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and judicious critic, * who considers tlvose romances as com- 

 positions of the " truly moral and heroic kind ;" had this been 

 the case, they would not surely have excited the complaints, 

 invectives, and sermons of the most excellent and zealous 

 men in Europe. Beside, if we consider the grossness of 

 the manners of those times, it is highly improbable that 

 such writings would have been so eagerly caught up, and so 

 universally admired, had they not been accommodated to the 

 depraved taste of the readers, -f- 



I might have thought it necessary, perhaps, to give further 

 proofs of the dangerous consequences resulting from tire old 

 romances, and of the power which they possessed over the 

 minds of persons of all descriptions, had not the great Cer- 

 vantes, in his admirable Don Quixotte, exhausted every thing 

 that could, or need, be said upon the subject ; and demon- 

 strated, by the success of his work, that no other mode of 

 attack, than that which he adopted, would have been at- 

 tended with equal success. It is remarkable that Cervantes 

 had been anticipated by Chaucer, in his attempt to ridicule 

 these productions, and also, in his manner of doing so. I 

 shall be excused for quoting a passage from the Letters of 

 Bishop Hurd, in which he makes us acquainted with the 

 motives that induced our venerable poet to compose a Tale 

 (the Rhyme of Sir Thopas,) at a period, when the manners 

 of romance were almost realised. " We are to observe," 

 says his lordship, " that this is Chaucer's own Tale, and that 



• Dr. Blair. t Don, G. Mayan's Life of Cervantes. 



