“in the republic of letters, there is no member of such inferior
rank, or who is so much disdained by his brethren of the quill, as
the humble novelist; nor is his fate less hard in the world at large,
since, among the whole class of writers, perhaps not one can be named
of which the votaries are more numerous but less respectable.”
Jane Austen is more spirited in her complaint, and takes her example
from Miss Burney herself:
“Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic
custom, so common with novel-writers, of degrading, by their
contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which
they are themselves adding; joining with their greatest enemies
in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely
ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she
accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages
with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronised
by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and
regard? I cannot approve it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to
abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new
novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the Press
now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected
pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world,
no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride,
ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers;
and while the ability of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History
of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume
some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the
_Spectator_ and a chapter from Sterne, is eulogised by a thousand
pens, there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity
and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the
performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
‘I am no novel-reader; I seldom look into novels; it is really very
well for a novel.’ Such is the common cant. ‘And what are you reading,
Miss ----?’ ‘Oh, it’s only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she
lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame. ‘It
is only _Cecilia_, or _Camilla_, or _Belinda_,’ or, in short, only
some work in which the greatest powers of mind are displayed, in which
the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation
of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are
conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.”