are in less regard because less known, cast almost entirely in the shade, or else unfaithfully noticed. This general fault applies to the three most prominent histories of literature with which the modern scholar is acquainted-the works of Schlegel, Sismondi and Bouterwek. The late Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by Mr. Hallam, is open to the same objections, and, if we are not greatly mistaken, to a wider and more prejudicial extent.

The capacity and requisite attainments on the part of a historian of European letters, would, if rigorously tested in the person of Mr. Hallam, incline one to place his pretensions and to rate his performance rather lower than the press and the reading public generally have thought proper to ascribe to him. The true position of this author in the literary republic, has been well defined by Macaulay, as that of a liberal, fair and accurate historian. But it will be readily seen that the very qualities that best fit Hallam for this department, are the least appropriate to him in his new character. The cool decisions and rigidly impartial statements of the narrator of civil and military occurrences, and of the speculatist on the political aspects of states and nations, diminish the influence of a literary spirit cherished with enthusiasm and kept fresh by a natural and healthy sympathy with men of genius. Hence we find the statesman and political economist has here got the better of the literary critic and the genuine man of letters. Mr. Hallam is a man of varied acquirements, much industry, and a correct judgment on points where he is well versed; but his work is, after all, little better than a catalogue raisonné; and in that section of it most interesting to the English reader-the department of old English prose and poetry-lamentably deficient, not only in a just appreciation

of the glories of the reigns of Elizabeth, of James, and of Charles I., but also in some of the common details with which every gentleman of moderate reading is supposed to be acquainted. All questions of speculative theology and theoretical politics, the antiquarian history of the first editions of the classics, and the early translations of the Bible, the progress of Oriental learning, and similar heads, are well and learnedly handled. The great defect of the writer is seen when he comes to speak of the minor prose literature of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and where those recondite niceties and delicate traits that test the fine critic, pass either without observation or are ignorantly and almost insolently treated. A feeling of the beauties of an obscure author of merit is as rare in the world of books, as the honest appreciation of a worthy man, who lives out of the world, and is, perhaps, underrated by the few to whom he is known, as in the circles of society. Not only candor but also ingenuity is wanted, in a critic of this description. The critic has candor, but is by no means an ingenious man in any of his works, and, we apprehend, not so well informed on these very topics as he ought to be. On this latter suggestion alone can we account for several false reports and very inadequate decisions. We have marked many instances, but shall at present quote but a few.

Mr. Hallam writes thus of Jeremy Taylor: "His sentences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not always reducible to grammar." Of Donne and Cowley, he gives the old Johnsonian criticism, which has been amply refuted over and over again. He speaks of South as he is currently mentioned, merely a witty court preacher, and says not a word of his vigorous eloquence. Of Hammond's biblical annotations he treats at length, but adds

Of

not a syllable of the sermons of the English Fenelon. Marvel, says Hallam,-"His satires are gross and stupid;" () while the critic writes this sentence of Crashaw, "It is difficult in general to find anything in Crashaw that bad taste has not deformed" (!!) Among the Shaksperian commentators he mentions Mrs. Montague, and others inferior even to her, but omits altogether any reference to Hazlitt or Lamb. One of the most flagrant instances of a want of proper reverence for the finest writers of the finest period of English literature, is to be seen in his notice of the Mermaid tavern: "the oldest and not the worst of clubs." The circle in which Mr. Hallam moves in perhaps more courtly and aristocratical. His idol, Mr. Hookham Frere, possesses "admirable humor;" but poor Owen Feltham, forsooth, who wrote the first century of his Resolves at the age of eighteen, and lived the life of a dependant, is a harsh and quaint writer, full of sententious commonplaces. This young man offers a striking example of an early maturity of judgment, and of the union of genuine pathos and fanciful humor. His little volume will be read with gratification a century hence, and by a larger class than now peruse it, and we dare affirm with more pleasure than the long and inaccurate volumes of Hallam.

Mr. Hallam's judgments, often assuredly caught from second sources, are, when original, those of a critic with the taste of Dr. Blair; a strange union of French criticism and reverence for classic models current in the early part and until almost the close of the last century. He gives an opinion of Addison, to which no reader of varied acquisition, or of broad views of the present day, could by any possibility assent. After Lamb and Hazlitt's, admirable criticisms, we cannot read with patience the labored cautiousness of Mr Hallam, on the old English dramatists. Our author's notices

of the old divines are too much a history of their polemical. works, and the views of their pulpit eloquence either borrowed or else confused.

Lest the popular admiration for genius of the popular sort should run wild, he sneeringly alludes to a certain class of critics, who would erect the John Bunyans and Daniel Defoes into the gods of their idolatry. The historian would himself peradventure substitute Dr. Lingard and Sharon Turner, his brother historians, or a pair of biblical critics, or High Dutch commentators. There are critics who measure an author's works by the company he keeps, or the clothes he wears. We suspect Mr. Hallam to be one of those who would treat Sir Harris Nicholas or the head of a college with unfeigned respect, but not allow himself to be ensnared into the vulgar society at Lamb's Wednesday-evening parties, where Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Hunt, and a host of the most brilliant men of the age, met to converse freely, like men, and not like litterateurs or namby-pamby followers of noble lords.

The history of English literature alone is much too comprehensive a subject for any one man. Mr. D'Israeli, who advertised his intention of attempting it, has been wisely disappointed. The curiosities of literature he has a more real love of, than for the simple beauties of prose or poetry. He might have compiled merely a collection of rare facts and curious. fragments, valuable for their suggestive matter to the student, but quite inadequate for a philosophical history of literature. The best criticisms are contained in classic lives, in letters, and the ablest review articles, in the lectures of Hazlitt, and the essays of Lamb and Leigh Hunt. With these writers, Mr. Hallam may in nowise compete, and we trust he will follow the bent of his natural inclinations, in turning over state

papers and government documents, and display his peculiar ability in sifting the measures of a party, and following up the consequences of a bill or a statute. For literary criticism, his cold temperament and negative taste are ill adapted. They incline him to look on the frank relation of an author's feelings as offensive egotism, and wholly obscure his perception of characteristic individuality or marked personal traits.

IV.

RELIGIOUS NOVELS.

A CERTAIN class of prose fictions is included under the above general term, which, from Bunyan to Brownson, is and ever has been exceedingly popular. They are, for this reason, to be closely scrutinized, as their scope and tendency may prove productive either of great good or considerable injury, not only to the cause or literature, but even to the cause of vital religion and Christian morality. The phrase, "Religious Novels," comprehends equally those works written professedly to favor or satirize particular sects and creeds, and those works which, with a more general and popular interest, still aim to take a high stand on all questions of morality, and to be, in effect, text-books of ethics and casuistry.

A general objection that strikes one at once, on the very face of the matter, is with regard to the intention and spirit of these and similar productions. Is a novel, we would ask, the proper vehicle for religious sentiment and moral instruction?