, _Pamela Censured_ attacks _Pamela_ for claiming to be
the first work ever aimed at cultivating "the Principles of VIRTUE and
RELIGION in the Minds of the YOUTH of BOTH SEXES." When _Pamela
Censured_ later assails _Pamela_ for not telling a true story, as the
title page advertises, it naively fails to understand that by the time
of _Pamela's_ publication the guise of telling a true story had
virtually become a fictional convention.

But when _Pamela Censured_ considers the implications of _Pamela's_
fictionality, it raises two valid literary problems, treating the first
in a cursory fashion and devoting to the second most of its space and
attention. If, as _Pamela Censured_ first of all asserts, the "editor"
of _Pamela_ is really the author, then all of the prefatory material in
_Pamela_ must be seen as proof of the author's immorality: he is a man
consumed by vanity. Secondly, this author must be convicted on even more
serious moral grounds: his fiction instructs readers to sin and enflames
those passions which he, as a moral man, should extinguish. Not only is
this a clear moral flaw in the author and in his book, but it also
blatantly contradicts the promises made on the title page.

In attacking _Pamela's_ morality, _Pamela Censured_ raises a problem
inherent in virtually all narrative fiction: stories inevitably lead
some readers to imitate the vicious characters rather than the virtuous
ones, in spite of any moral statements made by the author or any
punishments meted out at the end of the story. Even in "forbidding a
silly ostler to grease the horse's teeth," as Alithea says in _The
Country Wife_ (III, i), one may very easily teach him "to do't." Such
concerns, of course, are not new. From Plato and Horace to the
Neo-Humanists of the twentieth century, critics have dwelled in varying
degrees on the moral effects of literature. The eighteenth century,
reacting against the supposed immorality of the Restoration, often
emphasized the _utile_, losing sight of the _dulce_ in its criticism.
_Pamela Censured_ in its moral approach bears a striking similarity to
Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the
English Stage_ (1698): both virtually try to bludgeon to death literary
works for inciting immoral actions. In one respect, however, _A Short
View_ exercises a bit more control than does _Pamela Censured_. While
Collier refuses to quote directly from the offensive literature,
affirming that h