erant mind, it would have appeared ridiculous to wreak a personal spite against an author by depreciating his works. Pope and Swift had both referred to him in early life, with a contemptuous fleer at his talents; but it never entered his brain to refuse to quote and praise them because they disliked him. In the fifth number of the Jacobite Journal, published at a time when he knew that Richardson was exulting over his supposed failures, and making his genius the butt of his insolent pity, he speaks in terms of high eulogy of Clarissa Harlowe. He knew human nature too well not to divine the meanness to which the delineator of Clarissa and Clementina would descend, when his sensitive vanity was stung by ridicule; but it was a part of his philosophy to view such things with good-natured indulgence, and not hesitate to acknowledge the good qualities which might exist in connection with vices so paltry and so malignant.

Millar, Fielding's publisher, paid a thousand pounds for Amelia, thinking it would meet with the success of Tom Jones; but while it was in press, he obtained a hint that it was an inferior work, and might turn out a bad speculation. His stratagem to save himself from loss indicated the ingenuity of a master-mind in "the trade." At a general sale to the booksellers, he told them, with his accustomed tipsy gravity, that he should sell his other publications at the usual terms, but that there was such a demand for Amelia he should be compelled to decline all offers for that except at a reduced discount. The booksellers, cunning as they were, were all deceived by his manner, greedily swallowed the bait and the whole edition was ordered before it was pub ished.

After the publication of his last novel, Fielding

returned to his former occupation of newspaper essayist, and commenced, in 1752, The Covent Garden Journal. In this paper he published some of his most agreeable essays. His style in these has the cosiness and abandonment of an after-dinner chat, and is peculiarly felicitous in gossiping comments on literature and manners. In this journal he was drawn into a verbal quarrel with Smollett, who had established a fame, by Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle, second only to his own. The Journal was discontinued on account of Fielding's health, which now suffered from a complication of diseases, of which the principal were asthma, dropsy, and jaundice. The physicians recommended a milder climate as the only means of preserving his life, and Lisbon was fixed upon for his residence. Before he went, however, he undertook, at the request of the Duke of Newcastle, and for a fee of six hundred pounds, to extirpate some gangs of robbers and murderers who infested the metropolis. After performing this duty with great sagacity and complete success, he prepared for his voyage. On the 26th of June, 1754, he took that melancholy leave of his children which he has described with such affectionate pathos in his Voyage to Lisbon. This, his latest work, cut short by death, indicates that his mind was bright and his spirits joyous to the very verge of the tomb. He died at Lisbon, in the beginning of October, 1754, in the forty-eighth year of his age. His family, consisting of a wife and four children, were left penniless, but were preserved from want by the kindness of Sir John Fielding, and the ever-active charity of Ralph Allen.

It would seem that the most rigid moralist, in reviewing the events of a life illustrated by virtues so imperfectly rewarded, and by vices so severely expiated, as

that of Fielding, would be inclined rather to regret his misfortunes than harshly to condemn his faults. His whole existence, from the age of twenty, was one long struggle with fortune, in which he bore humiliations and experienced distresses which would have crushed a more sensitive spirit at the outset. His life, judged by its external events, without taking into account the character of the man, appears as wretched as any chronicled in the calamities of genius. But it was the peculiar constitution of his nature, that those qualities which whirled him into excesses blunted the edge of the miseries into which his excesses plunged him. In his lowest state, he rarely desponded, rarely lost the vigor of his intellect and the gladness of his disposition. Lady Montague, writing soon after she heard of his death, says that “his happy constitution (even when he had with great pains half demolished it) made him forget every evil, when he was before a venison pasty or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded," she adds, "he knew more happy moments than any prince upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture with a cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret." As a consequence of this felicity of disposition, he never whined about his misfortunes, never scolded the public for neglecting him, never represented his sensualities and weaknesses as the result of his ardent genius. From all nauseous cant of this kind, which so commonly infects authors and their biographers, Fielding's sense of humor would have preserved him, even if he had not been saved from it by his sense of the pleasurable. And that much abused noun of multitude, the World, against whose injustice poets have ever stormily inveighed, may find two consolations, at least, for its comparative neglec

of Fielding; in the thought that it could not possibly have lavished upon him an amount of wealth which his improvidence would not instantly have wasted; and in the reflection that, but for his poverty, he never would have produced those exquisite creations of humor and imagination, with their large knowledge of human nature and their large toleration of human infirmity, which have made his name immortal.

DANA'S POEMS AND PROSE WRITINGS."

THIS Collection of the writings of one of our deepes and most suggestive thinkers ought to have been made before, although, from the preface, we should judge that the author had undertaken a somewhat unwilling duty in making it even now. It contains all of Mr. Dana's poems and prose writings formerly published, together with a large addition, in the shape of reviews and essays originally contributed to various periodicals, and now for the first time collected. The matter in the second vol

ume will be new to most readers who are familiar with The Buccaneer and The Idle Man, it being wholly composed of articles reprinted from the North American Review, the Spirit of the Pilgrims, and a few other sources. The volumes will undoubtedly take a prominent place in American literature, among the best mental productions of the country; and our object in the present article is, to give a hasty view of the qualities of mind and disposition they display, and the peculiar individuality pervading the whole. We would not do Mr. Dana the injustice to judge his writings by any less exacting principles than those which apply to the higher class of minds.

* Poems and Prose Writings. By Richard Henry Dana. New York Baker and Scrioner. 1850. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 443, 440.— Christian Es aminer, March 1850.