writing, and took to the composition of stories and romances. Although now a man of fifty-four, he wrote with the vigour and ease of a young man of thirty. His greatest imaginative work was written in 1719-when he was nearly sixty-The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, . . written by Himself. Within six years he had produced twelve works of a similar kind. He is said to have written in all two hundred and fifty books in the course of his lifetime. He died in 1731.

4. His best known-and it is also his greatest--work is Robinson Crusoe; and this book, which every one has read, may be compared with 'Gulliver's Travels,' for the purpose of observing how imaginative effects are produced by different means and in different ways. Another vigorous work of imagination by Defoe is the Journal of the Plague, which appeared in 1722. There are three chief things to be noted regarding Defoe and his writings. These are: first, that Defoe possessed an unparalleled knowledge-a knowledge wider than even Shakespeare's of the circumstances and details of human life among all sorts, ranks, and conditions of men; secondly, that he gains his wonderful realistic effects by the freest and most copious use of this detailed knowledge in his works of imagination; and thirdly, that he possessed a vocabulary of the most wonderful wealth. His style is strong, homely, and vigorous, but the sentences are long, loose, clumsy, and sometimes ungrammatical. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was too eager to produce large and broad effects to take time to balance his clauses or to polish his sentences. Like Sir Walter Scott, again, he possesses in the highest degree the art of particularising.

5. JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745), the greatest prose-writer, in his own kind, of the eighteenth century, and the opposite in most respects especially in style-of Addison, was born in Dublin in the year 1667. Though born in Ireland, he was of purely English descent-his father belonging to a Yorkshire family, and his mother being a Leicestershire lady. His father died before he was born; and he was educated by the kindness of an uncle. After being at a private school at Kilkenny, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was plucked for his degree at his first examination, and, on a second trial, only obtained his B.A. "by special favour." He next came to England, and for eleven years acted as private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired statesman and ambassador, who lived at Moor Park, near Richmond-on

Thames. In 1692 he paid a visit to Oxford, and there obtained the degree of M.A. In 1700 he went to Ireland with Lord Berkeley as his chaplain, and while in that country was presented with several livings. He at first attached himself to the Whig party, but stung by this party's neglect of his labours and merits, he joined the Tories, who raised him to the Deanery of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. But, though nominally resident in Dublin, he spent a large part of his time in London. Here he knew and met everybody who was worth knowing, and for some time he was the most imposing figure, and wielded the greatest influence in all the best social, political, and literary circles of the capital. In 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, Swift's hopes of further advancement died out; and he returned to his Deanery, settled in Dublin, and " commenced Irishman for life." A man of strong passions, he usually spent his birthday in reading that chapter of the Book of Job which contains the verse, "Let the day perish in which I was born." He died insane in 1745, and left his fortune to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin. One day, when taking a walk with a friend, he saw a blasted elm, and, pointing to it, he said: "I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top." For the last three years of his life he never spoke one word.

6. Swift has written verse; but it is his prose-works that give him his high and unrivalled place in English literature. His most powerful work, published in 1704, is the Tale of a Tub-a satire on the disputes between the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches. His best known prose-work is the Gulliver's Travels, which appeared in 1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,- -on humanity. "The power of Swift's prose," it has been said by an able critic, "was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after times." His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift's style-as every genuine style does-reflects the author's character. He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott describes him as "tall, strong, and well made, dark in complexion, but with bright blue eyes (Pope said they were “as azure as the heavens "), black and bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, and features which expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind." He grew savage under the slightest contradiction; and dukes and great lords were obliged to pay court to him. His prose was as trenchant and powerful as were his manners it has been compared to "cold steel." His own definition of a good style is "proper words in proper places."

7. JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719), the most elegant prose-writeras Pope was the mose polished verse-writer-of the eighteenth century, was born at Milston, in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at Charterhouse School, in London, where one of his friends and companions was the celebrated Dick Steele-afterwards Sir Richard Steele. He then went to Oxford, where he made a name for himself by his beautiful compositions in Latin verse. In 1695 he addressed a poem to King William ; and this poem brought him into notice with the Government of the day. Not long after, he received a pension of £300 a-year, to enable him to travel; and he spent some time in France and Italy. The chief result of this tour was a poem entitled A Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax. In 1704, when Lord Godolphin was in search of a poet who should celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called The Campaign was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all English readers, and of "the town." A violent storm had passed over England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as cool and serene amid shot and shell as in a drawing-room or at the dinner-table, to the Angel of the Storm. The lines are these :

"So when an Angel by divine command

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”

For this poem Addison was rewarded with the post of Commissioner of Appeals. He rose, successively, to be Under Secretary of State; Secretary for Ireland; and, finally, Secretary of State for Englandan office which would correspond to that of our present Home Secretary. He married the Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor; but it was not a happy marriage. Pope says of him in regard to it, that—

"He married discord in a noble wife."

