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wrong, and apologise for what gives them no shame! Thus the Curate commenced the defence of novelreading:

CURATE.-What is the meaning of the absurd cry against works of fiction? If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," is it not wise to foresee, as it were, life under all its possible contingencies? Are we not armed for coming events by knowing something of their nature beforehand? Who learns only from the world amid which he walks, learns from a master that conceals too much; and the greater portion of the lesson, after all, must come out of the learner's own mind, and it is a weary while before he has learnt by experience the requisite shrewdness. Life is too short to learn by a process so slow, that the pupil begins to decay before he has learnt one truth. The preparatory education is not amiss. The early tears that tales of fiction bid to flow scald not like the bitter ones of real sorrow; and they, as it were by a charm of inoculation, prepare the cheek for the after tears, that they burn not and furrow too deeply. I cannot conceive how people came to take it into their heads that plays and novels are wicked things necessarily. Your Lady Prudence will take infinite pains that her young people shall not contaminate even their fingers with the half-binding-and perhaps fail too -and for honest simplicity induce a practice of duplicity, for fiction will be read. It is the proper food to natural curiosity-an instinct given us to learn; and I dare to say that letters were invented by Cadmus purposely for that literature.

AQUILIUS. Say nothing of Cadmus, or the serpent's teeth will be thrown against your argument. Their sowing was not unlike the setting up a press; and your literary men are as fierce combatants as ever sprang from the dragon's teeth, and have as strong a propensity to slaughter each other.

CURATE.-Yes, and even in works of fiction we have had the conflict of authors. They write now as much against each other as formerly. Fielding proposed to himself to write down Richardson; and religious novelists of our days take the field against real or imaginary opponents.

Richardson, able as he was, very cunningly set about his work-his Clarissa. By an assumed gravity, and well-managed affectation of morality, he contrived to render popular among prudes a most indecent work. The book was actually put into the hands of young people as an antidote to novels in general. This appeared to Fielding abominable hypocrisy, corrupting under disguise. And to this honest indignation are we indebted to him for his Joseph Andrews, the antidote to the very questionable morality, and unquestionable moral, of the virtue-rewarded Pamela.

AQUILIUS.-I was told the other day by a lady, that there are few kitchens in which Pamela is not to be found. She detected her own maid reading it, and was obliged to part with her, for setting her cap at her son, a youth just entered at College. The girl defended her conduct as a laudable and virtuous ambition, which the good author encouraged,—was not the title Virtue Rewarded? So much for Pamela. You will not, however, surely defend the novel-writing system of nearly half a century ago-the sickly sentimentalities of the All for Love school-that restless progeny not allowed to rest on circulating library shelves till their rest was final-whose tendency was to make young persons of either sex nothing but fools.

CURATE.-And whose authors had the fool's mark set upon them, not unhappily, by Jenner, in his Town Eclogues :

"Thrice-happy authors, who with little skill In two short weeks can two short volumes fill! Who take some miss, of Christian name inviting, And plunge her deep in love and letter-writing,

Perplex her well with jealous parents' cares,
Expose her virtue to a lover's snares,

Give her false friends and perjured swains by dozens,
With all the episodes of aunts and cousins;
Make parents thwart her, and her lover scorn her,
And some mishap spring up at every corner;
Make her lament her fate with ahs and ohs,
And tell some dear Miss Willis all her woes,
Whilst now with love and now with grief she rages;

Till, having brought her through two hundred pages,
Finding at length her father's heart obdurate,
Will make her take the squire, and leave the curate;

She scales the garden-wall, or fords a river,

Elopes, gets married, and her friends forgive her."

AQUILIUS.-And was it not whimsical enough that, in the presumption of their vanity, upstarted the Puritan

school, who had ever declaimed against novels and dramas, to counteract the mischievous tendency of these silly love-tales, and wrote themselves much sillier, and quite as mischievous? CURATE.-Are you then audacious enough to pass censure upon Calebs, and suchlike?

AQUILIUS." Great is Diana of Ephesus!" I abominate every thing Hannah More wrote-vain, clever, idolised, spoiled woman as she was--her style all riddle-ma-ree. Read her lauded What is Prayer? and you are reading a conundrum. An affected woman, she wrote affectedly, with a kind of unwomanly dishonesty. There was good natural stuff in her too, but it was sadly spoilt in the making up.

CURATE. You will shock the good, or rather the goody folk, who will insist upon the religious and moral purpose of all her works.

