KKClilOATIVK NATURAL UISTnRV. 





at WIIH odd Htil!. ' . mako 



L sorioH of chapters out oik Ho was a quiz of human 



is in him mii.-h of tho melancholy sarcaim which 

 Shakespeare puts into In. " Joqaes." Like Jaquea, ho rather 



himself on oooentrio manners, and yon never know 

 wh;it ho will say next. In 1759 hU first book began to appear, 



1 opinions of TrUtrum Shundy, Gent." Thin in 

 y a talc at all ; it is a medley of half-tnld in.-i.lcntH, half- 



Iiinti-d criticisms upon life, and mad sport of wit ul' 



- of Rabelais. Some of tho wit is qaito shocking, and 

 one must Hay of Storne, as Keats said of Byron, that his was a 

 t il.'in Hi.it mado solemnities oat of trifles, and solemn things 

 into trifles. Nevertheless, tenderness of a strangely delicate 

 kind i-; not wanting in the work of this pruriently-minded man ; 

 " Tristram Shandy " contains one of the most beautifully and 

 pathetically told stories in any language, the story of Lcfovre. 

 Sterne's other masterpiece is " A Sentimental Journey through 

 France and Italy." Ho had been born at Clonmel in 1713, and 

 Rpont tho most of hia life in a position which he neither suited nor 

 adorned, that of an English country parson. Some volumes of 

 his sermons wore published. He died in 1768. 



Sterne was a wit : Tobias Smollett was a humorist. Sterne 

 smiles at us ; but Smollett laughs with us. Sterne sees far 

 deeper into nature than Smollett does ; yet Smollett is quite as 

 healthy reading as the author of " Tristram Shandy." Smollett 

 is tho legitimate successor of Fielding, and will move you 

 with real fun far more than Fielding will ; but the fun, after 

 all, is romping, noisy fun, and often enough offensive to deli- 

 cacy. Tobias Smollett was born near Dumbarton, Scotland, in 

 IT^'l. Like Fielding, ho tried several kinds of life before be- 

 coming a novelist. Playwright, surgeon's mate, city doctor, 

 satirist, ho only found his true work in 1748, when he pro- 

 duced "Roderick Random." This rollicking story embodies 

 much of his personal experiences. Smollett's other novels, all 

 marked by strong humour, are : " Peregrine Pickle," " Fer- 

 dinand Count Fathom," " Humphrey Clinker," " Sir Launcelot 

 Greaves." Smollett executed other literary work besides, as, 

 for instance, a translation of " Don Quixote," and a " History 

 of England " in four volumes. This history ruined his health ; 

 he died in 1771. 



Novel-writing now takes a purer strain in our literature. 

 Oliver Goldsmith, an Irishman born in 1728, came to London, 

 after many vagaries, and settled down as a literary man in 

 the year 1756. He was a merry, open-hearted, reckless fellow, 

 full of ideas, but devoid of the common sense necessary for 

 their development. He was invited to write for the Public 

 Ledger, and to the pages of this newspaper he contributed the 

 papers now so well known as " The Citizen of the World." Dr. 

 Johnson took him up, and introduced him to tho great literary 

 folks. " The Traveller," a fine poem, soon proved what stuff 

 was in him. But debts lay heavily on his conscience and his 

 imagination. One day ho had to send and ask Johnson to help 

 him out of some pecuniary difficulty. Johnson went to see 

 him, and found he had a prose tale lying neglected in his desk. 

 This Johnson was able to sell at once to Newbery the book- 

 seller, for 60. It was " The Vicar of "Wakofield." The idyllic, 

 yet natural charms of this story will never die ; it has proved 

 the most popular novel in tho world. Unmatched simplicity of 

 narrative style, delicate and unobtrusive humour, variety of 

 situation and incident, and beautiful sympathy with goodness, 

 mako this wonderful tale inexpressibly dear to all lovers of 

 literature. There is that universality of human interest in the 

 " Vicar of Wakefield " which appeals to readers of all ages and 

 all nationalities. Tho child of nine eagerly devours it ; and 

 Goethe has recorded that it was a powerful factor in the 

 development of his intellectual life. With tho "Vicar of W:iko- 

 field," the period of tho classic English novelists may be said to 

 end. Tho fiction of that time had reached a perfect blossom. 



The lovely artlessness of Goldsmith's expression gave its 

 characteristic charm to his poetry, as well as to his prose. 

 Goldsmith's verse is to Pope's what a sweet wayside hedge is 

 to a Dutch garden. Pope's poetry is all head-work ; Gold- 

 smith's is full of affections, sympathies, charities, extended 

 both towards man and towards nature : it is gently emotional 

 throughout. Goldsmith, both in his " Traveller." and in his 

 " Deserted Village," subsequently published, cxhibit-i f:ir ni'iro 

 sense of external nature than Pope and his school dreamt of. 

