going so far as the celebrated French philosopher, who thought
that more was to be learnt from good novels and romances than from the
gravest treatises on history and morality, yet there are few works to
which I am oftener tempted to turn for profit or delight, than to the
standard productions in this species of composition. We find there a close
imitation of men and manners; we see the very web and texture of society
as it really exists, and as we meet with it when we come into the world.
If poetry has "something more divine in it," this savours more of
humanity. We are brought acquainted with the motives and characters of
mankind, imbibe our notions of virtue and vice from practical examples,
and are taught a knowledge of the world through the airy medium of
romance. As a record of past manners and opinions, too, such writings
afford the best and fullest information. For example, I should be at a
loss where to find in any authentic documents of the same period so
satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and of moral,
political, and religious feeling in the reign of George II, as we meet
with in the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams.
This work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind.
In looking into any regular history of that period, into a learned and
eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy of a diocese, or into a
tract on controversial divinity, we should hear only of the ascendancy of
the Protestant succession, the horrors of Popery, the triumph of civil and
religious liberty, the wisdom and moderation of the sovereign, the
happiness of the subject, and the flourishing state of manufactures and
commerce. But if we really wish to know what all these fine-sounding names
come to, we cannot do better than turn to the works of those, who having
no other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for success from
the fidelity of their pictures; and were bound (in self-defence) to reduce
the boasts of vague theorists and the exaggerations of angry disputants to
the mortifying standard of reality. Extremes are said to meet: and the
works of imagination, as they are called, sometimes come the nearest to
truth and nature. Fielding in speaking on this subject, and vindicating
the use and dignity of the style of writing in which he excelled against
the loftier pretensions of professed historians, says that in their
productions nothing is true but the n