of the passions.  Bigamy, seduction, adultery, are the incidents on which the story turns, and an effort is always made by the novelist to give to the sinners as attractive and interesting an aspect as possible, and to hold up any respectable people who may appear in the book to the contempt and derision of the reader.  Perhaps we would be wrong in blaming a writer for his or her vulgarity.  This is a fault into which some authors fall unconsciously, and is a part of their nature which they cannot shake off.  If Rhoda Broughton or “Ouida” were to cease being vulgar in print, they would be obliged to stop writing altogether, a public benefit which we can hardly expect them to confer.  But we have a right to severely call an author to task for representing vice in an attractive aspect, for condoning offences against morality, for depicting licentiousness as unattended by retributive consequences.  In so doing, a writer is false to art and to nature, as well as to morality.

Critics have done their utmost to discourage and expose this kind of literature.  The pages of The Spectator, of The Saturday Review, of The Athenaeum, of The London Examiner, of The Nation, are full of reviews which denounce in unmeasured terms the vulgarity and pruriency of much of the fiction of the present day.  But their censure can have little practical effect.  So long as a class of corrupt readers exists, so long will evil-minded men and women find a sale for the low conceptions of their depraved minds.  Parents alone, by supervising the reading of their children, can prevent the evil effects of immoral novels.  Some may think that I have exaggerated the bad characteristics of modern fiction.  A few examples of objectionable works will be found at the foot of this page,[214] an acquaintance with which will sustain my remarks.

The reader may possibly object that these are obscure names in literature, and that they represent writers whose works are ephemeral.  The names chosen are the most prominent in the class to which they belong.  Their obscurity is a redeeming feature of the society which can tolerate their existence.  Although writers are able to find a sale for the most disgusting productions; although the critic is continually obliged, in reviewing current literature, to wade through the nastiest mire, it yet remains certain that public taste is not pleased with the vile.  A limited circulation will be found for immoral novels among a depraved class, but it is to be said, for the credit of the nineteenth century, that talents prostituted can never bring fame.  The conceptions of a Goldsmith, a Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a George Eliot, remain among the dearest possessions of all English-speaking people.  But the unhealthy, unnatural, and hideous pictures given to the world by vicious men and women receive the same wages as the sin they portray.

[Footnote 212:  In Mr. John Morley’s edition of “English Men of Letters,” chapter ix.]