His deception discovered.

Arabella inexorable.

Amusement of the marquis.

Certainly, madam," replied Glanville, "it was very generous in Artaxerxes, as he was brother to Statira, to interpose in behalf of an unfortunate lover; and both Oroondates and Orontes were extremely obliged to him."'

66

"Orontes," replied Arabella, was more obliged to him than Oroondates; since the quality of Orontes was infinitely below that of Oroondates."

"But, madam," interrupted Glanville (extremely pleased at his having so well got over the difficulty he had been in), "which of these two lovers did Statira make happy?" This unlucky question immediately informed Arabella that she had been all this time the dupe of her cousin, who, if he had read a single page, would have known that Orontes and Oroondates were the same person; the name of Orontes being assumed by Oroondates to conceal his real name and quality.

The shame and rage she conceived at so glaring a proof of his disrespect and the ridicule to which she had exposed herself were so great that she could not find words severe enough to express her resentment, but ordered him instantly to quit her chamber, and assured him, if he ever attempted to approach her again, she would submit to the most terrible effects of her father's resentment rather than be obliged to see a person who had, by his unworthy behavior, made himself her scorn and aversion.

Glanville attempted, with great submission, to move her to recall her cruel sentence; but Arabella, bursting into tears, complained so pathetically of the cruelty of her destiny in exposing her to the importunities of a man she despised, that Glanville, thinking it best to let her rage evaporate a little before he attempted to pacify her, quitted her chamber, cursing Statira and Orontes a thousand times, and loading the authors of those books with all the imprecations his rage could suggest.

Glanville went into the garden to cool off, and here meeting the marquis, he told him the whole thing; in the course of his recital he could not help laughing, and the marquis was so diverted that he "would needs hear it all over again." He shared the annoyance of his nephew, but reproved him for not reading what was set before him, for, says he, "besides losing an opportunity

of obliging her, you drew yourself into a terrible di-
lemma."
Glanville admitted his error, but begged his
uncle to restore him to the favor of his cousin. Re-
pairing to his daughter, the marquis tried to reason
amiably with her, but her jargon about "Candace, the
beautiful daughter of Cleopatra" so enraged him that
he ordered one of her women to carry all her beloved
books into his apartment, vowing he would commit
them to the flames.

Burning of the

This is a parallel to the burning of the books in "Don Quixote," and in fact is the only part of Ara- books. bella's history which runs at all close to the work of Cervantes, which supplies its name. There were various imitations of the great original, of which this is perhaps the best.

We must now leave our heroine to her career. Mr. Glanville won the heart of his fair one by interceding for her favorite books. The marquis relented, and the young man, seizing them for fear his uncle should change his mind, hastened to carry them to his cousin, who, with eyes sparkling, at the sight of her favorites, generously pardoned her lover.

Of course she married him, at the end of two not very long volumes, wholly cured, after a series of marvelous adventures, of all her follies; although on her first appearance in the great world, ill prepared for the real dangers of society by her false notions of propriety acquired in her early studies, she made continual mistakes. There is really a sweetness and ingenuousness about Arabella, which, besides protecting her from the pitfalls awaiting her, wins, in my opinion, the affection

Marriage.

sion.

of her readers, or, at the least, prevents them from lay- Happy concluing down her story with the condemnation of absolute dulness.

You may meet the Lady Arabella again at Bath.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

British Novelists (Lecture I.). David Masson, M.A.

British Novelists, Vols. 32-33: Female Quixote (Mrs. Barbauld's edition).

BOOK III.

ADDISON AND GAY.

CHAPTER VIII.

Revolution.

WE commonly regard the age of the Revolution as an age of military exploits and political changes, an age whose warlike glories loom dimly through the smoke of Blenheim or of Ramillies, and the greatness of whose political issues still impresses us, though we track them with difficulty through a chaos of treasons and cabals. But to the men who lived in it the age was Changes of the far more than this. To them the Revolution was more than a merely political revolution; it was the recognition not only of a change in the relations of the nation to its rulers, but of changes almost as great in English society and in English intelligence. If it was the age of the Bill of Rights, it was the age also of the Spectator. If Marlborough and Somers had their share in shaping the new England that came of 1688, so also had Addison and Steele. And to the bulk of people it may be doubted whether the change that passed over literature was not more startling and more interesting than the change that passed over politics. Few changes, indeed, have ever been so radical and complete. Literature suddenly doffed its stately garb of folio or octavo, and stepped abroad in the light and easy dress of pamphlet and essay. We hear sometimes that the last century is "repulsive"; but what is it that repels us in it? Is it the age itself, or the picture of itself which the age so

fearlessly presents? There is no historic ground for thinking the eighteenth century a coarser or a more brutal age than the centuries that had gone before; rather there is ground for thinking it a less coarse and a less brutal age. The features which repel us in it are no features of its own production. What makes the Georgian age seem repulsive is simply that it is the in the Georgian first age which felt these evils to be evils, which dragged

Improvement

age.

Steele in the
Tatler.

them, in its effort to amend them, into the light of day. It is, in fact, the moral effort of the time which makes it seem so immoral.

Steele has the merit of having been the first to feel the new intellectual cravings of his day and to furnish what proved to be the means of meeting them. His Tatler was a periodical of pamphlet form, in which news was to be varied by short essays of criticism and gossip. But his grasp of the new literature was a feeble grasp. His sense of the fitting form for it, of its fitting tone, of the range and choice of its subjects, were alike inadequate. He seized indeed by a happy instinct on letter-writing and conversation as the two molds to which the essay must adapt itself; he seized with the same happy instinct on humor as the pervading temper of his work and on "manners" as its destined sphere. But his notion of "manners" was limited not only to the external aspects of life and society, but to those aspects as they present themselves in towns; while his humor remained pert and superficial. The Tatler, however, had hardly been started when it was taken in hand by a greater than Steele. "It was raised," as he frankly confessed, "to a greater thing than I intended," by the coöperation of Joseph Addison.

The life of the Tatler lasted through the years 1709 and 1710; the two next years saw it surpassed by the