behavior. Not pretending a rivalry of the Tatler or Spectator, to which it is much inferior, it is a very pleasing, readable copy of those delightful originals. With more invention, force, and dramatic power than Steele or Addison, Fielding has little of the taste or delicacy of either. He has humor, but stronger and broader than Addison, without his charming elegance-he has wit, but not of the glancing, piquant style of Steele's best writing. He has manly sense, ingenious turns, and true feeling, with a style next to Steele. With rich abundance of character and description in his novels; in this collection of essays, Fielding is comparatively meagre in both, though superior to some writers much more talked about. The Champion is for instance a far better work of its class, than the Idler of Johnson, or Hawkesworth's Adventurer, or the World or Microcosm.

We are apt to suspect (we believe it is the fact) that this was merely one of a number of the jobs of the great novelist, and by which he should not in justice be measured. It is a work, upon which any living periodical writer might safely rest a good literary reputation, but which is not strong enough for the name of Fielding, had he not written Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

Still, there is hardly a paper in it, without sentences or paragraphs quotable for their acute sense or ingenious turn of expression; a talent Fielding inherited from Steele. And here we may stop to trace the parallel features, in which these two true wits and genuine good fellows resembled each other. Both gentlemen, men of the world, professed men of pleasure, living on the town, and by their wits, guilty of the greatest imprudences, but we believe of nothing more, according to the trite saying, their own worst enemies, although most friendly to all others beside; at one

time living in affluence, and soon after in a spunging house or a jail, or trammelled within the rules of the Fleet, cheerful, social, humane, and thoughtless, yet most acute and penetrating observers of life, and manners, and character, and as writers, matchless for an easy, natural, graceful style, that conveyed the justest and most sensible, if they were grave, or if gay, the most pleasing and subtile, agreeable sentiment: Sir Richard Steele, and Henry Fielding, Esq., were intellectually and socially and morally brothers, in pens as well as they might have been in arms.

Fielding, as a metaphysician and painter of character, is as much above Steele, as he is above all other novelists, in his peculiar style. Yet as a mere essayist, Steele is the master, the original, whom his later disciple is content to follow with admiring steps.

2*

II.

TRAITS OF AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP.

DE TOCQUEVILLE, in one of the chapters of his work on America, thus characterizes the literature of a democratic state: "There will be more wit than erudition, more imagination than profundity; and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thoughtfrequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste." Without entering into the question, at present, of what may be yet expected from America, or even of what has been produced honorable to the country, and there is much to exhibit on the positive side, it may be a matter of curiosity to test the peculiar requisitions of the distinguished French critic by a few of the results of actual experience. Our literature has, in fact, been the very opposite of the condi tions claimed by De Tocqueville. He demands originality, force, passion, fruitfulness. What have been the accepted productions of American authorship? They disclose, for the most part, just the opposite qualities, of imitation, tame ness, want of passion and poverty.

In place of dramatic power, we find almost altogether descriptive talent; for energy, elaborate elegance; for pas

sion, sentimentality, not even (the very few instances, again, excepted, of the best character) sentiment, and so far from fruitfulness in the case of our best writers, they are uncommonly meagre, and easily exhausted. Fecundity is, with us, rather a badge of disgrace, considered a mark of our worst pretenders to authorship.

Imitation is natural, or rather, we should say, was for. merly pardonable, from our social and political condition. For to the end of the last century, or even the first quarter (perhaps) of the present, there were good English writers in the country, with no pretence to an American spirit, except in their political speculations. The grave writing of that period, and the lighter efforts as well, were conceived and modelled on English originals. The dependence of the colonies had not yet ceased: our independence was civil only. This was especially the case in New England from the fact of its early settlement by Englishmen. There the English race was kept pure, without the admission of foreign elements. This made New England the stronghold of the English feeling of the country. This kept her, for a long while, the most provincial and colonial part of the Union. This made Boston a literary town for English wares, and gave to it its peculiar character and attitude, in respect to English writers, who found their heaven there, when as voyagers they arrived, all prepared for idolatry and man-worship. How different from New-York, which is cosmopolitan, and truly a Metropolis, the city of the Dutch, and of the English, and of the native American, crossed by the French, German, Welsh, Scottish and Irish races—a city of the world like London, not a country town of literateurs and blue-stockings. There can be no doubt of the incalculable moral value of England to us as a

means of culture. Our past is hers, and let no man undervalue the sacred influences of Ancient Times, when rivalries are forgotten, jealousies have disappeared, when the drama of life appears to us simple and complete, when evil has perished and good alone remains. The tree of American Literature will be found to have its roots in English soil. But we can only show ourselves capable of receiving those blessed lessons by having in ourselves the virtue to live an independent life. "To him that hath shall be given."

Tameness, as general as imitation, and its co-relative, may be deduced from the same cause. Coldness of tempe rament, and the unnatural development of the faculty of taste, have "repressed the noble rage" of our writers; even in those whose early or most spontaneous writings are instinct with strength and self-reliance. Taught to look up to certain English names as unapproachable, and only to be copied with assiduous care, they have feared to give full scope to their natural genius, which they rather confined within the barriers of propriety and decorum. Hence our finest poets have been, save when their Muse would not be trammelled, but soared

"Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,"

in the majority of cases, themselves, gladly and humbly,

"Content to dwell in decencies for ever."

Hence the frequent charge of Plagiarism, upon which, as between authors of original merit, little account is always to be placed-for what may appear to be a theft to minds of coarse perceptions, might, perhaps, be held by the great originals as simply a proof of honorable allegiance to them.