its conclusion, as autumn gathers in the produce of the year. On the contrary, the adventures, however delightful in themselves, are but

"Like orient pearls at random strung,"

and are not connected together, otherwise than as having occurred to one individual, and in the course of one man's life. In fine, whatever may be the vote of the severer critics, we are afraid that many of the labourers in this walk of literature will conclude

with Bayes, by asking, "What is the use of the plot but to bring in fine things?" And, truly, if the fine things really deserve the name, we think there is pedantry in censuring the works where they occur, merely because productions of genius are not also adorned with a regularity of conception, carrying skilfully forward the conclusion of the story, which we may safely pronounce one of the rarest attainments of art.

The characters of Mrs Smith are conceived with truth and force, though we do not recollect any one which bears the stamp of actual novelty; and indeed, an effort at introducing such, unless the author is powerfully gifted with the inventive faculty, is more likely to produce monsters than models of composition. She is uniformly happy in supplying them with language fitted to their station in life; nor are there many dialogues to be found which are at once so entertaining, and approach so nearly to truth and reality. The evanescent tone of the highest fashionable society is not easily caught, nor perhaps is it desirable it should be, considering the care which is taken in these elevated regions to

deprive conversation of every thing approaching to the emphasis of passion, or even of serious interest. But of every other species of dialogue, from the higher to the lower classes of her countrymen, Mrs Smith's works exhibit happy specimens ; and her portraits of foreigners, owing to her long residence abroad, are not less striking than those of Britons.

There is yet another attribute of Mrs Smith's fictitious narratives, which may be a recommendation, or the contrary, as it affects readers of various temperaments, or the same reader in a different mood of mind. We allude to the general tone of melancholy which pervades her composition, and of which every one who has read the preceding Memoir can no longer be at a loss to assign the cause. The conclusions of her novels, it is true, are generally fortunate, and she has spared her readers, who have probably enough arising out of their own concerns to make them anxious and unhappy, the uncomfortable feeling of having wasted their hour of leisure upon making themselves yet more sad and uncomfortable than before, by the unpleasant conclusion of a tale which they had taken up for amusement. The sky, though it uniformly lours upon us through Mrs Smith's narrations, breaks forth on the conclusion, and cheers the scene when we are about to part from it. Still, however, we long for a few sunny glimpses to enliven the landin the course of the story, and with these we are rarely supplied; so that the general influence of melancholy can scarce be removed by the assurance, that our favourites are at length married and prosperous. The hasty and happy catastrophe seems

scape

so inconsistent with the uniform persecutions of Fortune, through the course of the story, that we cannot help doubting whether adversity had exhausted her vial, or whether she had not farther misfortunes in store for them after the curtain was dropped by the Authoress. Those who have few sorrows of their own, as Coleridge beautifully expresses it,1 love the tales which call forth a sympathy for which their own feelings give little occasion; while others, exhausted by the actual distresses of life, relish better those narratives which steal them from a sense of sorrow.

But every one, whether

of sad or gay temperament, must regret that the tone of melancholy which pervades Mrs Smith's compositions, was derived too surely from the circumstances and feelings of the amiable Authoress. We are indeed informed by Mrs Dorset that the natural temper of her sister was lively and playful; but it must be considered, that the works on which she was obliged, often reluctantly, to labour, were seldom undertaken from free choice. Nothing saddens the heart so much as that sort of literary labour which depends on the imagination, when it is undertaken unwillingly, and from a sense of compulsion. The galley-slave may sing when he is unchained, but it would be uncommon equanimity which could induce him to do so when he is actually bound to his oar. If there is a mental drudgery which lowers

1 "Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope, my joy, my Genevieve;
She loves me best whene'er I sing
The songs that made her grieve."

Love.

the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like the toil of the slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition when the heart is not in unison with the work upon which the head is employed. Add to the unhappy author's task, sickness, sorrow, or the pressure of unfavourable circumstances, and the labour of the bondsman becomes light in compari

son.

Before closing a rough attempt to discharge the debt we owe in acknowledgment of many pleasant hours derived from the perusal of Mrs Smith's works, we cannot but remark the number of highlytalented women, who have, within our time of novel-reading, distinguished themselves advantageously in this department of literature. Besides the living excellence of Mrs D'Arblay, and of Maria Edgeworth, of the Authoress of Marriage and the Inheritance, and of Mrs Opie, the names arise on us of Miss Austen, the faithful chronicler of English manners, and English society of the middling, or what is called the genteel class; besides also Mrs Radcliffe, Miss Reeves, and others, to whom we have endeavoured to do some justice in these sheets. We have to thank Mrs Inchbald, the authoress of Frankenstein, Mrs Bennet, too, and many other women of talents, for the amusement which their works have afforded; and we must add, that we think it would be impossible to match against these names the same number of masculine competitors, arising within the same space of time. The fact is worthy of notice: although, whether it arises from mere chance; whether the less marked and more evanescent shades of modern

society are more happily painted by the finer pencil of a woman; or whether our modern delicacy, having excluded the bold and sometimes coarse delineations permitted to ancient novelists, has rendered competition more easy to female writers, because the forms must be veiled and clothed with drapery, is a subject which would lead us far, and which, therefore, it is not our present purpose to enter into.