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HARRIET and SOPHIA LEE.— Harriet Lee, 1756-1851, and Sophia Lee, 1750-1824, sisters, were daughters of an actor of some note, and gained for themselves considerable reputation by their writings.

They were engaged for many years at Bath, in the management of a Young Ladies' Seminary. They wrote several works, which were well received. Those of Harriet were: The Errors of Innocence, a Novel, 5 vols.; The Young Lady's Tale; The Clergyman's Tale; The New Peerage, a Comedy; and all except two of The Canterbury Tales. Sophia wrote The Ruin, a Tale of Other Times, 6 vols : The Life of a Lover, a Novel, 6 vols.; Ormand, or the Debauchee, 3 vols. : The Chapter of Accidents, a Comedy; Almeyda, Queen of Granada, Tragedy; The Assignation, a Comedy; The Hermit's Tale, a Poem. Two or three of these plays were acted, and had considerable success. The Canterbury Tales, already named, extended to five volumes, and were held in high repute.

GRACE KENNEDY, 1782-1824, was a native of Ayrshire, Scotland, but resided in Edinburgh. She was the author of a number of novels or tales, which have been very popular, and have been held in high estimation by the critics: Decision; Profession not Principle; Father Clement; Dunallan, or Know what you Judge; Jenny Allan, the Lame Girl; Anna Ross, the Orphan of Waterloo; Philip Colville, a Covenanter's Story, etc.

LADY CAROLINE LAMB, 1785-1828, daughter of the Earl of Besborough, and wife of Hon. William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, wrote several novels which gained some reputation: Glenarvon, supposed to be a portrait of Lady Byron; Graham Hamilton; and Ada Reis.

MISS REGINA MARIA ROCHE, 1765-1845, a famous English novelist, is the rival of Mrs. Radcliffe. Miss Roche's most celebrated work is The Children of the Abbey, which has been widely read in England and the United States. Among the others are The Vicar of Lansdowne, Maid of the Hamlet, Monastery of St. Colombe, etc.

Galt.

John Galt, 1779-1839, wrote a very large number of works, and on a great variety of subjects. The works in which he was most successful were his novels.

Galt was born at Greenock, in Scotland. He began to study the law, but abandoned it for a literary life. He was employed for some time as agent for an emigration company, to promote settlement in Canada, but quarrelling with the Government, and being dismissed by the company, he thenceforward devoted himself entirely to authorship.

Galt's works are numerous, and are open to criticism. The histories and biographies are mostly compilations, and have the character of job work done for the booksellers. His novels, however, are thoroughly original and fresh, and though not uniformly up to the highest mark, yet always contain much that is first-rate. The following is a list of his principal works: The Ayrshire Legatees; The Annals of the Parish; The Wandering Jew; The Entail; The Provost; The Spaewife; Rothelan; The Last of the

Lairds; Laurie Todd; Southennan; The Omen; Glenfell; The Bachelor's Wife; Rock inghorse; The Stolen Child; The Majolo; Andrew of Padna; The Earthquake; Sir Andrew Wylie; The Steamboat; Ringan Gilbaize; Eben Erksine; Gathering of the West; The Member; The Radical; Bogel Corbet; Stanley Buxton; New British Theatre; Stories of the Study; Pictures from English, Scotch, and Irish History; Guide to the Canadas; Reflections on Political and Commercial Subjects; Voyages and Travels; Lives of the Players; Life of West; Life of Byron; Life of Wolsey; Apotheosis of Sir Walter Scott; Four Tragedies; Poems; Autobiography of John Galt.

"There is a thorough quaintness of phrase and dialogue in Mr. Galt's last works, which places him apart from all other Scotch novelists; much knowledge of life, variety of character, liveliness and humour are displayed in these novels, and render them justly popular. This humor and truth were recognized as admirable by Sir Walter Scott. The public will not soon forget his Ayrshire Legatees, his Annals of the Parish, nor the Entail; which last we think one of his best novels. Mr. Galt's biographies, and many of his other later works, manufactured for the booksellers, are of a very different character."— Gentleman's Magazine.

"According to our judgment, he has never written better than second-rate books; though we have ever found in what we consider his worst pieces something of his best self, and something which carried us through the whole, at the same time leaving instruction fresh and precise upon our minds. And this is saying a great deal when we consider the catalogue of his writings. Indeed, his mind is such, that it cannot give out anything belonging to it, which partakes not of its original nature. Strong, and what is called rough good sense is ever there; familiar but most expressive thoughts find similar illustrations most readily with him, which we presume could not have been improved by long study. He is, besides, strictly a moral as well as remarkably entertaining writer." - London Monthly Review.

