m 



but, as tUeir object was more to instruct than to please, or 

 rather to make tlie latter entirely subservient to the fornier, 

 their works are not read, or at most are only read by people 

 of taste and information. Such is the fate of Johnson'? llas- 

 selas, and of Guadentio di Lucca, a work ascribed to one of 

 the most illustrious philosophers ; * nor will this appear sur- 

 prising, when w? consider that the readers of novels are 

 usually the most illiterate part of the community. It is not 

 to he denied that such a form of writing might be made tlie 

 vehicle of wholesome moral instruction, which to a certain 

 jclass.of readers would not perhaps be unpalatable: but to 

 suppose that any extensive benefit would follow from such a 

 plan is to attribute to the generality of readers, a talent 

 for selection and discrimination, that exclusively belongs to 

 cultivated intellect. 



It is not enough, that a novel abounds in moral sentiments ; 

 the whole story should be so constituted, as to convey an 

 important lesson: but if every page have introduced uMnto 

 the company of vicious characters ; if we have been in- 

 duced, in our progress through the book, to smile at vice, 

 or to sympathise vyith the feelings of the libertine— can the 

 useful moral thrown into the last pfige, or into t\\e last line be 

 able to obliterate the bad impressions of all that went be- 

 fore ? unquestionably not. — In order, therefore, to make 

 novels useful, care should be taken to mark vice and folly 

 with abhorrence and contenipt, and to paint with all the 

 clearness of which language is susceptible, the disgrace and 



* Bishop Berkeley. 



