"It is, perhaps, invidious to enter too closely upon the general tendency of a work of entertainment. But when the admirers of Pamela challenge for that work the merit of doing more good than twenty sermons, we demur to the motion. Its good effects must, of course, have operation among young women in circumstances somewhat similar to those of the heroine; and, in that rank, it may be questioned whether the example is not as well calculated to encourage a spirit of rash enterprise, as of virtuous resistance. If Pamela became Esquire B-'s lady, it was only on account of her virtuous resistance to his criminal attacks; but it may occur to an humble inaiden (and the case, we believe, is not hypothetical) that to merit Pamela's reward, she must go through Pamela's trials; and that there can be no great harm in affording some encouragement to the assailant. We need not add how dangerous this experiment must be for both parties.

"But we have elsewhere intimated an opinion, that the direct and obvious moral to be deduced from a fictitious narrative, is of much less consequence to the public, than the mode in which the story is treated in the course of its details. If the author introduces scenes which excite evil passions, if he familiarizes the mind of the readers with impure ideas, or sophisticates their understanding with false views of morality, it will be an unavailing defence that, in the end of his book, he has represented virtue as triumphant. In the same manner, although some objections may be made to the deductions which the author desired, and expected should be drawn from the story of Pamela, yet the pure and modest character of the English maiden is so well maintained during the work; her sorrows and afflictions are borne with so much meekness; her little intervals of hope or comparative tranquillity break in on her troubles so much like the specks of blue sky through a cloudy atmosphere, that the whole recollection is soothing, tranquillizing, and, doubtless, edifying. We think little of Mr. B-, his character, or his motives, and are only delighted with the preferment of our favourite, because it seems to give so much satisfaction to herself."—Vol. ii. pp. 32—34.

Sir Walter defends the unfortunate and painful catastrophe of Clarissa. We agree with him, that it was the only way of ending the story consistently with the noble and affecting lesson proposed in the original design, and that no other could have called forth so fully the great powers of its author. We are aware, also, of the general argument against what is called poetical justice, that it gives us false views of human life, by representing virtue as always rewarded, and vice as always punished in the present world, and that when we come to apply to mankind the lesson we have learned from works written on this principle, we are led to suppose, that those whom we see in a state of apparent prosperity, are ever as good as they are fortunate, and that the wretched and afflicted have, in all cases, deserved their sufferings. Without staying to examine at present the soundness of this doctrine, of which, however, we have our doubts, and which we hope to be able to consider more fully on some future occasion, we shall only observe, that whatever power and skill an author may show in working up the

feelings of his reader to absolute agony by scenes of imaginary distress, and however sublime may be the moral he draws from them, yet readers whose temperament is that of ordinary cheerfulness and kindness, do not always willingly submit to this process for calling forth their sympathy, and improving their virtue. They desire only such a proportion of calamity in the narrative as will enhance the joy of its final prosperity-storm and darkness enough to make them glad at the return of sunshine. It may be doubted, whether it does not require either a degree of insensibility, or a morbid attachment to melancholy views of life, to sit down voluntarily and inflict upon ourselves the reading of nearly a dozen volumes filled with the fictitious tale of virtue struggling with calamity, and overwhelmed by it at last. If, however, we pause to console ourselves, as we are frequently tempted to do, by the consideration that all this is imaginary and false, the interest of the narrative is lost. To accompany the characters of the piece any farther in the story of their misfortunes, seems like voluntarily inflicting misery on beings of our own creation, who suffer only so far as we fancy their sufferings to be real. Life has too many sorrows of its own, that we should afflict ourselves with dreams of ideal distress.

Sir Charles Grandison, the good man whose virtue is always triumphant because it is not tempted, is treated by our author as he deserves.

We pass over what is said of Johnson and Goldsmith, concerning whom it is too late to say any thing new, in order to come at the sketch of the life of Horace Walpole, or rather to the examination of his character and works, for, to our surprise, scarce any thing is said of the events of his life. There is an accusation current among journalists, reviewers, and makers of books in general, that Walpole was exceedingly selfish, sordid, and heartless. We are glad to read the following good-natured apology for his character, for it is always delightful to learn that the man who interests us by his works, was not unamiable in his life.

"In private life, his temper appears to have been precarious; and though expensive in indulging his own taste. he always seems to have done so on the most economical terins possible. He is often, in his epistolary correspondence, harsh and unkind to Madame Deffand, whose talents, her blindness, and her enthusiastic affection for him, claimed every indulgence from a warm hearted man. He is also severe and rigid towards Bentley, whose taste and talents he had put into continual requisition for the ornaments of his house. These are unamiable traits of character, and they have been quoted and exaggerated. But his memory has suffered most on account of his conduct towards Chatterton, in

which we have always thought he was perfectly defensible. That unhappy son of genius endeavoured to impose upon Walpole a few stanzas of very inferior merit as ancient; and sent him an equally gross and palpable imposture under the shape of a pretended list of painters. Walpole's sole crime lies in not patronizing at once a young man who only appeared before him in the character of a very inartificial impostor, though he afterwards proved himself a gigantic one. The fate of Chatterton lies, not at the door of Walpole, but of the public at large, who, two years (we believe) afterwards, were possessed of the splendid proofs of his natural powers, and any one of whom was as much called upon as Walpole to prevent the most unhappy catastrophe.

Finally, it must be recorded to Walpole's praise, that though not habitually liberal, he was strictly just, and readily parted with that portion of his income which the necessities of the state required. He may, perhaps, have mistaken his character when he assumes, as his principal characteristic, "disinterestedness and contempt of money," which, he intimates, was with him less "a virtue than a passion." But by the generous and apparently most sincere offer to divide his whole income with Marshal Conway, he showed, that if there existed in his bosom more love of money than perhaps he was himself aware of, it was subjugated to the influence of the nobler virtues and feelings."-Vol. ii. pp. 126, 127.

