it is caricatured.
These three different vehicles for the conveyance of truth and morality, seem to require different conductors; and indeed it has seldom happened that any one man has equally succeeded in them.—Romance seems to require a poetic soul: strong in conception, fertile in invention, and various in expression. History wants nothing but a perspicuous

style, authentic information, and invincible veracity.
He who writes novels must partake of all these qualities. He must unite in his imagination the glow of poetry with the steadiness of narrative.—The latter must be as a curb to the former: not, however, to damp its spirit, but to prevent it from running away:—like the alderman, who, at a lord mayor's feast, would have made himself sick if his physician had not sat by the side of him.
Thus I think it becomes pretty evident that ← novel → writing holds a very respectable stand in literature, and I sincerely believe that men of considerable talents would very often practise it, were it not for those spurious productions with which the press teems under the appellation of novels, which means any love story calculated to madden the minds of sentimental country ladies, to trouble the domestic happiness of old gentlemen who marry young girls, and to overturn the purity imbibed at boarding schools.
These are sure to make their way into all the circulating libraries in the kingdom, provided they are sufficiently stuffed with dying lovers, inexorable parents, and impertinent chambermaids; with the

addition of three or four elopements, half a dozen duels, and an attempt or two at a rape; to which may be added, a little suicide, or a smattering of incest—especially if it be written by a lady—by way of zest, to make it go down the more glib.
Being about to give a ← novel → to the world, I thought it incumbent on me to say thus much; from which the reader will naturally conclude that I intend, throughout this work, to keep nature and probability in sight, to reject that which is frivolous and impertinent, and to adopt only what, by means of amusement, may bring about instruction.
It will nevertheless be necessary to say further, that, in portraying nature, I shall make her neither a flattering likeness, nor a caricature. Nor is it necessary; for, let her sit for her picture ever so often, she never will exhibit the same face twice, yet shall the general resemblance always be striking; for it has been well observed, that she takes every various hue of the camelion, yet, torture her how you will,