opined that Mrs. Bargrave had been driven crazy by a cruel husband, and dreamed the whole story of the apparition. Now' all this is sufficiently artful. To have vouched the fact, as universally known and believed by every one, nem. con., would not have been half so satisfactory to a sceptic, as to allow fairly that the narrative had been impugned, and hint at the character of one of those sceptics, and the motives of another, as sufficient to account for their want of belief. Now to the fact itself.

Mrs. Bargrave and Mrs. Veal had been friends in youth, and had protested their attachment should last as long as they lived; but when Mrs. Veal's brother obtained an office in the customs at Dover, some cessation of their intimacy ensued, "though without any positive quarrel." Mrs. Bargrave had removed to Canterbury, and was residing in a house of her own, when she was suddenly interrupted by a visit from Mrs. Veal, as she was sitting in deep contemplation of certain distresses of her own. The visitor was in a riding-habit, and announced herself as prepared for a distant journey (which seems to intimate, that spirits have a considerable distance to go before they arrive at their appointed station, and that the females at least put on a habit for the occasion). The spirit, for such was the seeming Mrs. Veal, continued to wave the ceremony of salutation, both in going and coming, which will remind the reader of a ghostly lover's reply to his mistress, in the fine old Scottish ballad:

Why should I come within thy bower?

I am no earthly man;

And should I kiss thy rosy lips,

Thy days would not be lang.

They then began to talk in the homely style of middle-aged ladies, and Mrs. Veal proses concerning the conversations they had formerly held, and the books they had read together. Her very recent experience probably led Mrs. Veal to talk of death, and the books written on the subject; and she pronounced, ex cathedrâ, as a dead person was best entitled to do, that "Drelincourt's book on death was the best book on the subject ever written." She also mentioned Dr. Sherlock, two Dutch books which had been translated, and several others; but Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and the future state of any who had handled that subject. She then asked for the work [we marvel the edition and impress had not been mentioned ], and lectured on it with great eloquence and affection. Dr. Kenrick's Ascetick was also mentioned with approbation by this critical spectre [the Doctor's work was, no doubt, a tenant of the shelf in some fa¬

yourite publisher's shop]; and Mr. Norris's Poem on Friendship -a work which, I doubt, though honoured with a ghost's approbation, we may now seek for as vainly as Correlli tormented his memory to recover the sonata which the devil played to him in a dream. Presently after, from former habits we may suppose, the ghost desires a cup of tea; but, bethinking herself of her new character, escapes from her own proposal by recollecting that Mr. Bargrave was in the habit of breaking his wife's china. It would have been indeed strangely out of character if the spirit had lunched, or breakfasted upon tea and toast. Such a consummation would have sounded as ridiculous as if the statue of the Commander in Don Juan had not only accepted of the invitation of the libertine to supper, but had also committed a beefsteak to his flinty jaws and stomach of adamant. A little more conversation ensued of a less serious nature, and tending to show, that even the passage from life to death leaves the female anxiety about person and dress somewhat alive. The ghost asked Mrs. Bargrave whether she did not think her very much altered, and Mrs. Bargrave of course complimented her on her good looks. Mrs. Bargrave also admired the gown which Mrs. Veal wore; and, as a mark of her perfectly restored confidence, the spirit let her into the important secret, that it was a scoured silk, and lately made up. She informed her, also, of another secret, namely, that one Mr. Bretton had allowed her ten pounds a-year; and, lastly, she requested that Mrs. Bargrave would write to her brother, and tell him how to distribute her mourning-rings, and mentioned there was a purse of gold in her cabinet. She expressed some wish to see Mrs. Bargrave's daughter; but when that good lady went to the next door to seek her, she found on her return the guest leaving the house. She had got without the door, in the street, in the face of the beast-market, on a Saturday, which is market-day, and stood ready to part. She said she must be going, as she had to call upon her cousin Watson (this appears to be a gratis dictum on the part of the ghost), and, maintaining the character of mortality to the last, she quietly turned the corner, and walked out of sight.

Then came the news of Mrs. Veal's having died the day before at noon. Says Mrs. Bargrave, "I am sure she was with me on Saturday almost two hours." And in comes Captain Watson, and says Mrs. Veal was certainly dead. And then come all the pieces of evidence, and especially the striped silk gown. Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "You have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and I that that gown was scoured ;" and she cried that the gown was described exactly, for, said she, "I helped her to make it up." And next we have the silly attempts made to dis

credit the history. Even Mr. Veal, her brother, was obliged to allow that the gold was found, but with a difference, and pretended it was not found in a cabinet, but elsewhere; and, in short, we have all the gossip of says I, and thinks 1, and says she, and thinks she, which disputed matters usually excite in a country

town.

When we have thus turned the tale the seam without, it may be thought too ridiculous to have attracted notice. But whoever will read it, as told by De Foe himself, will agree that, could the thing have happened in reality, so it would have been told. The sobering the whole supernatural visit into the language of middle or low life, gives it an air of probability even in its absurdity. The ghost of an exciseman's housekeeper, and a seamstress, were not to converse like Brutus with his Evil Genius: and the circumstances of scoured silks, broken tea-china, and such like, while they are the natural topics of such persons' conversation, would, one might have thought, be the last which an inventor would have introduced into a pretended narrative betwixt the dead and living. In short, the whole is so distinctly circumstantial that, were it not for the impossibility, or extreme improbability at least, of such an occurrence, the evidence could not but support the story.

