LEIGH HUNT, who has already been mentioned as a poet, may also be included here among the periodical prose writers, for, though he was a good deal of a bookmaker as well, he lacked the power of sustained effort, and his books are therefore in the main composed of fragmentary materials. His manner and style bear the unmistakable impress of his own easy-going, irresponsible nature, the butterfly quality of his genius, and his personal charm. He had to live by his pen, and much of his work was done too fast, but his essays, with their quick wit and abundant fancy, are always readable, and his love of literature was honest and deep. As a critic, though he ranks below Hazlitt and Lamb, he holds a distinctive place among the men of his time. His taste was very eclectic, and the breadth of his sympathies is a pleasant feature of his criticism; but, on the whole, his tendency was towards romanticism. The most popular of all his books is his delightfully-written Autobiography, which Carlyle, who was not easy to satisfy in such a matter, called "a pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy book."

101. Other Prose Writers of the Period. Prominent among these, yet standing entirely apart from every set and group, was WILLIAM COBBETT (1762-1835), political reformer, journalist, pamphleteer, and maker of many books. A coarse, vigorous, independent man, Cobbett was one of the most striking personalities and one of the most widely influential writers of his age, though little of his voluminous work comes under the head of general literature. Perhaps his most characteristic book, and the one which has the most permanent interest, is his Rural Rides. His English Grammar is probably unique among grammars, because it is thoroughly entertaining. As a prose writer (and Hazlitt regarded him as one of the

best in the language) he belonged to the race of Bunyan, Defoe, and Swift. He is vernacular, strong, simple, and clear. He evidently put into practice his own principle that a writer should always take the first word that comes to him, as this is sure to be the word which most fully conveys his meaning. This theory served him extremely well; but one would hesitate to apply it generally.

An antithesis to Cobbett in almost every conceivable particular is presented by LANDOR, whose poetry has already been referred to. As Cobbett is one of our best vernacular and colloquial writers, and as De Quincey is one of our chief masters of romantic prose, so Landor is unsurpassed in the severe, sententious, sculpturesque style. His principal prose work, the Imaginary Conversations, are dialogues between great characters of the past. Their composition extended over many years, and there are some 150 of them in all. They cover a wide range of subjects in life and literature; some are purely dramatic; others are reflective and philosophical. It has been well said of him that he was not a great thinker, but a man of great thoughts. Besides these Conversations, Landor produced three other works of a somewhat similar character-The Citation of William Shakespeare; Pericles and Aspasia, a tale of the golden age of Athens told in letters; and the Pentameron, a series of dialogues between Petrarch and Boccaccio, especially noteworthy for their fine criticism of Dante,

SOUTHEY was as industrious as a prose writer as he was as a poet, and as a whole his prose has worn better than his verse. His masterpiece is the admirable Life of Nelson. On the other hand, COLERIDGE's prose is as fragmentary as his verse. His criticism was, however, always suggestive and stimulating, and it exercised a profound influence in the establishment of the romantic principle

in literature. His Biographia Literaria is rambling and unequal, and its style is in general poor; but it contains many pages of such subtle analytical and interpretative power that they are enough by themselves to give him high standing among English writers on the theory of poetry.

This chapter could be extended considerably by the inclusion of the many writers who, during this period, did excellent work in history and philosophy. But this is not the place to discuss the value of their contributions to the literature of their special subjects, and no useful purpose would be served by a mere catalogue of their names and writings.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (Concluded).

The Novel.

102. Scott. We have seen (§ 91) that after ten years of great success as a writer of romances in verse, Scott turned from the romance in verse to prose fiction, and that he was led to make this change in part because the original vein which he had opened up was getting exhausted, and in part because the sudden rise of Byron threatened the supremacy which he had long enjoyed. But though with Waverley (1814) he struck out definitely into a new line, it is quite clear that in his later narrative poems he had been unconsciously gravitating towards the novel. This is shown by a comparison between The Lay of the Last Minstrel and the last important production of the series, Rokeby. The Lay was simply an elaboration of the old ballad form. Rokeby was to all intents and purposes a novel in verse. In this work for the first time, as he himself perceived, the interest was made to centre not in incident but in character, and the chief figures were handled in a way much more suitable to the medium of prose than to that of verse. In Rokeby, then, verse was not an aid, but a hindrance, to his powers. The transition from verse to prose was therefore natural. Nor was the idea of writing a prose romance so entirely new to him as is commonly supposed. It had occurred

to him, he tells us, before the time of the Lay, when he had entertained "the ambitious desire of composing a tale of chivalry, which was to be in the style of The Castle of Otranto, with plenty of Border characters and supernatural incident "-in fact, a sort of Lay, but in prose. Accident turned him to the verse romance instead, and success prompted him to devote his energies to it. A little later, however, the reception accorded to The Lady of the Lake convinced him that there was a large English reading public interested in the Highlands, and conceiving that he might turn his own first-hand knowledge of the Highlands to good account, he "threw together” the opening chapters of Waverley. He did not, however, persevere with this experiment, and the manuscript was thrown aside and forgotten. Then a fresh stimulus came from the Irish Tales of Maria Edgeworth (see § 104). These Scott read with enthusiasm; he was particularly struck by their detailed pictures of the characters and manners of the Irish people; and it now came to his mind that what Miss Edgeworth had done for Ireland, he might do for Scotland. Once more his interest in prose fiction was awakened, but this time his mind ran in the direction of the novel of contemporary life. Just then, by happy accident, while hunting in a drawer for some fishing tackle, he lighted upon the draft of the first chapters of Waverley. He read them; found that they fell in with his plan; and sat down to complete the work—a task which, by one of his wonderful feats of improvisation, he accomplished in three weeks.

The history of Scott's gradual approach to the novel is important because it helps us to realise that two different lines of influence ran together in determining the character of his work. On the one hand, there were all those influences which had combined to make him a romantic

R