FASHIONABLE NOVEL WHITING. 175 



It is to be inferred the novel in question being a favourite that 

 if you please, you may make your hero quite perfect, but the gene- 

 rality of readers will like him the better perhaps, for approaching 

 more nearly to the level of their own nature. He may transgress his 

 own perfect notions of propriety, in a spirit of civil obedience to the 

 prejudices of his less moral fellow-creatures. For instance, in a 

 fashionable work now before us, the hero, although perfectly moral 

 in theory, accepts a challenge, because, had he refused it, not a young 

 lady in the kingdom would have read a line further. He then writes 

 a long letter to his father, in which he expresses very filial acknow- 

 ledgments for the advantages he has derived from a moral and reli- 

 gious education, expresses his horror of the crime of duelling, and 

 finishes with an explanation of the unnecessary necessity by which he 

 is bound to " go out" in direct opposition to his principles ! 



Whatever your hero may be in point of morality, he must be per- 

 sonally perfect. In this particular, no medium can be tolerated. 

 Ladies, who form the majority of novel readers, set too high a value 

 upon time, to lose it in reading the adventures of a man who has red 

 hair, or who is marked by the small-pox. On the other hand, a very 

 handsome fellow may be made rather naughty, if he be reformed 

 towards the end of the third volume. You cannot ever be wrong in 

 giving him black hair and a pale face ; he must be tallish and saddish ; 

 his figure must be elegant, his eyes expressive, and his voice musical. 

 The same observations, with a slight alteration in particulars, will 

 apply to heroines. In their case, beauty must be inseparable from 

 virtue, if it be the author's intention to excite interest in favour of 

 the latter. You will find it of advantage to give your heroine a 

 younger sister, or a cousin, always observing that they must be as 

 unlike each other, bodily and mentally, as two persons of the same 

 family usually are ! It is very judicious and successful to represent 

 them at a hair-curling tete-a-tete, and to expatiate upon their bare 

 feet and glancing ancles. 



In descriptions of persons and things you must always be elabo- 

 rate, but not luminous. Ladies excel in this branch of composition. 

 Scenery, manners, dress, and predicaments are all delineated by 

 them with befitting accuracy. From the furniture of a room, to the 

 emotions of a heroine, they are circumstantially exact, and inform 

 you how the curtains are hung, and the chairs covered, how the hair 

 is dressed, the mouth quivers, the tears scald, the throat becomes 

 choaked, and the heart throbs, in despite of tight whalebone, with 

 painful expressiveness. The followers of Sappho are not yet extinct ; 

 for, even in this artificial age and prudish country, there are ladies 

 whose imaginations are warm and whose pens are glowingly expres- 

 sive. As they must be presumed to know best what pleases their 

 own sex, you cannot be wrong in gallantly following as far as they 

 lead. 



Whether you understand French or not, you must never lose an 

 opportunity of using French phrases in the management of your 

 dialogues. Make your ladies and gentlemen talk five times as well, 

 and your vulgar characters five times as ill, as they do in their 

 respective spheres of real life. Your style must be varied by a 