AQUILIUS. They may insist, for they are an obstinate race. What moral, or what religion, is inculcated in this "A brute of a husband"selfish, a tyrant, a gourmandiser-illtreats an amiable wife. He scorns patient virtue, and is an infidel. He must be converted-that is the religious object. He must be metamorphosed, not after Ovid's fashion-there is the moral object. How is it done, do you remember? If not,

you will never guess. By what latent virtue is he to be reclaimed? Virtue, indeed! would the indignant Puritan proclaim-what virtue is in poor human rags? He shall be reclaimed through his vice! Indeed, Madam Puritan, that is a novelty. So, however, it is. The man is a glutton. On his conversion-day he is gifted with an extraordinary appetite and discriminating taste. It is a pie yes, a pie, that converts him to piety. CURATE.-Oh, oh, oh! you are mocking surely. A pie!

AQUILIUS.-Yes, a pie. It is remarkably good-quite delicious. It puts the brute in good humour with himself and every body, and he grunts applause, and promises his favour to the cook. At this stage-this incipient stage of his conversion-a pathetic butler bursts into tears, and affectionately sobs out the beautiful truth. The cook for the occasion was his mistress-the ill-treated wife. He

becomes a perfect Christian on the instant; and with the conversion comes the moral metamorphosis, and the "brute of a husband" is, on a sudden, the best and most religious of men. Now, in what respect, Mr Curate, would you bid any of your flock to go and do likewise? Setting aside as worthless, then, to say the best of it, the moral, the set-up primness of the whole affair is so odious, that you long even for a little wickedness to set nature upon nature's legs, that we may at least acknowledge the presence of humanity.

You

CURATE. We must ask Lydia to defend the writers of her sex. are severe upon poor Hannah, who would have been good enough in spite of her extreme vanity, if the clique had let her alone. Her Calebs was to be the novel par excellence, the model tale, and with no little con

tempt for all others.

The

AQUILIUS.-Your Lydia has too much good sense, and too much plain honesty, to defend any thing wrong because it is found in woman. utmost you can expect from her is not to object to the saintly Hannah, as was the charity of the Wolverhampton audience, when her play was acted there. Master Betty was hissed, and this impromptu was uttered, during a lull, from the gallery—

"The age of childhood now is o'er, Of folly and of whimWe dont object to Hannah More, But we'll ha-na-more of him." CURATE.-Yet she is supposed to have done some good by her minor tales for the poor. Possibly she did the object was at all events good.

AQUILIUS. And here she was the precursor to a worse set, so bad that it can hardly be said of them that they are "daturos progeniem vitiosiorem."

CURATE.—Yes, even wickedly religious. The scheme was, that the poor should teach the rich, and the infant the man. I remember reading some of these tales of Mrs Sherwood's. Is there not one where a little urchin, not long after he is able to run alone, is sent out on an errand,-an unconverted child,-commits the very natural sin of idleness, loiters by the way, and lies under a tree. There, you will suppose, sleep comes upon him-no,

but grace. He rises a converted manchild, an infant apostle, goes home and converts his wicked grandfather, or great-grandfather. "Ex uno disce omnes. Great was the outcry against Maria Edgeworth's children's tales, because they did not inculcate religious dogmas. This was a great compliment to her genius, for it showed that every sect would have wished her theirs. She wisely left the catechism to fathers, mothers, and nurses, and preferred leaving to the parson of each parish the prerogative of sermonising.

AQUILIUS.-Some of you take your prerogative as a sanitary prescription, and sweeten your own tempers by throwing off their acerbities, ad libitum, one day in the week; abusing in very unmeasured terms all mankind, and their own congregation in particular-indeed, often in language that, used on week days, and by any other people, would be looked upon as nearly akin to what is called cursing and swearing." So do extremes sometimes meet. A little thunder clears the air wonderfully; the lightning may not always be evident.

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CURATE. All writers, especially novelists and reviewers, assume this privilege of bitterness, without the restriction to one day out of seven; hence, to say nothing of the better motives in the other case, they are more practised in acerbity than amiability. Your medicine becomes the habit, not the cure. We must have civil tongues the greater part of our lives. Your literary satirist uses the drunkard's remonstrance

"Which is the properest day to drink-
Saturday, Sunday, Monday?
Each is the properest day, I think;

Why should you name but one day ?" AQUILIUS.-But to return to our subject. Novels are not objected to as they were; now that every sect in politics and religion have found their efficacy as a means, the form is adopted by all. And with a more vigorous health do each embody their principle. The sickly sentimentality school is sponged out or nearly so. The novel now really represents the mind of a country in all its phases, and, if not the only, is nearly the best of its litera

ture. It assumes to teach as well as to amuse. I could wish that, in their course down the stream of time, it had not taken the drama by the neck, and held it under water to the drowning.

