fun which is found in the discomfiture of the helpless by the hand of insolent roystering strength. Nor does it comport with rational ideas of "hatred of meanness and knavery" to glorify the giving away to friends of money that should be paid to creditors. These are Fielding's notions of "sympathy," and the best that can be said in their defence is that they have prevailed in England even to this day. It is not uncommon in English fiction (and perhaps in fact) to regard the creditor, the "dun," as an enemy. He who has trusted you with his money or goods, which you have used and not returned as promised, is sacrificed to a "friend" in need, and the act is admired! You have been generous with the money of somebody else, and yet are not marked as a thief but as a hero! Happily this absurdity is almost unknown in the literature of the more logical, working, debt-paying portion of the race. But it is characteristic of Fielding and his heroes.

Tobias Smollett (1721-71) was, like Fielding, of a good family (Scottish) and, also like him, was early in life obliged to depend on himself. After travelling about the world as surgeon's-mate on board a vessel in the royal navy, he, too, found wherein his forte lay, and began to write novels. Among these are "Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle," and "Humphrey Clinker," the latter written many years after the others, and generally thought to be his best. He also wrote a "History of England," which has not kept its ground against the standard work of Hume, written at about the same time; though the latter part, from the period where the greater historian broke off (1688) to 1765, is occasionally to be found in libraries as a supplement to Hume's.

Among the progenitors of the modern novel, Smollett is third in time and in estimation; Richardson being first in date and in decency, and Fielding first in power. Smollett's pen was both bitter and foul.

He was of an unhappy

temper, and found, as such persons do, an unfriendly world to live in; for as has been well said, mankind is like a mirror, in that it gives back smile for smile and frown for frown.

His coarseness seemed to be an inherent part of his being, a thing loved by the writer for its own sake rather than forced upon him by his devotion to truth to nature and the times of which he was telling.

The best work he did was in describing life in the navy; and the race of British sailors of the old day found in his writings a passport to immortality. They have already passed away, but their memory is embalmed forever in Smollett's romances.

The last of the group of novelists we have mentioned (although he is scarcely entitled to that name) is Laurence Sterne (1713-68) who was born in Ireland, son of an army officer, and grandson of an Archbishop of York. He was a clergyman, though one would not guess it from his writings. His "Tristram Shandy" depicts, with great humor, characters whose individuality gives them an imperishable place in our literature. "Uncle Toby" and "Corporal Trim" are no more to be forgotten than are Cromwell and Barebones. The airy creations of fiction will live as long as the solid characters of history. In "The Sentimental Journey," satire is exchanged for sentiment and, although coarseness is not far to seek, it is subordinated to a vein of tender philanthropy, benevolence, and pity for all suffering which palliates if it does not excuse the other. True, Thackeray maintains that the sentiment is forced and affected, and much of it merely a cunning mask for indelicate suggestion; but that has not been the conclusion of readers in general.

His story of the imprisoned starling has drawn many tears, and has become an English classic:

"I can't get out!" said the starling, and to every person who came

through the passage it ran fluttering to the side toward which he 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. . . 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, I can not set thee at liberty." "I can't get out, I can't get out!" said the starling.

Perhaps it is characteristic of Sterne's superficial and ineffectual sentiment that, the wire being so obstinate, the poor starling remains a prisoner through all the ages during which the story shall remain a part of literature.

The well-known and often-quoted phrase "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," is not taken from the Bible, but from Sterne; a fact about which there is a very general and very natural mistake.

CHAPTER XXX.

EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETS.

N grouping together the poets who followed Pope, we do not give them in order of merit, but of date of birth. The earliest, Edward Young, (1681-1765) was a clergyman and wrote, beside much other verse, "Night Thoughts," a long religious poem in nine books, of which the main subject is the immortality of the soul. Dr. Young had much to sadden his life in the loss of friends, and his principal poem is tinged with a melancholy which does not necessarily belong to the subject. The didactic style of Young is now out of fashion; but his poem contains many fine lines, which are worth some little search to find. We subjoin a few of these:

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss.

He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.

Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.

Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew,
She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven.

Pigmies are pigmies still, though perched on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.

Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), son of a Scottish peasant in Lanarkshire, rose from an apprenticeship at wig-making to be a bookseller in Edinburgh, and reached middle life before he published his first volume of collected verse. Later, his pastoral play of "The Gentle Shepherd," written partly in dialect, gave him at once a recognized place among poets, and drew the best society of the town to his humble shop. The scene-painting of the "Shepherd " is of homely life, enlivened by homely sentiment and overflowing humor. The play is interspersed throughout with graceful songs, among which "Lochaber no more," and "The Yellow-haired Laddie" are deservedly popular. The

"Gentle Shepherd" is said to be the only Scotch pastoral poem ever written.

Ramsay had various ups and downs of fortune, preserving through them all the sunny cheerfulness which appears in his writings, pleased with his success and the appreciation of cultivated people, and very happy in his home-life.

Of Richard Savage (1698-1743) we should probably have heard but little had it not been for Dr. Johnson's generous and friendly "Life." His biographer sums up his history by saying that he was "doomed to poverty and obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life only that he might be swallowed by its quicksands or dashed upon its rocks." If Savage had been a great poet we might relate his misfortunes in detail; but as he did not rise above mediocrity it is enough to say that his life was a wretched and unhappy one, whose vicissitudes were embittered by his own ill-regulated passions and vicious excesses. of the interesting facts connected with it is that he and Dr. Johnson used sometimes to walk the London streets at night together, when neither one had the means to pay for a lodging and the supper which should have preceded it. One couplet of Savage's will live:

He lives to build, not boast, a generous race;

No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.

One

A curious instance of the ideas prevailing at that time is afforded by Savage's expectations from Queen Caroline (wife of George II.). When he had killed a man in a tavern brawl and was under sentence of death, she procured his pardon, and he afterward wrote a birthday ode addressed to her, calling himself her "Volunteer Laureate," for which he received a present of fifty pounds. Colley Cibber, the actual laureate, remonstrated against having his laurels thus borrowed or stolen; but Savage paid no attention, and once a year sent the queen a poem in return for which he received the same gift. The drollest part of it all is that