By this, of course, it will be understood we do not imply that the sum of his genius was in any way comparable to that of the illustrious dramatist; but that he achieved his results in the same way. He was the great artist in fiction, because he was the great observer and interpreter of human nature. The novel will never be able to assume a position of equal importance with the_drama, because of its comparative defectiveness of construction. But to such perfection as it is capable of being brought, Fielding almost attained. It is, then, for the reason of the similarity of his method to that of Shakspeare, that we have ventured to award him the highest title of eminence. Byron gave it as his belief that " Fielding was the prose Homer of human nature;" the far-seeing Goethe was delighted with his art; and Gibbon demonstrated his literary sagacity by the following eloquent eulogium :- -“Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the Counts of Hapsburgh, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century Dukes of Alsace. Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of the family of Hapsburgh: the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage; the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberties of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new, world. The successors of Charles V. may disdain their brethren in England; but the romance of 'Tom Jones,' that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria." We have no writer to whom we can point who excels Fielding in the art of setting out his characters by means of strong broad lights and shadows. The drawing is masterly and accurate, and nothing deters him from telling the whole truth. He is full of a sublime candour. His narrative is no mere record of events, but personal history of the most effective description. Whoever comes in the way of his pencil, must submit to the most rigorous and unflinching representation.-Macmillan's Magazine.

THE OLD SCOTTISH BALLADS.

FOR the true carelessness of song-writing we must go back to an earlier time, in which the happy persons who found themselves capable of stringing rhymes together for the amusement of their neighbours, did not immediately begin to make a profession of it, and become thereafter the slaves of the public and the hunted of the critics. They sang their songs in their own way. They were pathetic, or merry, or scornful, just as it pleased them. When they had some little story to tell, they told it briefly, so that people should remember it; and when they had no story to tell, they remained silent, and earned their living at the plough, or at the loom, or at the shoemaker's bench. The fortunate result for us is, that a collection of songs written by a song-loving people, gathered from all periods of its history, and brought together independently of any theory or prejudice to be satisfied, contains an astonishing amount of what may be called the rough material of poetry.

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Here are no painful discussions about the various emotions, but the emotions themselves, uttered in the simplest, briefest, and most direct fashion possible, convincing one of their genuineness by the rude artlessness of the lines, and going straight to the heart in consequence. Here is no "damnable iteration" of a particular mood. The songs that are written in the song-writing period of a people's life are as various as that life itself is. The busy coming and going of the world as it exists is displayed in them-its political hopes and triumphs, its humorous stories, its pathetic fireside tales, its universal, thoughtless, unconscious delight in the mere activity of living. They commend themselves to all moods and to all circumstances with a charming inconsistency, for a man is not always praying, or always joyful, or always broken-hearted. Here is a merry song about drinking; and here is one that tells of fell slaughter in battle; and here is one that praises a comely lass; and here is yet another, we regret to say, making fun of over-solemn ministers of religion, in no very modest or charitable fashion. Each of these utterances, it is easy to see, has been the honest expression of the song-writer's sentiment for the moment. He fears no critics; he does not even clamour for a public; he sings his songs, Autolycus-like, to cheer the hard ways of the world, and those may listen who choose.

As for the sentiments which these songs convey, they are as varied and contradictory as human life itself is, even when they propose to give homely and shrewd advice. In many of them an honest contempt for the law is visible, and an unholy triumph when some notorious freebooter has been successful. When at length he is brought to the gallows, there is no craven submission attributed to him. Macpherson is made to say—

"Untie these bands frae aff my hands,

And bring to me my sword,
And there's no man in all Scotland

But I'll brave him at his word."

And the old ballad that bewails the fate of Gilderoy, who was executed at Edinburgh in 1638, exclaims :—

"Wae worth the loon that made the laws

To hang a man for gear!

To reave of life for ox or ass,

For sheep, or horse, or meer!

Had not the laws been made so strick,

I ne'er had lost my joy;

Wi' sorrow ne'er had wet my cheek
For my dear Gilderoy !"

But the songs which throw the strongest light on the manners and customs of the Scottish peasantry of bygone times are those that are of a humorous and jovial character, describing odd incidents in courtship, in domestic management, and so forth, all with marked and appropriate characters introduced. We meet with figures that become

as familiar as our own friends to us, through the medium of a few happy lines of description. We know the Laird of Cockpen, and old John Anderson; we can picture the persistent wooing of Duncan Gray, and the scorn of Maggie Lauder when she was asked her name by the travelling piper. There is a great bluntness of speech among these people. The elderly maiden of ungainly presence goes over all her worldly possessions, her cattle, and housing, and linen, and so on, and then bids her lover say at once whether he means to marry her or not. There is an equal frankness of conduct; if the lass of the mill can only get out without awakening her father (who has doubtless a gun loaded with small shot for the reception of young men who come tapping at window-panes), she is free to go down to the corn-rigs with her sweetheart, and spend the best part of a moonlight night in wandering about the country. As for the drinking songs, they have such an amazing good humour in them that it is clear they were not written after one of the bouts which they describe so vividly. These devil-may-care lyrics were never written by a man with a headache; if they were, he was probably philosopher enough to foresee that the ailment would be but temporary, and to laugh and have his joke all the same. Now-a-days the result of a headache on one of our painfullyconscientious and introspective poets would doubtless be different. We should probably have as the result an agonizing dissection of the emotions of a suicide, with some discourteous allusions to revealed religion, and an intimation that the world was only fit for the judgment that overtook Sodom and Gomorrah.—Daily News.

