circulation of wisdom may we expect from novels
which are to teach philosophy, and politics, and political economy, and
I know not what else. But such works have succeeded, you will tell me.
What shall I say to _Tremaine?_--what to _Coningsby?_ In _Tremaine_, so
far as I remember, the didactic portion had sunk like a sort of
sediment, and being collected into a dense mass in the third volume,
could easily be avoided. As to _Coningsby_, I deny that it any where
calls upon the reader for much exercise of his reflective powers. The
novel has some sparkling scenes written in the vivacious manner of our
neighbours, the French, and these we read. Some Eton boys talk politics,
and as they talk just as boys should talk, their prattle is easily
tolerated. Besides, I am not responsible for the caprice of fashion, nor
for those adventitious circumstances which give currency to books, and
which may sometimes compel us all to read what none of us heartily
admires.

Certainly, if I were admitted to the counsels of a novelist, I should
never have finished with my list of grievances, my entreaties, and
deprecations. I will not inflict it upon you. But there is one little
request I cannot help making even to a novelist in embryo. I have been
annoyed beyond measure at the habit our writers of fiction have fallen
into, of throwing their heroes perpetually into a sort of swoon or
delirium, or state of half consciousness. That a heroine should
occasionally faint, and so permit the author to carry her quietly off
the stage--this is an old expedient, natural and allowable. What I
complain of is, that whenever the passions of the hero himself rise to a
certain pitch; or whenever the necessities of the plot require him to do
one thing, whilst both his reason and his feelings would plainly lead
him to do another--he is immediately thrown into a state of half frenzy,
has a "vague consciousness" of something or other, makes a complete
nightmare of the business; is cast, in short, into a state of _coma_, in
which the author can carry him hither and thither, and communicate to
him whatever impulse he pleases. In this sort of dream he raves and
resolves, he fights or he flies, and then wakes to confused memory of
just what the author thinks fit to call to his recollection. It is very
interesting and edifying, truly, to watch the movements of an irrational
puppet! I do beg of you, when you take up the functions of the novelist,
not to distribute this