Sterne, the witty, pathetic, and sentimental author of Tristram Shandy, was not inferior in conception of rich eccentric comic character, to any English novel writer that preceded him. Brother Shandy, my Uncle Toby, Trim, the widow Wadman, and Dr. Slop, will go down to posterity with the kindred creations of Cervantes. This idol of his own day is now, however, but little read, except in passages of pure sentiment. His broad humor is no longer relished; his oddities have not the gloss of novelty; and his indecencies startle the delicate and correct. The want of simplicity and decency for which even his sparkling polished diction can not atone, is his greatest fault. Sterne's life too, was as little in keeping as his writings. Though a clergyman, he was dissolute and licentious; and though a sentimentalist, who had, with his pen, tears for all animate and inanimate nature, he was, in his own conduct, hard-hearted and selfish. Had he confined himself to his living in the country, going his daily rounds of pastoral duties, he would have been a wiser and better man. 'He degenerated in London,' says Garrick, 'like an ill-transplanted shrub: the incense of the great spoiled his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud —an invalid in body and mind.'

LAURENCE STERNE was the son of an Irish lieutenant, and was born at Clonmel, in the south of Ireland, on the twenty-fourth of November, 1713. He was educated by a cousin, first at Halifax, in Yorkshire, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts, in 1740. Having entered into orders, his uncle, Dr. Sterne, a rich pluralist, presented him with the living of Sutton, to which was added a prebend of York; and through his marriage with a York lady, he derived another living in that county, the rectory of Stillington. He lived nearly twenty years at Sutton, reading, painting, fiddling, and shooting, with occasional quarrels with his clerical brethren, with whom he was no favorite. He left Yorkshire for London, in 1759, to publish the two first volumes of 'Tristram Shandy.' Two other volumes were published in 1761, and during the following year, the same number more. He now took a tour to France, which enriched some of his subsequent volumes of Tristram,' with his exquisite sketches of peasants and vine-dressers, the muleteer, the abbess and Margarita, Maria at Moulines, and the poor ass with his heavy panniers, at Lyons.

In 1764, Sterne took another continental tour, and penetrated into Italy, to which we are indebted for his Sentimental Journey. The latter work he composed on his return to Coxwould, the living of which had been presented to him, on the first publication of 'Tristram,' by Lord Falconbridge. Having completed the first part of his 'Journey' he went to London to see it published, and died in lodgings in Bond-street, on the eighteenth of March, 1768. His death-bed was attended by nobody but a hired nurse. He had often wished to die in an inn, where the few cold offices he might require could be purchased with a few guineas, and paid to him with

an undisturbed and punctual attention. His wish was realized almost to the letter.

Sterne's great work, 'Tristram Shandy,' is but a bundle of episodes and digressions, strung together without any attempt at regularity or order. The reader must 'give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands— be pleased, he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.' Through the whole novel, however, over its mists and absurdities, shines his little family band of friends and relatives-that inimitable group of originals and humorists-which stand out from the canvass with the force and distinctness of reality. This distinctness and separate identity is a proof of what Coleridge has termed the peculiar power of Sterne, of seizing on, and bringing forward those points on which every man is a humorist, and of the masterly manner in which he has brought out the characteristics of two beings of the most opposite natures-the elder Shandy, and Toby-and surrounded them with a group of followers, sketched with equal life and individuality. Some volumes of Sermons, published by Sterne, show, according to the opinion of the poet Gray, 'a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but,' he adds, 'you see the author often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the audience.' Both the 'Sermons' and the Journey' are more regular than 'Tristram,' but in other respects they partake largely of the same character. As a specimen of the sentimental style of Sterne, we select the following passage from his 'Journey' :

THE STARLING-CAPTIVITY.

And as for the Bastile, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year; but with nine livers a day, and pen, and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the court-yard as I settled this account; and remember I walked down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I, vauntingly, for I envy not its powers which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition, the Bastile is not an evil to be despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper and not of a man which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint. I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained 'it could not get out.' I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention. In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage; 'I can't get out, I can't get out,' said the starling. I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of

its captivity-'I can't get out,' said the starling. God help thee! said I, but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient; I fear, poor creature, said I, I can not set thee at liberty. 'No,' said the starling, 'I can't get out; I can't get out,' said the starling. I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirit, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked up stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draught, and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change; no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or ehemic power turn thy sceptre into iron: with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which rises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time, nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice; his children-but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the further corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed: a little calender of small sticks lay at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh; I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears; I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

CHARLES JOHNSTONE, the period of whose birth is not known, was born in Ireland, and bred to the bar; but a severe obstruction of his hearing compelled him to abandon that profession. After some delay and irresolution, he finally resolved to turn his attention to literature; and, in 1760, ap

peared his first novel, under the title of The Adventures of a Guinea. The work was so wonderfully popular, that in less than a year from its first publication, a third edition was called for. It exhibits a variety of incidents, related in the style of Le Sage and Smollett, but the satirical portraits are overcharged, and the author was too fond of lashing and exaggerating the vices of his age. One of the critics of the novel says, 'it leads us along all the gloomy, and foul, and noisome passages of life, and we escape from it with the feeling of relief with which we would emerge from a vault in which the air was loaded with noisome vapors.'

