ought not to excite the resentment of the writers, or be construed into an attempt to injure them. On the contrary, I have only endeavoured to deprive them of a merit which I have proved they cannot justly claim; and I hope that what has been advanced may form some apology for their quitting, at a very early period in the history of Novel-writing, the business of common life, and introducing their readers to the company of persons of rank and fashion.

The consequence of this has been two-fold. The writers have obtained a much freer range for the energies of imagination from their ignorance of the life they pretended to describe, which is a matter of much more consequence than many of my readers may suppose. The other advantage is the gratification of perusing the secret history of personages whose manners it would be delightful to copy, because every thing they do, and every thing they suffer, every thing they say, and even their very silence, are accompanied with an air and a grace highly fascinating and irresistibly sympathetic.

From the commencement, indeed, of this alteration in the manner of writing Novels, every thing seems to advance on the scale of

refinement, and such common things as tears and sighs and sobs become so refined and double-refined as to be wholly beyond the reach of persons of moderate fortunes. For the latter, perhaps, this is a lucky circumstance; for they who never cry but when they have cause, think nothing of the pleasures of sorrow, and would no more endeavour to heighten the complexion by tears, than to decorate a broken limb with ribbons. From this alteration likewise in the creation of proper personages, remote from common life, we may observe that faintings, swoonings, fits, and phrenzies, are all managed in a manner, and written in a style far more picturesque, and better calculated for effect than before. In some respects, indeed, our notions of refinement may be thought to have been carried a little too far, as in the business of fighting duels, which seems indispensable to a lover; it being as necessary for him, before he can marry his mistress, to call out an antagonist, as to take out a licence. I may also instance the case of suicide in consequence of disappointments of the heart, or, as they are sometimes called in vulgar life, contradictions. It, probably, was never the intention of the writers to give lessons of this kind, but merely to complete a pathetic scene

by the introduction of a pond, a river, and a willow tree. These landscapes have, however, produced a farther effect; and I cannot help here remarking, that as the ideas of some lunaticks are observed to take a tincture from the Politics of the times, so the fair suicides of late years appear to have caught their wild fancies from their romantic instructors; and, despising the vulgarity of the New River, or the Thames, universally prefer the Canal at St. James's, or the Serpentine in Hyde Park*. Nor is it less. noticeable that the papers, in recording these transactions, forgetting all other circumstances, dwell on the person of the suicide with an elegance of description and of flattery exactly in unison with the language of those fictions which prompted the action.

But even high life may be exhausted ; and such appears to have been the case when, what I may term the third revolution in Novelwriting took place, by the introduction of castles and spectres, blue chambers and long-vaulted passages, murders, and robbers and assassins from page. These must have admipage to

* Let not this be read as a passing sneer at Novels; it deserves more serious consideration, and, perhaps, will be found not remotely connected with an insatiable and exclusive taste for romantic reading.

VOL. II.

nistered a new series of delights, and of instruction, but of what kind it is not easy to determine. We have not yet heard of any inns being mistaken for castles, nor inn-keepers' daughters for princesses. Some considerations, however, on the architecture of these gloomy mansions, these deep solitudes and awful cells," may, perhaps, be the subject of a future PROJECTOR.

THE PROJECTOR. No 50.

November 1805.

IT has often been objected to schemers that they are perpetually forming plans which are disproportioned to their means of execution; and among other instances we frequently hear of men without a shilling in their pockets, who become the Projectors of plans for paying off the national debt; while others, who never saw a cannon, and never discharged a musquet, employ themselves in devising means for carrying on the continental war, or invading the

enemy's country. But, if we consider this matter more kindly, it would, I humbly think, become us to allow that there is very rarely much connexion between the Projector and the Project; and that it is not absolutely necessary there should be that nice proportion between them which may be requisite in other things. We might also, I think, exercise our candour in such cases, and confess that to be a very laudable ambition which carries a man, if I may so speak, out of himself and his own concerns, and invests him with a capacity for schemes of vast magnitude and importance. Yet in whatever light we view this ambition, it is undoubtedly owing to it that we find able statesmen every where but in the Ministry, eloquent speakers every where but in Parliament, and conscientious officers every where but in commission.

Ill as it becomes me to defend all the practices of Projectors, I could not refrain from these few remarks as an apology for my brethren, hoping that if they are thought to have be allowed the benefit any weight, I may of it during my present lucubration, which, I am afraid, some will think another instance of that digressive ambition which carries a man out of his own profession. Nothing can per