ABSTRACT
To drop our metaphors: we shall not indeed find in novels, as in romances, the hero sighing respectfully at the feet of his mistress, during a ten years’ courtship in a wilderness; nor shall we be entertained with the history of such a tour, as that of Saint George; who mounts his horse one morning at Cappadocia, takes his way through Mesopotamia, then turns to the right into Illyria, and so, by way of Grecia and Thracia, arrives in the afternoon in England. To such glorious violations as these of time and place, romance writers have an exclusive claim. Novelists usually find it more convenient to change the scene of courtship from a desert to a drawing-room; and far from thinking it necessary to lay a ten years’ siege to the affections of their heroine, they contrive to carry their point in an hour or two; as well for the sake of enhancing the character of their hero, as for establishing their favourite maxim of love at first sight; and their hero, who seldom extends his travels beyond the turnpike-road, is commonly content to choose the safer, though less expeditious, conveyance of a post-chaise, in preference to such a horse as that of Saint George.
