she never saw. There is nothing in her books that she did not create.'

To complete this exotic group, to which we owe what has been fitly termed the Renaissance of Wonder,' we must mention William Beckford, of Fonthill (1759-1844), the inheritor from his aldermanic parent of a million sterling, and the author of the gorgeous' romance of Vathek, published in French in Lausanne in 1787, and in English shortly afterwards.2 A man of genuine mental gifts, Beckford's wealth proved his undoing, and after a life spent in chasing chimeras, he died at Bath in 1844.

Less wonderful, but of more enduring value and interest as a fashioner of the historical novel as we have it, is Joseph Strutt (1749-1802), author of the well-known volumes on the Manners' and Sports' of the English people, and of the antiquarian romance of Queenhoo Hall, edited by Walter Scott, some six years after its author's death. Strutt ignores the imaginative claims of historical fiction. His idea was to convey antiquarian knowledge through the medium of fiction, on the same principle that any other wholesome though nauseous dose is communicated.

But apart from its own merit, which is considerable, Queenhoo Hall is very interesting as the original matrix

1 See the amusing account of her by Professor Raleigh; a higher estimate is formed by Dr. Garnett in Dict. Nat. Biog.

2 Vathek, conte Arabe, is said to have been written by Beckford when he was only twenty-one, and, further, to have been written in French at one sitting of three days and two nights. Forgotten in France during the revolutionary typhoon and for a hundred years after, its singular destiny was fulfilled when, in 1893, it was 'réimprimé sur l'original Français,' with a preface by Stéphane Mallarmé, who claims for it a place 'parmi les chefs-d'œuvre des Petits Maîtres.' A surreptitious English version was printed in

in which Scott cast the type of the Waverley Novel. The antique dialogue, the setting of old customs and old furniture, the introduction of old songs and scraps of folklore (and also, it must be admitted, of a good deal of Wardour Street)—all this is a direct legacy from Strutt's curious and Balzacian methods of research. Queenhoo opens with the description of a May game in the fifteenth century, followed by Chapter II., a scene at a country alehouse. Very tame this, in comparison with such opening scenes as those in Kenilworth or Nigel; yet we shall not be wrong in describing Queenhoo as the lodge to Waverley Manor. Strutt introduces us for the first time to many of the choicest flowers of 'mediæval' English, Rowley-English, as we might call it: hight for called, ween, benemped for named, trow, yshent, carle, princox. In spite, however, of some absurdities, Strutt's literary legacy is one for which we cannot be too grateful.

In the wake of the minor Johnsonian prose-writers was a vast and nebulous tail of lady novelists and essayists and writers for the young. The period saw the development of a novel literature for the nursery, which we might trace in a chapter devoted to children's books, from Goody Two Shoes and Tommy Trip to the Death and Burial of Cock Robin. A mere list of the lady poets from 1750 to 1800 would fill a folio page, while the life-industry of a Ballard might be taxed to fathom the learning of the blue stockings who conversed of Shakespeare and the musical glasses with Mrs. Montagu. It is perhaps to be deplored, but it is inevitable that from all these galaxies and coteries we should be able to select but two names, and only one that of a lady.

Thomas Day (1748-1789) was a perfect type of the mad Englishman with whom foreign caricatures have familiarized us, and a philanthropist of the most bigoted sincerity.

In his search for a practical guide he wavered between Cato the Censor and Rousseau. But his amusing eccentricity entirely failed to subdue the native worth of his character, and his quaintly didactic History of Sandford and Merton (3 vols., 1783, 1787, and 1789) expresses at bottom a very noble ideal of manliness and independence. His kindness to animals and to the poor did not absorb, as in the case of some well-known philanthropists, the affection that was due to his own family.

Hannah More (1745-1833), one of the last survivors in the nineteenth century of the Johnsonian coterie, was the descendant of a Puritan family. She was gifted as a girl, a good linguist, vivacious, and amusing. Introduced to Johnson at Reynolds's, she pleased the great doctor by her not too artless flattery and her sprightly verses, such as the Bas Bleu, which Johnson was permitted to see in manuscript. She developed into a good woman, with a vigorous understanding and a strong turn for benevolence and the reclaiming of the young person. Her views of education were not quite of the modern type. She taught the Bible and the Catechism, together with such coarse work as might fit her pupils to become good servants. She discouraged writing in the poor, and protested against too much book-learning. Her own literary production was extensive, and she perpetually kept up a didactic dribble-scribble of tracts and booklets, all of them extremely edifying and written in an ostentatiously plain Franklin-Cobbett kind of style. Her Village Politics, by Will Chip (1792), had an enormous sale, only to be exceeded by that of Calebs in Search of a Wife. Her success' shows the advantage from a worldly point of view of writing orthodox didactic works.'

CHAPTER IX

THE DRAMA.

APART from Goldsmith and Sheridan, there are few if any dramatists of this period who are read by other than dramatic students. The best plays of Fielding, of Foote, of Colman and Macklin differ only in degree, and perhaps not quite so much as is supposed in this respect, from The Rivals and The Good-Natured Man; but the characters are not quite strong enough or broad enough to arrest attention. The writers worked on the lines of Vanbrugh and Farquhar, but with less wit, for a public considerably narrowed both in numbers and also in taste. The pious agencies of Queen Anne's reign, especially the formation of societies for the reformation of manners, did much to restrict not only the licence of the stage, but the popularity of the theatre as a whole. These tendencies were naturally very much strengthened by the growth of evangelicalism as the century proceeded. But, long before the Wesleys had made. themselves felt, the declining vigour of stage influence was shown by the feeble opposition made to the licensing act of 1737-the result of which was to restrict legitimate drama in the metropolis to the two licensed houses, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and, further, to submit every play produced to the censorship of the government. Literary tendencies (such as were expressed in the Stratford Jubilee of 1769), no less than dramatic necessity,

turned the thoughts of theatrical managers forcibly towards the untrammelled drama of the seventeenth century: the efforts of both the licensed houses were thus concentrated less upon securing good new pieces than upon attaining the highest pitch of histrionic excellence in the performance of repertoire. Take the two houses in the season 1769-70, in the very middle of our period, as an example of what was done in this direction. We find that at Drury Lane were played (each for one or two nights only): Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Lear, Tempest, Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, As You Like It, Wycherley's Plain Dealer, New Way to Pay Old Debts, Henry IV., Merchant of Venice, Congreve's Mourning Bride, Vanbrugh's Provok'd Husband, Steele's Conscious Lovers, Much Ado, Rowe's Fair Penitent, Centlivre's Wonder, Cymbeline, Othello, Alchemist, Every Man in his Humour, Vanbrugh's Confederacy, Merry Wives, Dryden's Love for Love, Macbeth, Beggar's Opera, Cibber's Double Gallant, Moore's Foundling, Otway's Venice Preserved and Orphan.

The programme of the season at Covent Garden was framed upon much the same lines: Henry V., Farquhar's Recruiting Officer, Cibber's She wou'd and she wou'd not, Richard III., Romeo and Juliet, Busy Body, Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Hamlet, Provok'd Husband, Macbeth, Cymbeline, Relapse, Lee's Rival Queens, Merchant of Venice, Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice, Addison's Cato, and Southern's Oroonoko.

In addition to all this repertoire each house produced perhaps half-a-dozen new plays, and some dozen recent plays, by favourite authors of the day. Like the plays, the audiences were recruited from old stagers. Habitual playgoers for the most part, they were naturally exacting judges both of the acting and dramatic workmanship. Conservatism in both was an all-powerful force. A high