very

our youth being early initiated into the company of those who commit them, must depend on farther experience than a plan yet in its infancy can be supposed to possess. We have, indeed, heard much lately of men of "genteel appearance," and of "elegant dress," as well as of some "beautiful and interesting" young ladies who have been examined at Bow-street, or made their debut at the Old Bailey; yet I much question whether the company they kept on the highway has given them a thorough knowledge of the virtues of honesty, or whether their fondness for crowds, mobs and routs, has tended much to improve their ideas of the nature of property, or to give them more correct notions of the value of time. In endeavouring, therefore, to inspire a young man with a just abhorrence of dishonest and unfair means of amassing money, instead of introducing him at first into the company of strumpets and pickpockets, it might be advisable to try the more genteel manners of jockies and money-lenders.

As idleness is acknowledged to be the root of all evil, nothing can be more prudent than to give youth an early aversion to it; and here principally it is that we may contemplate the effects of our new plan. Nor is it possible to say to what farther lengths it might be carried,

cases.

if those parents who have taught their children the value of time at places of public and private amusement, from day to day, or rather from night to day, would condescend to favour us with their experience in a series of well-attested It would be particularly desirable that they should specify the hour or day when their children acquired their first dislike to waste of time, and when it amounted to such a sense of its value as to make them prefer the domestic circle, and the occasional friendly society, to midnight riot and licentious pleasures. I am not anxious about these particulars myself, because I am already fully apprized of all the effects of the system; but I suggest them for the sake of some well-meaning persons of the old school, who contend for a mode of education so opposite, that without some new and extraordinary light thrown upon the subject, it is not possible they should ever be reconciled to one, which, in their opinion, is calculated only to anticipate the criminal passions, to introduce a premature debasement of mind, and add to the artificial miseries of society.

THE PROJECTOR. N° 49.

THE

October 1805.

HE pens of many of my predecessors have been laudably employed in investigating the good and evil of Novels, and Novel-reading; but, as the manufacture of Novels is still carried on to a very great extent, it is, I am afraid, to be inferred that their labours have not been followed by all the success they deserve. This, however, as in other matters connected with public instruction, is a cause rather for regret than surprize. Long experience ought to have convinced authors and teachers, that to point out what is hurtful, and to induce people to avoid it, are two very different processes, and rarely effected by the same means.

It will not be expected that any thing new can be advanced on a question so often handled: and, indeed, in all these my lucubrations, Į have hinted that my readers are not to expect much of that kind. Yet, perhaps, this very circumstance may recommend the present PROJECTOR to the attention of the readers of Novels,

since no class of people are more partial to the repetition of the same adventures, the same language, and the same sentiments. I hope, therefore, they will grant to me a little of that indulgence so liberally and constantly extended to the manufacturers of their favourite studies, who would be thrown totally out of bread if their customers were so nice as to reject one Novel merely because it resembled another, or refuse to read what they had often read before.

proper

The chief argument, if I mistake not, in favour of Novel-writing, is, its " tendency to teach conduct in the affairs of common life." But, if I may be permitted to differ from the many authorities in which this is advanced, namely, the prefaces to at least five hundred of these publications, I should presume that this argument can affect only such Novels as treat of common life, the number of which is so small that they may be fairly set aside without any injury to the main question. The great majority treat of a kind of life which is so far from being common in any sense of the word, that we may safely aver it is to be found in print, and nowhere else.

Nor is this the fault of the creators of romantic life; and I question, whether it is even their misfortune; because a Novel founded on

common life must be miserably deficient in all those circumstances from which the pleasure of Novel-reading arises. That pleasure I take to consist principally in the reader's being introduced into the acquaintance of a class of personages of superior wealth and rank. of extraordinary virtues and extravagant vices, with whom he is not likely to become familiar in any other way. Common life too abounds so little in adventures, and has so much of the level insipidity of plain sailing, or the flat and humdrum motion of towing, that without very extraordinary aid, and a complete derangement of all its progress, I know not how even a couple of duodecimos could be manufactured from the history of any man that ever existed, and existed, as men in common life do, for no other purpose than to mind his business, provide for his family, and perform the quiet duties of a good Christian and a good subject. We are also to consider, that the most interesting part of every Novel is a detail of distresses; but distresses in common life are so tame and unpicturesque, that, besides their making a very sorry figure in themselves, they are utterly incapable of producing any sweet sympathizing effect on the most tender-hearted reader. It is wonderful, indeed, what a difference is ob