ks very tickle of that sere: a yawn might come much more
easily. The most shocking thing that the heroine, who is "an attempt to
delineate woman in her natural state," does (and that not of malice) is
to receive her lover in a natural bathroom. But her adventures are told
in a style which is the oddest compound of Romantesque and Johnsonese.
("The hour was ardent. The bath was cool. _He calculated upon the
probable necessity of its enjoyment_.") The spirit is the silliest and
most ignorant Philhellenism--all the beauty, virtue, wisdom, of the
ancient Greeks being supposed to be inherited by their mongrel
successors of the early nineteenth century. An English and a Turkish
lover dispute Ida's affection or possession. There are the elaborate
pseudo-erudite notes which one has learnt to associate chiefly with
Moore. The authoress boasts in her preface that she "has already written
almost as many volumes as she has years," and that she has hardly ever
corrected her proofs. Perhaps this silliness will make some think her
not more an example of the savagery of contemporary criticism than a
justification thereof.

It was in fact not only brutal man who objected to the preposterous
excesses of pseudo-romance: and serious or jocular parables were taken
up against it, if not before _Northanger Abbey_ was written, long before
it was published. In 1810 a certain "G." or "S.G.," whose full name was
Sarah Green, wrote, besides some actual history and an attempt at the
historical novel, a very curious and rather hybrid book entitled
_Romance Readers and Romance Writers_. Its preface is an instance of
"Women, beware Women," for though it stigmatises male creatures, such as
a certain Curteis and a certain Pickersgill, it treats Lady Morgan (then
only Sydney Owenson) and "Rosa Matilda" even more roughly and asks (as
has been asked about a hundred years later and was asked about a hundred
years before), "Is it not amazing that the [two] most licentious writers
of romance are women?" And it starts with a burlesque account of a
certain Margaret Marsham who exclaims, "What then? to add to my earthly
miseries am I to be called Peggy? My name is Margari_tt_a!" "I am sure
that if I am called Peggy again I shall go into a fit." But this promise
of something to complete the trio with _Northanger Abbey_ and _The
Heroine_ (to be presently mentioned) is not maintained. Not only does
the writer force the note of parody too much by making "Margaritta"