder authors were but little studied, it passed for an indication of extensive learning; but he is now known to have been the boldest of plagiarists, pillaging without scruple the pages of Burton, Rabelais, and the old lawyers and canonists.

CHAPTER XXI.

HISTORICAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

IN accordance with a law which seems at particular epochs to govern the appearance of great names in one department of art or literature, like the sculptors of the Periclean age, the romantic dramatists in that of Elizabeth, and the novelists who appeared in England in the days of Richardson and Fielding, the middle of the eighteenth century was signalized by a remarkable wealth of historical genius, and gave birth to Hume, Robertson and Gibbon.

David Hume (1711-1766), a Scotchman, was educated at the University of Edinburgh. A taste for literature and literary pursuits early declared itself as his ruling passion, but the limited circumstances of his family seemed to make its gratification impossible. However, after a vain attempt to devote himself to the Law, and an equally unsuccessful trial of commercial life, Hume resolved" to make a very rigid frugality supply his deficiency of fortune, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of his talents in literature." At the age of twenty-three he went to France with the intention of pursuing his studies in a country retreat. Three years passed very agreeably in close attention to philosophy and general literature. In 1737 he returned to Great Britain to publish the first-fruits of his pen, A Treatise on Human Nature. "Never," says Hume's autobiography, was literary attempt more unfortunate. But being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow." Two volumes of Moral and Philosophical Essays, published in 1742, met with a more favorable reception; but the wavering fortunes of the next ten years would have chilled, the aspirations of a less resolute soul. True to his resolve, Hume eked out his slender patrimony with genuine Scotch thrift; it was, however, hardly sufficient for his