The effect was most wonderful; Drelincourt upon Death, attested by one who could speak from experience, took an unequalled run. The copies had hung on the bookseller's hands as heavy as a pile of lead bullets. They now traversed the town in every direction, like the same balls discharged from a field-piece. In short, the object of Mrs. Veal's apparition was perfectly attained.

The air of writing with all the plausibility of truth must, in almost every case, have its own peculiar value; as we admire the paintings of some Flemish artists, where, though the subjects drawn are mean and disagreeable, and such as in nature we would not wish to study or look close upon, yet the skill with which they are represented by the painter gives an interest to the imita tion upon canvas which the original entirely wants. But, on the other hand, when the power of exact and circumstantial delineation is applied to objects which we are anxiously desirous to see in their proper shape and colours, we have a double source of pleasure, both in the art of the painter, and in the interest which we take in the subject represented. Thus the style of probability with which De Foe invested his narratives, was perhaps ill bestowed, or rather wasted upon some of the works which he thought proper to pro→ duce, and cannot recommend to us the subject of Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders; but, on the other hand, the same talent throws an air of truth about the delightful history of Robinson Crusoe, which we never could have believed it possible to have united with

so extraordinary a situation as is assigned to the hero. All the usual scaffolding and machinery employed in composing fictitious history are carefully discarded. The early incidents of the tale, which in ordinary works of invention are usually thrown out as pegs to hang the conclusion upon, are in this work only touched upon, and suffered to drop out of sight. Robinson, for example, never hears anything more of his elder brother, who enters Lockhart's Dragoons in the beginning of the work, and who, in any common romance, would certainly have appeared before the conclusion. We lose sight at once and for ever of the interesting Xury; and the whole earlier adventures of our voyager vanish, not to be recalled to our recollection by the subsequent course of the story. His father-the good old merchant of Hull-all the other persons who have been originally active in the drama, vanish from the scene, and appear not again. This is not the case in the ordinary romance, where the author, however luxuriant his invention, does not willingly quit possession of the creatures of his imagination, till they have rendered him some services upon the scene; whereas in common life, it rarely happens that our early acquaintances exercise much influence upon the fortunes of our future life.

Our friend Robinson, thereafter, in the course of his roving and restless life, is at length thrown upon his Desert Island, a situation in which, existing as a solitary being, he became an example of what the unassisted energies of an individual of the human race can perform; and the author has, with wonderful exactness, described him as acting and thinking precisely as such a man must have thought and acted in such an extraordinary situation.

Pathos is not De Foe's general characteristic—he had too little delicacy of mind; when it comes, it comes uncalled, and is created by the circumstances, not sought for by the author. The excess, for instance, of the natural longing for human society which Crusoe manifests while on board of the stranded Spanish vessel, by falling into a sort of agony, as he repeated the words, “Oh, that but one man had been saved!-Oh, that there had been but one!" is in the highest degree pathetic. The agonizing reflections of the solitary, when he is in danger of being driven to sea, in his rash attempt to circumnavigate his island, are also affecting.

In like manner we may remark, that De Foe's genius did not approach the grand or terrific. The battles, which he is fond of describing, are told with the indifference of an old bucaneer, and probably in the very way in which he may have heard them recited by the actors. His goblins, too, are generally a commonplace sort of spirits, that bring with them very little of supernatural terror; and yet the fine incident of the print of the naked foot on the sand, with

Robinson Crusoe's terrors in consequence, never fail to leave a powerful impression upon the reader.

The supposed situation of his hero was peculiarly favourable to the circumstantial style of De Foe. Robinson Crusoe was placed in a condition where it was natural that the slightest event should make an impression on him; and De Foe was not an author who would leave the slightest event untold. When he mentions that two shoes were driven ashore, and adds that they were not neighbours, we feel it an incident of importance to the poor solitary.

The assistance which De Foe derived from Selkirk's history, seems of a very meagre kind. It is not certain that he was obliged to the real hermit of Juan Fernandez even for the original hint; for the putting mutineers of turbulent character on shore upon solitary places, was a practice so general among the bucaneers, that there was a particular name for the punishment; it was called marooning a man. De Foe borrowed perhaps, from the account in Woodes Rogers, the circumstance of the two huts, the abundance of goats, the clothing made out of their skins; and the turnips of Alexander Selkirk may have perhaps suggested the corn of Robinson Crusoe. Even these incidents, however, are so wrought up and heightened, and so much is added to make them interesting, that the bare circumstance occurring elsewhere, cannot be said to infringe upon the author's claim to originality. On the whole, indeed, Robinson Crusoe is put to so many more trials of ingenuity, his comforts are so much increased, his solitude is so much diversified, and his account of his thoughts and occupations so distinctly traced, that the course of the work embraces a far wider circle of investigation into human nature, than could be derived from that of Selkirk, who, for want of the tools and conveniences supplied to Crusoe by the wreck, relapses into a sort of savage state, which could have afforded little scope for delineation. It may, however, be observed, that De Foe may have known so much of Selkirk's history, as to be aware how much his stormy passions were checked and tamed by his long course of solitude, and that, from being a kind of Will Atkins, a brawling dissolute seaman, he became (which was certainly the case) a grave, sober, reflective man. The manner in which Robinson Crusoe's moral sense and religious feeling are awakened and brought into action, are important passages in the work. I

We should say more on this subject, were it not that Mr. Howel, of Edinburgh, a person every way qualified for the task, has collected several particulars concerning the history of Selkirk, the prototype of Robinson Crusoe, which he designs shortly to lay before the public.