 His was not an exact knowledge of nature ; his sense of its 



beauty was expressed in a general way. Bui tfu advance Us 

 time hod made in appreciation of the external universe must 

 be noted. Goldmnith wrote two socoeasfal eomediec, "The 

 Good-natured Man," and " She Stoop* to Conquer." He died 



in tho T.-inj,l,. in 1774. 



Jamoa ThomHon, a Scotchman, author of "The BeMont." 

 " The Castle of Indolence," and other poetical work*, WM a 

 contemporary of Goldsmith'*, and like him helped to bring about 

 a better feeling for the influenced of nature. Akonaide, who 

 wrote " The Pleasure* of tho Imagination," rather harked back 

 on the classic stylo of Pope, bat not very successfully. Coliin* 

 distinguished himself chiefly by aomo graceful ode*, of which that 

 addrosned to Evening is tho most admired. Gray wrote several 

 volume* of good poetry, bat by far the beat of hi* production* 

 is hia very perfect " Elegy written in a Country Churchyard." 

 Tho churchyard won that of Stoke Pogin. Churchill penned a 

 good many telling, satirical pocma ; and William Cowper, bora 

 at Great Berkhampntcad in 1731, achieved a poetical fame that 

 will last long. His humorous ballad of " John Gilpin " in still a 

 favourite with yoang and old ; his " Tank " contain* much fino 

 thinking and fancy ; and iris " Olncy Hymns " trpre** devout 

 religious sentiment in a pure style, unhappily too rare in vewe 

 of this class. Cowper lived to the year 1800. Wealey and 

 Watts belong also to the evangelical party of thin period, 

 while David Humo and Gibbon the historian wrote upon tho 

 free-thinking side. 



Somehow or other, however, tho outstanding figure among all 

 these writers in the beginning of the eighteenth century in 

 Dr. Samuel Johnson. It is hard to say upon what grounds he 

 should claim so prominent a place. There were in hia day 

 several who wrote better prose than he did, and twenty who wrote- 

 better verse. Tho secret of his dominance over his time lien, 

 not so much in what ho directly accomplished through the pen, 

 as in his influence as a talker. Partly because of his learning, 

 partly because of hia large-brained views of life, partly because 

 of his sterling kindliness of heart, partly because of the dicta- 

 torial spirit and manner born in him, he obtained recognition 

 on all sides as the literary Cato of his day. Johnson was born 

 at Lichfield in 1709, and had many a hard struggle in London 

 before he attained any pecuniary comfort aa a literary man. 

 His chief work is his " Dictionary of the English Language," 

 truly a gigantic task to accomplish, and accomplish so ably. 

 The essays published under tho titles of " The Rambler," and 

 " The Idler," were well received ; his tiresome " Rosselas," a 

 tale written to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, 

 was still more popular for a time, although, as Macaulay 

 has remarked, the anthor in this Abyssinian romance " trans- 

 ferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt." 

 A great service was done by Dr. Johnson to our literature 

 when he published his " Lives of tho Poets." These contain 

 condensed information and criticism of a very valuable charac- 

 ter, though, as a critic, ho occasionally went curiously far astray. 



RECKEATIVE NATURAL HISTORY 



OUR MOST FAMILIAR NUTO. 



FEW of the treasures yielded by trees and shrubs have BO much 

 historical, traditional, commercial, and home interest associated 

 with them, as have the shell-coated seeds wo familiarly call nuts. 



England, in its primitive and uncultivated condition before 

 invasion by the Romans brought new customs and new pro- 

 ductions from a far-off land with it possessed few fruits, and a 

 very limited number of indigenous forest trees. The hazel nut, 

 however, grow abundantly in tho tangled thickets in which tho 

 stark wolf and the great red deer found shelter and a sanctuary 

 from the spears and arrows of the woad-painted and skin-ehul 

 hunters, who, with hound and horn, trod the tangled mores of 

 dell and dingle, which havo long passed away to give place to 

 closely-packed honses, crowded thoroughfares, and toiling multi- 

 tudes ; and the only traces left of the old forest and that whi:!i 

 it yielded, are perchance found in digging some deep foundation 

 or tunnel bonoath tho earth, when amongst solid, though jet- 

 black, tree trunks and vegetable mould we discover the empty 

 HholU of ebon-hucd hazel nuts, and tho antlers of deer. 



Tho name by which this fruit, so much beloved by tho 

 holiday-keeping schoolboys and nimble, sportive squirrels of 



