do not give it entire satisfaction. We seek for a more heroic and splendid order of things. Q. What has brought it so much into contempt? A. The faulty manner of its execution, rather than its nature. Q. When did fictitious history first commence ? A. In the earliest periods. The genius of the eastern nations in particular, was, from the earliest times, much turned towards invention and the love of fiction. Q. What fictitious histories were fashionable in the dark ages? A. The romances of knight errantry; in which were displayed a new and wonderful sort of world, knights, and heroines, magicians, dragons, giants, invulnerable men, winged horses, enchanted armour, and enchanted castles, adventures absolutely incredible: yet they were writings of the highly moral and heroic kind. Q. Why were these called Romances ? A. Because they were first written in France, in the Roman or Romance language. Q. What furnished new matter and increased the spirit for such writings? A. The crusades of the Christians against the Saracens ; which, from the 11th to the 16th century, bewitched all Europe. Q. Who exploded the taste for this sort of writing? A. Cervantes, by his history of Don Quix ote. Q. What succeeded? A. The magnificent heroic romance, which soon dwindled to the familiar novel. Q. What was the character of novels during the age of Louis XIV. and Charles II. ? A. They were of a trifling nature, without the appearance of moral tendency, or useful instruction. Q. Has their character since been improved? A. Some; but they oftener tend to dissipation and idleness, than to any good purpose. Q. Who excel in this kind of writing, the English or the French? A. The French. The English neither relate so agreeably, nor draw characters with so much delicacy. Q. What productions of the French have merit? A. Gil Blas, by Le Sage; the Marianne of Marivaux; and the Nouvelle Heloise of Rous seau. Q. What fiction in the English language is supported unusually well? A. The adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Q. For what are Fielding's novels distinguished? A. For their humour; his characters are lively and natural, and his stories are favourable to humanity. Q. Who is the most moral of the English novel writers ? A. Richardson; the author of Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison. POETRY. Q. What is Poetry? A. The language of passion, or of an enlivened imagination, formed, most commonly, into regular numbers. Q. To whom did the Greeks ascribe the origin of poetry? A. To Orpheus, Linus, and Musæus. A. No. Poetry is coeval with man. Q. It has often been said that Poetry is older than prose: What are we to understand by this, that men first talked in poetical numbers? A. No: but that poetry was committed to writing long before prose. Priests, Philosophers, and Statesmen, all, at first, delivered their instructions in poetry: until the age of Herodotus, history had appeared only in poetical tales. Q. To what was this owing? A. To the fact that plain discourse had not power to attract man in a rude, uncivilized state. Songs also could be better remembered and transmitted to posterity, than any other composition. Q. With what attention were the ancient bards treated? A. They were always kept near the person of the Sovereign; they recorded all his great exploits; they were employed as ambassadors; and their persons were held sacred. Q. What is the character of the Gothic poetry? A. Remarkably fierce, breathing nothing but slaughter and blood. Q. What cast did the poetry of the Greeks early receive? A. A philosophical cast. Orpheus, Linus, Musæus treated of creation and of chaos, and of the rise of things. Q. Who have been the greatest poets in the East? A. The Arabians and Persians; but their poetry did not assume as regular a structure as that of the Greeks. Q. Were the different kinds of poetry in the first ages properly separated from each other? A. No; they were all mingled in the same composition. Q Was this the case also with history, eloquence, and poetry? A. Yes. All composition was blended in one mass, as all occupations were united in one person. Q. How came prose writing to assume the place of poetry? A. From a wish that men, occupied with the subjects of policy and useful arts, had to be instructed and informed, as well as moved. Q. What did Poetry thenceforth become? A. A separate art, calculated chiefly to please, and confined to such subjects as related to the imagination and passions. Q. What was the early companion of poetry? A. Music. The bard sung his verses, and played upon his harp or lyre at the same time. Q. What was the effect of this union? A. Music enlivened and animated poetry, and poetry gave force and expression to mu sic. Q. When instrumental music came to be studied as a separate art, divested of the poet's song, what was the consequence? A. It lost all its ancient power of inflaming the hearers with strong emotions, and sunk into an art of mere amusement. Q. Does not poetry preserve, in all countries, some remains of its original connexion with music? A. Yes, in its versification or artificial arrangement of words and syllables to produce agreeable sound. Q. How was versification effected by the Greeks and Romans ? A. By the use of metrical feet, dactyles, spondees, iambus, &c. Q. Are these introduced into English verse? A. No. The genius of our language does not admit them. Q. What is the structure of our English heroic verse? A. Iambic; composed of a succession, |