their author was familiar they remain unrivalled.

[Sidenote: _SERIOUS PROSE WORKS._]

Of the writers of serious prose works, Johnson, as critic, moralist and
author, enjoyed until his death in 1784 a kind of literary dictatorship.
His greatest achievement, _The Lives of the English Poets_, belongs to
his later days. This delightful work pronounces with unfaltering
dogmatism judgments founded on canons of criticism which were accepted
in the then expiring age of Augustan literature. His _Life_ by his
satellite Boswell holds the first place among biographies as a triumph
of portraiture. The new interest in antiquity was fostered by the rise
of English historical writing. In the earliest years of the reign Hume
completed his _History of England_, which, though no longer regarded as
of scientific importance, is a fine example of literary treatment as
applied to history. A little later came Robertson's works, more
scholarly in their design, and written in a philosophic spirit and in
highly polished language. The work of one historian of the time is great
alike as a monument of learning and of literary faculty. The first
instalment of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ appeared
in 1766, the last in 1788. The grandeur of its conception, the orderly
method of its construction, the learning it displays, and the unflagging
pomp with which the historian presents his narrative, invest this book
with a pre-eminence in English historical literature which remains
beyond dispute. Other famous books of the time are Paley's theological
works, Sir William Blackstone's _Commentaries on the Laws of England_,
and Adam Smith's _Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ (1776).
Smith, while laying the foundations of political economy as a distinct
science, treated theories in relation to actual facts; his book was at
once accepted as a guide by statesmen, and largely inspired Pitt's
economic policy. As a political writer Burke carried rhetoric to the
sublimest heights in his _Reflections on the French Revolution_ and some
later works. Lord Chesterfield's _Letters_, many of them belonging to
the early years of the reign, are admirable for their wit and elegance,
but lack the special quality of the inimitable _Letters_ of Horace
Walpole, written on a countless number of topics, and treating them in a
manner which, though somewhat affected, is easy and singularly
appropriate to the writer's cast of mind. Of the Junius _Letters_
e