metaphysical science. After this period the Scotch mind leads the way in this department of science. After Francis Hutcheson, born in Ireland but educated in Glasgow, came David Hume, Adam Smith, Henry Home (Lord Kames), James Beattie, Archibald Alison, and that illustrious succession of Edinburgh metaphysicians, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and Sir William Hamilton, the most eminent of all. In England appeared also men who labored successfully in this field, as David Hartley, Richard Price, Abraham Tucker, Joseph Priestley, and the more recent writers, Sir James Mackintosh, a Scotch man by birth and education, James Mill, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

§ 67. The literature of Physical Science, with which may be associated that of mathematical science both pure and applied, is valued more in respect of its content, its subjectmatter, than of its literary character. It would hardly be just, if practicable, to enumerate the labors in this field and grade them according to their proper literary merit. Their works will be sought and appreciated rather for what they present that is new or excellent than for the form in which this is done, or for the influence they have had on the progress or present character of our literature. must suffice to say that while the physical sciences have had for the most part but a recent origin, the British and Anglo-American mind has been most prolific in this species of intellectual products, and exhibited genius of the highest order. It is enough to mention the names of Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Sir John Herschel, Sir Humphrey Davy, Sir David Brewster, Rev. William Whewell, Hugh Miller, omitting a host of hardly less illustrious contributors to science.

It

§ 68. The literature of science has for a century past been embodied to a large extent in temporary forms. Periodical literature, indeed, has been, since the beginning of the last century, a most remarkable growth. Starting

with the "Tatler," by Sir Richard Steele, a small paper published three times a week, the first issue of which was on the 12th of April, 1709, that grand succession of Essays followed in papers bearing different names, as the "Spectator," the "Guardian," the " Rambler," the "Adventurer," the "Idler" etc., which has given their chief celebrity to Addison, Johnson, Hawkesworth, Mackenzie, and others. In 1731, commenced the higher class of monthly periodicals called magazines, with the "Gentleman's Magazine," by Mr. Cave, and in October, 1802, appeared the first number of the "Edinburgh Review," a type of the more grave and elaborate Quarterlies. A new order of essayists arose, in which are ranked as the more brilliant lights, Francis Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Thomas B. Macaulay, Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas Carlyle, and Professor John Wilson.

Not a little of our most valuable scientific and critical literature is incorporated in the encyclopædias of the last century and a half. The first of these was the Cyclopædia of Ephraim Chambers, first published in 1728 in London, of which a number of editions were issued. In 1770 was published the "Encyclopædia Britannica," by William Smellie, and in 1802 the first volume of "Rees's Cyclo pædia," in forty-five large quarto volumes. This was fol lowed by the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia" in 1808-1830, under the superintendence of Sir David Brewster; the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana" begun in 1815; the "London Cyclopædia," "Lardner's Cyclopædia," the "Penny Cyclopædia," the "American Cyclopædia," and others, both comprehensive and devoted to special depart. ments of knowledge.

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CHAPTER XIII.

FICTION.

69. FICTION, like the representation of the actual and the real, first appears clothed in song or verse. The first romancer, as the first historian, is the bard. Before the age of Chaucer, metrical romances were numerous, and continued long afterwards to give a prominent character to our literature. Indeed, some of our best poets, from Shakespeare on to Tennyson, have drawn inspiration and material from these old romances. As other species of discourse so this laid aside the shackles of poetry and flourished ir. the freedom of prose.

Fiction, in its diversified forms and under as diverse names as Apologue, Parable, Fable, Allegory, Romance, Novel, Tale, has found a place in almost every body of literature. Its objects and uses have been as various. It has been employed in illustrating truth, and in enforcing practical piety and morality; in explaining and commending sound doctrine, and exposing and ridiculing error; in exalting virtue, and satirizing vice; in pleasing the taste and fostering the contemplation and exhibition of the beautifu. and lovely in art and in manners; and as well also in lashing whatever is rude or uncouth or ugly in works of invention or in social life and habits.

The earliest considerable prose romance in our literature, at least after the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More, 14801535, is the "Arcadia," by Sir Philip Sidney, 1554-1586, a work very popular in the age of its appearance, but now attractive only to the student and the antiquarian. In the

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following century appeared the immortal allegory of John Bunyan, 1628-1688, the "Pilgrim's Progress." Of this remarkable work, the great critic of these last times, Macaulay, says: "The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language; no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed. Though there were many clever men in England during the latter, half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost,' the other the Pilgrim's Progress."" Early in the next century, in 1717, was published another work of fiction almost equally popular and enduring, the "Robinson Crusoe" of Daniel De Foe, 1661– 1731, of which Johnson said: "Nobody ever laid it down without wishing it were longer;" and Walter Scott long after added: "There scarce exists a work so popular as 'Robinson Crusoe.' The charm of De Foe is his perfect naturalness, appearing in the simplicity and purity of his diction and the truthfulness of his characters and his scenes. No child, while ravished by the narrative, ever dreamed that Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday were other than real characters. Eminent among the subsequent writers of fiction should be enumerated Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, whose "Gulliver's Travels" has received something of "Crusoe's" favor. A new species of fictitious writing was introduced in the novels of Samuel Richardson, 1689–1761, Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, and Tobias George Smollett, 1721-1771. They are to be regarded as the originators of the modern novel. The "Tristram Shandy" of Laurence Sterne, the "Rasselas " of Samuel Johnson, and the "Vicar of Wakefield" of Oliver Goldsmith, of this same period,

are classics in our literature. The age was indeed prolific in fictitious composition. It was especially remarkable for female authorship. As distinguished writers of fiction we find the names of Frances Burney, Sophia and Harriet Lee, Mrs. Inchbald, Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Mrs. Amelia Opie, Anna Maria and Jane Porter, Miss Edgeworth, Hannah More, and others. The new age of novel writing was ushered in by Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832, already eminent as a poet, by the publication of " Waverley" in 1814, followed by that long and wonderful series of fictitious works, the "Waverley Novels," ending only with the decay of the author's life in 1831. This series, characterized by its truthful and able rendering of human experience in its various phases, worked with a magical power on the minds of readers and authors. He was succeeded by an innumerable host of novel-writers; and the prominent characteristic of the following literary period was the prolific production of novels. Every year has continued to present hundreds of new novels to the insatiate appetite for fiction, from an authorship as uncontrollable in its propensity towards this kind of literary creation. The latter half of the nineteenth century is the age of fiction. Only an infinitesimal portion of this immeasurable accumulation can enter into the permanent body of our literature. The feeble falls and decays like the foliage of autumn. Of that which is truly able, that which like Scott's, like Cooper's, has apprehended the healthy, the normal, the abiding in human life and manners, will survive; that which battens on the morbid, the carrion in corrupt humanity, must die. So, too, that which otherwise deserving illustrates and exalts, must outlive that which delights preeminently in exaggeration, in distortion, in caricature. It were wise and well, if readers in selecting, as selection is a necessity in this immensity of matter, would take the natural, the normal, and the truthful, with which real genius deals, rejecting the monstrous, the pustulous, and the illusive.