deformity, by breaking the mirror of nature, it remains entire and unfullied to the eye of virtue, that consciously reflects its own unspotted loveliness.


As it very often happens that readers get half through a work without knowing its drift—not unfrequently because the author does not know it himself—I hold it necessary to preclude all possibility of any such thing in the perusal of this work, by premising what, according to my conception, ought to be the tendency of productions similar to this, and what I here mean to inculcate in particular.
A novel → , as the word is now understood and established, is a general title for any work which

springs solely from the imagination, yet so delineates men and manners as to place all its events within view of probability. It is a kind of mean betwixt history, which records mere fact, and romance, which holds out acknowledged fiction.
As, however, pleasure and instruction are the only end that any admitted exercise of the imagination can propose, these all labour, with different materials, to produce the same effect. History not only teaches mankind to shun vice and imitate virtue, by instancing those events which are most condusive to so laudable an end, but shows the propriety of the doctrine it enforces, by authenticating the possibility of such conduct.
The novelist, who is the biographer of an imaginary hero, chooses, for his source, manners in general. His margin cannot swell with authorities, nor can he—by way of notes—cite the contrary opinions of great men concerning the vices or virtues of those characters he celebrates. So they possess the same qualities in common with the rest of mankind, and the events brought about by their means are such as our observation points out to be natural, his task is completely performed; and he has a right to expect as much credit for relating circumstances that might have happened, as he

who—as far as he can clear his narrative from the cobwebs of tradition, and disentangle it from the labyrinth of contradictory authority—records facts that did happen.
Romances are, figuratively, in nature; and, literally, fictitious. They are intended, by lifting the mind above probability, to enforce moral by figure and allegory: and they attain their end—and indeed laudably—for they rouse those torpid minds into action which cannot relish writings that are kept within the bounds of simple nature.
This species of composition is remarkably gratifying to weak minds. It is—if I may be permitted so to express myself—an honourable fraud; for, exaggerate the beauty of virtue how you can, it will still be lovely; whereas vice, being ugly in itself, becomes more hideous when