and mere bibliographers, makers of catalogues, collectors, book-sellers and auctioneers. People of sense in ordinary matters, and men intelligent in their own walk of life, but who have never received any tincture of literature, make the most opinionated of all critics. A carpenter expects to graduate the powers of the human mind, and a stone mason to overthrow one of Ariosto's castles. Thinking to bring everything to a common standard, the illiterate imagine themselves to be as good judges of right and wrong in morals, as of the beautiful and odious in æsthetics. They are keen at a bargain, and confide without doubt in their own decisions on works of genius. The same people who talk pertly of Milton and Wordsworth, would think it absurd for a blacksmith to attempt to take a watch to pieces. Yet the difference of difficulty, between the two operations, is by no means great. And, after all, the immediate popularity of most writers rests chiefly upon such readers as these; the worthy, fit audience, though few, finally give reputation. Meanwhile, however, the mob of readers follow established names and reigning fashions; they follow their chosen leaders with implicit credulity.

Bibliographic critics are learned in title pages, indexes, editions. Their judgments are traditionary; their opi nions hereditary. They think by proxy, and talk by rote. One of this sort reads everything and feels nothing; he is a walking catalogue; a peripatetic companion to the library; he knows the names of all the authors that have lived. "In books, not authors, studious is my lord.” Yet such is a useful character; a guide to the literary voyager; a conductor of the literary diligence. He is well in his place if he will only remain quietly in it; but the difficulty is to keep him there.

X.

FEMALE NOVELISTS.

in

THE real genius of the female mind, in two classes of prose fiction, appears to be universally confessed, i. e., the delineation of the artificial in manners, and the natural in sentiment in the novel of manners, as Evelina; and in the novel of sentiment, as the Simple Story. Ridicule and pathos, these furnish the appropriate weapons, and occupy the legitimate provinces of the female novelist. In these departments they reign supreme. Manly writers may have at their command a wider vocabulary of indig nant sarcasm or exhibit profounder views of character: may paint an absurdity in more glowing colors, and more grotesque forms, or display a superior exuberance of comic fancy; but they cannot trifle with such abandon and ease as a female wit: their wit may carry more weight, but it is less bright and cutting than a woman's. Men reason better, but they cannot rally so well; and raillery, in ordinary talk, bears the palm from ratiocination. Masculine satire is best adapted for the dissection of character and real things, and not so well fitted for depicting mannerisms. Women observe and note all the varieties of the genus oddity, more readily than men, and with a certain instinctive nicety of taste and discrimination, they describe the varying

and almost imperceptible shades of manners. From an educated sense of propriety in behavior, and the restraints of decorum and etiquette, they are rendered more critical judges of the nice observances of polite breeding, and the opposite gaucheries of an impolite or rustic bearing. Mere external minutiæ engage their attention so much as to beget an almost pedantic regard for certain forms of society, and a horror of all solecisms, which they almost rank with criminal offences. They are, for this reason, perfectly at home either in criticising or describing the persons or events of a ball-room, the boudoir, theatre, concert, or saloon. With a quick eye they note each and every deviation from the existing code of fashion, whether it be in dress, manners or conversation. So much for the satirical powers of the sex.

A similar analogy holds in respect to the talent for sentimental description. Great poets, like Shakspeare, and painters of man, as Fielding, for instance, deal more with the passions than the sentiments, which require finer handling, to borrow a phrase from the artist. A middle range, between high passion and indifference, the pathos of domestic tragedy, the prose imagination of the poet, depicting scenes of ordinary or even of humble life, appear to fall within the sphere of female genius. Few masculine writers (even among poets) have done full justice to the noblest specimens of the female character, whilst, at the same time, it must be confessed that no female painter has ever been able to grasp very many traits of the characters of men, or to realize the immense discrepancies between the different ranks. The best women are ignorant, practically, of the lowest forms of humanity (still noble in the most utter degradation); and those who are such cannot

throw any light upon the subject from their own pens. Whole classes of society are thus excluded from the vision of the fair author, and the motley manners of many men. We have had no female Ulysses or Homer. At the same time there is, nevertheless, a wide field to be explored, of private history and domestic life.

There are the mani

fold windings of the female heart to be threaded (an Arachne's web); there is the beautiful nature of childhood to unfold, the growing beauty of the womanly maiden; and the proper audience (of readers) is composed of characters of the same stamp, sweet children, innocent girlhood, fair virginity, womanly beauty, inspiring love. From the bud to the full blown flower, from her offspring (with its opening mind and inquisitive tongue), to the lovely creature that bore it, a precious burden; from these come the lessons of life, to these they are properly addressed, and by one of themselves. Yes! women write for women, and so they should: let men explore the baser parts of human nature; let it be their business (a hateful task) to torture the guilty soul into penitence, religion, and virtue. It is for woman to weave garlands of immortal beauty for the brow of goodness and happy duty; and to wreathe chaplets for the crowning graces of the confiding, the affectionate, and the pure. By way of illustrating the above remarks, we shall, in particular, proceed to notice the fictions of Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Inchbald, who stand foremost in the two classes we have undertaken to describe. We shall reserve a page or two for Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Bremer, not forgetting an incidental notice of other female writers of eminence in the same depart

ment.

First, however, of the two classical painters we men

tioned, the latter of whom we place at the head of all female novelists and prose writers, for qualities both of head and heart, which rarely meet in union. Many of our fair readers may have to be told that these capital writers were the peculiar favorites of their day; though we dare to say that by the class for whom their works were written and appropriately addressed, they are almost entirely unknown. This is more particularly the case with regard to the present generation of readers. Old ladies and young women of a certain age, have thumbed Camilla and the Simple Story, aye, and well. Yet, while the modern lady has every new novel on her table, we seldom see the Simple Story; never Nature and Art, more frequently Evelina, and Cecilia hardly at all. We trust these suggestions may not be wholly profitless, but induce a return to those standard productions, not only unsurpassed but unequalled by any attempts of the kind at present. None of the fashionable novelists of our present era can hit off a city fop like Miss Burney, or melt the heart with no unfeigned emotion like the creator of Miss Milner, and Dorriforth, and Sandford. There is a smartness, a shrewdness of observation in the authoress of Evelina, to which neither Lady Blessington, nor Mrs. Gore, nor any writer of her school, can lay any pretensions. Neither do we possess in English, at the present moment, a writer who can excite our indignation of timeserving in the bishop, and hypocritical severity in the unjust judge; who can quicken our admiration of fortitude, patience, and noble generosity, or smite the heart with a weight of melancholy anguish at the untimely fate of the poor victim of sin in power and "the pride of place," as the admirable writer of Nature and Art. The more