hion, our foes
are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the
nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who
collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and
Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne,
are eulogized by a thousand pens--there seems almost a general wish of
decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and
of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to
recommend them. "I am no novel-reader--I seldom look into novels--Do not
imagine that I often read novels--It is really very well for a novel."
Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss--?" "Oh! It is
only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book
with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or
Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest
powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge
of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the
liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the
best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a
volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she
have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be
against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication,
of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of
taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement
of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of
conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language,
too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age
that could endure it.

CHAPTER 6

The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in
the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine
days, is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the
delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which
marked the reasonableness of that attachment.

They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five
minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, "My dearest
creature, what can have made you so late? I have been waiting for you at
least this age!"

"Have you, indeed! I am very sorry for it; but really I thought I was in
very good t