Thefe pages have been extended too far to allow much room for the writer to apologize for prefuming to give fentiments in oppofition to the wifdom which regulated the establishments he confiders. The experience of every day furnishes improvements to what has been before believed as perfect as its nature would allow. He trufts, that his fuggeftions will be believed to flow from a warm with for the welfare of mankind in general, and the refpectability of the profeffion more particularly. With this declaration he difmiffes his piece.

ON

SCARCELY

HORACE.

any clafs of books is more numerous than fictitious hiftories or novels; nor is there any one fo little deferv. ing the attention of a cultivated or a thinking mind. The caufes of this may be worth while developing to do which, to gether with an attempt at delivering a few precepts by which this fpecies of compofition may be fomewhat better executed, is my purpose in the following pages.

The intention of every publication fhould be to inftruct; and that work is the moft perfect which accomplishes this end

best

Of

best, by the most agreeable means. this truth the ancients were well apprifed; and they early endeavoured, by fables, apologues, and dramatic pieces, which afterward became the foundation of the national fuperftition, to inculcate what appeared to them the dictates of morality and religion.

To the present times this fpecies of writing has been handed down; but in aim and execution varying, according to the age that produced it: either delineating, with prifmatic pencil, the fantastic features: of chivalry, or the fuperftitious glooms of monkish devotion. In either variety, however, if the mind was not improved, it was at least interested. It remained for more modern times, and for Great-Britain in particular, to produce volumes, which, under the names of novels, memoirs, tales, are abfolute vacuums, devoid of fentiment, imagination, diction; or, if they have fome little claim on the attention, owe it but to the difgraceful power of feducing a young.

E 5

young and inexperienced mind. This ef fect is attempted by flattering pictures of youthful imprudence, or illegitimate love.

Were thefe productions always content with being empty or infipid, the danger might be the lefs. But their fabricators have found that, in order to the fale of their lucubrations, it was often neceffary to appeal to the paffions of that age for which they write. Hence we find, thickly interfperfed through many of thefe dangerous volumes, high-wrought fcenes of imprudent amour; with fufficient of the romantic to captivate a young mind; fufficient, and but fufficient verifimilitude to impofe upon the judgment; and warmth more than enough to kindle, in the fympathizing breaft, paffions which eagerly feize upon the firft convenient object for their gratification. I write not from hypothefis. How frequently may we trace an imprudent ftep in youth to the impreffion made by fome of thefe fcenes on a fafcinated imagination? How often has

a contempt

a contempt of parental authority, an indulgence of perhaps licentious paffion, been fanctioned by the pert vivacity of an intriguing heroine, or the fophiftry of an accomplished libertine! Though polished ad unguem, and too infidiously captivating, as most of its author's productions are, I believe The New Eloife has done more in arming our youth for feduction, and predifpofing the best, because the most delicate-minded, females to fall beneath their arts, than all the licentious fuggeftions of conftitution could ever accomplish.

Even when a bad moral tendency is guarded against in thefe writings, as fometimes is affected to be done, they are generally found to contain falfe and partial views of human life; improbable, almoft impoffible fituations; unnatural monsters. of good or evil, who either, by their perfection, defy imitation, or, by their enormity, flatter the checkered vices of humanity. Thus the young reader, inflead of beforehand viewing the world as he is