and Then? One thing I cannot but greatly admire in Mr Warren-he is ever alive to the dignity of his profession. Hating law as I do, in all its courses, ways, contacts, and consequences, and officials, from the Lord Chief-Justice to the petty constable; and having a kind of envious dislike to the arrogation to themselves, by lawyers, of the greater part of the great profits and emoluments of the country; and seeing, besides, that most men of any station and property pay, in their course of life, as much to lawyers as in taxes, the one cried-up grievance; yet I confess that Mr Warren has put the noble portraiture of the profession, in all its dignity and usefulness, and in its high moral and intellectual acquirements and actions, so vigorously before me, that I recant, and even venerate the profession-against my will, nevertheless.

CURATE. HOW touching are the early struggles with his poverty, in the person of the young physician himself! with what fine taste and feeling of the gentleman and the scholar are they written! Perhaps no novel can show a more perfectly complete-in-itself character than his Gammon, in whom is the strange interweaving of the man of taste and sense-even, in some sense, better feeling-with the vile and low habits of knavery.

AQUILIUS.-The author differs from most novelists in this, that he does not make love, by which must be understood love-making or love-pursuing, the subject, but incidental to his subject. He sets up affection, rather, in the niche for his idolatry. Tenderness, and duty linked with it, and made sublime by it, is with him far more than the "passion," of love. It is life with love, rather than in the chase of it, that we see detailed in trial and in power.

CURATE. It is so; and yet you do not, I presume, mean to blame other authors if they have made "the passion" their subject. We are only bound to the author's choice, be it what it may-love, ambition, or any other-we must have every feature of life, every notice of action, pictured.

AQUILIUS. Surely but there is a masculine virtue, seeing that the one field has been so decidedly occupied, in making it less prominent; and where

are

it is thus abstinently administered, there is often a great charm in the conciseness and unexpectedness. Let me exemplify Mr Southey's Doctor. There may be, strictly speaking, or rather speaking after the fashion of novels, but little love-making; there are, nevertheless, two little scenes, that the most touchingly effective I ever remember to have read. The one is a scene between cousinsdependent and in poverty, I think, at Salisbury; the other, the unexpected and brief courtship of Doctor Dove himself. It is many years since I read The Doctor, yet these two scenes have often been conjured up, and vividly pictured to my imagination. I doubt if Southey could have told a love-tale in any other way, and few in any way would have told one so well.

CURATE. Those who dwell too unsparingly on such scenes, and spin out their sentimental tales, and bring the loving pair incessantly before the eye, do for the most part the very thing which the nature of the passion forbids. Its whole virtue is in the secrecy. And though the writer often supposes a secrecy, by professing himself only the narrator and not the witness, yet the reader is not quite satisfied, seeing that he too is called in to look over the wall or behind the hedge; and the virtue he is willing to give the lovers is at some expense of his own, for he has a shrewd suspicion that both he and the writer are little better than spies.

AQUILIUS. Surely you will admit something conventional, as you would the soliloquy on the stage-words must pass for thoughts. I find a greater fault with those kind of novels; they work, as it were, too much to a point, beyond which, and out of which aim, there is no interest. These I call melodramatic novels, in which the object seems to harrow up or continually excite the feelings, to rein the hasty course of curiosity, working chiefly for the denouement, after which there is nothing left but a blank. Curiosity, satisfied, cannot go back; the threads have all been taken up that lead out of the labyrinth-they will not conduct you back again. Novels of this kind have greater power, at first, than any other; but, the effect for which they labour fully produced,

the effervescence is over; and though we remember them for the delight they have given, we do not return to them. Novels of less overstrained incident, full of a certain naïveté in the description of men and manners, from which the reader may make inferences and references out of his own knowledge, though they will not be read by so many, will be read oftener by the same persons. Perhaps there is more genius in the greater part of these novels, but the writers sacrifice to effect -to immediate effect-too much. Cooper's novels are somewhat of this kind; and may I venture to say that the Waverley novels, as they are called, assume a little more than one could wish of this character. Authors, in this respect, are like painters of effect-they strike much at first, but become even tiresome by the permanency of what is, in nature, evanescent. It is too forced for the quietness under which things are both seen and read twice. Generally, in such tales, when the parties have got well out of their troubles, we are content to leave them at the church door, and not to think of them afterwards.

