generally marked the lighter verses of that day, and also a rather lax and epicurean tone of philosophy, which is sometimes expressed with inimitable felicity. Nothing can more strongly mark the wide difference between the social condition of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than a comparison between the tone and the topics of the admirable Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson, and the gay, worldly, satirical letters of Lady Mary Montagu. Both the one and the other are types of the female character as modified by the respective influer.ces of the two so strongly-contrasted epochs.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

A.-MINOR ESSAYISTS, &c.

their arguments was published by Sir William Temple in 1692, in his Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning, written in elegant language, but containing much puerile matter, and exhibiting great credulity. Not content with pointing out the un

EUSTACE BUDGELL (1685-1736), a friend of Addison, who obtained for him many important posts under Government. He contributed to the Spectator all the papers marked with the letter X. Hav-doubted merits of the great writers of antiquity, he ing lost almost his whole fortune in the South Sea scheme, and large sums of money in unsuccessful attempts to obtain a seat in Parliament, he became a ruined man. He was accused of having forged in his favor Tindal's Will, a charge to which Pope alludes in the lines,

"Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on my quill, And write whate'er he please-except my will." Budgell was supposed to have assisted Tindal in his infidel works. His circumstances having become desperate, Budgell committed suicide, by leaping from a boat into the Thames. In his house was found a slip of paper, on which he had written

"What Cato did, and Addison approved, Cannot be wrong."

undervalued the labors and discoveries of the moderns, and passed over Shakspeare, Milton, and Newton without even mentioning their names. A far abler and an impartial estimate of the controversy was made by Wotton in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, published in 1694. WILLIAM WOTTON (1666-1726) had been a boy of astonishing precocity, and was admitted in his tenth year to Catherine Hall, Cambridge. When he took his degree, at the age of thirteen, he was acquainted with twelve languages. In his "Reflections" he discusses the subject with great impartiality and learning; and, while assigning to the ancients their real merits, he points out the superiority of the moderns in physical science.

Sir William Temple, in his Essay, among other

Budgell published a weekly periodical called the arguments for the decay of humor, wit, and learnBee.

JOHN HUGHES (1677-1720) contributed some papers to the Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian. He also published some miscellaneous poems, a tragedy called the Siege of Damascus, several translations from the French, and an edition of Spenser's Works.

TOM BROWN (d. 1704) and TOM D'URFEY (d. 1723), two facetious but immoral writers, frequently mentioned in the lighter literature of the period. DURFEY wrote several plays of a licentious character. In No. 67 of the Guardian Addison solicits his readers to attend a play for D'Urfey's benefit.

B.-BOYLE AND BENTLEY CONTRO

VERSY.

This celebrated controversy, which has been alluded to more than once in the preceding chapters, arose out of another upon the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers. The dispute had its origin in France, where Fontenelle and Perrault claimed for the moderns a general superiority over the writers of antiquity. A reply to

ing, had maintained "that the oldest books extant were still the best in their kind;" and in proof of this assertion had cited the Fables of Æsop and the Epistles of Phalaris. This led to the publication of a new edition of the Epistles of Phalaris by the scholars of Christ-Church, Oxford (1695). The nominal editor was Charles Boyle, brother of the Earl of Orrery, who, in his Preface, inserted a bitter reflection upon RICHARD BENTLEY (1662-1742), the King's Librarian, on account of the supposed refusal of the latter to grant him the loan of a MS. in the King's Library. Bentley, who appears to have been unjustly blamed in this matter, soon lad an opportunity of retaliation. In the second edition of Wotton's Reflections, published in 1697, Bentley added a dissertation, in the form of letters to his friend, in which he proved that the author of the Epistles of Phalaris was not the Sicilian tyrant, but some sophist of a later age. Sir William Temple, who had been greatly annoyed at Wotton's Reflections, was still more incensed at Bentley's Dissertation; and Swift, who then resided in Temple's house, made his first attack upon Bentley in the

Battle of the Books, in which he ridiculed the great scholar in the most ludicrous manner; though the work was not printed till some years after.

against the devoted critic."— (Monk's Life of Bentley, i. p. 108.)

Among the many other attacks made upon Bentley at this period, the only one which continues to be known is Swift's Battle of the Books, in which he pours forth upon Bentley all the embittered vehemence of his satire.