Beckford.

WILLIAM BECKFORD, 1760-1844, was a man of extraordinary genius, who but for his enormous wealth might have achieved the highest distinction as an author.

Beckford was son of a Lord-Mayor of London, and inherited from his father, besides a large English estate, a fortune in the West Indies which yielded him upwards of £100,000 per annum. He was a man of a high order of genius, and he was educated with extreme care. If it had not been for his excessive wealth, he might have made himself one of the greatest ornaments of letters. As it was, he published several works of great literary merit.

Beckford's first work, written at twenty, was Biographical Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters. It is a work criticizing with great severity certain English painters. His next and chief literary production was Vathek. This was an oriental romance, written in French, but translated into English by some other author. Byron speaks of it in terms of highest eulogy. It is said to be in such pure French that no one would suspect it to be written by other than a native Frenchman, and its orientalism is so complete that travellers in the East have some difficulty in believing that it is not a translation from some oriental original. With all its beauties, however, it is as audacious as anything in Byron in its licentiousness, and is diabolical in its contempt for mankind. Mr. Beckford published also a book of travels, called Italy, and another called Recollections of an Excursion to the Mountains of Alcobacca and Batalba, which contain passages of a high order of merit,

"He is a poet, and a great one, too, though we know not that he ever wrote a line of verse. His rapture amidst the sublime scenery of mountains and forests, in the Tyrol, especially, and in Spain, is that of a spirit cast originally in one of nature's finest moulds; and he fixes it in language which can scarcely be praised beyond its deserts simple, massive, nervous, apparently little labored, yet reaching, in its effect, the very perfection of art.” — London Quar, Review.

Beckford spent vast sums of money in building Fonthill Abbey, on his estat in England, and in filling it with the rarest and most costly works of art. After ab-ndoning this fancy, he built another magnificent palace near Bath; also, a mansion near Cintra, in Portugal, where he spent much of the latter part of his life. He was a man singularly gifted with genius and wealth, but utterly selfish and worldly, who had exhausted at twenty all the world had to offer, and lived in sullen grandeur to the age of eighty-four.

Monk Lewis.

MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS, 1775-1818, is often called "Monk" Lewis, after one of his celebrated works.

Mr. Lewis studied at Oxford and also in Germany, and resided during the last five years of his life in Jamaica. He is the author of a number of dramas and novels, which were at one time extremely popular, and exercised a great influence over the then rising generation of authors. The most celebrated are: The Monk, a romance so licentious in passages that the author was for a while in danger of prosecution; The Castle Spectre, a drama; and Timour the Tartar; Rolla, and The Captive, dramas. After Lewis's death there appeared The Journal of a West India Proprietor, also his Life and Correspondence. The Journal and the Correspondence are easy and entertaining in style, and replete with information.

As a writer of works of imagination, Lewis belongs to what is vulgarly known as the "blood-and-thunder" school. His works, abounding in scenes of horror, resemble those of Mrs. Radcliffe. Lewis was a man of decided imagination and poetic ability, as is shown by the ballads and songs scattered through his plays and novels. But he suffered his imagination to run riot, and although for a while he seemed to have created a new era in literature, his works are gradually falling into that neglect which is the lot of all crude and frantic effort.

CHARLES ROBERT MATURIN, 1782-1824, a native of Ireland, educated at Trinity Col lege, Dublin, was the author of a number of dramas and novels, which enjoyed at one time a good share of popularity, but which have since fallen into neglect.

The principal are Fatal Revenge, a Novel; The Wild Irish Boy, a Novel; Bertram, a Tragedy; Manuel, a Tragedy; Women, a Novel. Maturin's productions are in the Mrs. Radcliff style, abounding in horrors, and his style, although vigorous, is extrav agant and unequal.

MICHAEL SCOTT, 1789-1835, was a native of Scotland, educated at the University of Glasgow, and engaged for a number of years in the West India trade. From 1822 until his death he resided in Scotland. Scott is the author of two celebrated serials that appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and were afterwards reprinted. They are called Tom Cringle's Log, and The Cruise of the Midge. They attracted great attention at the time of their appearance, and are still read and enjoyed by numerous readers.

