The prudence of their publishers suggests the expediency of making them conveniently portable. Every corner of the kingdom is abundantly supplied with them. In vain is youth secluded from the corruptions of the living world. There is another evil arising from a too early attention to Novels. They fix attention so deeply, and afford so lively a pleasure, that the mind, once accustomed to them, cannot submit to the painful task of serious study.
Authentic history becomes insipid.
The reserved graces of the chaste matron Truth pass unobserved admist the gaudy and painted decorations of fiction. The boy who can procure a variety of books like Gil Blas , and the Devil upon Two Sticks , will no longer think his Livy, his Sallust, his Homer, or his Virgil pleasing. He will not study old Lilly, while he can read Pamela and Tom Jones , and a thousand inferior and more dangerous novels. When the judgment is ripened by reflection, and the morals out of danger, every well-written book will claim attention. The extreme insipidity of some of our later Novels, it might have been supposed, would have prevented their reception.