And so they all go, forever
implying that fiction is frivolous or immoral or worthless, until it
is not surprising that, as Mr. Bradsher has reminded us, the elder
Timothy Dwight of Yale College was able to assert, "Between the Bible
and novels there is a gulf fixed which few novel-readers are willing
to pass." Richardson was forced to defend himself, so was Sterne, so
was Fielding, so was Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson was evidently making
concessions when he advised romances as reading for youth. Jeffrey,
the critic and tyrant of the next century, summed it all up when he
wrote that novels are "generally regarded as among the lower
productions of our literature." And this is the reputation that the
novel family has brought with it even down to our day.
The nineteenth century was worse, if anything, than earlier
periods, for it furthered what might be called the evangelistic
slant toward novel-reading, the attitude that neatly classified
this form of self-indulgence with dancing, card-playing, hard
drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that
the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this
prejudice.
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