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Art. 35. Derwent Priory; or Memoirs of an Orphan in a Series of Letters. First published periodically; now republished, with Additions, by the Author of the 'Castle on the Rock.' 2 Vols. 12mo. 7s. sewed. Symonds. 1798.
Whether it be that lords are, in modern times, become so numerous as to bear a very considerable proportion to the mass of the community, or that there is something in a title which annexes a sort of adventitious dignity to the trite sentiments that abound in novels, we know not: but it is certain that, in all the minor works of this description, the actors are seldom below 'the degree of nobility'. Sometimes, indeed, an amiable inconnu is brought into play: but it generally happens that, in the thickening of the plot, he or she is found to have an undoubted, though hitherto latent, claim to a title. The mere common run of mankind, the swinish multitude, stand as low in the estimation of the Novelist, as they are said to have done in that of some very eminent statesmen: they are much too insignificant to occupy any place in these prosaic epics.
In the present composition, there is no deviation from this established practice; for the reader will find here how Miss Rutland, the dependent orphan, who was supposed to be the offspring of an illegitimate amour, turns out to be the lawfully begotten daughter of Lord and Lady Severn; and how her cruel grandfather meets with her by a fortunate accident (the oversetting of his carriage,) acknowledges her birth, and constitutes her heiress to his fortune, by which she is at length enabled to become the happy wife of her adoring Lord Merioneth! The reader will not be less delighted with an account how Lady Laura, straying one day into a cottage, finds its inhabitant to be the amiable and accomplished Clifford, by whom she is afterward twice rescued, once from a ravisher, and once from a mischievous cow; and how, when she comes of age, she bestows on his fidelity and valour the 'unreluctant hand of his Lady Laura.'
[complete] Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, September 1999
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