[816]Ibid. ch. XXVII.
[817]Ibid. ch. XXIII.
[818]"Peregrine Pickle," ch. XXIII.
[819]In "Novels and Novelists," by W. Forsyth, the author says, ch. V. 159: "What is the character of most of these books (novels) which were to correct follies and regulate morality? Of a great many of them, and especially those of Fielding and Smollett, the prevailing features are grossness and licentiousness. Love degenerates into a mere animal passion.... The language of the characters abounds in oaths and gross expressions.... The heroines allow themselves to take part in conversations which no modest woman would have heard without a blush. And yet these novels were the delight of a bygone generation, and were greedily devoured by women as well as men. Are we therefore to conclude that our great-great-grandmothers... were less chaste and moral than their female posterity? I answer, certainly not; but we must infer that they were inferior to them in delicacy and refinement. They were accustomed to hear a spade called a spade, and words which would shock the more fastidious ear in the reign of Queen Victoria were then in common and daily use."—Tr.
[820]Byron's Works, ed. Moore, 17 vols. 1832; "Life," III. 127, note.
[821]There is a distinct trace of a spirit similar to that which is here sketched, in a select few of the English writers. Pultcck's "Peter Wilkins the Flying Man," Amory's "Life of John Buncle," and Southey's "Doctor," are instances of this. Rabelais is probably their prototype.—Tr.
[822]Sterne's Works, 7 vols. 1783, 3; "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy," VII. ch. XXXII.
[823]"Tristram Shandy," I, 2. ch. XII.
[824]"Tristram Shandy," 2, IV. ch. XXVII.
[825]Ibid. 3, IX. ch. XX.