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tion of reserve; and when the company broke up, she observed, with a toss of her nose, that Brown was a civil fellow enough, considering the lowness of his origin; but that fortune, though she had mended his circumstances, was incapable to raise his ideas, which were still humble and plebeian.

In the early part of his literary career Smollett produced some poems that gave promise of a high order of poetic genius. His Ode to Independence, one of these, possesses the masculiue strength of Dryden, with an elevation of moral feeling and sentiment, rarely attempted or felt by that great poet. Another is the following sweetly plaintive strain, occasioned by the barbarities committed in the Highlands by order of the Duke of Cumberland, after the battle of Culloden, in 1746.

THE TEARS OF SCOTLAND.

Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banished peace, thy laurels torn!
Thy sons, for valour long renowned,
Lie slaughtered on their native ground;
Thy hospitable roofs no more
Invite the stranger to the door;
In smoky ruins sunk they lie,
The monuments of cruelty.

The wretched owner sees afar

His all become the prey of war;
Bethinks him of his babes and wife,
Then smites his breast, and curses life.
Thy swains are famished on the rocks,
Where once they fed their wanton flocks;
Thy ravished virgins shriek in vain;
Thy infants perish on the plain.

What boots it, then, in every clime,

Through the wide-spreading waste of time;
Thy martial glory, crowned with praise,
Still shone with undiminished blaze?

Thy towering spirit now is broke,

Thy neck is bended to the yoke.

What foreign arms could never quell,

By civil rage and rancour fell.

The rural pipe and merry lay

No more shall cheer the happy day;
No social scenes of gay delight
Beguile the dreary winter night.

No strains but those of sorrow flow,

And nought be heard but sounds of woe,
While the pale phantoms of the slain
Glide nightly o'er the silent plain.

Oh! baneful cause, oh! fatal morn,
Accursed to ages yet unborn!
The sons against their father stood,
The parent shed his children's blood.

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To the great novelists whom we have now noticed, we may add Brooke, Sterne, Johnstone, and Walpole.

HENRY BROOKE, the author of a novel under the title of The Fool of Quality, was born at Rantaven, Ireland, in 1706. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin; and at the age of seventeen he entered the Middle Temple, where, from the vivacity of his genius, the excellence of his heart, and his literary attainments, he soon became the friend and favorite of the most prominent wits of the day. His taste for the drama induced him to write the tragedy of Gustavus Vasa; but unfortunately the politics of the times, and the influence of government, forbade its production on the stage, as it breathed sentiments too warm and elevated in favor of liberty. The sentiments of the play, however, suited the public taste, and when it appeared in print, so rapid was the sale, that the author received more than ten times as large a remuneration as would have accrued to him from its representation. In easy circumstances, and influenced by a beloved wife, he now resolved to return to Ireland, and pass his remaining days amid the peaceful and retired scenes of private life. He died in Dublin, on the tenth of October, 1783.

After his return to his native country, Brooke continued his literary labors, and produced a number of other dramatic pieces, a poem on Universal Beauty, and the dramatic novel already mentioned. The works of this author have now very generally fallen into obscurity, but 'The Fool of Quality' was very popular in its day, and contains many pleasing and instructive sketches for youthful readers. It does not, however, offer any passage for quotation.

Sterne, the witty, pathetic, and sentimental author of Tristram Shandy, was not inferior in conception of rich eccentric comic character, to any English novel writer that preceded him. Brother Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, the widow Wadman, and Dr. Slop, will go down to posterity with the kindred creations of Cervantes. This idol of his own day is now, however, but little read, except in passages of pure sentiment. His broad humor is no longer relished; his oddities have not the gloss of novelty; and his indecencies startle the delicate and correct. The want of simplicity and decency for which even his sparkling polished diction can not atone, is his greatest fault. Sterne's life too, was as little in keeping as his writings. Though a clergyman, he was dissolute and licentious; and though a sentimentalist, who had, with his pen, tears for all animate and inanimate nature, he was, in his own conduct, hard-hearted and selfish. Had he confined himself to his living in the country, going his daily rounds of pastoral duties, he would have been a wiser and better man. 'He degenerated in London,' says Garrick, like an ill-transplanted shrub: the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud -an invalid in body and mind.'

