From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers.

And while the abilities 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, are eulogized 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--Do not imagine that I often read novels--It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant.

"And what are you reading, Miss-- ?" "Oh! It is 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 the 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.