THREE:Before the conclusion of the reign of George II. a new school of fiction had appeared. De Foe had, besides his "Robinson Crusoe," opened up the inexhaustible field of incident and character existing in actual life in his "Colonel Jack," "Moll Flanders," "Roxana," and other novels, and Fielding and Richardson extended it. Fielding, too, died six years before the beginning of this reign, and Richardson in the first year of it. But their works were in full circulation, and extended their influence far into this period. They have, therefore, been left to be noticed here in connection with the class of writers to whom they gave origin, and to whom they properly belong. Richardson (b. 1689; d. 1761) seems to have originated the true novel of real life in his "Pamela," which was the history of a servant, written with that verisimilitude that belongs to biography. This was commenced in 1740, and brought to a conclusion in 1741. The extra-ordinary sensation which it created was sufficient proof that the author had struck into the very heart of nature, and not only knew where the seat of human passion lay, but had the highest command over it. It was not, in fact, from books and education, but from native insight and acute observation, that he drew his power. He was born in Derbyshire, and received his education at a common day-school. He was then apprenticed as a printer in London, and established himself as a master in that business, which he continued to pursue with great success. His "Pamela" ran through five editions in the first year. In 1748[172] appeared his "Clarissa Harlowe," and wonderfully extended his reputation, which reached its full blaze in his "Sir Charles Grandison," in 1754. In all these works he showed himself a perfect analyst of the human heart, and detector of the greatest niceties of character. Though he could have known little or nothing of aristocratic life, yet, trusting to the sure guidance of nature, he drew ladies and gentlemen, and made them act and converse as the first ladies and gentlemen of the age would have been proud to act and speak. A more finished gentleman than Sir Charles Grandison, or correcter lady than Miss Byron, was never delineated. The only thing was, that, not being deeply versed in the debaucheries and vulgarisms of the so-called high life of the time, he drew it as much purer and better than it was. It is in the pages of Fielding and Smollett that we must seek for the darker and more real character of the age. The fault of Richardson was his prolixity. He develops his plot, and draws all his characters, and works out his narrative with the minutest strokes. It is this which prevents him from being read now. Who could wade through a novel of nine volumes? Yet these were devoured by the readers of that time with an avidity that not even the novels of Sir Walter Scott were waited for in the height of his popularity.Perhaps there is no cause from which Ireland has suffered more than from misrepresentations. Nowhere have the want of discrimination, and due allowance for the extravagant exaggerations of vehement partisans, been more pernicious. There were in the reign of George IV. no evils in Ireland which would not have yielded to the action of just and impartial government, removing real grievances, and extending to the people, in a confiding spirit, the blessings of the British Constitution, in the spirit of Lord Wellesley's administration. He had to contend, indeed, with peculiar difficulties. Ireland shared largely in the general distress of the United Kingdom, occasioned by the contraction of the currency, and the consequent low prices of agricultural produce. He found a great portion of the south in a state of licentiousness, surpassing the worst excesses of former unhappy times; he had to deal with dangerous and secret conspiracies in other parts of the country. He applied the energies of his powerful mind to master these complicated difficulties in the spirit of conciliation which had been enjoined in the king's instructions. He explored every dangerous and untried path, and he laboured diligently, by the equal administration of the laws, to promote peace and happiness among all classes of the people. He succeeded to a great extent in accomplishing the object of his administration. Mr. Plunket, the Irish Attorney-General, in his speech on unlawful societies, in the House of Commons, in February, 1825, described the country as in a state of peace and prosperity. She had been enabled, by the noble lord at the head of the Government, and by the measures which he had matured, to enjoy the blessings which were the offspring of internal tranquillity. Those measures had been properly administered, and public confidence had been in consequence restored. "It was a great blessing," he said, "it was a most gratifying object, to behold that country now floating on the tide of public confidence and public prosperity. She was lying on the breakers, almost a wreck, when the noble marquis arrived; and if he had not taken the measures which have been so successfully adopted, she never could have floated on that tide of public prosperity."
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FORE:SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY. (After the Portrait by J. Hoppner, R.A.)
FORE:Anglo-Mexican 33 0 0 158 0 0
