liant and
interesting period of English literary history. It is interesting not
only on account of its splendour, but because it is so well known. We
are familiar with the faces of its great men by portraits, and with the
events of their lives by innumerable biographies. Every reader is
acquainted with Pope's restless jealousy, Goldsmith's pitted countenance
and plum-coloured coat, Johnson's surly manners and countless
eccentricities, and with the tribe of poets who lived for months ignorant
of clean linen, who were hunted by bailiffs, who smelt of stale punch,
and who wrote descriptions of the feasts of the gods in twopenny
cook-shops. Manners and modes of thought had greatly changed since the
century before. Macbeth, in silk stockings and scarlet coat, slew King
Duncan, and the pit admired the wild force occasionally exhibited by the
barbarian Shakspeare. In those days the Muse wore patches, and sat in a
sumptuous boudoir, and her worshippers surrounded her in high-heeled
shoes, ruffles, and powdered wigs. When the poets wished to paint
nature, they described Chloe sitting on a green bank watching her sheep,
or sighing when Strephon confessed his flame. And yet, with all this
apparent shallowness, the age was earnest enough in its way. It was a
good hater. It was filled with relentless literary feuds. Just recall
the lawless state of things on the Scottish Border in the olden
time,--the cattle-lifting, the house-burning, the midnight murders, the
powerful marauders, who, safe in numerous retainers and moated keep, bade
defiance to law; recall this state of things, and imagine the quarrels
and raids literary, the weapons satire and wit, and you have a good idea
of the darker aspect of the time. There were literary reavers, who laid
desolate at a foray a whole generation of wits. There were literary
duels, fought out in grim hate to the very death. It was dangerous to
interfere in the literary _melee_. Every now and then a fine gentleman
was run through with a jest, or a foolish Maecenas stabbed to the heart
with an epigram, and his foolishness settled for ever.

As a matter of course, on this special shelf of books will be found
Boswell's "Life of Johnson"--a work in our literature unique, priceless.
That altogether unvenerable yet profoundly venerating Scottish
gentleman,--that queerest mixture of qualities, of force and weakness,
blindness and insight, vanity and solid worth,--has written the finest
bo