...therefore "easily" follow "the current of fancy." "For this reason," he continues in the same installment, "these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater...solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions" (1: 20). Here Johnson...

...delighted, are such as exhibit life in its true state" 137 —as well as the provisional tone of the phrase "these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality," 138 demonstrate the difficulty of making definitive statements about so recent a genre. This uncharacteristic...

...rest of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama, as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer...observing his behaviour and success, to regulate their own practise, when 45 they shall be engaged in the like part. For this reason these familiar histories...

...understands the practice in the Rambler, where "common readers" are to "fix their eyes upon [a character] with closer attention, and hope by observing his behaviour...success to regulate their own practices, when they 25 The eighteenth-century conduct book is essential to both Armstrong's and Poovey's account of the...

...rest of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer...their own practices, when they shall be engaged in like part. For this reason these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities...

...novelistic example, its sheer proximity to us, entails both a pedagogic promise and a pedagogic danger: [T]hese familiar histories may perhaps be made of...solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power ot example...

...himself," but in contemporary novels, where the "adventurer is leveled with the rest of the world . . . young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer attention, and hope, by observing his behavior and success, to regulate their own practices. . . ." Thus moralists have more reason to be...

...rest of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama, as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer...solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. Quite parallel with this...

...was in very little danger of making any applications to himself." The "familiar histories" of today "may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions." Not that Johnson lacks...

...with the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama, as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer...practices, when they shall be engaged in the like part (69). Some of Inchbald's later revisions indicate that she felt pressure to clarify A Simple Story's...