Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/15

 "If, indeed, her reputation had been lost, and she had conversed long enough with a man to have worn out her youth and beauty, and had been left in poverty, and all kinds of distress, without any hopes of relief, her folly would have then been so glaring, he could by no means have owned her for his child."

"John's coldness and neglect; nay, his liking other women better than his wife, which no virtuous woman can possibly bear."

"Lucretia herself (whose chastity nothing but the fear of losing her reputation could possibly have conquered)."

"The words genius, and no genius; invention, poetry, fine things, bad language, no style, charming writing, imagery, and diction, with many more expressions which swim on the surface of criticism, seemed to have been caught by those fishers for the reputation of wit, though they were entirely ignorant what use to make of them, or how to apply them properly."

"He was not of the opinion, that the more ignorant a man is of any subject, the more necessary it is to talk of it."

Her satire of the amateur critic is always keen. One of the most entertaining chapters in the book is that relating the conversation of a number of fine ladies on the subject of pathos on the stage. It is amusing to find that some literary historians have not perceived the irony of the passage, and so have done less than justice to Miss Fielding's critical acumen.

" There is nothing so surprising to me as the absurdity of almost everybody I meet with; they can't even laugh or cry in the right place. Perhaps it will be hardly believed, but I really saw people in the boxes last night, at the tragedy of Cato, sit with dry eyes, and show no kind of emotion, when that great man fell on his sword; nor was it at all owing to any firmness of mind, that made them incapable of crying neither, for that I should have admired: but I have known those very people shed tears at George Barnwell.

" Oh, intolerable I cry for an odious apprentice-boy, who murdered his uncle at the instigation too of a common woman, and yet be unmoved, when even Cato bled for his country.