ABSTRACT
Mr. URBAN, It must be a matter of real concern to all considerate minds, to see the youth of both sexes passing so large a part of their time in reading that deluge of familiar romances, which, in this age, our island overflows with. ’Tis not only a most unprofitable way of spending time, but extremely prejudicial to their morals, many a young person being entirely corrupted by the giddy and fantastical notions of love and gallantry, imbibed from thence. There is scarce a month passes, but some worthless book of this kind, in order to catch curiosity by its novelty, appears in the form of two volumes 12mo. price five or six shillings, and they are chiefly the offspring, as I take it, of the managers of the circulating libraries, or their venal authors. Some few of them, indeed, have come from better pens, but the whole together are an horrible mass of hurtful insignificance, and, I suppose, may amount now to above an hundred volumes; I speak at the lowest.
