d student of literature. The value of the
latter has been admitted by all competent authorities, and it is
enhanced by the fact that Moore was a strong Whig, and was even accused
by some zealots of favouring Jacobinism. His picture, therefore, of the
way in which political revolution glides into ethical anarchy is
certainly unbiassed the other way. Of _Zeluco_ everybody, without
perhaps a very clear knowledge of its authorship, knows one passage--the
extremely humorous letter containing the John Bull contempt of the
sailor Dawson for the foolish nation which clothes its troops in "white,
which is absurd, and blue, which is only fit for the artillery and the
blue horse." But few know much more, though there is close by a much
more elaborate and equally good piece of Smollettian fun in the quarrel
of Buchanan and Targe, the Scotch Whig and Jacobite, over the reputation
of Queen Mary. The book, however, besides the unlucky drawback that
almost all its interest lies in the latter part, has for hero a sort of
lifeless monster of wickedness, who is quite as uninteresting as a
faultless one, and shows little veracity of character except in the
minor personages and episodes. In these, and indeed throughout Moore's
work, there is a curious mixture of convention with extreme shrewdness,
of somewhat commonplace expression with a remarkably pregnant and
humorous conception. But he lacks concentration and finish, and is
therefore never likely to be much read again as a whole.

There may appear to be some slight inconsistency in giving a paragraph,
if only a short one, to Arthur Young where distinct mention has been
refused to Price and Priestley. But Olivier de Serres has secured a
place in all histories of French literature as a representative of
agricultural writing, and Young is our English Serres. Moreover, his
_Survey of France_ has permanent attraction for its picture of the state
of that country just before, and in the earliest days of, the
Revolution. And though his writing is extremely incorrect and unequal,
though its literary effect is much injured by the insertion of
statistical details which sometimes turn it for pages together into a
mere set of tables, he has constant racy phrases, some of which have
passed into the most honourable state of all--that of unidentified
quotation--while more deserve it. He was born in 1741, the son of a
Suffolk clergyman, was connected by marriage with the Burneys, and very
early develope