ABSTRACT
It is chiefly in the tone of the satire that the adventures of Chrysal differ from those of Le Sage's heroes. As Le Sage renders vice ludicrous, Charles Johnstone seems to paint even folly as detestable, as well as ridiculous. His Herald and Auctioneer are among his lightest characters; but their determined roguery and greediness render them hateful even while they are comic. It must be allowed to this caustic satirist, that the time in which he lived called for such an unsparing and uncompromising censor. In Johnstone's time this reform had not commenced, and he might well have said, with such an ardent temper as he seems to have possessed, Difficile est satyram non scribere. The same indulgence to the usual freedoms of a town life, seems to have influenced Johnstone's dislike to the Methodists, of whose founder, Whitefield, he has drawn a most odious and a most unjust portrait.
