_Pulito._ “What you have said, _was_ true, but _is_ not. There are now so many perfect specimens from every literary mine, that dross or counterfeit is instantly detected. Criticism has become stable, or, if ever influenced by prejudice, or local feeling, you have only to take the average--cast them together into the alembic, and truth will come forth. And indeed the _general_ and _long-continued_ opinion of the multitude on a literary work, is always correct, partly because nature speaks within them, and partly because they have been told what to think by their superiors.” _Nescio._ “Don’t suppose I prefer the flimsy modern copyists, to the eloquent Old English prose writers--the thinkers of the seventeenth century. But what says your Criticism to the novelists of the present age, as compared with those of eighty years since?” _Pulito._ “I speak not of Scott; for I admit, as must all, that to the rest of story tellers, he is the sun in heaven. I likewise except Edgeworth, and Marryatt, and, perhaps, James and Cooper. But the Bulwerian is the prevailing style; and of him enlightened criticism says, that, with much brilliancy, and some philosophy, there is a great deal that is vicious in style, and false in sentiment, shallow in reasoning, and depraving in tendency. It says that his aphorisms are merely antitheses, striking, but untrue. His characters are too strong contrasts to be natural; they are foils to one another.” _Nescio._ “And where will you find a more glaring instance of this, than in Scott’s Quentin Durward, where he introduces tragedy and comedy--the executioners to Lewis, that subtle king?” _Pulito._ “I allow it, and always considered the picture overcharged: it is broad farce, and not real life.” _Nescio._ “Well, I will tell you what _I_ think of Smollett. When he is himself, he is coarse; and when he rises to the tender, he speaks in language, which true lover and true poet never employed. His sentimentality is to me disgusting, and his sketches, though laughable, are many of them caricatures. He had a strong sense of the ludicrous, but no taste for the refined. His sea-characters are admirable; but when, in the History of England, were oaths and exclamations, which I repeat not, so common in the mouths of _refined ladies_ even, as he would represent? When I close a volume of Smollett, I rise with a sense of weariness--there is a something, which I sought, and found not--his characters appear before me in bold prominence, and they are consistent with themselves, but I doubt me whether all of them are consistent with human nature.”