as you say, he meant nothing. I should be very angry myself, if I imagined-" "Nay, Ma'am," says Honour, "I protest I believe he meant nothing. I thought he talked as if he was out of his senses; nay, he said he believed he was beside himself when he had spoken the words. Ay, Sir, says I, I believe so too. Yes, says he, Honour.-But I ask your ladyship's pardon; I could tear my tongue out for offending you." -"Go on," says Sophia; "you may mention any thing you have not told me before."-"Yes, Honour, says he (this was some time afterwards, when he gave me the crown), I am neither such a coxcomb, nor such a villain, as to think of her in any other delight but as my goddess; as such I will always worship and adore her while I have breath. This was all, Ma'am, I will be sworn to the best of my remembrance. I was in a passion with him myself, till I found he meant no harm."—"Indeed, Honour," says Sophia, "I believe you have a real affection for me. I was provoked the other day when I gave you warning; but if you have a desire to stay with me, you shall."-"To be sure, Ma'am," answered Mrs. Honour, "I shall never desire to part with your ladyship. To be sure, I almost cried my eyes out when you gave me warning. It would be very ungrateful in me to desire to leave your ladyship; because as why, I should never get so good a place again. I am sure I would live and die with your ladyship; for, as poor Mr. Jones said, happy is the man—” Here the dinner-bell interrupted a conversation which had wrought such an effect on Sophia, that she was, perhaps, more obliged to her bleeding in the morning, than she, at the time, had apprehended she should be. As to the present situation of her mind, I shall adhere to a rule of Horace, by not attempting to describe it, from despair of success. Most of my readers will suggest it easily to themselves; and the few who cannot, would not understand the picture, or at least would deny it to be natural, if ever so well drawn. CHAPTER I. OF THE SERIOUS IN WRITING, AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE IT IS INTRODUCED. PERADVENTURE there may be no parts in this prodigious work which will give the reader less pleasure in the perusing, than those which have given the Author the greatest pains in composing. Among these probably may be reckoned those initial essays which we have prefixed to the historical matter contained in every book: and which we have determined to be essentially necessary to this kind of writing, of which we have set ourselves at the head. For this our determination we do not hold ourselves strictly bound to assign any reason; it being abundantly sufficient that we have laid it down as a rule necessary to be observed in all prosai-comi-epic writing. Whoever demanded the reasons of that nice unity of time or place which is now established to be so essential to dramatic poetry? What critic hath been ever asked, why a play may not contain two days as well as one? Or why the audience (provided they travel, like electors, without any expense) may not be wafted fifty miles as well as five? Hath any commentator well accounted for the limitation which an ancient critic hath set to the drama, which he will have contain neither more nor less than five acts. Or hath any one living attempted to explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by that word low; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all humour from the stage, and have made the theatre as dull as a drawingroom? Upon all these occasions the world seems to have |