CURATE.-You are wrong. The novel has not drowned the drama. It is the goody, the Puritan school, has done the work, and will, not drown, but suffocate, the noble art that gave us Shakspeare, by stopping up all avenues and entrance to the theatres-having first filled the inside with brimstone, or at least cautioned the world that the smell of brimstone will never quit those who enter. In discussing the subject, however, I would class the play and the novel together, under "works of fiction." Why, by the way, did the self-styled religious world that set up a crusade against novelists and "fictionmongers"-show such peculiar favour to John Bunyan, and his Pilgrim's Progress-the most daring fiction? I believe that very imaginative, nay, very powerful work, has gone through more editions than any other in our language: a proof at least that there is something innate in us all,-a natural power of curiosity to see and hear more than actual life presents to usthat sends all, from infancy to age, in every stage of life, either openly or secretly, to the reading tales of fiction. We all like to see Nature herself with a difference; and, loving "to hold the mirror up to nature," we prefer that the glass should be coloured, or at least a shade deeper, and love the image more than the thing.

AQUILIUS.-Yes; and we indulge in a double and seeming contrary propensity-excitement and repose. We are safe in the storm-look out "from our loopholes of retreat," as Cowper calls them, on the busy world-and in our search after that equally evasive philosopher's stone, the "yvwo σeavTov," like to squint at our deformities in private, and, by seeing them in other folks, we learn our faults by deputy.

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CURATE. And what a wonderful and wisely-given instinct is there in us all, that we may learn to the utmost in one short life-an instinct by which we recognise as nature, as belonging strictly to ourselves, what we have never seen or experienced, and

have only portrayed to us in works of fiction. All people speak of the extensive range of Shakspeare's genius -that he appears to have been conversant with every mode of life, with the sentiments and language appropriate to each-that he is at once king, courtier, citizen, and clown; yet what do those who so admire him for this universality know themselves, but through him, of all these phases of life? We recognise them by an instinct, that enters readily into the possibilities of all nature which is akin to us; and if this be so, the busiest man who is no reader, may, in his walk through life, see much more of mankind than the reader, but know far less. Who teaches to read puts but the key of knowledge into the scholar's hand. It was well said by Aristophanes, "Masters for children, poets for men."

AQUILIUS.-True; and if all literary fiction could be withdrawn and forgotten, and its renovation prohibited, the greater part of us would be dolts, and, what is worse, unfeeling, ungenerous, and under the debasing dominion of the selfishness of simple reason. It has always appeared to me that those who cautiously keep novels from young people mistake the nature of mind, thinking it only intel. lect, and would cultivate the understanding alone. Imagination they Imagination they look upon as an ignis fatuus, to be extinguished if possible-an ignis fatuus arising out of a quagmire, and leading astray into one. There is nothing good comes from the intellect alone. The inventive faculty is compound, in which imagination does the most work; the intellectual portion selects and decides, but collects not the materials. All true sentiment, all noble, all tender feeling, comes not of the understanding, but of that mind—or heart, if we so please to call it-which imagination raises, educates, and perfects. Even feelings are to be madeare much the result of education. The wildest romances will, in this respect, teach nothing wrong. If they create a world somewhat unlike the daily visible, they create another, which is a reality to the possessor, to the romantic, from which he can extract much that is practical, though it may seem not so; for from hence

may spring noble impulses, generosity and fortitude. It is not true that such reading enervates the mind: I firmly believe it strengthens it in every respect, and fits it for every action, by unchaining it from a lower and cowardly caution. Who ever read a romance that inculcated listless, shapeless idleness? It encourages action and endurance. We have not high natures till we learn to suffer. I have noted much the different effects troubles have upon different persons, and have seen the unromantic drop like sheep under the rot of their calamities, while the romantic have been buoyant, and mastered them. They have more resources in themselves, and are not bowed down to one thought nor limited to one feeling: in fact, they are higher beings.

