388 Romances and Novels, [Chap. XIX. 



to defend some of the peculiar doctrines of Chris- 

 tianity; while, on the other hand, these doctrines 

 have been covertly attacked, in the Life and Opi- 

 iiions of John Bunckk-^^jun. in the Alemoirs of se- 

 veral Learned Ladies, in The Spii^itual Quixote, in 

 Dialogues of the Philosophei^s of Uluhrce, and in se- 

 veral other works of fiction. That system of opi- 

 nions usually styled the Neiv Philosophy f has been 

 exhibited with great zeal, with a view to its defence, 

 hi the fictitious writings of Diderot, and many 

 other French novelists ; and in those of Holcroft, 

 Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Hays, 

 of Great Britain. The same delusive and mis- 

 chievous system has been successfully attacked 

 and exposed in The Highlander, by Dr. Bissett ; 

 in the Modern Philosophers, by Miss Hamilton ; in 

 Vaurien, or Sketches of the Ti??ies, by ]\lr. Disraeli; 

 in the Memoirs of St. Godwin, in The Vagahondy 

 in Plain Sense^ and in various anonymous publica- 

 tions of the novel kind. 



A number of other novelists, both in Great- 

 Britain and on the continent of Europe, deserve 

 to be mentioned, in recounting the conspicuous 

 writers of this class, which belong to the eigh- 

 teenth century. In Great Britain female novelists 

 have been numerous and respectable. Among 



"* The Life and Opinions of John Bunckle, esq., and Memoirs of 

 several Learned Ladies, were written by Mr. Thomas Amory, an 

 excentric genius of Great Britain, who was born in 1692, and 

 died in 1789. He was a zealous Socinian. 



f B7 the iV(fzy Philosophii is meant, that system of doctrines 

 concerning the constitution of man, and concerning morals and 

 religion, taught by the author of the Sj/sfanc de la Nature, by 

 H^'.vetitis, and Condorcet, and afterwards by several other cele- 

 brat.d writers, both of France and Great Britain, 



