ABSTRACT
Of the various species of composition that in course come before us, there are none in which our writers of the male sex have less excelled, since the days of Richardson and Fielding, than in the arrangement of a novel. Ladies seem to appropriate to themselves an exclusive privilege in this kind of writing; witness the numerous productions of romantic tales to which female authors have given birth. The portraiture of the tender passions, the delicacy of sentiment, and the easy flow of style, may, perhaps, be most adapted to the genius of the softer sex: but however that may be, politeness, certainly, will not suffer us to dispute this palm with our fair competitors. We, though of the harder sex, as men, and of a still harder race as critics, are no enemies to an affecting well-told story: but as we are known not to be very easily pleased, it may be imagined that those performances only will obtain the sanction of our applause, which can stand the test of certain criteria of excellence.
