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rific castle, or mouldering abbey, in which she had been alarmed or tormented, is a part of her own domain, and enjoys in connubial happiness the extensive property of which she had unjustly been deprived. All this may be very absurd, but life perhaps has few things better than sitting at the chimney-corner in a winter evening, after a wellspent day, and reading such absurdities.

The above divisions of the Serious, Comic, and Romantic novels, comprehend the great proportion of English prose fictions. In this country we have had few of those works in which fable and history are blended, and which form so extensive a class of French novels. With the exception, perhaps, of the Citizen of the World, we have no production of any celebrity resembling the Jewish Spy, or Persian Letters, and in which various remarks on the manners and customs of a country are presented through the supposed medium of a foreigner, unbiassed by the habits and associations of a native. In the class of Fairy and Oriental Tales, we are equally deficient; but in that of the Voyages Imaginaires, no nation of Europe has produced three performances of equal merit with Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, and Gau dentio di Lucca.

6

De Foe and Swift, the authors of the two former of these works, though differing very widely in education, opinions, and character, have at the same time some strong points of resemblance. Both are remarkable for the unaffected simplicity of their narratives-both intermingle so many minute circumstances, and state so particularly names of persons, and dates, and places, that the reader is involuntarily surprised into a persuasion of their truth. It seems impossible that what is so artlessly told should be a fiction, especially as the narrators begin the account of their voyages with such references to persons living, or whom they assert to be alive, and whose place of residence is so accurately mentioned, that one is led to believe a relation must be genuine which could, if false, have been so easily convicted of falsehood. The incidents, too, are so very circumstantial, that we think it impossible they could have been mentioned unless they had been real. For example, instead of telling us, like other writers, that Robinson Crusoe in his first voyage was shipwrecked, and giving a mere general description of mountainous billows, piercing shrieks, and other concomitants of a tempest, De Foe immediately verifies his narrative by an enumeration of particulars." So partly row

ing," says he," and partly driving, our boat went away to the northward, sloping towards the shore, almost as far as Winterton-Ness. But we made slow way towards the shore; nor were we able to reach it till, being past the light-house at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind."

Those minute references immediately lead us to give credit to the whole narrative, since we think they would hardly have been mentioned unless they had been true. The same circumstantial detail of facts is remarkable in Gulliver's Travels, and we are led on by them to a partial belief in the most improbable narrations.'

But the moral of Robinson Crusoe is very different from that of Gulliver's Travels. In the former we are delighted with the spectacle of difficulty overcome, and with the power of human ingenuity and contrivance to provide not only accommodation but comfort, in the most unfavourable circumstances. Never did human being excite more sympathy in his fate than this shipwrecked mariner we enter into all his doubts and difficul

'There is a good deal of this style of writing in a French work already mentioned, Sadeur's Voyage to Australasia, written by Gabriel de Foigni, about the year 1676.

ness.

ties, and every rusty nail which he acquires fills us with satisfaction. We thus learn to appreciate our own comforts, and we acquire, at the same time, a habit of activity; but, above all, we attain a trust and devout confidence in divine mercy and goodThe author also, by placing his hero in an uninhabited island in the Western Ocean, had an opportunity of introducing scenes which, with the merit of truth, have all the wildness and horror of the most incredible fiction. That foot in the sand-Those Indians who land on the solitary shore to devour their captives, fill us with alarm and terror, and, after being relieved from the fear of Crusoe perishing by famine, we are agitated by new apprehensions for his safety. The deliverance of Friday, and the whole character of that young Indian, are painted in the most beautiful manner; and, in short, of all the works of fiction that have ever been composed, Robinson Crusoe is perhaps the most interesting and instructive.

The moral effect of Gulliver's Travels is very different. It would, perhaps, be too much to say that the author had an express design to blacken and calumniate human nature, but at least his work betrays evident marks of a diseased imagination and a lacerated heart-in short, of that frame of mind which led him in the epitaph he

composed for himself, to describe the tomb as the abode, Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit. We rise, accordingly, from Gulliver's Travels, not as from the work of De Foe, exulting in our nature, but giddy, and selfish, and discontented, and, from some parts, I may almost say brutified. The general effect, indeed, of works of satire and humour is perhaps little favourable to the mind, and they are only allowable, and may be read with profit, when employed as the scourges of vice or folly.

Gaudentio di Lucca is generally, and, I believe, on good grounds, supposed to be the work of the celebrated Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, one of the most profound philosophers and virtuous visionaries of his age. We are told, in the life of this celebrated man, that Plato was his favourite author; and, indeed, of all English writers, Berkeley has most successfully imitated the style and manner of that philosopher. It is not impossible, therefore, that the fanciful Republic of the Grecian sage may have led Berkeley to write Gaudentio di Lucca, of which the principal object, apparently, is to describe a faultless and patriarchal form of government. This representation of perfection and happiness is exhibited in the journey of Gaudentio di Lucca to Mezzoramia, a country