us strong, the following is surprising criticism from a youth of twenty-one, the very Byron and Bulwer age:

"I am inclined to regard you (the author of Eugene Aram) as an original discoverer in the world of literary enterprise, and to reverence you as the father of a new 'lusus naturæ school.' There is no other title by which your manner could be so aptly designated. I am told, for instance, that in a former work, having to paint an adulterer, you described him as belonging to the class of country curates, among whom, perhaps, such a criminal is not met with once in a hundred years; while, on the contrary, being in search of a tender-hearted, generous, sentimental, high-minded hero of romance, you turned to the pages of the Newgate Calendar, and looked for him in the list of men who have cut throats for money, among whom a person in possession of such qualities could never have been met with at all. Wanting a shrewd, selfish, worldly, calculating valet, you describe him as an old soldier, though he bears not a single trait of the character which might have been moulded by a long course of military service, but, on the contrary, is marked by all the distinguishing features of a bankrupt attorney, or a lame duck from the Stock Exchange. Having to paint a cat, you endow her with the idiosyncrasies of a dog."

At the end, the author intimates that he is ready to treat with any liberal publisher for a series of works in the same style, to be called Tales of the Old Bailey, or Romances of Tyburn Tree. The proposed series is represented only by Catherine, a longer and more elaborate effort in the same direction. It is the narrative of the misdeeds of Mrs. Catherine Hayes, — an allusion to whose criminal

ity in after days brought down upon the author of Pendennis an amusing outpouring of fury from Irish patriotism, forgetting in its excitement that the name was borne by a heroine of the Newgate Calendar, as well as by the accomplished singer whom we all regret. The purpose of Catherine is the same as that of Elisabeth Brownrigge, to explode the lusus naturæ school; but the plan adopted is slightly different. Things had got worse than they were in 1832. The public had called for coarse stimulants and had got them. Jack Sheppard had been acquiring great popularity in Bentley's Miscellany; and the true feeling and pathos of many parts of Oliver Twist had been marred by the unnatural sentimentalism of Nancy. Mr. Ikey Solomon objected utterly to these monstrosities of literature, and thought the only cure was a touch of realism; an attempt to represent blackguards in some measure as they actually are:

"In this," he says, "we have consulted nature and history rather than the prevailing taste and the general manner of authors. The amusing novel of Ernest Maltravers, for instance, opens with a seduction; but then it is performed by people of the strictest virtue on both sides; and there is so much religion and philosophy in the heart of the seducer, so much tender innocence in the soul of the seduced, that— bless the little dears! - their very peccadilloes make one interested in them; and their naughtiness becomes quite sacred, so deliciously is it described. Now, if we are to be interested by rascally actions, let us have them with plain faces, and let them be performed, not by virtuous philoso

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phers, but by rascals. Another clever class of novelists adopt the contrary system, and create interest by making their rascals perform virtuous actions. Against these popular plans we here solemnly appeal. say, let your rogues in novels act like rogues, and your honest men like honest men; don't let us have any juggling and thimblerigging with virtue and vice, so that, at the end of three volumes, the bewildered reader shall not know which is which; don't let us find ourselves kindling at the generous qualities of thieves and sympathizing with the rascalities of noble hearts. For our own part, we know what the public likes, and have chosen rogues for our characters, and have taken a story from the Newgate Calendar, which we hope to follow out to edification. Among the rogues at least, we will have nothing that shall be mistaken for virtue. And if the British public (after calling for three or four editions) shall give up, not only our rascals, but the rascals of all other authors, -we shall be content. We shall apply to government for a pension, and think that our duty is done."

Again, further on in the same story:

"The public will hear of nothing but rogues; and the only way in which poor authors, who must live, can act honestly by the public and themselves, is to paint such thieves as they are; not dandy, poetical, rose-water thieves, but real downright scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low, as scoundrels will be. They don't quote Plato like Eugene Aram, or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about Tò κaλóν, like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor Biss Dadsy, in Oliver Twist. No, my dear madam, you and your daughters have no right to admire and sympathize with any such persons, fictitious or real: you ought to be made cordially to detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and abominate all people of this

kidney. Men of genius, like those whose works we have, above alluded to, have no business to make these characters interesting or agreeable, to be feeding your morbid fancies, or indulging their own with such monstrous food. For our parts, young ladies, we beg you to bottle up your tears, and not waste a single drop of them on any one of the heroes or heroines in this history; they are all rascals, every soul of them, and behave as sich.' Keep your sympathy for those who deserve it; don't carry it, for preference, to the Old Bailey, and grow maudlin over the company assembled there."

Neither of these tales, though it is very curious to look back at them now, can be considered quite successful. And the reason of this is not hard to find. It was impossible that they could be attractive as stories; while, on the other hand, the humor was not broad enough to command attention for itself. They were neither sufficiently interesting nor sufficiently amusing. They are caricatures without the element of caricature. In Elisabeth, we have little but the story of a crime committed by a criminal actuated by motives and overflowing with sentiments of the Eugene Aram type. Catherine is more ambitious. In it an attempt is made to construct a story, to delineate character. The rival loves of Mr. Bullock and Mr. Hayes, and the adventures of the latter on his marriage-day, show, to some extent, the future novelist; while in the pictures of the manners of the times, slight though they are, in the characters of Corporal Brock and Cornet Galgenstein, and M. l'Abbé O'Flaherty, we

can trace, or at least we now fancy we can trace, the author of Barry Lyndon and Henry Esmond. Catherine herself, in her gradual progress from the village jilt to a murderess, is the most striking thing in the story, and is a sketch of remarkable power. But nothing could make a story interesting which consists of little more than the seduction of a girl, the intrigues of a mistress, the discontent of a wife growing into hatred and ending in murder. At the close, indeed, the writer resorts to the true way of making such a jeu d'esprit attractive, – burlesque. He concludes, though too late altogether to save the piece, in a blaze of theatrical blue-fire; and it was this idea of burlesque or extravagant caricature which led to the perfected successes of George de Barnwell and Codlingsby. In a literary point of view, it is well worth while to go back upon those early efforts; and we have dwelt upon them the more willingly that their purpose and the literary doctrine they contend for would be well remembered at this very time. We have given up writing about discovered criminals, only to write more about criminals not yet found out; the lusus naturæ school has given place to the sensational; the literature of the Newgate Calendar has been supplanted by the literature of the detective officer, -a style rather the worse and decidedly the more stupid of the two. The republication of Catherine might be a useful, and would be a not unpleas