Matutina parùm cautos jam frigora mordent :
Et quæ rimosâ benè deponuntur in aure.
'Tis (let me see) three years and more,
(October next it will be four)

Since Harley bade me first attend,
And chose me for an humble friend;
Wou'd take me in his coach to chat,

And question me of this and that:

As' What's o'clock?' and How's the wind?'
'Who's chariot's that we left behind?'

Or gravely try to read the lines

Writ underneath the country-signs;

Or, Have you nothing new to-day

From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay?'
Such tattle often entertains

My lord and me as far as Staines,

As once a week we travel down
To Windsor, and again to town,
Where all that passes inter nos

Might be proclaimed at Charing-cross.--SWIFT.

NUMBER XXVII.

A NOVEL, conducted upon one uniform plan, containing a series of events in familiar life, in which no episodical story is interwoven, is, in effect, a protracted comedy, not divided into acts. The same natural display of character, the same facetious turn of dialogue and agreeable involution of incidents are essential to each composition. Novels of this description are not of many years standing in England, and seem to have succeeded after some interval to romance, which, to say no worse of it, is a most unnatural and monstrous production. The Don Quixote of Cervantes is of a middle species; and the Gil Blas, which the Spaniards claim, and the French have the credit of, is a series of adventures rather

than a novel, and both this and Don Quixote abound in episodical stories, which separately taken are more properly novels than the mother work.

Two authors of our nation began the fashion of novel-writing, upon different plans indeed, but each with a degree of success, which perhaps has never yet been equalled: Richardson disposed his fable into letters, and Fielding pursued the more natural mode of a continued narration, with an exception however of certain miscellaneous chapters, one of which he prefixed to each book in the nature of a prologue, in which the author speaks in person: he has executed this so pleasantly, that we are reconciled to the interruption in this instance; but I should doubt if it is a practice in which an imitator would be wise to follow him.

I should have observed, that modern novelists have not confined themselves to comic fables, or such only as have happy endings, but sometimes, as in the instance of The Clarissa,' wind up their story with a tragical catastrophe; to subjects of this sort, perhaps, the epistolary mode of writing may be best adapted, at least it seems to give a more natural scope to pathetic descriptions; but there can be no doubt that fables replete with humorous situations, characteristic dialogue, and busy plot, are better suited to the mode which Fielding has pursued in his inimitable novel of The Foundling,' universally allowed the most perfect work of its sort in ours, or probably any other language.

6

There is a something so attractive to readers of all descriptions in these books, and they have been sought with such general avidity, that an incredible number of publications have been produced, and the scheme of circulating libraries lately established, which these very publications seem to have suggested, having spread them through the kingdom, novels are

now become the amusing study of every rank and description of people in England.

Young minds are so apt to be tinctured by what they read, that it should be the duty of every person who has the charge of education, to make a proper choice of books for those who are under their care: and this is particularly necessary in respect to our daughters, who are brought up in a more confined and domestic manner than boys. Girls will be tempted to form themselves upon any characters, whether true or fictitious, which forcibly strike their imaginations, and nothing can be more pointedly addressed to the passions than many of these novel heroines. I would not be understood to accuse our modern writers of immoral designs; very few I believe can be found of that description; I do not therefore object to them as corrupting the youthful mind by pictures of immorality, but I think some amongst them may be apt to lead young female readers into affectation and false character by stories where the manners, though highly charged, are not in nature and the more interesting such stories are, the greater will be their influence: in this light, a novel heroine, though described without a fault, yet if drawn out of nature, may be a very unfit model for imitation.

The novel, which of all others is formed upon the most studied plan of morality, is Clarissa, and few young women I believe are put under restriction by their parents or others from gratifying their curiosity with a perusal of this author: guided by the best intentions, and conscious that the moral of his book is fundamentally good, he has taken all possible pains to weave into his story incidents of such a tragical and affecting nature, as are calculated to make a strong and lasting impression on the youthful heart. The unmerited sufferings of an innocent and beau

tiful young lady, who is made a model of patience and purity; the unnatural obduracy of her parents; the infernal arts of the wretch who violates her, and the sad catastrophe of her death, are incidents in this affecting story better conceived than executed: failing in this most essential point, as a picture of human nature, I must regard the novel of Clarissa as one of the books, which a prudent parent will put under interdiction; for I think I can say from observation, that there are more artificial pedantic characters assumed by sentimental Misses, in the vain desire of being thought Clarissa Harlows, than from any other source of imitation whatsoever: I suspect that it has given food to the idle passion for those eternal scribblings, which pass between one female friend and another, and tend to no good point of education. I have a young lady in my eye, who made her will, wrote an inscription for the plate of her own coffin, and forswore all mankind at the age of sixteen. As to the characters of Lovelace, of the heroine herself, and the heroine's parents, I take them all to be be= ings of another world. What Clarissa is made to do, and what she is allowed to omit, are equally out of the regions of nature. Fathers and mothers who may oppose the inclinations of their daughters, are not likely to profit from the examples in this story, nor will those daughters be disposed to think the worse of their own rights, or the better of their parents, for the black and odious colours in which these unnatu

ral characters are painted. It will avail little to say

that Clarissa's miseries are derivable from the false step of her elopement, when it is evident that elopement became necessary to avoid compulsion. To speak with more precision my opinion in the case, I think Clarissa dangerous only to such young persons whose characters are yet to be formed, and who from natural susceptibility may be prone to imitation, and

likely to be turned aside into errors of affectation. In such hands, I think a book so addressed to the passions and wire-drawn into such prolixity, is not calculated to form either natural manners or natural style; nor would I have them learn of Clarissa to write long pedantic letters on their bended knees,' and beg to kiss the hem of their ever-honoured Mamma's garment,' any more than I would wish them to spurn at the addresses of a worthy lover, with the pert insult of a Miss Howe.

The natural temper and talents of our children should point out to our observation and judgment the particular mode in which they ought to be trained; the little tales told to them in infancy, and the books to be put into their hands in a forwarder age, are concerns highly worth attending to. Few female hearts in early youth can bear being softened by pathetic and affecting stories without prejudice. Young people are all imitation, and when a girl assumes the pathos of Clarissa without experiencing the same afflictions, or being put to the same trials, the result will be a most insufferable affectation and pedantry.

Whatever errors there may be in our present system of education, they are not the errors of neglect ; on the contrary, perhaps, they will be found to consist in over-diligence and too great solicitude for accomplishment; the distribution of a young lady's hours is an analysis of all the arts and sciences; she shall be a philosopher in the morning, a painter at noon, and a musician at night; she shall sing without a voice, play without an ear, and draw without a talent. A variety of masters distract the attention and overwhelm the genius: and thus an indiscriminate zeal in the parent stops the cultivation and improvement of those particular branches, to which the talents of the child may more immediately be adapted, But if parents who thus press the education of their