“Sir,—Your first volume is far inferior to the two last. Your second is sublimely horrible—captivatingly frightful.
“Your third is all a great genius can do to delight a great genius, and I never felt myself so conscious of, or so proud of giving proofs of a good understanding, as in pronouncing this to be a capital work.
“It is my opinion that fine ladies, milliners, mantua-makers, and boarding-school girls will love to tremble over it, and that men of taste and judgment will admire the superior talents, the incessant energy of mind you have evinced.
“In these two last volumes, there does not appear to me (apt as I am to be tired with reading novels) one tedious line, still there are lines I wish erased. I shudder lest for the sake of a few sentences, (and these particularly marked for the reader’s attention by the purport of your preface) a certain set of people should hastily condemn the whole work as of immoral tendency, and rob it of a popularity which no other failing it has could I think endanger.
“This would be a great pity, especially as these
sentences are trivial compared to those which have not so glaring a tendency,
and yet to the eye of discernment are even more forcible on your side of the
question. . . . . But if I find fault it is because
| 140 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