CURATE.-Novelists, too, seem to think that, by their very title, they are compelled to seek novelties. I have to complain of a very bad novelty. The lived together happy for ever after" is not only to be omitted, but these last pages of happiness are sadly slurred over; as if the author was mostly gifted with the malicious propensity for accumulating trouble upon his favourites, and with reluctance registered their escape into happiness. They do out of choice what biographers do out of necessity, the disagreeable necessity of biography, and for which-I confess the weakness-I dislike it. I do not like to come to the "vanitas vanitatum " to see the last page contradict and make naught of the vitality, the energy, the pursuit, the attainment of years. It is all true enough-as it is-that old men have rheum, but, as Hamlet says, it is villanous to set it down. You have, of course, read that powerful novel Mount Sorel. You remember the last page-the one before had been" voti compos "-all were happy; and there it should have ended. Not a bit of it. Then follows

the monumental scene. You are desired to look forward, to see them, or rather to be told of their lying in their shrouds, with their feet, that recently so busily walked the flowery path of the accomplishment of their hopes, upturned and fixed in the solemn posture of death.

AQUILIUS.-Yes, I remember it well, and being rather nervous, declined reading Emilia Wyndham, by the same author, because I heard it was melancholy, and feared a similar conclusion. I agree with you with respect to biography: and remember, when a boy, the sickening sensation when I read at school the end of Socrates. I wish biographers would know where to stop, and save us the sad catastrophe. It is strange, that you must not read the life of a buffoon but you must see his tricks come to an end, and his whole broad farce of life suddenly drop down dead in tragedy. Whatever may be said of the biographer in his defence, I hold the novelist inexcusable.

CURATE.-I should even prefer the drop-scene of novel happiness to come quietly down before the accoucheur and the registrar of births make their appearance. Why should we be told of a nursery of brats-a whole quiverful, as Lamb says, "shot out" upon you? It is better to take these things for granted. Doubtless it is as true, that the happy couple will occasionally suffer-she from nerves, and he under dyspepsia; but we do not see such matters, nor ought they to be brought forward, although I doubt not the authors might obtain a very handsome fee from an advertising doctor for only publishing the prescriptions. If they go on, however, in this absurd way, it is to be feared they will go one step further with the biographers, and publish the will, with certificate of probate and legacy-tax duly paid.

AQUILIUS.-We are not, however, as bad as the French. If our novels do sometimes require an epitaph at the end, they do not make death at once a lewd, sentimental, frightful, and suicidal act and that not as a warning, but as a French sublime act.

CURATE.-You have read, then, the Juif Errant. I am not very well acquainted with French novels, but have read some very pretty stories in

built up out of the materials supplied by this natural propensity.

AQUILIUS.-How beautiful are impossibilities when genius sets them forth as truth! Who does not yield implicit belief to every creation of Shakspeare? I prefer the utter impossibilities to improbabilities converted into real substantial fact. Let us have Mysteries of Udolpho uncleared up; it is dissatisfying at the end to find you have been cheated. One would not have light let in to a mysterious obscure, and exhibit perhaps but a bare wall ten feet off. I had rather have the downright honest ghost than one, on discovery, that shall be nothing but an old stick and a few rags. The reader is put in the condition of the frogs in the fable, when they found themselves deluded into wonder and worship of an old log. I would not even clear up the darkness of ignorance respecting the Pyramids, and will believe that the hieroglyphics are the language of fables, that are better, like the mummies, under a shroud. Wherever you find a bit of the mysterious, you are sure to be under a charm. In Corinne of Madame de Stael, not the most romantic of authors, the destiny cloud across the moon you would not have resolved into smoke ascending from a house-top. Let the burial-place of Edipus be ever hid. Imagination converts ignorance into a pleasure. There is a belief beyond, and better than that of eyes and ears.

CURATE.-Not at present; at this moment I will trust both. I hear the carriage, and here is Lydia returned from I hope she has picked up the parcel of books which I gathered for our reading.

Now here, Eusebius, our dialogue broke off, and we greeted the Curate's wife. The box, it seems, had not reached the little town; so, with a woman's nice tact, Lydia, the Curate's Lydia, had brought us two Novels to begin with. I therefore put my letter to you by, until we had read them, and I was enabled to say something about them. You perceive, Eusebius, that I have made some mention in the dialogue of you, and your opinions upon nursery fabulous education. Lydia says for to her we mentioned your whim-that you must come and

discuss it with her; and she will, to provoke you, bring you into company with some very good people, and very much devoted to education. She tells me she has a neighbour who burnt Gay's fables, which a godfather had given to one of her children; because, said she, it taught children lying, for her children looked incredulous as one day she told them that beasts cannot speak. The Curate's wife promises herself some amusement, you perceive, when you come; you must therefore be as provoking as possible. now, Eusebius, we have read the novels brought to us. The first, Jane Eyre, has been out some time: not so the other, Madame de Malguet, which has only now made its first appearance. I do not think it fair, though it is a common practice with critics, to give out a summary of the tales they review-for this is sure to spoil the reading. I will resume, then, the dialogue, omitting such parts as may be too searching into the story.

