BURKE. 1730-1797. Among the friends of Dr. Johnson was the great orator, Edmund Burke. He was a man of fine culture, and genius of the highest order. His most celebrated works are—An Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French Revolution, Letter to a Noble Lord (the Duke of Bedford), and his great Speech on the Im peachment of Warren Hastings. EXTRACTS. I. Early and provident fear is the mother of safety. II. To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. III. There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. HUME. 1711-1776. David Hume was born in Scotland in 1711 and educated at the university of Edinburgh. He attempted the study of law and afterwards entered business, but they were abandoned for literature. His chief title to fame rests upon his great History of England, in six volumes, from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the expulsion of James II., known as the Revolution of 1688. Upon its completion, in 1762, it was universally recognized as the greatest historical work that had ever been written in the English language. In ease and naturalness of style, in clear analysis of characters, in philosophical insight into causes and effects, and in orderly arrangement and luminous presentation of events, it has rarely if ever been surpassed. Hume's chief faults as an historian are, first, that he is content to take his facts at second hand, so that on disputed points he is not thoroughly reliable; and secondly, that he dwells too fondly on the doings of kings and conquerors, and does not sufficiently sympathize with the people in their struggles for liberty and justice. But, with all his faults, he stands in the front rank of philosophical historians. He died, unmarried, in 1776. GIBBON. 1737-1794. Edward Gibbon, author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was born in Sussex, of a good family, in 1737. He attended Oxford, but being of a delicate constitution, did not complete the course. His father then sent him to Lausanne, in Switzerland, where he regained his health, and spent a great part of his life. The first volume of his immortal history came out in 1776, and the last in 1787-after an interval of eleven years. Its success was immediate and immense, and for more than a hundred years it has retained its popularity, and still stands unrivalled in its field. Gibbon was a man of profound learning and wide research, and his work is therefore exhaustive; but it is never dry or diffuse. On the contrary, it is written in a style remarkable no less for its strength and clearness, than for a certain organ-like harmony and magnificence of tone. After the publication of his great work, he wrote a Memoir of his life and writings, which is a model of autobiographical writing; and in 1897 a collection of his private letters was published. He remained single till his death, which occurred in London in 1794, at the age of fifty-seven. OTHER PROSE WRITERS OF THIS AGE. HISTORICAL. WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1721-1793), a Scotchman, author of History of Scotland, History of Charles V. of Germany, and History of America. In his day Robertson ranked with his great contemporaries, Hume and Gibbon, but he now occupies a much lower rank. Probably his best work is Charles V., which was edited, with considerable additions, by the American historian, W. H. Prescott. FICTITIOUS. SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761), author of Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison. HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754), author of Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia. TOBIA GEORGE SMOLLETT (1721-1771), author of Roderick Random Peregrine Pickle, and Humphrey Clinker. LAWRENCE STERNE (1713-1768), an irreligious parson, author of Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey. HANNAH MORE (1745-1833), author of The Inflexible Captive and other dramas; The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, Caelebs in Search of a Wife, and other tales; and some very useful works on Education. She was a great favorite of Dr. Johnson's. POLITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. JUNIUS, supposed to be Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818), author of the celebrated Letters of Junius. RICHARD BRINSLey Sheridan (1751-1816), a great orator, and author of School for Scandal. HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797), author of Castle of Otranto (a romance), and celebrated for his letters, which have been published in nine volumes. THEOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL. THOMAS REID, D. D. (1710-1796), a distinguished Scotch metaphysician, author of An Inquiry into the Human Mind, etc. WM. PALEY, D. D. (1743-1805), author of Natural Theology, Hora Pauline, etc. AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES. Benj. Franklin, Thos. Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and other writers of the Period of the Revolution. PERIOD VIII.-AGE OF SCOTT. 1800-1837. (Part of the reign of Geo. III., and the reigns of Geo. IV. and William IV.) THE 'HE Age of Scott, sometimes called the Age of Romantic Poetry, extends from the beginning of the present century to the death of George IV., in 1830. The reaction from the correct and artificial school of poetry, which had been begun nearly a century earlier by Thomson, and carried on by Burns and Cowper, was now complete, and reached its culmination in the metrical romances of Scott and the impassioned outbursts of Byron and Shelley. Much of the romantic character of the literature of the age is probably due to the influence of the collection of folk-songs or ballads, published a little earlier (1765) by Bishop Percy. We know that Scott was powerfully influenced by them, and their ef fects can be distinctly traced in all subsequent poetry, even to the present day. (See Lockhart's Life of Scott.) The principal historical events of the age were the downfall of Napoleon and the war of 1812. The authors will be divided into two classes : I. THE POETS, represented by Byron, Shelley, Moore, Keats, Campbell, and Wordsworth. II. THE PROSE WRITERS, represented by Scott, Southey, Coleridge, De Quincey, Lamb, and Hallam. Scott, Southey, Coleridge, and Campbell were distinguished both in poetry and prose. I. POETS OF THE AGE OF SCOTT. LORD BYRON. 1788-1824. George Gordon Noel Byron, the most splendid genius of the age, was born in London in 1788. He graduated at Cambridge, and then travelled for about two years. On his return he married Miss Milbanke, who left him in about a year, soon after the birth of their daughter, Ada. He then quitted England forever, and passed the rest of his life, in the grossest dissipation, on the Continent, mostly in Switzerland and Italy. In 1824 he went to Missolonghi to assist the Greeks in their struggle for liberty, where he died in the same year, at the age of thirty-six, thus gloriously ending an inglorious and wretched life. Byron was a great genius, but not in the best sense a great poet. He was great in a small way. Instead of giving voice to the healthful impulses and aspirations of the universal heart, he filled the universe with the scoffs and sneers and fancied woes of Lord Byron. His works contain some magnificent descriptions, fine imagery, and noble sentiments; but their general tone is misanthropic, irreligious, immoral, and therefore unhealthful. His finest poem—and, indeed, one of the grandest poems of bu the century-is Childe Harold. Among the best of his other works are- -The Dream, The Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa, The Bride of Abydos, Parisina, The Giaour, and The Siege of Corinth. His longest and most brilliant poem is Don Juan, is unfit to read, on account of its coarseness. Beside these ne wrote Cain, Manfred, Marino Faliero, and several other dramas. These contain powerful passages, but are on the whole very defective on account of their want of variety in action and characters. (See "Life and Letters of Lord Byron," by Thomas Moore.) EXTRACTS. Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. II. The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore. III. All who joy would win, Must share it; Happiness was born a twin. IV. The sky is changed! and such a change! O night, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Childe Harold, C. III., St. 92. SHELLEY. 1792-1822. Percy Bysshe Shelley, the most poetical of all poets, was born in 1792, and was drowned in the Bay of Spezzia, Italy, in 1822. He is the author of several powerful dramas and of some long nar rative and descriptive poems, but he is essentially a lyric poet, and as such is unexcelled. The Skylark, The Sensitive Plant, |