Chap. XIX.] Romances and Novels. S97 



of their excellencies ; but such have been, in all 

 ages, the great corrupters of the world ; and their 

 resemblance ought no more to be prcberved tiuui 

 the art of murdering without pain *."' 



Estimating novels, then, not as they }night be 

 made, but as they are in fact, it may be asserted, 

 that there is no species of reading which, promis- 

 cuously pursued, has a more direct tendency to 

 discourage the acquisition of solid learning, to fill 

 the mind with vain, unnatural, and delusive ideas, 

 and to deprave the moral taste •(•. It would, pci - 

 haps, be difficult to assign any single cause wi)ich 

 has contributed so much to produce that lightness 

 and frivolity which so remarkably characterize the 

 literary taste of the eighteenth century, as tiic un- 



* On this principle it is plain that such a cbarccter ^s Toiu Jonrg 

 ought never to have been exhibited by a friend to virtue. And 

 though the characters drawn by Richardson are by no means ^o 

 liable to censure on this ground as several of those by Fiehiiiig, 

 yet it may be doubted whether the Ijoiclace of tlie former, taken 

 in all its parts, be a character calculated to make a vinuous im- 

 pression, especially on the youthful mind. 



f The celebrated Dr. Goldsmith, in writing to his brother, re- 

 specting the education of a son, expresses hinibeif in the following 

 strong terms, which are the more remarkable, as he had himself 

 written a novel : — '^ Above all things, never let your son touch a 

 romance or novel J these paint beauty in colours more charnvng 

 than nature j and describe happiness that man never tastes How- 

 delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss • 

 They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness 

 which never existed; to despise the little good which fortune has 

 mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she • ver gave; and, m 

 general, take the word of a man who has seen the world, and has 

 studied human nature more by experience than precept; take my 

 word for it I say, that such books teach us very little of the world." 

 Jjife o/" Goldsmith, pnjijfed to his Miti-dldneoua ll'orks. 



