Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/17

Rh has brought into notice an emigrant, and motley class of literature, formerly, in this country, little known and less honoured. We throw aside our profound researches, and feast upon popular abridgments; we forsake the old march through elaborate histories, for "a dip" into entertaining memoirs. In this, our immediate bias in literature, if any class of writing has benefited more than another in popularity and estimation, it is the Novel. Readers now look into fiction for facts; as Voltaire, in his witty philosophy, looked among facts for fiction. I do not say that the novel has, in increased merit, deserved its increased reputation: on the contrary, I think, that though our style may be less prolix than it was in the last century, our thoughts are more languid and our invention less racy. However this be, the fashion in literature, of which I speak, has, among the wrecks of much that is great and noble, opened to second-rate ability and mediocre knowledge, paths that were shut to them before. And I, for one, if I have lost as a member of the Public, have gained more than proportionately as an Individual. I feel that I have just sufficient reading, or observation, or reflection, or