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A Gossip's Story, and a Legendary Tale. By the Author of Advantages of Education. 2 vols. 12mo. Longman, 1796.
'The following pages are intended, under the disguise of an artless history, to illustrate the advantages of CONSISTENCY, FORTITUDE, and the DOMESTIC VIRTUES; and to expose to ridicule, CAPRICE, AFFECTED sensibility, and an idle censorious humour.' This intention is extremely well executed: - the characteristics just enumerated are exemplified in the conduct of two sisters of very opposite feelings and dispositions, Louisa and Marianne Dudley; and in the movements of a female club, supposed to be established near the place of their residence.
We have read these volumes with more than ordinary satisfaction; the style is simple and unaffected; the story, though not abounding with intricacies of plot, variety of incidents, and hyperbolical contrasts of happiness and distress, is conducted with sufficient ingenuity to occupy the attention, and interest the reader in behalf of the leading characters. The writer has been guided by the principles of just taste, as well in the choice of language as in the preservation of character. 'The fair enthusiast who indulges in all the extravagance of heroic generosity, romantic love, and exuberant friendship,' forming her estimate of real life from the exaggerations of romance, is drawn with the happiest success. In an age of sentiment, i.e. false senti-[419]ment, the novelist who will put the reader on his guard against that 'bane of social life,' merits no inconsiderable praise. The story conveys a very useful and important lesson; and the piety that pervades the whole is highly honourable to the author's principles.
The Legendary Tale is interesting, and written with the requisite simplicity; but much too long. The smaller Poems possess very superior merit, which the following sonnet will testify. - Vide vol. II. page 142.
SONNET. Her hair dishevel'd, and her robe unty'd,
Cassandra rush'd amongst the festal train,
What time young Paris sang his nuptial strain,
And led to Priam's roof the Spartan bride:
Of certain woes that must that crime betide,
The holy virgin prophesied in vain;
Her warning voice could no attention gain,
'Till Pyrrhus level'd Ilium's tow'ring pride.
Ah! in the horrors of that night aghast,
What shrieks, prophetic maid, thy truth declar'd?
And thus when youth beholds Misfortune's blast
O'erturn the fairy bow'rs by Fancy rear'd,
Too late it muses on the precepts sage
of cool experience, and predictive age. [complete]
Provided by Julie Shaffer, August 1999.
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