be sufficient to observe, that countries, the least polished by literature, or civilized by commercial intercourse, have always been found the most resolute assertors of their ancient dignity; a cause to which we must attribute the prolix catalogue of Scottish monarchs, and the Milesian colony of the Irish antiquaries. The second, as the malice of my inquiry does not war with the dead, I shall not examine; the very existence of such an opinion may in time become doubtful. There are perhaps few popular opinions, so repugnant as the former to truth and reason, which may not be traced to their origin, in an inventive mind, occupied rather in palliating its omissions by ingenious excuses, than in avoiding them by a determined activity; and the most specious are seldom recurred to but as the lenitives of reflection, on the painful retrospect of wasted time, and abilities misapplied. No 26. MONDAY, MAY 14, 1787. Fabula nullius veneris, sine pondere, et arte.--Hor. NOVEL-WRITING has by some late authors been aptly enough styled the younger sister of Romance. A family likeness indeed is very evident; and in their leading features, though in the one on a more enlarged, and in the other on a more contracted scale, a strong resemblance is easily discoverable between them. An eminent characteristic of each is Fiction; a quality which they possess, however, in very different degrees. The fiction of romance is restricted by no fetters of reason, or of truth; but gives a loose to lawless imagination, and transgresses at will the bounds of time and place, of nature and possibility. The fiction of the other, on the contrary, is shackled with a thousand restraints; is checked in her most rapid progress by the barriers of reason; and bounded in her most excursive flights by the limits of probability. To drop our metaphors: we shall not indeed find in novels, as in romances, the hero sighing respectfully at the feet of his mistress, during a ten years' courtship in a wilderness; nor shall we be entertained with the history of such a tour, as that of Saint George; who mounts his horse one morning at Cappadocia, takes his way through Mesopotamia, then turns to the right into Illyria, and so, by way of Grecia and Thracia, arrives in the afternoon in England. To such glorious violations as these of time and place, romance writers have an exclusive claim. Novelists usually find it more convenient to change the scene of courtship from a desert to a drawing-room; and far from thinking it necessary to lay a ten years' siege to the affections of their heroine, they contrive to carry their point in an hour or two; as well for the sake of enhancing the character of their hero, as for establishing their favourite maxim of love at first sight; and their hero, who seldom extends his travels beyond the turnpike-road, is commonly content to choose the safer, though less expeditious, conveyance of a post-chaise, in preference to such a horse as that of Saint George. But, these peculiarities of absurdity alone excepted, we shall find, that the novel is but a more modern modification of the same ingredients which constitute the romance; and that a recipe for the one may be equally serviceable for the composition of the other. A Romance (generally speaking) consists of a number of strange events, with a hero in the middle of them; who, being an adventurous knight, wades through them to one grand design, namely, the emancipation of some captive princess, from the oppression of a merciless giant; for the accomplishment of which purpose he must set at nought the incantations of the caitiff magician; must scale the ramparts of his castle; and baffle the vigilance of the female dragon, to whose custody his heroine is committed. Foreign as they may at first sight seem from the purposes of a novel, we shall find, upon a little examination, that these are in fact the very circumstances upon which the generality of them are built; modernized indeed in some degree, by the transformations of merciless giants into austere guardians, and of she-dragons into maiden aunts. We must be contented also that the heroine, though retaining her tenderness, be divested of her royalty; and in the hero we must give up the knight-errant for the accomplished fine gentleman. 6 Still, however, though the performers are changed, the characters themselves remain nearly the same. In the guardian we trace all the qualities which distinguish his ferocious predecessor; substituting only, in the room of magical incantations, a little plain cursing and swearing; and the maiden aunt retains all the prying vigilance, and suspicious malignity, in short, every endowment but the claws, which characterize her romantic counterpart. The hero of a novel has not indeed any opportunity of displaying his courage in the scaling of a rampart, or his generosity in the deliverance of enthralled multitudes; but as it is necessary that a hero should signalize himself by both these qualifications, it is usual, to manifest the one by climbing the garden wall, or leaping the park-paling, in defiance of steel-traps and spring-guns; and the other, by flinging a crown to each of the post-boys, on alighting from his chaise and four. 6 In the article of interviews, the two species of composition are pretty much on an equality; provided only, that they are supplied with a quantum sufficit' of moonlight, which is indispensably requisite; it being the etiquette for the moon to appear particularly conscious on these 'occasions. For the adorer, when permitted to pay his vows at the shrine of his divinity, custom has established in both cases a pretty universal form of prayer. Thus far the writers of novel and romance seem to be on a very equal footing; to enjoy similar advantages, and to merit equal admiration. We are now come to a very material point, in which romance has but slender claims to comparative excellence; I mean the choice of names and titles. However lofty and sonorous the names of Amadis and Orlando; however tender and delicate may be those of Zorayda and Roxana, are they to be compared with the attractive alliteration, the seducing softness, of Lydia Lovemore, and Sir Harry Harlowe ; of Frederic Freelove, and Clarissa Clearstarch? Or can the simple Don Belianis, of Greece,' or the Seven Champions of Christendom,' trick out so enticing a title-page, and awaken such pleasing expectations, as the 'Innocent Adultery,' the 'Tears of Sensibility,' or the 'Amours of the Count de D***** and L--y ?' It occurs to me while I am writing this, that as there has been of late years so considerable a consumption of names and titles, as to have exhausted all the efforts of invention, and ransacked all the alliterations of the alphabet; it may not be amiss to inform all novelists, male and female, who under these circumstances must necessarily wish, with Falstaff, to know where a commodity of good names may be bought,' that at my warehouse for wit, I have laid in a great number of the above articles, of the most fashionable and approved patterns. Ladies may suit themselves with a vast variety, adapted to every composition of the kind; whether they may choose them to consist of two adjectives only, as the Generous Inconstant,'-the Fair Fugitive,'-or the name of a place, as Grogram Grove,' 'Gander Green,' or whether they prefer the still newer method of coupling persons and things with an 'or,' as 'Louisa; or, the Purling Stream,'-'Estafina; or, the Abbey in the Dale,''Eliza; or, the Little House on the Hill.' Added to these, I have a complete assortment of names for every individual that can find a place in a novel; from the Belviles and Beverleys of high life, to the Humphreyses and Gubbinses of low; suited to all ages, ranks, and professions; to persons of every stamp, and characters of every denomination. In painting the scenes of low life, the novel again enjoys the most decisive superiority. Romance indeed sometimes makes use of the grosser sentiments, and less refined affections of the squire and the confidant, as a foil to the delicate adoration, the platonic purity, which make the love of the hero, and suits the sensibility of his mistress. But where shall we find such a thorough knowledge of nature, such an insight into the human heart, as is displayed by our novelists; when, as an agreeable relief from the insipid sameness of polite insincerity, they condescend to portray in coarse colours, the workings of more genuine passions in the bosom of Dolly, the dairy-maid, or Hannah, the house-maid? When on such grounds, and on a plan usually very similar to the one I have here endeavoured to sketch, are founded by far the greater number of those novels, which crowd the teeming catalogue of a circulating library; is it to be wondered at, that they are sought out with such avidity, and run |