CURATE.-The caution professes mainly to protect women; yet, among all the young women whom I have been acquainted with, I should say that the novel-readers are not only the best informed, but of the best nature, and some capable of setting examples of a sublime fortitude-the more sublime because shown in a secret and all-enduring patience. Who are they that will sit by the bedside of the sick day and night, suffer privation, poverty, even undeserved disgrace, and shrink not from the selfimposed duty, but those very young women in whom the understanding and imagination have been equally cultivated, so as to render the feelings acute and impulsive?-and these are novel-readers. Love, it is said, is the only subject all novels are constructed upon; and such reading encourages extravagant thoughts, and gives rise to dangerous feelings. And why dangerous? And why should not such thoughts and feelings be encouraged? Are they bad? Are they not such as are requisite for wife and mother to hold, and best for the destiny of woman-best in every viewbest if her lot be a happy one, and far best if her lot be an ill one? For the great mark of such an education is endurance-a power to create a high duty, and energy and patience where both are wanted. Women never sink under any calamity but blighted affection; and we love them not less, we admire them not less, that they do

sink then, for their heroism is in the patience that brings and that awaits death.

AQUILIUS.-I have heard Eusebius say that he has made it a point, wherever he goes, to recommend earnestly to all young mothers to select no nurse for their children but such as have a good stock of nursery tales. He has often purposed to write an essay on the subject of the requisite education for nurses, asserting that there ought to be colleges for training to that one purpose alone; for, as the nurse gives the first education, the first impression, she gives the most important. The child that is not sung to, and whose ear has not been attentive to nursery tales, he would say, would be brought up to turn his father and mother out of doors, and deserve, if he did not come, to be hanged; and if such unfortunate child be a daughter, she would live to be a slut, a slattern, a fool, and a disgrace. He had no doubt, he said, believing that all Shakspeare's creations were realities, that Regan and Goneril were ill nursed, and no readers; and that Cordelia was in infancy well sung to, and being the youngest, was set to read romances to her old and wayward father,

"Methinks that lady is my child Cordelia!" How full are these few words of the old father's feeling, and reminiscent of the nursery, of songs, of tales, wherein he had seen the growth of his "child Cordelia !" Eusebius would be eloquent upon this subject: I cannot tell you half of what he thought and vigorously expressed. He used to delight in getting children together and telling them stories, and invariably began with "once upon a time," which, he used to say, had, if any words could have, a magical charm.

CURATE.- Bad, indeed, was the change when story reading and telling ceased to be a part of education: and what was put in its place?-stuff that no child could understand or care about. The good old method once abandoned, there was no end to the absurdities that followed; and they who wrote them knew nothing about children, or what would amuse, and, by interesting, improve them. The false system of cramming them with

knowledge, which it was impossible for them to digest, really stopped their intellectual growth, and checked the natural spring of their feelings. Wisdom-mongering went on upon the "rational plan," till the wise-heads, full-grown infant pumpkins, fatuated, empty of anything solid or digestible; and so they grew, and grew from night to morn, and morn to night, stolid boobies, lulled into a melancholy sleep by the monotonous hum of "Hymns in Prose."

AQUILIUS.-" Hymns in Prose!" Is not that one of Mrs Barbauld's books for children, I have often heard mothers say, "that is so very good?" CURATE.-Oh yes! Here it is in Lydia's library.

AQUILIUS.-Open it-any where. CURATE.-Well, now, I do not think the information given to the child here is quite correct in its order, for I think the parent of the mother must be the child's grandmother. mother loveth her little child; she bringeth it up on her knees; she nourisheth its body with food."

"The

AQUILIUS.-A very unnatural parent if she did not. It is very new information for a child. Well, go on.

CURATE." She feedeth its mind with knowledge. If it is sick, she nurseth it with tender love; she watcheth over it when asleep; she forgetteth it not for a moment."

AQUILIUS.-A most exemplary and extraordinary mother—not a moment! Go on.

CURATE." She teacheth it how to be good; she rejoiceth daily in its growth." I do not see the connexion between the "teaching to be good and the growth. "But who is the parent of the mother? Who nourisheth her with good things, and watcheth over her with tender love, and remembereth her every moment? Whose arms are about her to guard her from harm?"

AQUILIUS.-Stay a moment-whose arms? Why, the husband's to be sure; which the child may have seen, and need not have been told as a lesson.

CURATE." And if she is sick, who shall heal her?" Now, you would say, the apothecary, and so would the child naturally answer; but that would not be according to the "ra

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