In the midst of this outcry Bentley remained unmoved. Conscious of his own learning, he could afford to despise the ignorant malice of his enemies; and he set himself resolutely to work to prepare an answer, which should not only silence his opponents, but establish his reputation as one of the greatest scholars that ever lived. His work appeared in 1699, under the title of A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris: with an Answer to the Objections of the Hon. Robert Boyle, by Richard Bentley, D. D.; but it is frequently called Bentley against Boyle. "The appearance of this work is to be considered an epoch not only in the life of Bentley, but in the history of literature. The victory obtained over his opponents, although the most complete that can be imagined, constitutes but a small part of the merits of this performance. Such is the author's address, that, while every page is

At Christ Church the indignation was, if possible, even greater. Bentley's attack was considered an affront to the whole College, and it was resolved to crush, at once and forever, the audacious assailant. All the strength of Christ Church was enlisted in the contest; but the chief task of the reply was undertaken by Atterbury. He was assisted by George Smalridge, Robert Friend, afterwards head-master of Westminster School, his brother John Friend, and Anthony Alsop. "In point of classical learning," observes the biographer of Bentley, "the jointstock of the confederacy bore no proportion to that of Bentley; their acquaintance with several of the books upon which they comment appears only to have begun upon that occasion, and sometimes they are indebted for their knowledge of them to their adversary; compared with his boundless erudition, their learning was that of school-boys, and not always sufficient to preserve them from distressing mistakes. It may be doubtful whether Busby himself, by whom every one of the confederate band had been educated, possessed knowledge which could have qualified him to enter the lists in such a con-professedly controversial, there is embodied in the troversy." But their deficiency in learning they work a quantity of accurate information relative to made up by wit and raillery; and when the book history, chronology, antiquities, philology, and appeared, in 1698, it was received with extravagant criticism, which it would be difficult to match in applause. It was entitled Dr. Bentley's Disserta- any other volume. The cavils of the Boyleans had tions on the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of fortunately touched upon so many topics, as to draw Esop, examined by the Honorable Charles Boyle, from their adversary a mass of learning, none of Esq. It is usually known by the familiar title of which is misplaced or superfluous: he contrives, Boyle against Bentley; though Boyle, whose name with admirable judgment, to give the reader all the it bears, had no share in the composition of the work. information which can be desired upon each quesIt was generally supposed that Bentley was silenced tion, while he never loses sight of his main object. and crushed. "All accounts agree in stating the Profound and various as are the sources of his learnapplause which the book met with to have been ing, everything is so well arranged, and placed in loud and universal; and the general interest excited so clear a view, that the student who is only in the by this controversy, properly a business of dry elementary parts of classical literature may peruse learning, appears to us almost incredible. This the book with profit and pleasure, while the most state of public feeling is attributable in some degree learned reader cannot fail to find his knowledge to the vein of wit and satire which pervades the enlarged. Nor is this merely the language of those Christ Church performance, but still more to ex- who are partial to the author; the eminently learned traneous causes. The numbers and ability of the Dodwell, who had no peculiar motive to be pleased members of that distinguished society, who appear with a work by which he was himself a considerable to have felt as one man in this common cause, had sufferer, and who as a nonjuror was prejudiced a powerful influence over public opinion. Again, against Bentley's party, is recorded to have avowed the extreme popularity of Sir W. Temple, who was 'that he had never learned so much from any book represented as rudely attacked, and the interest in his life.' This learned volume owes much of its excited in behalf of Mr. Boyle, a young scholar of attraction to the strain of humor, which makes the noble birth, who appeared in the field of controversy perusal highly entertaining. The advocates of as the champion of an accomplished veteran, dis- Phalaris, having chosen to rely upon wit and railposed people at all hazards to favor his cause.lery, were now made to feel in their turn the conAdded to this, an opinion which had been industriously circulated of Bentley's incivility, and a certain haughty carriage which undoubtedly belonged to him, gave a violent prejudice to the public mird. Severe and accurate erudition being rare in those days, people were so far deluded as to believe that on most, if not all points, Boyle was successful: we learn from Bentley himself, that the book was at Erst generally regarded as unanswerable; and this even among his own friends. Nobody suspected that he would venture to reply; still less that he could ever again hold up his head in the republic of learning: the blow was thought to be fatal; and many persons, as usual, eagerly joined the cry

sequences of the warfare which they had adopted. So well sustained is the learning, the wit, and the spirit of this production, that it is not possible to select particular parts as objects of admiration, without committing a sort of injustice to the rest. And the book itself will long continue to be in the hands of all educated persons, as long as literature maintains its hold in society."-(Monk's Life of Bentley, i. pp. 120–123.)

With this dissertation the controversy came to an end, for Bentley's reply was so complete and crushing that it was hopeless to attempt a rejoinder. Sir William Temple died a few weeks before the publication of Bentley's work, and was thus spared the

mortification of witnessing the utter discomfiture of | after it had been given up by Swift. She was the his friends. daughter of Sir Roger Manley, governor of Guernsey.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GREAT NOVELISTS.

