d pathos, and without Walter Shandy,
Dr. Slop, the Widow Wadman, Yorick, Uncle Toby, and Corporal Trim,
English literature would certainly be very much the poorer.

Hugh Kelly (1739-1777), born in Dublin, was the son of a publican and
himself became a staymaker, a trade from which he developed through
the successive stages of attorney's clerk, newspaper-writer,
theatrical critic, and essayist, into a novelist and playwright. His
novel, _Memoirs of a Magdalen_ (1767), was translated into French.
His first comedy, a sentimental one entitled _False Delicacy_ (1768),
achieved a remarkable success on the stage and was even a greater
success in book form, 10,000 copies being sold in a year, so that its
author was raised from poverty to comparative affluence. In addition,
it gave him a European reputation, for it was translated into German,
French, and Portuguese. Strange to say, his later comedies, _A Word
to the Wise, A School for Wives_, and _The Man of Reason_, were
practically failures, and the same is true of his tragedy,
_Clementina_. Kelly ultimately withdrew from stage work, and for the
last three years of his life practised as a barrister without,
however, achieving much distinction in his new profession.

Charles Coffey (d. 1745), an Irishman, was the author of several
farces, operas, ballad operas, ballad farces, and farcical operas,
the best known of which was _The Devil to Pay, or the Wives
Metamorphosed_ (1731).

Henry Brooke (1703?-1783), a county Cavan man and the son of a
clergyman, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards
studied law in London. Becoming guardian to his cousin, a girl of
twelve, he put her to school for two years and then secretly married
her. Of his large family of twenty-two children, three of whom were
born before their mother was eighteen years old, but one survived
him. Appointed by Lord Chesterfield barrack-master at Mullingar,
Brooke afterwards settled in Co. Kildare. It was there that he wrote
his celebrated work, _The Fool of Quality, or the History of the Earl
of Moreland_ (5 vols., 1766-1770), which won the commendations of men
so widely different as John Wesley and Charles Kingsley. It is,
indeed, a remarkable book, combining, as it does, many of the
characteristics of Sterne, Mackenzie, Borrow, and George Meredith. It
is not very well known nowadays, but it will always bear, and will
well repay, perusal. Brooke also wrote a poem on _Universal Beauty_
(1735) and