Excerpt from The Novels and Novelists: Of the Eighteenth Century, in Illustration of the Manners and Morals of the Age Facts from other sources. But I have not thought it necessary to adhere strictly and for mally to this programme, and have therefore introduced sketches of the plots and characters of some of the most interesting and once widely popular novels, which for various reasons remain practically unknown to the great mass of readers of the present day, and especially to the female part of them. To do this and give anything like a just idea of the originals, without offending against decorum, is no easy task, nor do I at all flatter myself that I have succeeded. But the very difficulty is in itself a proof of the difference, in one important respect, between the taste and manners of the last and the taste and manners of the present century. In these, I think, it 'cannot be denied that there has been a great improvement; but I hope it will not be sup posed that I mean to imply that our more deco rous sins are not morally quite as bad as the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.