We wish that we could afford room for the passage where our author, in his remarks on the Castle of Otranto, considers the question of the propriety of the expedient adopted by Mrs. Radcliffe, and other writers of romances, of "referring their prodigies to an explanation founded on natural causes in the latter chapter of their romances." The conclusion to which he arrives, as might be expected from his own works, is in favour of the narrative of Walpole, "which details supernatural events as they would have been readily believed and received in the eleventh or twelfth century." He adds, that "the precaution of relieving our spirits from the influence of supposed supernatural terror, seems as unnecessary in a work of professed fiction, as that of the prudent Button, who proposed that the human face of his representative of the lion should appear from under his mask, and acquaint the audience plainly that he was a man as other men, and nothing more than Smug the joiner."

Of Mackenzie it is said, that "the historian of the Homespun family may place his narrative, without fear of shame, by the side of the Vicar of Wakefield." We apprehend, however, that this is a bad compliment to the modesty of Mackenzie. The humour of the Homespun family is, to be sure, exceedingly natural and delicate, but it is a mere sketch after all, and certainly has no pretensions to be compared to the finished and full-length picture of Goldsmith, with its varied groups, and its perfection of colouring. The character of Umphraville in the Mirror, is undoubtedly in Mackenzie's best manner; it is just such a one as he was eminently qualified to draw; and in the

happy mingling of a deep quiet kind of pathos, with light comic touches, no writer has excelled him. But his Colonel Caustic, in the Lounger, which Scott mentions with such high praise, is, to our apprehension, unworthy of his pen. He has attempted a stronger and broader cast of humour than in any other part of his writings, and for which he had evidently no talent. The pathetic parts only are like Mackenzie, for he could not fail here: but the Colonel's eccentricities are violent and disagreeable, and the author, with all his pains, has made him but a tedious old fellow after all.

The Old English Baron of Clara Reeve, the only one of her works of which Sir Walter takes any notice, is, in his opinion, a very good ghost story, "somewhat prosy," almost entirely destitute of manners and character, but, on the whole, very sensibly and judiciously constructed, and with a careful heed to the most approved rules of getting up a tale of supernatural

terrors.

Robert Bage, according to our author, was a paper maker at Elford, in England. He received a common education, which he improved by his own diligence, and made himself master of the French and Italian languages, besides acquiring a respectable knowledge of mathematics. His parents were of the society of Friends, and he preserved through life an independence of thinking, and an attachment to certain dangerous, unwarrantable, and unfashionable doctrines respecting political and religious liberty. He wrote several agreeable novels, the first of which, Mount Henneth, was published in 1781, and the last, Hermsprong, or Man as he is not, in 1795, and prolonged an industrious and virtuous life to the age of seventy-two. Several pleasant and characteristic extracts are given in the book before us, from his correspondence with Mr. Hutton, of Birmingham, his friend and patron.

It is very curious that Sir Walter, who defends with great zeal the moral tendency of Tom Jones, should censure so severely that of Bage's novels. As far as we understand his argument, he considers the work of Fielding as harmless, because it is a fair copy of the human character, and represents man as he is; while the writings of Bage, in particular the novel entitled Hermsprong, exert a dangerous influence, because they show us man squaring his conduct by the rules of reason and philosophy, and present us with a model of excellence not only no where to be found, but absolutely unattainable. He supports this ground by remarking, that the faculty of reason, upon which Hermsprong builds his system of virtue and morality, is an insufficient guide, and hints that the writings

of Bage are deformed by "speculative errors." It is very true, as Sir Walter observes, that "the professed moral of the piece is what the reader is least interested in," but it is no less true, as he elsewhere observes, that the moral tendency of a work of fiction is to be judged of from the general impression left upon the mind by the example of the personages introduced. If we apply the test thus furnished by our author to the novel of Fielding, we apprehend that it will hardly pass the ordeal. The gallantries of Tom Jones are related as things of a trivial nature, which, as they are contrary to some old fashioned notions of morality, are not, it is true, to be deemed quite innocent, and yet are scarcely grave enough to be mentioned with reprehension; pleasant adventures which agreeably diversify his biography. They are lifted out of the natural grossness, and out of the obscurity in which all men willingly leave their dishonourable amours, into something like respectability, by being associated with the frankness, the generosity, and the other amiable qualities of the hero. Now it seems to our humble judgment, that an example of this sort, proposed to the world by the great talents of Fielding, is likely to do more harm than all the philosophical treatises that could be written in defence of libertinism. If a writer of novels be always justified in representing men as he finds them, without regard to the moral effect of his pictures, then the examples of splendid profligacy, of elegant and refined voluptuousness, of vice high in rank gazed at and knelt to and imitated by the world, which have done and are doing so much to corrupt society, are to repeat their salutary work in those works to which so large a portion of the world recur for daily amusement.

With respect to the tendency of Bage's novels, we cannot see that any great harm can accrue from contemplating a pattern of virtue superior to any thing we find in the world about us, and more perfect than we can hope to imitate. We had, indeed, supposed, that something of this sort constituted the very basis of that religion for which Sir Walter, in his animadversions on the writings of Bage, professes so much concern. If, by setting before us such a model, a desire is raised in us to resemble it, (and that this is the general effect, we appeal to the experience of every reader,) one step at least is made in the progress of virtue. Sir Walter desires his readers to compare the philosophical Hermsprong of Bage with the philosophical Square in Tom Jones. What then? We shall only compare an honest man with a hypocrite, and make no progress in the argument. He objects that Bage has not represented the conduct of Hermsprong as influenced in any degree by religious