SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD

(1795-1854)

HOMAS NOON TALFOURD, author of "Ion" and almost equally celebrated for his oration in defense of Shelley's publisher, was the writer of a number of notable essays and reviews, which belong to the period when English prose style took its tone from the reviews of the "Quarterly » school of anonymous literary dictaTalfourd, however, is companionable and pleasant rather than assertive in his mode of expression and he deserves to be remembered for this not less than for the subject-matter of his essays. He was born near Stafford, England, January 26th, 1795, and was educated for the bar. He served in Parliament, made a reputation as a forensic orator, sat on the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, wrote essays and plays, and published a "History of Greek Literature" as well as biographies and travels. The tragedy of "Ion» which is his best-known work was put on the stage in 1836. In 1837 he published the "Life and Letters of Charles Lamb," and in 1849-50 "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb." He died at Stafford, March 13th, 1854.

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BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES

E REGARD the authors of the best novels and romances as among the truest benefactors of their species. Their works have often conveyed, in the most attractive form, lessons of the most genial wisdom. But we do not prize them so much in reference to their immediate aim, or any individual traits of nobleness with which they may inform the thoughts, as for their general tendency to break up that cold and debasing selfishness with which the souls of so large a portion of mankind are incrusted. They give to a vast class, who by no means would be carried beyond the most contracted range of emotion, an interest in things out of themselves, and a perception of grandeur and of beauty, of which otherwise they might ever have lived unconscious. Pity for fictitious sufferings is, indeed, very inferior to that sympathy with the universal heart of man which inspires real self-sacrifice; but it is better even to be moved by its ten

derness than wholly to be ignorant of the joy of natural tears. How many are there for whom poesy has no charm, and who have derived only from romances those glimpses of disinterested heroism and ideal beauty, which alone "make them less forlorn," in their busy career! The good housewife, who is employed all her life in the severest drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of a state and dignity above her station and age, and some dim vision of meek, angelic suffering, when she thinks of the well-thumbed volume of "Clarissa Harlowe," which she found, when a girl, in some old recess, and read, with breathless eagerness, at stolen times and moments of hasty joy. The careworn lawyer or politician, encircled with all kinds of petty anxieties, thinks of the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," which he devoured in his joyful school days, and is once more young, and innocent, and happy. If the sternest puritan were acquainted with Parson Adams, or with Dr. Primrose, he could not hate the clergy. If novels are not the deepest teachers of humanity, they have, at least, the widest range. They lend to genius "lighter wings to fly." They are read where Milton and Shakespeare are only talked of, and where even their names are never heard. They nestle gently beneath the covers of unconscious sofas, are read by fair and glistening eyes in moments snatched from repose, and beneath counters and shopboards minister delights "secret, sweet, and precious." It is possible that, in particular instances, their effects may be baneful; but, on the whole, we are persuaded they are good. The world is not in danger of becoming too romantic. The golden threads of poesy are not too thickly or too closely interwoven with the ordinary web of existence. Sympathy is the first great lesson which man should learn. It will be ill for him if he proceeds no further; if his emotions are but excited to roll back on his heart, and to be fostered in luxurious quiet. But unless he learns to feel for things in which he has no personal interest, he can achieve nothing generous or noble. This lesson is in reality the universal moral of all excellent romances. How mistaken are those miserable reasoners who object to them as giving "false pictures of life of purity too glossy and ethereal - of friendship too deep and confiding-of love which does not shrink at the approach of ill, but looks on tempests and is never shaken," because with these the world too rarely blossoms! Were these things visionary and unreal, who would break the spell, and bid the delicious enchantment vanish? The soul will not be the

worse for thinking too well of its kind, or believing that the highest excellence is within the reach of its exertions. But these things are not unreal; they are shadows, indeed, in themselves; but they are shadows cast from objects stately and eternal. Man can never imagine that which has no foundation in his nature. The virtues he conceives are not the mere pageantry of his thought. We feel their truth - not their historic or individual truth, but their universal truth- as reflexes of human energy and power. It would be enough for us to prove that the imaginative glories which are shed around our being are far brighter than the light of common day," which mere vulgar experience in the course of the world diffuses. But, in truth, that radiance is not merely of the fancy, nor are its influences lost when it ceases immediately to shine on our path. It is holy and prophetic. The best joys of childhood-its boundless aspirations and gorgeous dreams-are the sure indications of the nobleness of its final heritage. All the softenings of evil to the moral vision by the gentleness of fancy, are proofs that evil itself shall perish. Our yearnings after ideal beauty show that the home of the soul which feels them is in a lovelier world. And when man describes high virtues, and instances of nobleness, which rarely light on earth, so sublime that they expand our imaginations beyond their former compass, yet so human that they make our hearts gush with delight,- he discovers feelings in his own breast, and awakens sympathies in ours, which shall assuredly one day have real and stable objects to rest on!