Johnstone wrote several other novels of a similar description to 'The Adventures,' among which were The Reverie, or a Flight to the Paradise of Fools, and The Pilgrim, or a Picture of Life; but they are now all utterly forgotten. In 1782, the author went to India, became proprietor of a Bengal newspaper, and died there, in 1800.

HORACE WALPOLE, the author of The Castle of Otranto, was the third son of Sir Robert Walpole, and was born in 1717. In the seventeenth year of his age, he entered King's College, Cambridge, and soon after distinguished himself by his elegant verses in honor of Henry the Sixth, the founder of Eton school. Under the patronage of his father, who was prime minister, he obtained, in 1738, the office of inspector of exports and imports, which he afterwards exchanged for that of usher to the exchequer, with which he held the place of comptroller of the pipe, and of clerk of the escheats in the exchequer for life-appointments which yielded him annually, nearly five thousand pounds. In 1739, he received permission 'to travel on the continent, and, accompanied by Gray, he made the tour of France and Italy; but the dispute at Reggio, to which we have already alluded, separated them for a time, though their intimacy, to the honor of both, was renewed, in 1744.

On his return to England in 1741, Walpole was elected a member of parliament; but though he sat in the house over twenty-five years, he never distinguished himself as a speaker, except in his famous defence of his father, which occurred in the very commencement of his parliamentary career. On resigning his seat in the house, he retired to his favorite estate at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham, which he had purchased in 1747, and which, from year to year, he afterwards tastefully adorned with all the striking features of Gothic times. In this charming spot the literary hermit established, in 1757, a printing-press, where he published, first the two sublime odes of his friend Gray, and afterwards edited other works in an elegant and highly finished manner. On the death of his nephew, in 1791, Walpole became Earl of Oxford, but elevation of rank had no charms for him. He never took his seat in the House of Lords, and with reluctance submitted to the adulation of his friends, on assuming an empty title, which he contemptuously called a new name for a superanuated old man of seventy-four.

In his manners, Lord Oxford was polite and even facetious; and as a man

of letters, he was distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his information. In his sentiments he was lively and intelligent, and in his perceptions, clear and acute. If avarice and vanity were, according to one of his biographers, his leading foibles, an affable and social temper were his counteracting virtues. He was of a benignant and charitable disposition, though not a liberal patron. The death of this distinguished man occurred on the second of March, 1797, at the advanced age of eighty.

The 'Castle of Otranto,' published in 1764, is the only one of Walpole's works that connects his name with the novel writers of this period. It at first appeared anonymously, as a work found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England, and printed at Naples in the black letter, in 1529. 'I wished it to be believed ancient,' he said, ' and almost every body was imposed upon.' The tale was so well received by the public, that a second edition was soon called for, to which the author prefixed his name. Though designed to blend the ancient romance, in which all was imagination and improbability, with the modern, in which nature is copied, the peculiar taste of Walpole, who loved to 'gaze on Gothic toys through Gothic glass,' and the nature of his subject, led him to give the preponderance to the antique. The particulars in which he has improved on the incredible and mysterious, are the dialogues and style, which are pure and dramatic in effect, and the more delicate and picturesque tone which he has given to chivalrous manners.

Walpole would, however, hold but an insignificant place in English literature if his reputation depended on 'The Castle of Otranto.' His Correspondence and Memoirs, those pictures of society and manners, compounded of wit and gayety, shrewd observation, sarcasm, high life, and sparkling language, place him in a high position among the literary men of his age. In 1758, appeared his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, and three years after, his Anecdotes of Painting in England. In 1767, he published his Historic Doubts as to the character and person of Richard the Third; besides which he left for publication Memoirs of the Court of George the Second, and a large collection of copies of his letters. As his letters are generally considered his best performances, we quote the following as a specimen.

TO SIR HORACE MANN, 1750.

LONDON EARTHQUAKES AND LONDON GOSSIP.

Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent,
That they have lost their name.-Dryden.

My text is not literally true; but as far as earthquakes go towards lowering the price of wonderful commodities, to be sure we are overstocked. We have had a second, much more violent than the first; and you must not be surprised if, by next post, you hear of a burning mountain sprung up in Smithfield. In the night between Wednesday and Thursday last (exactly a month since the first shock), the earth had a shivering fit between one and two, but so slight, that, if no more had followed, I don't believe it would have been noticed. I had been