He died at Holland House, Kensington, London, in the year 1719, at the age of forty-seven.

8. But it is not at all as a poet, but as a prose-writer, that Addison is famous in the history of literature. While he was in Ireland, his friend Steele started The Tatler, in 1709; and Addison sent numerous contributions to this little paper. In 1711, Steele began a still more famous paper, which he called The Spectator; and

Addison's writings in this morning journal made its reputation. His contributions are distinguishable by being signed with some one of the letters of the name Clio-the Muse of History. A third paper, The Guardian, appeared a few years after; and Addison's contributions to it are designated by a hand () at the foot of each. In addition to his numerous prose-writings, Addison brought out the tragedy of Cato in 1713. It was very successful; but it is now neither read nor acted. Some of his hymns, however, are beautiful, and are well known. Such are the hymn beginning, "The spacious firmament on high ;" and his version of the 23d Psalm, "The Lord my pasture shall prepare."

9. Addison's prose style is inimitable, easy, graceful, full of humour -full of good humour, delicate, with a sweet and kindly rhythm, and always musical to the ear. He is the most graceful of social satirists; and his genial creation of the character of Sir Roger de Coverley will live for ever. While his work in verse is never more than second-rate, his writings in prose are always first-rate. Dr Johnson said of his prose: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style-familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, -must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." Lord Lytton also remarks: "His style has that nameless urbanity in which we recognise the perfection of manner; courteous, but not courtier-like; so dignified, yet so kindly; so easy, yet high-bred. It is the most perfect form of English." His style, however, must be acknowledged to want force-to be easy rather than vigorous; and it has not the splendid march of Jeremy Taylor, or the noble power of Savage Landor.

10. RICHARD STEELE (1671-1729), commonly called "Dick Steele,” the friend and colleague of Addison, was born in Dublin, but of English parents, in the year 1671. The two friends were educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford together; and they remained friends, with some slight breaks and breezes, to the close of life. Steele was a writer of plays, essays, and pamphlets-for one of which he was expelled from the House of Commons; but his chief fame was earned in connection with the Society Journals, which he founded. He started many-such as Town-Talk, The Tea-Table, ChitChat; but only the Tatler and the Spectator rose to success and to fame. The strongest quality in his writings is his pathos: the source of tears is always at his command; and, although himself of a gay and even rollicking temperament, he seems to have preferred this vein. The literary skill of Addison—his happy art in

the choosing of words-did not fall to the lot of Steele; but he is more hearty and more human in his description of character. He died in 1729, ten years after the departure of his friend Addison.

11. ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744), the greatest poet of the eighteenth century, was born in Lombard Street, London, in the year of the Revolution, 1688. His father was a wholesale linendraper, who, having amassed a fortune, retired to Binfield, on the borders of Windsor Forest. In the heart of this beautiful country young Pope's youth was spent. On the death of his father, Pope left Windsor and took up his residence at Twickenham, on the banks of the Thames, where he remained till his death in 1744. His parents being Roman Catholics, it was impossible for young Pope to go either to a public school or to one of the universities; and hence he was educated privately. At the early age of eight, he met with a translation of Homer in verse; and this volume became his companion night and day. At the age of ten, he turned some of the events described in Homer into a play. The poems of Spenser, the poets' poet, were his next favourites; but the writer who made the deepest and most lasting impression upon his mind was Dryden. Little Pope began to write verse very early. He says of himself-

"As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

His Ode to Solitude was written at the age of twelve; his Pastorals when he was fifteen. His Essay on Criticism, which was composed in his twentieth year, though not published till 1711, established his reputation as a writer of neat, clear, sparkling, and elegant verse. The Rape of the Lock raised his reputation still higher. Macaulay pronounced it his best poem. De Quincey declared it to be "the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers." Another critic has called it the "perfection of the mock-heroic." Pope's most successful poem—if we measure it by the fame and the money it brought him-was his translation of the Iliad of Homer. A great scholar said of this translation that it was a very pretty poem, but not Homer." The fact is that Pope did not translate directly from the Greek, but from a French or a Latin version which he kept beside him. Whatever its faults, and however great its deficiency as a representation of the powerful and deep simplicity of the original Greek, no one can deny the charm and finish of its versification, or the rapidity, facility, and melody of the flow of the verse. These qualities make this work unique in English poetry.