LAURENCE STERNE was the son of an Irish lieutenant, and was born at Clonmel, in the south of Ireland, on the twenty-fourth of November, 1713. He was educated by a cousin, first at Halifax, in Yorkshire, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts, in 1740. Having entered into orders, his uncle, Dr. Sterne, a rich pluralist, presented him with the living of Sutton, to which was added a prebend of York; and through his marriage with a York lady, he derived another living in that county, the rectory of Stillington. He lived nearly twenty years at Sutton, reading, painting, fiddling, and shooting, with occasional quarrels with his clerical brethren, with whom he was no favorite. He left Yorkshire for London, in 1759, to publish the two first volumes of 'Tristram Shandy.' Two other volumes were published in 1761, and during the following year, the same number more. He now took a tour to France, which enriched some of his subsequent volumes of 'Tristram,' with his exquisite sketches of peasants and vine-dressers, the muleteer, the abbess and Margarita, Maria at Moulines, and the poor ass with his heavy panniers, at Lyons.

In 1764, Sterne took another continental tour, and penetrated into Italy, to which we are indebted for his Sentimental Journey. The latter work he composed on his return to Coxwould, the living of which had been presented to him, on the first publication of 'Tristram,' by Lord Falconbridge. Having completed the first part of his 'Journey' he went to London to see it published, and died in lodgings in Bond-street, on the eighteenth of March, 1768. His death-bed was attended by nobody but a hired nurse. He had often wished to die in an inn, where the few cold offices he might require could be purchased with a few guineas, and paid to him with

an undisturbed and punctual attention. His wish was realized almost to the letter.

Sterne's great work, "Tristram Shandy,' is but a bundle of episodes and digressions, strung together without any attempt at regularity or order. The reader must give up the reins of his imagination into his author's handsbe pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.' Through the whole novel, however, over its mists and absurdities, shines his little family band of friends and relatives—that inimitable group of originals and humorists-which stand out from the canvass with the force and distinctness of reality. This distinctness and separate identity is a proof of what Coleridge has termed the peculiar power of Sterne, of seizing on, and bringing forward those points on which every man is a humorist, and of the masterly manner in which he has brought out the characteristics of two beings of the most opposite natures-the elder Shandy, and Toby-and surrounded them with a group of followers, sketched with equal life and individuality.

Some volumes of Sermons, published by Sterne, show, according to the opinion of the poet Gray, 'a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but,' he adds, 'you see the author often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.' Both the 'Sermons' and the 'Journey' are more regular than 'Tristram,' but in other respects they partake largely of the same character. As a specimen of the sentimental style of Sterne, we select the following passage from his 'Journey' :

THE STARLING-CAPTIVITY.

And as for the Bastile, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year; but with nine livers a day, and pen, and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court-yard as I settled this account; and remember I walked down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly, for I envy not its powers which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition, the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper and not of a man which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained it could not get out.' I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage; 'I can't get out, I can't get out,' said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of

its captivity-'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient; I fear, poor creature, said I, I can not set thee at liberty. 'No,' said the starling, 'I can't get out; I can't get out,' said the starling. I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirit, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked up stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change; no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or ehemic power turn thy sceptre into iron: with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which rises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice; his children-but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the further corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed: a little calender of small sticks lay at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh; I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

CHARLES JOHNSTONE, the period of whose birth is not known, was born in Ireland, and bred to the bar; but a severe obstruction of his hearing compelled him to abandon that profession. After some delay and irresolution, he finally resolved to turn his attention to literature; and, in 1760, ap

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