the charge of levity; consciousness of his powers tempted him to defy the charge; and it must be owned that when professional interests came into play, he ceased to exhibit his customary greatness of motive. He was an extraordinary man, however, and did a great deal of good.

12th. Humors of Mere Temperament; as Molière's Malade Imaginaire, Sheridan's Sir Anthony Absolute, &c.

13th. Moral or Intellectual Incongruities; as in all humors more or less, conventionally considered, or with regard to ap-. pearances; but particularly in Don Quixote, who is the representative of the most affecting struggles of society itself, if society did but know it. And indeed society seems to be finding it out, and to be at once restoring Don Quixote to his reason, and giving him hopes of his island. Veniat regnum. A delicious minor character of the incongruous order, is that of Major Bath in Fielding's novel of Amelia; a poor and pompous but nobleminded gentleman, who swears "by the honor and dignity of man,” and is caught cooking some gruel in a saucepan for his ailing sister.

14th and last, and above all, not only as far as delight and hope go, but wisdom and success itself (for they are Don Quixote's descendants without his madness or hollow cheeks, and are possessed by anticipation of his island), Genial Contradictions of the Conventional, as exemplified in the Sir Roger de Coverleys, Parson Adamses, and the prince of them all, Uncle Toby. The people in the Vicar of Wakefield are related to them, especially Moses; but they are for the most part as sophisticate in the comparison, as Goldsmith was conscious and uneasy. Nothing can surpass Addison's treatment of Sir Roger de Coverley; but for the honor of Nature's first fresh impulses, and with the leave of an admirable living writer before mentioned (whom I have the honor to call my friend) let it never be forgotten that Steele invented him. Steele invented all the leading characters in the Spectator, all those in the Tatler and Guardian; and is in fact the great inventive humorist of those works, as well as its most pathetic story-teller; though Addison was the greater worker out of the characters, and far surpassed him in wit and style. One little trait related of Sir Roger on his first appearance-his

talking all the way up stairs with the footman,-contains the germ of the best things developed by Addison.

As to Parson Adams, and his fist, and his good heart, and his Eschylus which he couldn't see to read, and his rejoicing at being delivered from a ride in the carriage with Mr. Peter Pounce, whom he had erroneously complimented on the smallness of his parochial means, let everybody rejoice that there has been a man in the world called Henry Fielding to think of such a character, and thousands of good people sprinkled about that world to answer for the truth of it; for had there not been, what would have been its value? We are too apt to suspect ill of one another, from the doubt whether others are as honest as ourselves, and will not deceive us; forgetting, in common modesty, that if we ourselves are honest people, so must be thousands

more.

But what shall I say to thee, thou quintessence of the milk of human kindness, thou reconciler of war (as far as it was once necessary to reconcile it), thou returner to childhood during peace, thou lover of widows, thou master of the best of corporals, thou whistler at excommunications, thou high and only final Christian gentleman, thou pitier of the devil himself, divine Uncle Toby! Why, this I will say, made bold by thy example, and caring nothing for what anybody may think of it who does not in some measure partake of thy nature, that he who created thee was the wisest man since the days of Shakspeare; and that Shakspeare himself, mighty reflector of things as they were, but no anticipator, never arrived at a character like thine. No master of bonhomie was he. No such thing, alas! did he find in the parson at Stratford-upon-Avon, or in the tap-rooms on his way to town, or in those of Eastcheap, or in the courts of Elizabeth and James, or even in the green-rooms of the Globe and Blackfriars, though he knew Decker himself, and probably had heard him speak of such a man as Signor Orlando Friscobaldo. Let him afford to lose the glory of this discovery; let Decker be enriched with it; and let Fielding and Sterne have the renown of finding the main treasure. As long as the character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the heart of man is noble. It awaits the impress of all good things, and may pre

pare for as many surprises in the moral world, as science has brought about in the physical.

I will close this Essay (would that it had been worthier of the subject!) with a few disconnected passages from Tristram Shandy, worthy to be had in everlasting remembrance.

Corporal Trim about to read a sermon." If you have any objection," said my father, addressing himself to Dr. Slop. Not in the least," replied Dr. Slop : "for it does not appear on which side of the question it is wrote it may be a composition of a divine of our church, as well as yours; so that we run equal risques." "Tis wrote upon neither side," quoth Trim;" 'for 'tis only upon conscience, an' please your honors."

