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he completed it in seven years-a period exceeding that employed by Dickens in writing all his works. What will be the estimate placed upon these works in the next century? That is a very different question. But the same may be said of Scott. If we may judge from the reception of Zanoni, Bulwer, who has so long been eminent as a writer of fiction, has produced satiety, and must find a new road to popularity. Works written for amusement are generally produced with rapidity. It is easier to write a work in three volumes than in one-condensation being more difficult than amplification. A celebrated orator of antiquity having detained a public assembly with a long speech, apologized by saying he had not had time to make it shorter. Sheridan says, "Easy writing is sometimes hard reading." Hence works written for amusement lose, with their novelty, half their charm. Our age receives with favour one style of writing: the close of the century may require a very different style. Many authors -before and since the time of Lope de Vega-have attained unbounded popularity with their own age, whose names now are but little known. Cervantes and John Bunyan were very obscure in their life-time; and wrote Don Quixotte and Pilgrim's Progress while confined in prison, with sufficient time for thought. Their names and works are alike immortal. Dante says he is "growing grey" while writing the Divina Commedia; but that work was not written for his own century. Montesquieu wrote an article, for his Esprit des Loix, on the origin and revolutions of the civil. laws in France; and says, "You will read it in three

hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has whitened my hair." It has been computed that of the one thousand books published annually in Great Britain, scarcely ten are thought of after twenty years. Paradise Lost and Shakspeare's Plays are numbered among the ten: but Milton and the Avon bard were not easy and extempore writers. If a laborious writer should be asked why he composed with so much care and thought, he might answer, with the artist who replied to a similar question, I paint for eternity.

Three years ago I called Dickens the Hogarth of prose fiction; the comparison between them failing in this, that the painter is often coarse, as will be recollected by those who have examined his Progresses: the writer is always delicate. His subsequent productions have not destroyed the points of the parallel. An English author, during the last year, drew a comparison between them, and says, "The same species of power displays itself in each. Like Hogarth, Dickens takes a keen and practical view of life; is an able satirist; very successful in depicting the ludicrous side of human nature, and rendering its follies more apparent by humorous exaggeration; and is peculiarly skilful in his management of details. He is a very original author, well entitled to his popularity, and is the truest and most spirited delineator of English life among the middling and lower classes of society since the days of Smollett and Fielding." He makes men act as they appear in real life. He has no mock-heroics -no overstrained descriptions—no sickening sentimen

talities. Artificial manners are false manners.

Sim

plicity is essential in our estimate of high polish and refinement. And what is true of personal accomplishment, is no less true of writing. The object of the writer of fiction should be to,

"Catch the manners, living, as they rise."

The unexampled success of Dickens has produced imitators of his style of writing. There is something so easy, so natural, in the works of genius which produces the conviction that it would not be difficult to equal them: but the imitator shares the fate of Icarus who rashly attempted, with his wings of wax, to follow the course of the eagle in his flight towards the region of the sun. A description of vulgar, or profligate life may be made to attract attention for the hour, even when the author possesses moderate powers. But it requires genius of a very high order to describe human nature in its lowest grades, so as to excite those sympathies of our character which connect the outcasts of our race with the great human family: to portray man, corrupted from childhood by profligate association, and debased by sensual indulgence, yet having a spark in his bosom which may be kindled into a burning light; and which, as the feeblest pulsation shews the presence of life, proves that the soul within him came down from heaven. It is then we feel that God is our common Father; and that man-even when debased-is still our brother. Human nature is never so far degraded as to lose all the sympathies which connect us with our species; and even a reprobate son, when standing

in the presence of a mother whose life he had embittered, may feel the inextinguishable impulses of his nature swell within his bosom. A fountain may be concealed from the view, and its existence unknown; but, if you remove the obstruction, it gushes forth, and imparts its living waters to the weary traveller.

Ainsworth is one of the imitators of Dickens, without an approach to rivalship. One of his female characters is well drawn. Her nature is truly feminine; and there is that quiet, meek submission to accumulated misery which belongs to the character of woman. Stern man, like the mountain oak, is uprooted and prostrated by the violence of the storm; while woman -delicate woman-bends before it like the osier bough, and rises again. Her husband had died ignominiously; she was steeped in poverty; temptation, in that form more repulsive than death to virtuous woman, had assailed her: and as if to make the cup of misery overflow, and then present its very dregs to her lips-her son was outcast and outlawed. The cords of that delicate instrument—the human mind-snapped asunder, and she became a raving maniac. But there is a striking contrast between the moral tendency of the writings of Dickens, and of those of Ainsworth and others of the same school, which tend to convince active and uneducated youth that, by following the examples of Dick Turpin, Guy Fawkes, and Jack Sheppard, they may acquire a romantic immortality. If the love of his species be a part of the character of Ainsworth, he will, after having read the Sixth Report of the Inspector of Prisons in England, regret having written Jack Shep

pard, and other contributions to Felon Literaturea species of writing so common in the present day.

The remark has often been made, that we cannot judge of the personal character of an author from his writings. The remark may be true if confined to portions of his works; but the view of the whole will give us some defined idea of his moral creed. A licentious man could not easily be a voluminous, and a chaste writer. The volcanic fire within the mountain would sometimes burst out, and melt the snow on its summit. Sterne should not be judged by his chapters on Le Fevre, Maria of Moulines, and the Dead Ass. They give us no reason to suppose the writer would refuse to make provision for his suffering mother. His true character is better inferred from Tristram Shandy. The Tale of a Tub, and Gulliver's Travels furnish the correct view of the man who could break the heart of poor Stella. But all the writings of Dickens allow us to infer that he would provide an independent support for his father; that he would be most exemplary in the discharge of all the duties of the domestic and social relations; that he would suffer intense agony from the loss of a sister. He confers honour on his country and his species; and every admirer of genius in union with virtue, will wish that he may live to erect-if he have not already accomplished the work—an imperishable literary monument for England,

"That land of scholars, and that nurse of arms."