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 Cœlebs, 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—ill-treats 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!