|
ART XXIII. Angelina; a Novel. In Three Volumes. By Mrs Mary Robinson, Author of Poems, Vancenza, the Widow, &c. &c. London: printed for the Author; and sold by Hookham and Carpenter, No. 147, New Bond Street. 1795.
We think the fair author has mistaken the name of her heroine. Sophia Clarendon, not Angelina, seems to be the first figure. This novel is written in an easy and elegant style; though we must say, that this is not the most interesting performance of Mrs Robinson.
A young nobleman, who has, by his own account, dissipated a large fortune, goes to the city in search of a rich wife.
'You know, my dear friend, that though my estate is one of the most spacious in the kingdom, a variety of circumstances have conspired to load it with incumbrances that will not easily be removed. Thus situated, the old expedient, a rich wife, appeared the most certain and probable remedy I could adopt. We always find this blessed consolation in the last extremity, where rank holds out the temptation; ambition grasps at the shadow, we enjoy the substance; in other words, we sell what is of little use to us, and obtain for our bargain that which will purchase all the gratifications this world can afford. Every circle in this overgrown metropolis presents wealthy upstarts; who, to varnish over their original insignificance, are on the watch for needy nobility, whose wants may reduce them to the humiliation of forming connexions from which their pride shrinks with abhorrence. Indeed, we constantly behold young women of little birth, and great fortune, as indelicately exposed to sale as our horses, or our hounds; with this difference only, that we are not permitted, on any account whatever, to inquire the pedigree of our purchase; we have only to give them a name, and they pass for thorough bred in all the circles of fashionable dissipation.'
This is an example of that knowledge of fashionable life, and [75] the ways of the world in general, which, as well as a just discrimination of individual characters, appears throughout these volumes. This novel is agreeably interspersed with effusions of a tender and melancholy kind, in harmonious versification.
[complete] Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, September 1999
|
