The majority of the early novels, in aiming to teach some lesson, show the influence of Samuel Richardson, the father of English fiction. This didactic spirit appears in sober statement of the most self-evident truths. "Death, my dear Maria, is a serious event," says the heroine of one of these novels. Another characteristic is tepid or exaggerated sentimentality. The heroine of _The Power of Sympathy_ dies of a broken heart "in a lingering graceful manner." At least twenty-two American novels had been published between 1789 and the appearance of Charles Brockden Brown's _Wieland_ 1798. Only an antiquary need linger over these. We must next study the causes that led to a pronounced change in fiction. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CLASSIC AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.--The next step in fiction will show a breaking away from the classic or didactic school of Samuel Richardson and a turning toward the new Gothic or romantic school. To understand these terms, we must know something of the English influences that led to this change. For the first two thirds of the eighteenth century, English literature shows the dominating influence of the classic school. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in poetry and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) in prose were the most influential of this school. They are called _classicists_ because they looked to the old classic authors for their guiding rules. Horace, more than any other classic writer, set the standard for poetry. Pope and his followers cared more for the excellence of form than for the worth of the thought. Their keynote was:-- "True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." [Footnote: Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, lines 297-8.] In poetry the favorite form was a couplet, that is, two lines which rhymed and usually made complete sense. This was not inaptly termed "rocking horse meter." The prose writers loved the balanced antithetical sentences used by Dr. Johnson in his comparison of Pope and Dryden:-- "If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing.... Dryden is read with frequent astonishment and Pope with perpetual delight." Such overemphasis placed on mere form tended to draw the attention of the writer away from the matter. The American poetry of this period suffered more than the prose from this formal influence. Since the motto of the classicists was polished regularity, they avoided the romantic, irregular, and improbable, and condemned the _Arabian Nights_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Tempest_, and other "monstrous irregularities of Shakespeare." This school loved to teach and to point out shortcomings, hence the terms "didactic" and "satiric" are often applied to it.