The early times of England - unlike those of Spain were not rich in chivalrous romances. The imagination seems to have been chilled by the manners of the Norman conquerors. The domestic contests for the disputed throne, with their intrigues, battles, and executions, have none of that rich, poetical interest, which attended the struggles for the Holy Sepulchre. Nor, in the golden age of English genius, were there any very remarkable works of pure fiction. Since that period to the present day, however, there has been a rich succession of novels and romances, each increasing the stores of innocent delight, and shedding on human life some new tint of tender coloring.

The novels of Richardson are at once among the grandest and the most singular creations of human genius. They combine an accurate acquaintance with the freest libertinism, and the sternest professions of virtue-a sporting with vicious casuistry, and

the deepest horror of freethinking- the most stately ideas of paternal authority, and the most elaborate display of its abuses. Prim and stiff, almost without parallel, the author perpetually treads on the very borders of indecorum, but with a solemn and assured step, as if certain that he could never fall. "The precise,

strait-laced Richardson," says Mr. Lamb in one of the profound and beautiful notes to his specimens, "has strengthened Vice from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries, and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth of libertinism sufficient to have invented." He had, in fact, the power of making any set of notions, however fantastical, appear as "truths of holy writ" to his readers. This he did by the authority with which he disposed of all things, and by the infinite minuteness of his details. His gradations are so gentle, that we do not at any one point hesitate to follow him, and should descend with him to any depth before we perceived that our path had been unequal. By the means of this strange magic, we become anxious for the marriage of Pamela with her base master; because the author has so imperceptibly wrought on us the belief of an awful distance between the rights of an esquire and his servant, that our imaginations regard it in the place of all moral distinctions. After all, the general impression made on us by his works is virtuous. Clementina is to the soul a new and majestic image, inspired by virtue and by love, which raises and refines its conceptions. She has all the depth and intensity of the Italian character, with all the purity of an angel. She is at the same time one of the grandest of tragic heroines, and the divinest of religious enthusiasts. Clarissa alone is above her. Clementina steps statelily in her very madness, amidst "the pride, pomp, and circumstance" of Italian nobility; Clarissa is triumphant, though violated, deserted, and encompassed by vice and infamy. Never can we forget that amazing scene, in which, on the effort of her mean seducer to renew his outrages, she appears in all the radiance of mental purity, among the wretches assembled to witness his triumph, where she startles them by her first appearance, as by a vision from above; and holding the penknife to her breast, with her eyes lifted to heaven, prepares to die, if her craven destroyer advances, striking the vilest with deep awe of goodness, and walking placidly, at last, from the circle of her foes, none of them daring to harm her! How pathetic, above all other pathos in the world, are those

snatches of meditation which she commits to the paper, in the first delirium of her woe! How delicately imagined are her preparations for that grave in which alone she can find repose!

Cold must be the hearts of those who can conceive them as too elaborate, or who can venture to criticize them. In this novel all appears most real; we feel enveloped, like Don Quixote, by a thousand threads; and, like him, would we rather remain so forever than break one of their silken fibres. "Clarissa Harlowe " is one of the books which leave us different beings from those which they find us. « Sadder and wiser » do we arise from its perusal.

Yet when we read Fielding's novels after those of Richardson, we feel as if a stupendous pressure were removed from our souls. We seem suddenly to have left a palace of enchantment, where we have passed through long galleries filled with the most gorgeous images, and illumined by a light not quite human nor yet quite divine, into the fresh air, and the common ways of this "bright and breathing world." We travel on the highroad of humanity, yet meet in it pleasanter companions, and catch more delicious snatches of refreshment, than ever we can hope elsewhere to enjoy. The mock heroic of Fielding, when he condescends to that ambiguous style, is scarcely less pleasing than its stately prototype. It is a sort of spirited defiance to fiction, on the behalf of reality, by one who knew full well all the strongholds of that nature which he was defending. There is not in Fielding much of that which can properly be called ideal,- if we except the character of Parson Adams; but his works represent life as more delightful than it seems to common experience, by disclosing those of its dear immunities, which we little think of, even when we enjoy them. How delicious are all his refreshments at all his inns! How vivid are the transient joys of his heroes, in their checkered course - how full and overflowing are their final raptures! His "Tom Jones" is quite unrivaled in plot, and is to be rivaled only in his own works for felicitous delineation of character. The little which we have told us of Allworthy, especially that which relates to his feelings respecting his deceased wife, makes us feel for him, as for one of the best and most revered friends of our childhood. Was ever the "soul of goodness in things evil" better disclosed than in the scruples and the dishonesty of Black George, that tenderest of gamekeepers, and truest of thieves? Did ever health, good-humor, frank