§1. History of Prose Fiction. The Romance and the Novel. § 2. DANIEL DEFOE. His life and political career. §3. Robinson Crusoe. § 4. Defoe's other works. § 5. SAMUEL RICHARDSON. Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison. § 6. HENRY FIELDING. His life and publications. § 7. Characteristics of his writings. Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild, Tom Jones, and Amelia. § 8. TOBIAS SMOLLETT. His life and publications. § 9. Characteristics of his novels. Compared with Fielding. § 10. LAWRENCE STERNE. Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. § 11. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. His life and publications. § 12. Criticism of his works. The Traveller and The Deserted Village. The Vicar of Wakefield. The Good Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer.

§ 1. Most departments of literature were cultivated earlier in England than that of Prose Fiction. We have, it is true, the romantic form of this kind of writing in the Arcadia of Sidney, and the philosophical form in the Utopia and the Atlantis; but the exclusive employment of prose narrative in the delineation of the passions, characters, and incidents of real life was first carried to perfection by a constellation of great writers in the eighteenth century, among whom the names of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith, are the most brilliant luminaries. Originally appearing, as do all types of literature, in a poetical form, the rhymed narratives of chivalry, poured forth with such inexhaustible fertility by the Trouvères of the Middle Ages, were in course of time remodelled and clothed in prose, and in their turn gave birth to the long, pompous, and unnatural romances of the time of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., which formed the principal light reading of the higher classes. In the Grand Cyrus, the Astrée, and the Princesse de Clèves, a class of writers of whom D'Urfé, Scudéri, Calprenède, and Madame de la Fayette, may be considered the types, imitated in descriptions of the adventures of classically-named heroes, the lofty, heroic, stilted language and sentiments which they borrowed from the Castilian writers. The absurdities and exaggerations of this kind of story naturally produced a reaction; and Spain and France gave birth to the Comic Romance originally intended as a kind of parody of the superhuman elevation and hair-splitting amorous casuistry of the popular fictions. Don Quixote was in this way as much a caricature of Montemayor as the Roman Comique of Scarron of the Clélie, or Grand Cyrus. In England, where the genius of the nation is eminently practical, and where the immense development of free institutions has tended to encourage individuality of character, and to give importance to private and domestic life, the literature of Fiction speedily divided into two great but correlative branches, to which our language alone has

given specific and distinct appellations — the Romance and the Novel. Both these terms are indeed ultimately derived, like the things they represent, from the nations of the South; the former originally signifying the dialect of the Trouvères and Troubadours, and thence, by a natural transition, that species of narrative fiction which was most abundantly produced in the dialect: the second, the Novella, Nouvelle, or short amusing tale, of which such a multitude of examples are to be found in the Italian, Spanish, and French literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It will be sufficient merely to mention the Decamerone of Boccaccio and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles of Marguerite of Navarre. This latter, the lighter or more comic form of narrative, is a type traceable ultimately to the Fabliaux of the old Provençal poets. But in modern English the Romance and the Novel both express varieties of prose and fiction of considerable length and elaborateness of construction: the former word indicating a narrative, the characters and incidents of which are of a lofty, historical, or supernatural tone, while the latter expresses a recital of the events of ordinary or domestic life, generally of a contemporary epoch. It is the latter department in which English writers, from the time of its first appearance in our literature down to the present time, have encountered few rivals and no superiors. § 2. The founder of the English Novel is DANIEL DEFOE (1661-1731), a man of extraordinary versatility and energy as a writer, and one of the most fertile authors of narrative and controversial productions; for his complete works are said to comprise upwards of two hundred separate writings. His life was agitated and unfortunate. He was the son of a butcher in London, and by family as well as personal sympathies an ardent Whig and Dissenter. Indeed, he was educated for the ministry in a dissenting sect, but embraced a mercantile career, having at various periods carried on the business of a hosier, a tilemaker, and a woollen-draper. But his real vocation was that of a writer, and the ardor with which he maintained, in innumerable pamphlets, the principles of constitutional liberty, not only distracted his attention from his commercial pursuits, but exposed him, in those evil times, to repeated persecutions from the Government. He carried his devotion to Protestant principles so far, as to join the abortive insurrection under the Duke of Monmouth, though from this danger he escaped with impunity. He was at different times punished on charges of sedition, with all the inhuman brutality of those days, having been exposed in the pillory, sentenced to have his ears cut off, severely fined, and on two occasions imprisoned in Newgate, his confinement on one occasion extending to nearly two years. Nothing, however, could daunt or silence this indefatigable champion of liberty, and he continued to pour forth pamphlet after pamphlet, full of irony, logic, and patriotism. Among the most celebrated of his works in this class are his Trueborn Englishman, a poem in singularly tuneless rhymes but full of strong sense and vigorous argument, in which he defends William of Orange and the Dutch against the prejudices of his countrymen, the Hymn to the Pillory, and the famous pamphlet The Shortest