But

LYDIA.—Well, I am glad we read Jane Eyre first, for I should have been sorry to have ended with tears, which she has drawn so plentifully; and not from my eyes alone, though both you men, as ashamed of your better natures, have endeavoured to conceal them in vain.

AQUILIUS.-It is a very pathetic tale-very singular; and so like truth that it is difficult to avoid believing that much of the characters and incidents are taken from life, though woman is called the weaker sex. Here, in one example, is represented the strongest passion and the strongest principle, admirably supported.

CURATE. It is an episode in this work-a-day world, most interesting, and touched at once with a daring, yet delicate hand. In spite of all novel rules, the love heroine of the tale has no personal beauty to recommend her to the deepest affection of a man of sense, of station, and who had seen much of the world, not uncontaminated by it. It seems to have been the purpose of the author to show that high and noble sentiments, and great affection, can be both made subservient, and even heightened, by the energy of practical wisdom. If the author has purposely formed a heroine without the heroine's usual accomplishments,

with a knowledge of the world, and even with a purpose to heighten that woman in our admiration, he has made no small inroad into the virtues that are usually attributed to every lover, in the construction of a novel. He, the hero, has great faults-why should we mince the word ?-vice. And yet so singular is the fatality of love, that it would be impossible to find two characters so necessary to exhibit true virtues, and make the happiness of each. The execution of the painting is as perfect as the conception.

LYDIA. I think every part of the novel perfect, though I have no doubt many will object, in some instances, both to the attachment and the conduct of Jane Eyre.

AQUILIUS. It is not a book for Prudes-it is not a book for effeminate and tasteless men; it is for the enjoyment of a feeling heart and vigorous understanding.

LYDIA.I never can forget her passage across the heath, and her desolate night's lodging there.

CURATE. But you will remember it without pain, for it was at once the suffering and the triumph of woman's virtue.

AQUILIUS. To my mind, one of the most beautiful passages is the return of Jane Eyre, when she sees in the twilight her "master" and her lover solitary, and feeling his way with his hands, baring his sightless sorrow to the chill and drizzly night.

CURATE. But what think you of Madame de Malguet? In a different way, that is as unlike any other novel as Jane Eyre. This, too, is written to exhibit the character of woman under no ordinary circumstances.

AQUILIUS-She reminds me of the Chevalier d'Eon, whose portrait I remember to have seen years ago in the Wonderful Magazine-half man, half woman. Madame de Malguet is perhaps an amalgamation of the Chevalier and Lady Hester Stanhope. These, after all, are not the beings to be exempt from the tender passion, but it is under the strongest vagaries. Love without courtship is the very romance of the passion; and such is there in the tale of Madame de Malguet. The scene is laid in a little town, and its immediate neighbourhood, in France; and

though a "Tale of 1820," carries back its interest, and much of the detail of the story, to the horrors of the first French Revolution. There is consequently a wide field for diversity of character, and for conflict of opinions, and their effects, as shown upon every grade of social life; and it is very striking that the deepest rooted prejudices, ere the conclusion, change sides, and are fitted upon characters to whom, at the commencement, they seemed but little to belong. The inborn aristocratic feelings, alike with the republican habits, meet their check; and I suppose it was the intention of the author to show the weakness of both.

CURATE.-I am not certain of that, for I think the innate is preserved even through the disguise of contrary habits. I know not which is the hero

the Buonapartean soldier or the English naval captain. There are some discussions on subjects of life interspersed, which show the author to be a man of a deeply reflecting mind, and endued with no little power of expressing what he thinks and what he feels. AQUILIUS.-When I found fault with this wet blanket of happiness, the monumental termination of Mount Sorel, I did not so soon expect to meet with a repetition of this fault. I must pick a quarrel with the writer for unnecessarily putting his characters hors-de-combat. I think authors nowa-days need not be afraid of the fate of Cervantes-of having them taken off their hands, and made to play their parts upon any other stages than their

own.

LYDIA. You seem, both of you, to forget the real moral of the storythat a person endowed with a little more than common sense, general kindness, amiability, and energy of character, may be more useful in the world than the most accomplished hero.

CURATE.-You would have found him too a hero, if his actions had been within the sphere of heroism. I hope to meet with Mr Torrens again. He has very great powers, and his conceptions are original.

And now, Eusebius, having written you this account of our dialogue, and breathed country air, and witnessed happiness, I am, yours ever, and "Precipue sanus, nisi cùm pituita molesta est." AQUILIUS.