lley's _Frankenstein_, to which we may refer, though
the book was later than those included in the _Novelists' Library_.
Scott wrote in _Blackwood's_: "We ... congratulate our readers upon a
novel which excites new reflections and untried sources of
emotion."[217] The _Quarterly_ reviewer took the opposite and more
conservative attitude and expressed himself thus: "Our taste and our
judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the
ability with which it may be executed the worse it is--it inculcates no
lesson of conduct, manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not
even amuse its readers, unless their taste has been deplorably
vitiated--it fatigues the feelings without interesting the
understanding; it gratuitously harasses the heart, and wantonly adds to
the store, already too great, of painful sensations."[218] In general
Scott minimizes the effect of any moral that may be expressed in the
novel, but occasionally he seems inconsistent, when he is talking of
sentiments that are peculiarly distasteful to him.[219] But his thesis
is that "the direct and obvious moral to be deduced from a fictitious
narrative is of much less consequence to the public than the mode in
which the story is treated in the course of its details."[220] In the
_Life of Fielding_ he says of novels: "The best which can be hoped is
that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of
life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by
strains of generous sentiment, and tales of fictitious woe. Beyond this
point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of
polished life."

He conceived that his prefaces might be useful to warn readers against
any ill effects that might otherwise result from the reading of the
accompanying texts; and our comments on the _Lives of the Novelists_ may
fitly close with a quotation which shows the writer's attitude toward
the novels and his own criticisms upon them. The passage is taken from
the _Life of Bage_. "We did not think it proper to reject the works of
so eminent an author from this collection, merely on account of
speculative errors.[221] We have done our best to place a mark on these;
and as we are far from being of opinion that the youngest and most
thoughtless derive their serious opinions from productions of this
nature, we leave them for our reader's amusement, trusting that he will
remember that a good jest is no argument; that the