excellent specimens of the "slashing" style of criticism, now happily gone altogether out of fashion, might be culled from Smollett's contributions to the Review. The result, of course, was that he speedily raised against himself a host of enemies, thus embittering his life with a long series of petty squabbles and disputations. One controversy in which he engaged carried with it very serious consequences. Reviewing a pamphlet in which Admiral Knowles vindicated his conduct in the secret expedition against Rochfort in 1757, Smollett declared that Knowles was "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity." This was strong language, though it seems to have been justified by the facts of the case; and Smollett being prosecuted for libel, was sentenced to pay a fine of £100, and to suffer three months' imprisonment. While confined in prison he occupied himself in writing the "Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves," which in 1760-1 appeared by instalments in the British Magazine, being one of the first of those serial tales which now form the staple of so many of our periodicals. It was republished in 1762. Sir Launcelot is a modern Don Quixote, and the story of his exploits is one of the least successful of Smollett's productions.

Besides the works by which his name is principally known, Smollett compiled or lent his name to a number of pieces of literary hackwork. Among these may be mentioned a col lection of voyages (1757), and a History of England from the earliest period to 1748. This was published in 1758, in four quarto volumes, and is said to have been written in fourteen months-a feat of literary activity which, we should imagine, has never been surpassed. The narrative was afterwards brought down to 1765. Smollett does not rank high as an historian; the speed with which he wrote carried with it its inevitable fruits of carelessness and inaccuracy. “I spent much of the day over Smollett's History," writes Macaulay in his Diary (December 8, 1838). "It is exceedingly bad: detestably so. I cannot think what had happened to him. His carelessness, partiality, passion, idle invective, gross ignorance of facts, and

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crude general theories, do not surprise me much. But the style, wherever he tries to be elevated, and wherever he attempts to draw a character, is perfectly nauseous; which I cannot understand. He says of old Horace Walpole that he was an ambassador without dignity and a plenipotentiary without address. I declare that I would rather have my hand cut off than publish such a precious antithesis." This is too harsh a judgment; it errs as much on the side of severity as Scott's does on the side of lenity when he says that Smollett's History is written with uncommon spirit and correctness of language. Smollett could scarcely fail to render any subject he treated of readable at least; and though his facts are gathered with little care, his style is frequently attractive and vigorous. The latter part of his History is (or rather used to be) often printed as a continuation of Hume's.

In 1763, Smollett, broken down in health and much depressed in spirits by domestic affliction, undertook a journey to France and Italy, in which countries he resided for between two and three years. On his return to England in 1766 he published an account of his travels, which bears painful traces of how his bodily weakness and mental trials had affected his disposition. The "learned Smelfungus," says Sterne, alluding to Smollett, "travelled from Boulogne to Paris-from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen and jaundice; and every object he passed by was discoloured and distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but an account of his own miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon-he was just coming out of it. "Tis nothing but a huge cockpit,' said he." The closing years of Smollett's life were spent in a very pitiful condition of weak health and often of severe pain. Like his great rival, Henry Fielding, he sought to regain his strength in a foreign climate, only to find there his grave. He set out for Italy in 1770, and drew his last breath in the neighbourhood of Leghorn in 1771. There is something peculiarly sad about the death of Smollett at the early age of fifty-one. In spite of his multifarious industry he left his family almost totally unprovided for.

he lived a few years longer he would have inherited the estate of Bonhill, of the value of about £iooo a year, and thus have been enabled to end his days in comfort and affluence.

