To describe a real rascal, you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show; and unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him at all.
Even the gentlemen of our age--this is an attempt to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated men--even these we cannot show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives and their education.

Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a MAN.

We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper.

Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art.

Many ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the course of the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.
My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness and generosity to overcome them.