Chap. XIX.] Romances and Novels. 389 



these Mrs. Brooke, Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Sheri- 

 dan, Mrs. Yearsley, Miss Seward, Miss West, and 

 Miss Williams liave attracted most attention, and 

 been the objects of most applause. In France, 

 out of a long list which might be enumerated, the 

 fictitious writings of M. de St. Pierre, Madame 

 Genlis, and M. Florian, are worthy of particu- 

 lar distinction, especially on account of their pure 

 moral tendency. In Germany the writers of ro- 

 mances and novels, during the age under review, 

 were extremely numerous. Of these Wieland is 

 entitled to the first place. The appearance of his 

 Agathon is represented as a grand epoch in the 

 history of fictitious writing in that countij *. Next 

 to Wieland, Goethe is respectably known as a 

 novelist, not only in his own country, but also 

 throughout Europe. The name of F. J. Hermes 

 also deserves to be distinguished among the 

 living novel writers of Germany, as do those of 

 Nicholai, Richter, and several others. In a 

 word, in every cultivated part of the European 

 world novel writers have incredibly abounded in 

 modern times ; but the author has so little know- 

 ledge even of the names of the principal works of 

 this kind, and so much less of their respective me- 

 rits and demerits, that he cannot undertake to 

 speak of them in detail. 



America has given birth to few productions in 

 the department of romance or novel. Indeed, no 



♦ Lessing, a German critic, of great learning 'and acuteness, 

 pronounced The Histori/ of Agathon to be one of the finest efforts 

 of genius in the eighteenth century; nay, he called it thejirst and 

 onli/ novel of tlte Gerraanf^ written for ihijilcing men of classical 

 taste. 



