|
Art. 38. - The Union: a Novel. By Miss Minifie, Author of the Count de Poland. 3 Vols. 12mo. 9s. sewed. Dutton. 1803.
We remember to have heard a gentleman, who was often employed in reading modern novels to ladies seated round a working-table, confess, that he seldom read above two or three lines in a page. His eye glanced over the lines following those he was perusing; and he sometimes omitted them, and occasionally supplied their substance. The female coterie, however, confessed that they never understood a novel so well as when he read it. Accident has led us to improve on this plan; for we, by chance, took up the third instead of the second volume, and read a great part of it, without discovering the mistake. When we did discover it, a few lines might have supplied the whole.
Miss Minifie is not a novice in this kind of labour; but we do not think she has derived much knowledge from her experience; for we have scarcely ever seen a tissue consisting of so many improbable, and so many ridiculous, circumstances. We should not, on many occasions, engage in so minute an examination of novels, were it not to guard against the erroneous examples they hold out. The heroine by courtesy is always faultless; and her conduct will, of course, be imitated. Our heroine, engaged to a gentleman of the name of Osmond, flies from her father's house, because a lady, whom she met accidentally at Calais, said that her daughter was seduced by a person bearing that name. She is received by a respectable family in the north, as a governess, where she meets with this gentleman, who has fled from her because he would not marry 'on compulsion.' This new Rosetta discovers her Young Meadows, but suffers him to go to Ireland to solicit his father's consent to marry her whose assumed name he only knew. Such conduct, perhaps, no young lady will choose to imitate: the rest of the story is equally absurd and improbable. She is carried off, by violence, to a desert island; escapes in a boat, with a young woman alone, to an island still more deserted; finds her lover in this spot dying, whom she recovers; and they are at last rescued by a rival. All, however, ends happily. We have not often before reached the summit of absurdity. [complete]
Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, January 2000
|