III. REVIEWERS AND POLITICAL WRITERS.

Gifford.

William Gifford, 1756-1826, obtained distinction in various walks of authorship, but is chiefly known by his labors as editor of the London Quarterly Review.

Gifford was born poor, and was left an orphan at twelve. He went to sea for a short time, and then was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Through the liberality of a benevolent surgeon, Mr. Cookesley, Gifford was enabled to study the classics, and to attend for some time at Oxford. Spurred by a desire for literary life, he went to London.

Publications. Gifford's first publication was The Baviad, a poetical satire, published in 1794, and directed against Mrs. Piozzi and other second-class writers and pretenders to literature. His next was the Mæviad, 1795, likewise a satire, and aimed at the dramatists of the day. Both poems were successful. In 1797, he became editor of the famous Anti-Jacobin. In 1802, he published a translation of Juvenal, which has been pronounced on good authority to be "the best poetical version of a classic in the English language." He performed a large amount of critical work in editing old English authors. He gave critical editions of Massinger, 4 vols., 8vo; Ben Jonson, 9 vols., 8vo; Ford, 2 vols., 8vo; Shirley, 6 vols., 8vo. The editions of Ford and Shirley were unfinished at his death, and were completed by other hands.

Work as a Reviewer. Gifford's crowning work, however, was his editorship of the London Quarterly Review, from 1809, the time of its inception, to 1824. Here he reigned supreme for a period of fif teen years, and his reign was one of terror. He was a man of great acuteness of intellect, coarse and savage in disposition, lynx-eyed to detect blemishes, and relentless in exposing them, yet enjoying a large measure of consideration in the literary world on account of the power which he wielded by virtue of his editorial position, and which he used with incessant and remorseless activity.

"As an editor of old authors, Mr. Gifford is entitled to considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising the text, and for some improvement he has introduced into it. He had better have spared the Notes, in which, though he has detected the blunders of previous commentators, he has exposed his own ill temper and narrowness of feeling more. As a critic, he has thrown no light on the character and spirit of his authors. He has shown no striking power of analysis, nor of original illustration, though he has chosen to exercise his pen on writers most congenial to his own turn of mind from their dry and caustic wit: Massinger and Ben Jonson. What he will

make of Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none of the fiery quality' of the poet."- Hazlitt.

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"He was a man of extensive knowledge; was well acquainted with classic and old English lore; so learned, that he considered all other people ignorant; se vise, that he was seldom pleased with anything; and, as he had not risen to much eminence in the world, he thought no one else was worthy to rise. He almost rivalled Jeffrey in wit, and he surpassed him in scorching sarcasm and crucifying irony. Jeffrey wrote with a sort of levity which induced men to doubt if he were sincere in his strictures; Gifford wrote with an earnest fierceness which showed the delight which he took in his calling."- Allan Cunningham,

"He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classical author; and his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad squabashed at once a set of coxcombs, who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have repressed his rancors against those who had preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a conima, was in Gifford's eye a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labors, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal's guilt in dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was very valetudinary, aud realized two verses, wherein he says Fortune assigned him

One eye not over good,

Two sides that to their cost have stood

A ten years' hectic cough,

Aches, stitches, all the various ills

That swell the devilish doctor's bills,

And sweep poor mortals off.

He was a little man, dumpled up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his countenance."- Sir Walter Scott.

"William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, seems to have united in himself all the bad qualities of the criticism of his time. He was fierce, dogmatic, bigoted. libellous, and unsympathizing. Whatever may have been his talents, they were exquisitely unfitted for his position — his literary judgments being contemptible, where any sense of beauty was required, and principally distinguished for malice and wordpicking. The bitter and snarling spirit with which he commented on excellence he could not appreciate; the extreme narrowness and shallowness of his taste; the labored blackguardism in which he was wont to indulge, under the impression that it was satire; his detestable habit of carrying his political hatreds into literary criticism; his gross personal attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt, and others, who might happen to possess less illiberal principles than his own; made him a dangerous and disagreeable adversary, and one of the worst critics of modern times. Through his position as the editor of an influential journal, his enmity acquired an importance neither due to his talents nor his character."- Whipple.

Mackintosh.

Sir James Mackintosh, 1765-1832, obtained great and deserved celebrity as a writer on subjects connected with statesmanship and national polity.

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