SHELLEY ON POETRY.

POETRY is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place and person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen, and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that even in the desire and regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is, as it were, the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the morning calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These, and corresponding conditions of being, are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom of the universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and re-animate in those who have ever experienced these emotions,

the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide-abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

WORDSWORTH'S POETRY.

WORDSWORTH was a wise and happy man, a thinker and a dreamer, who read and walked. He was from the first in tolerably easy circumstances, and had a small fortune. Happily married, amidst the favours of Government and the respect of the public, he lived peacefully on the margin of a beautiful lake, in sight of noble mountains, in the pleasant retirement of an elegant house, amidst the admiration and attentions of distinguished and chosen friends, engrossed by contemplations which no storm came to distract, and by poetry which was produced without any hindrance. In this deep calm he listens to his own thoughts; the peace was so great within him and around him, that he could perceive the imperceptible. "To me, the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." He saw a grandeur, a beauty, a teaching in the trivial events which weave the woof of our most commonplace days. He needed not, for the sake of emotion, either splendid sights or unusual actions. The dazzling glare of lamps, the pomp of the theatre, would have shocked him; his eyes were too delicate, accustomed to quiet and uniform tints. He was a poet of the twilight. Moral existence in commonplace existence, such was his object-the object of his choice. His paintings are cameos with a grey ground, which have a meaning; designedly he suppresses all which might please the senses, in order to speak solely to the heart. Out of this character sprang a theory-his theory of art, altogether spiritualistic, which, after repelling classical habits, ended by rallying Protestant sympathies, and won for him as many partisans as it had raised enemies. Since the only important thing is moral life, let us devote ourselves solely to nourishing it. The reader must be moved genuinely, with profit to his soul; the rest is indifferent; let us, then, show him objects moving in themselves, without dreaming of clothing them in a beautiful style. Let us strip ourselves of conventional language and poetic diction. Let us neglect noble words, scholastic and courtly epithets, and all the pomp of factitious splendour, which the classical writers thought themselves bound to assume, and justified in imposing. In poetry, as elsewhere, the grand question is, not ornament, but truth. Let us leave show and seek effect. Let us speak in a bare style, as like as possible to prose, to ordinary conversation, even to rustic conversation, and let us choose our subjects at hand, in humble life. Let us take for our characters an

idiot boy, a shivering old peasant woman, a hawker, a servant stopping in the street. It is the truth of sentiment, not the dignity of the folks, which makes the beauty of a subject; it is the truth of sentiment, not the dignity of the words, which makes the beauty of poetry. What matters that it is a villager who weeps, if these tears enable me to see the maternal sentiment? What matters that my verse is a line of rhymed prose, if this line displays a noble emotion? Men read that they may carry away emotion, not phrases; they come to us to look for moral culture, not pretty ways of speaking. And thereupon Wordsworth, classifying his poems according to the different faculties of men, and the different ages of life, undertakes to lead us through all compartments and degrees of inner education, to the convictions and sentiments which he has himself attained. All this is very well, but on condition that the reader is in Wordsworth's position; that is, essentially a philosophical moralist, and an excessively sensitive man. -Taine's History of English Literature.

A MODERN ENGLISH ESSAYIST.

His mind had not the

HAZLITT was a poet more than a critic. exquisite critical balance, but belonged to the advocate rather than the judge. He was an intensity. What he liked, that he loved; what he despised or disliked, he hated. But he was a poet. His eye speedily detected anything beautiful, and with the same unerring eye he selected it and brought it out; whilst, with the love he had for it, he gave it honour. His criticisms are so rich in thought and language that they not only point out the beauties they treat of, but are substantive beauties in themselves. He often rises to high eloquence, and uses painted words to bring his pictures before our eyes, though his thoughts are sometimes clothed in too gay rhetoric. It was an occasional redundancy of ornament that brought on Hazlitt the onslaught of the Quarterly Review in the article on the Round Table." Reading that article in these days, one is sensible that the recoil on the Quarterly is harder than the blow to Hazlitt. Those were the days when, on both sides, men of genius were liable to depreciation by their rivals. A healthier tone has since been given to the reviews, and it belongs only to a few of the lower press of to-day to make freedom of opinion a crime and reason for abuse. In his essay "On going a Journey," we see Hazlitt's love of the beautiful in nature, and how he must be alone to worship it in "that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is eloquence." "I want," he says,

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to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy."

Hazlitt had that generous appreciation of genius in others which belongs generally to the highest class of minds-which caused Goethe to hold out the hand of fellowship to all rising talent, and Johnson to stand by Goldsmith. His powers of analysis were very great, and yet he could reconstruct and generalize, so that the picture as a whole