There is an amusing and (in its context) just passage of Thackeray's,
in which he calls Charlotte Lennox, author of _The Female Quixote_
(1752), a "figment." But it would be unlucky if any one were thereby
prevented from reading this work of the lady whom Johnson admired, and
for whom he made an all-night orgie of apple-pie and bay-leaves. Her
book, which from its heroine is also called _Arabella_, is clever and
not unamusing, though it errs (in accordance with the moral-critical
principles of the time) by not merely satirising the "heroic" romances
of the Gomberville-La Calprenede-Scudery type, but solemnly discussing
them. Arabella, the romance-bitten daughter of a marquis, is, for all
her delusion, or because of it, rather a charming creature. Her lover
Glanville, his Richardsonian sister, and the inevitable bad Baronet (he
can hardly be called wicked, especially for a Baronet) are more
commonplace: and the thing would have been better as a rather long
_nouvelle_ than as a far from short novel. It alternately comes quite
close to its original (as in the intended burning of Arabella's books)
and goes entirely away from it, and neither as an imitation nor
independently is it as good as Graves's _Spiritual Quixote_: but it is
very far from contemptible.

Yet though the aptitude of women for novel-writing was thus early
exemplified, it is not to be supposed that the majority of persons who
felt the new influences were of that sex. By far the larger number of
those who crowded to follow the Four were, like them, men.

That not exactly credit to the Tory party, Dr. John Shebbeare, has had
his demerits in other ways excused to some extent on the score of
_Lydia_--whose surname, by the way, was "Fairchild," not unknown in
later days of fiction. Even one who, if critical conscience would in
any way permit it, would fain let the Tory dogs have a little the best
of it, must, I fear, pronounce _Lydia_ a very poor thing. Shebbeare, who
was a journalist, had the journalist faculty of "letting everything go
in"--of taking as much as he could from Richardson, Fielding, Smollett,
etc., up to date (1755); and of throwing back to Afra for an interesting
Indian, Canassatego. The book (like not a few other eighteenth-century
novels) has very elaborate chapter headings and very short chapters, so
that an immoral person can get up its matter pretty easily. A virtuous
one who reads it through will have to look to his virtue for reward. Th