Shortly before his death, Smollett completed his last and best work, the "Expedition of Humphrey Clinker,” “the most laughable story," says Thackeray, "that ever was written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." Humphrey Clinker himself, Winifred Jenkins, Matthew Bramble, Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, and above all Lismahago, are characters that none but a writer of first-rate humorous genius could have created. There is, too, a fine mellow flavour about “Humphrey Clinker," which makes it a fitting close to Smollett's literary life. There is in it, too, a vein of pathos, not uncommon in Smollett's novels, but never found in Fielding's. "I remember,” said Carlyle to Mr. Moncure Conway, speaking about his early years, "few happier days than those in which I ran off into the woods to read 'Roderick Random,' and how inconsolable I was that I could not get the second volume. To this day I know of few writers equal to Smollett. Humphrey Clinker' is precious to me now as he was in those years. Nothing by Dante or any one else surpasses in pathos the scene where Humphrey goes into the smithy made for him in the old house, and whilst he is heating the iron, the poor woman who has lost her husband and is deranged comes and talks to him as to her husband, John, they told me you were dead. How glad I am you are come.' And Humphrey's tears fall down and bubble on the hot iron." Comparing Fielding's novels with Smollett's, Hazlitt said that the one was an observer of the characters of human life, the other a describer of its various eccentricities. The distinction is just. Smollett could not draw his characters without, like Dickens, adding to them a considerable touch of caricature, while Fielding painted men as they really were. There is, too, an air of culture and refinement about Fielding's novels which is absent from Smollett's. To relish Fielding properly one must have some literary taste and knowledge, while Smollett's riotous fun can be appreciated. by any one who is able to read. On the other hand, in variety

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and originality of incident and character Smollett decidedly surpassed Fielding, and he was besides no contemptible poet, as his "Tears of Caledonia," written after the massacre of Culloden, and his "Ode to Independence," sufficiently show. As a man Smollett in many ways deserves to be held in kindly remembrance. Proud, frank, imprudent, he was a hard hitter, always ready to give a blow, and always ready to take one manfully. Good-hearted and generous, but petulant and sometimes revengeful, he made many enemies; but when he saw that he had done any one an injustice, he was always ready to make noble reparation. To his poor brethren of the quill, the ragged denizens of Grub Street, he, poor himself, gave bountiful aid, though he could not refrain from making fun of their eccentricities. In person he is said to have been remarkably handsome, "with a certain air of dignity that seemed. to show that he was not unconscious of his own powers."

A writer of equal genius to Fielding or Smollett, but differing from them in almost every respect, was the last great novelist of the eighteenth century, Laurence Sterne. As a novelist he stands unique; for though many, inspired by his success, endeavoured to imitate him, they succeeded only in catching a portion of his peculiar mannerism: his subtle humour and his singular vein of sentiment were beyond their reach. Sterne's one work of fiction is not a novel of real life, neither has it any elaborately constructed plot: he seems, indeed, to have thought, with Bayes in the "Rehearsal," "what is a plot good for except to bring in good things?" He rambles on in the most incoherent and eccentric way, constantly indulging in digressions and meditations, so that through the whole long work the plot scarcely makes any material progress. It is by his finely conceived sketches of character and by the depth and, tenderness of his humour that Sterne has won or himself an immortal name in literature. Sterne is one of the happily few men of genius whose character was such as to cause one to approach the study of their writings with a feeling of prejudice. He was born at Clonmel, Ireland, of English parents, in 1713. His father was a lieutenant, who was

engaged in the wars in Flanders during the reign of Queen Anne; and Sterne thus spent rather a wandering childhood, following the sound of the drum as his father's regiment was ordered from place to place. When about ten years old he was sent to England, and put to school near Halifax, "with an able master," he says in the fragment of autobiography which he left behind him, "with whom I stayed some time, till, by God's care of me, my Cousin Sterne of Elvington became a father to me, and sent me to the University." One anecdote which he relates of his school-days would seem to show that his genius had been rather precocious. Upon the newly whitewashed ceiling of the schoolroom he wrote with a brush in large capital letters LAU. STERNE. For so doing he was severely whipped by the usher, but the head-master took Sterne's part strongly, and declared that his name should never be effaced, for he was a boy of genius, and sure to come to preferment. Sterne left school shortly after the death of his father, which occurred in a duel, and in 1733 entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of M.A. in 1740. On leaving the University he took orders, and through the interest of his uncle, a well-beneficed clergyman, obtained the living of Sutton and the Prebendary of York. In York he met with the lady whom he afterwards married. The account of his courtship shall be given in his own words: "I courted her for two years. She owned she liked me, but thought herself not rich enough or me too poor to be joined together. She went to her sister's in S, and I wrote to her often. I believe then she was partly determined to have me, but would not say so. At her return she fell into a consumption; and one evening that I was sitting by her, with an almost broken heart to see her so ill, she said, 'My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live; but I have left you every shilling of my fortune. Upon this she showed me her will. This generosity overpowered me. It pleased God that she recovered, and 1 married her in the year 1741." It is a pity to have to relate, after this sentimental narrative, that within a few years after