him. Accordingly, though attempts have been made to trace them to various individuals, the author must still be considered as unknown.

Overlooking one comparatively obscure work, the Cyclopædia of EPHRAIM CHAMBERS, published in 1728, in two folio volumes, was the first dictionary or repertory of general knowledge published in Britian. Chambers, who had been reared to the business of a globe-maker, and was a man of respectable, though not profound attainments, died in 1740. His work was printed five times during the subsequent eighteen years, and has finally been extended, in the present century, under the care of DR ABRAHAM REES, to forty volumes in quarto. DR JOHN CAMPBELL (1708-1775), whose share in compiling the Universal History has already been spoken of, began in 1742 to publish his Lives of the British Admirals, and three years later, commenced the Biographia Britannica; works of considerable magnitude, and which still possess a respectable reputation. The reign of George II. produced many other attempts to familiarize knowledge; but it seems only necessary to allude to one of these, the Preceptor of ROBERT DODSLEY, first published in 1748, and which long continued to be a favourite and useful book. It embraced within the compass of two volumes, in octavo, treatises on elocution, composition, arithmetic, geography, logic, moral philosophy, human life and manners, and a few other branches of knowlege, then supposed to form a complete course of education. Dodsley, though only the editor of this work, was an original writer of some ability: originally a footman, he rose by his own exertions to be a respectable publisher, and was the author of a small moral work still popular, entitled the Economy of Human Life, and of a favourite farce, called the King and the Miller of Mansfield.

The age under notice may be termed the epoch of Magazines and Reviews. The earliest work of the former kind, the Gentleman's Magazine, commenced in the year 1731, by Mr Edward Cave, a printer, was at first, simply,

CAVE-CHAMBERS-SMOLLETT.

189

a monthly condensation of newspaper discussions and intelligence, but in the course of a few years, became open to the reception of literary and archæological articles. The term magazine thus gradually departed from its original meaning as a depository of extracts from newspapers, till it was understood to refer to monthly miscellanies of literature, such as it is now habitually applied to. The design of Mr Cave was so successful, that it soon met with rivalry, though it was some time before any other work obtained sufficient encouragement to be continued for any lengthened period. The Literary Magazine, started in 1735 by Mr Ephraim Chambers, subsisted till about the close of the century. The London Magazine, the British Magazine, and the Town and Country Magazine, were other works of the same kind, published with more or less success, during the reigns of George II. and George III. In 1739, the Scots Magazine was commenced in Edinburgh, upon a plan nearly similar to the Gentleman's ; it survived till 1826, and forms a valuable register of the events of the times over which it extends. In the old magazines, there is little trace of that anxiety for literary excellence which now animates the conductors of such miscellanies; yet, from the notices which they contain, respecting the characters, incidents, and manners of former years, they are generally very entertaining. The Gentleman's Magazine continues to be published, and retains much of its early distinction as a literary and archæological repository.

Periodical works, devoted exclusively to the criticism of new books, were scarcely known in Britain till 1749, when the Monthly Review was commenced under the patronage of the Whig and Low Church party. This was followed, in 1756, by the establishment of the Critical Review, which for some years was conducted by Dr Smollett, and was devoted to the interests of the Tory party in church and state. These productions, conducted with no great ability, were the only publications of the kind previous to the commencement of the British Critic in 1793.

Another respectable and useful periodical work was originated in 1758, by Robert Dodsley, under the title. of the Annual Register; the plan being suggested, it is said, by the celebrated Burke, who, for some years, wrote the historical portion with his usual ability. work, and a rival called the New Annual Register, commenced some years later, are still published.

This

SEVENTH PERIOD.

FROM 1780 TILL THE PRESENT TIME.

make so

In the progress of literature, it would almost seem a fixed law that an age of vigorous original writing, and an age of imitation and repetition, should regularly follow each other. Authors possessed of strong original powers great an impression on public taste their names, their styles, their leading ideas, become so exclusively objects of admiration and esteem, that for some time there is an intolerance of every thing else; new writers find it convenient rather to compete with the preceding in their own walks, than to strike out into novel paths; and it is not perhaps, until a considerable change has been wrought upon society, or at least until men begin to tire of a constant reproduction of the same imagery and the same modes of composition, that a fresh class of inventive minds is allowed to come into operation-who, in their turn, exercise the same control over those who are to succeed them. The period between 1727 and 1780, which was the subject of the foregoing section, may be said to have been the age of the followers of Dryden, Pope, Swift, and Addison; it was an era devoted to a refining upon the styles of those men and their contemporaries, and produced comparatively little that was strikingly new. Towards the close of the century, the vein would appear to have been exhausted; the subject of artificial manners had been

FROM 1780 TO 1835.

191

fully treated; the sounding and delicately measured composition, which originated in the days of Queen Anne, had been carried to its utmost pitch of perfection; the public began to grow weary of a literature which aimed at nothing which was novel, either in matter or in form; and the time had come for a change. Accordingly, there now arose a series of writers, who, professing to be in a great measure independent of rule in the selection of themes and styles, sought to impress or to please their readers by whatever of new, in thought or sentiment, imagery or narrative, they were able to throw into a literary form. Relieved from the formalities which oppressed both polite life and polite literature during the eighteenth century; encouraged by the free and inquiring spirit which was at the same time animating men in their political and social affairs; the individuals who cultivated letters at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, were characterised by the vigour and novelty of their descriptions and narratives, by a high sense of the beautiful both in nature and in art, by a boldness of imagination unknown since the days of Elizabeth, and a desire rather to expound those feelings and affections which form the groundwork of man's character and moral condition, than to dwell on the trivial and accidental peculiarities which constitute his external manners. Even in the language of these writers, there was an ease and volubility which could not fail to be distinguished by the most careless reader from the stiff and neatly adjusted paragraphs of their predecessors: it almost appeared that formality, precision, and pomp, were dismissed at the time of the French Revolution from the ideas and words, as well as from the dresses of men. It is indeed to be remarked that, in no delineation of any elevated poetical scene, either painted or written, during the eighteenth century, does the artist or writer seem to have been able to shake off the formal costumes which were then prescribed by fashion to all above the meanest rank. The noblest personages of antiquity seem to wear the wigs,

brocade, and stately manners of the court of George the Second. The most sublime conceptions of natural and artificial objects, bear marks of the prevailing taste in gardening and architecture. It was not until the epoch at which we have now arrived, that poets, painters, and players, adopted language, dress, and scenery, suitable to the objects and the times which they desired to represent.

POETS.

The above general remarks on the literature of the age apply with peculiar force to the department of poetry, which is not only a conspicuous branch of the belles lettres, but that which usually gives a character to all the rest. It is generally allowed that a disposition to depart from the polished and formal style of versification which prevailed during the preceding period, owed its rise, in no small measure, to the several collections of traditionary poetry which appeared during the eighteenth century. A panegyrical criticism on the ballad of Chevy Chase, which Addison published in the Spectator, is allowed to have been the first instance of any specimen of that kind of poetry being noticed with commendation by a scholarly writer. In 1765, DR THOMAS PERCY (afterwards Bishop of Dromore) gave to the world the extensive collection entitled Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which may be described as having been the more immediate means of awakening a taste for the unaffected strains of simple narrative and genuine passion. This work contains a great variety of those ballads, which, though perhaps partly originated by the early professional poets called minstrels, have so long existed as a legendary literature among the common people, that they may almost be considered as the composition of that portion of the community, of whose tastes and forms of thought and feeling they are an almost express record. The romantic incidents which they commemorate, the strong natural pathos