in the heart of the deserts of Africa, whose inhabitants had lived unknown to the rest of the world, and in a region inaccessible, except by the road by which Gaudentio was carried thither. This Italian having followed a sea-faring life, was taken by corsairs, and conveyed to Alexandria. He was there sold to one of the chiefs, or pophars, of this unknown country, who had come to Egypt on mercantile speculation. The best and most striking part of the work is the description of the journey across the desert sands, which the travellers traverse on dromedaries, and which are happily contrasted with those stations that lay on the road, where they sought repose and shelter. The region which Gaudentio finally reaches is described as a terrestrial paradise, and its government, laws, and customs, are what the author conceives to be most perfect in civil polity and social intercourse. His views are somewhat fantastic, but not so visionary as those exhibited in the Utopia. During his abode in this happy land, Gaudentio, who had been discovered to be the grand-nephew of the master whom he had followed to Mezzoramia, is treated with much distinction, and, at length, espouses the daughter of the pophar. But after a residence of twenty-five years, having lost his wife and children, he sets

out for his own country, and, after some adventures, arrives at Bologna, where he is arrested by the inquisition, and forced to give an account of his adventures.

The style of this work is extremely pure, and some of the incidents, especially that of the Grand Vizier's daughter, who was afterwards sultana, `exceedingly well managed. The portrait of the English Freethinker, towards the end of the work, is skilfully drawn, and the absurdity of the arguments of Hobbes very humorously displayed.

From the popularity of Robinson Crusoe, many compositions of a similar description appeared in England towards the middle of last century. Such are the "Travels and Adventures of William Bingfield, Esq.;" and also the "Life and Adventures of John Daniel, containing his Shipwreck with One Companion on a Desolate Island: his accidental Discovery of a Woman. Their peopling of the Island. Also a Description of an Eagle invented by his Son Jacob, on which he flew to the Moon, with some Account of its Inhabitants. His Return, and accidental Fall into the Habitation of a Sea-Monster, with whom he lived Two Years." Of all these fictions, the best is the Voyage of Peter Wilkins, which was written about 1750, and has now fallen into unmerited neglect. In that work,

the simplicity of the language of De Foe, and also several of the incidents of his most celebrated

pro

duction have been happily imitated. As in Robinson Crusoe, Peter Wilkins is a mariner, who, after undergoing various calamities at sea, is thrown on a distant uninhabited shore. He is furnished with stores, utensils, and provisions, from the wreck of the ship in which he had sailed. De Foe, however, confines himself to incidents within the sphere of possibility, while the unknown author of Peter Wilkins has related many supernatural adventures-he has also created a new species of beings, which are amongst the most beautiful offsprings of imagination, and have been acknowledged in the Curse of Kehama, as the origin of the Glendoveers :

The loveliest race of all of heavenly birth,
Hovering with gentle motion o'er the earth,
Amid the moonlight air,

In sportive flight still floating round and round.

I have now finished what I proposed to write on the History and Progress of Fiction. To some of my readers I may appear, perhaps, to have

dwelt too shortly on some topics, and to have bestowed a disproportionate attention on others; nor is it improbable that in a work of such extent and variety, omissions may have occurred of what ought not to have been neglected. Such defects were inseparable from an enquiry of this description, and must have, in some degree, existed even if I could have bestowed on it undivided attention, and if, instead of a relaxation, it had been my sole employment. I shall consider myself, however, as having effected much if I turn to this subject the attention of other writers, whose opportunities of doing justice to it are more favourable than my own. A work, indeed, of the kind I have undertaken, is not of a nature to be perfected by a single individual, and at a first attempt, but must be the result of successive investigations. By the assistance of preceding researches on the same subject, the labour of the future enquirer will be abridged, and he will thus be enabled to correct the mistakes, and supply the deficiencies, of those who have gone before him.