Passage of an Excommunication, with the comment upon it.—" May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him! May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him! May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him." "Our armies swore terribly in Flanders," cried my uncle Toby, "but nothing to this. I couldn't find it in my heart to curse my dog so." Memento and Money" I have left Trim my bowling-green,” cried my uncle Toby.-My father smiled.—“I have left him, moreover, a pension," continued my uncle Toby.-My father looked grave. "Is this a

fit time," said my father to himself, " to talk of pensions and grenadiers?" Unconscious Self-betrayal.—" I am at a loss, Captain Shandy," quoth Dr. Slop, "to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most; whether in physiology or divinity." Slop had not forgot Trim's comment upon the sermon. "This poor fellow," continued Dr. Slop, "has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this point." "That he has," said my father. Very likely," said my uncle. "I'm sure of it," quoth Yorick.

War and the Fly." I wish the whole science of fortification, with all its inventors, at the devil," said my father. "It has been the death of thousands, and it will be mine in the end. I would not, I would not, brother Toby, have my brain so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be the proprietor of Namur, and of all the towns in Flanders with it."

(Tristram's father, who afterwards apologizes for this sally of impatience, was not aware that the occupation of his brother Toby's head with all this scientific part of war was the very reason why he did not think of it's being the "death of thousands.")

"My uncle Toby was a man patient of injuries; not from want of courage; I have told you, in a former chapter, that he was a man of courage;

and will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth, I know no man under whose arm I would have sooner taken shelter; nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts; for he felt this insult of my father's as feelingly as a man could do; but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,-no jarring elements in it,-all was mixed up so kindly within him: my uncle Toby had scarcely a heart to retaliate upon a fly.

"Go," says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him; "I'll not hurt thee," says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room with the fly in his hand; "I'll not hurt a hair of thy head. Go," says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape; go, poor devil! get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?-this world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me."

66

People think they are in no want of such lessons as these nowadays; but to say nothing of their flattering themselves too much on that point (for there are

"flies

of many sizes), it is

This illustrious Irish

greatly because Sterne has taught them. man (I have a "Shandean" reason for speaking of him under that title) is Rabelais, reborn at a riper period of the world, and gifted with sentiment. To accuse him of cant and sentimentality, is itself a cant or an ignorance; or at least, if neither of these, it is but to misjudge him from an excess of manner here and there. The matter always contains the solidest substance of truth and duty. It is a thousand pities he retained something of the coarseness of Rabelais, because it prevents his book from being put into everybody's hands; though upon his own principle of turning evil to good, perhaps even this blemish has served to draw attention to it. Among passages which are supposed to be connected with that coarseness, but really are not so, are some which are yet destined to be of important service to mankind; and if I were requested to name the book of all others, which combined Wit and Humor under their highest appearance of levity with the profoundest wisdom, it would be Tristram Shandy.

4

CHAUCER,

BORN, 1324?-DIED, 1400 ?

THE graver portion of the genius of this great poet will be more fitly noticed in the volume to be entitled Action and Passion. He is here only in his gayer mood.

I retain the old spelling for three reasons:-first, because it is pleasant to know the actual words of such a writer, as far as they can be ascertained; second, because the antiquity is part of the costume; and third, because I have added a modern prose version, which removes all difficulty in the perusal. I should rather say I have added the version for the purpose of retaining the immortal man's own words, besides being able to show perhaps how strongly every word of a great poet tells in the most modern prose version, provided his ideas are not absolutely misrepresented. At all events, the reader may go uninterruptedly, if he pleases, through the version, and then turn to the original for the finer traits, and for a music equally correct and beautiful.

I wish I could have given more than one comic story out of Chaucer; but the change of manners renders it difficult at any time, and impossible in a book like the present. The subjects with which the court and gentry of the times of the Henries and Edwards could be entertained, are sometimes not only indecorous but revolting. It is a thousand pities that the unbounded sympathy of the poet with everything that interested his fellow-creatures did not know, in this instance, where to stop. Yet we must be cautious how we take upon ourselves to blame him. Even Shakspeare did not quite escape the infection of indecency in a