author complacently patronising Scott after the appearance of the Waverley Novels.

Didactic novelists of another stamp were Hannah More (1745-1833), Walpole's "holy Hannah,” Mrs. Inchbald (1753-1821), and Thomas Day (1748-1789). Mrs. More left scarcely any branch of literature untouched, and won fame in each. She came forward late in life as a novelist with Calebs in Search of a Wife (1809), which is as much a moral tract as a novel, and more likely now to be known by name than read. Mrs. Inchbald, though she suffered from difficulty in utterance, commenced life as an actress, and then became playwright and novelist. Her novels, A Simple Story and Nature and Art, are essentially didactic, dealing with the education of the young and social convention. But Mrs. Inchbald shows marked individuality of treatment, brilliant cleverness, and power in characterisation; though her pathos is overwrought. Miss Edgeworth, however, confesses to have been more moved by A Simple Story than any novel, without exception, she ever read. Of Thomas Day it is enough to say that he was the author of the once famous child's book, Sandford and Merton.

Another and better tendency in imaginative writing is illustrated by Frances Burney (1752– 1840), who was followed though not imitated by

her sister-novelist, Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the greatest of English novelists, who claims by right a chapter to herself. The novel of domestic manners was already to be found in Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. But a great change had passed over English social life since the middle of the century: manners were more refined, the proprieties were more strictly observed, and novels which had once been the common reading of the drawing-room were now banished as indecent. Smollett and Fielding were regarded as low; and even Richardson was beginning to be thought lengthy and dull. They belonged, moreover, to past history; and the social life they depicted had grown unfamiliar to readers living three or four decades later. It was reserved for Miss Burney to revive the true novel of domestic life and the social round, purified of the sentimentalism of Richardson and the realism of Fielding and Smollett. She was born at King's Lynn, where her father was an organist. Her education was neglected, and at eight years of age she did not know her alphabet; but when her father moved to London in 1760 she came into contact with cultured society, including Johnson, Reynolds, and Garrick, and she began to educate herself by reading at random in her father's library. As a child she showed a natural propensity for scrib

bling; and she did not contradict the rumour, which spread upon the appearance of her first novel, Evelina, that it was the work of a young girl of seventeen. In point of fact Miss Burney was ten years older when Evelina took the town by storm. Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, and Sheridan were all enthusiastic admirers, and Sir Joshua Reynolds sat up all night to read Evelina. Miss Burney's first novel is written in the letter-form of Richardson, in a simple, unadorned, and pleasant style. The difficulties of the heroine on points of etiquette, propriety, and honour, when she finds herself in the unaccustomed surroundings of fashionable life in London are admirably portrayed; and Miss Burney exhibits close and original power of observation in the variety of characters whom she draws. Dr. Johnson gave her the title of "character-monger," and the name is fully deserved, though Miss Burney is not free from faults of exaggeration, and she is apt to make her people embodiments of a mood. Her satirical treatment is not sufficiently light-handed, and is clumsy compared to the subtlety of Jane Austen. Cecilia, her second novel, is not so good; the illusion of reality is not as well maintained, and Miss Burney's tendency to caricature is more manifest. But contemporary opinion was satisfied, and placed Cecilia by the side of Evelina. After

five years of "slavery" as keeper of the queen's robes, Miss Burney retired, and two years later she married General D'Arblay, a French refugee, and spent many years in France. Her later novels, Camilla and The Wanderer, are ruined by the affectation of a pompous and stilted Johnsonian style, which had already begun to make its appearance in Cecilia. The true significance of Miss Burney lies in her two early novels, and her restoration of the realistic painting of everyday life, unmixed with false romanticism, sentiment, or doctrinaire theories.

James Ballantyne used to relate that nothing could gratify Scott more than to say of his work, Positively this is equal to Miss Edgeworth," and Scott himself more than acknowledged the debt of suggestion he owed to her when he tried to portray the peasantry and land of Scotland in the spirit in which Miss Edgeworth had drawn the people, cabins, and peat-bogs of Ireland. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) was born in England, but spent the greater part of her life in Ireland. She owed her education to her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, himself the author of several engineering and educational works. The daughter began as an authoress by following in her father's footsteps, and publishing, with the immense confidence of youth, a compendious Parent's Assistant,

in six volumes. Other educational books followed; and the moral purpose never deserts Miss Edgeworth in anything she ever wrote. Her first novel, Castle Rackrent, published anonymously, brought her fame. Miss Edgeworth set herself to give a living and realistic picture of Irish peasant life; and she was the first writer who attempted to found the interest of her representation of "low life," not on incident but wholly upon characterisation, and to this end her true and genuine gift of humour assisted. The best of her other novels are Belinda, The Absentee, and Ormond. Miss Edgeworth's chief claim to remembrance are her racy and humorous pictures of Irish life. The pattern she set was followed by Scott for his own country; and since their time almost every county in the United Kingdom has produced its specialist in local scene-painting and characterisation. The fault of Miss Edgeworth's novels is a vein of dullness inspired by the moral purpose, which was for her the most important feature of her books. The moral reacts on her characters, and they too often tend to become mere types of the virtues and the vices; and, as a natural consequence, the circumstances in which they are placed appear to the reader artificial rather than inevitable.

A point of interest, which the latter half of the