ventures are worthy to be bound up with those of my good
sister-in-law, the German Princess, and Moll Flanders."--Walpole to
Mann, June 14, 1742.]

[Footnote 181: "Adventures of Count Fathom," letter of dedication.]

[Footnote 182: "The Carter and Talbot Correspondence," Ed. by Rev.
Montagu Pennington, 1809.]

[Footnote 183: See "The Carter and Talbot Correspondences."]

CHAPTER VII.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CONTINUED.
I.--THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL.
II.--STERNE, JOHNSON, GOLDSMITH, AND OTHERS.
III.--MISS BURNEY, AND THE FEMALE NOVELISTS.
IV.--THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL.

I.

We have observed in the earlier works of fiction of the eighteenth
century, together with great coarseness of thought and manners, the
reflection of a strong moral and reforming tendency. As early as the
reign of William III, Parliament had requested the king to issue
proclamations to justices of the peace, instructing them to put in
execution the neglected laws against open licentiousness.[184] In 1698,
Collier published his "Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of
the English Stage," a powerful and effective protest against the
depravity of the drama. At about the same time had been formed the
Societies for the Reformation of Manners, which energetically attacked
the more flagrant forms of crime. "England, bad as she is," wrote Defoe
in 1706, "is yet a reforming nation; and the work has made more
progress from the court even to the street, than, I believe, any nation
in the world can parallel in such a time and in such circumstances."
Toward the middle of the century, these tendencies took effect in the
Methodist Revival, a movement destined to exert a profound influence
on society. Accompanying this revival, or resulting from it, were many
important reforms. The corruption of political life gradually
diminished. A new patriotism and unselfishness began to appear in
public men. A spirit of philanthropy arose which corrected some of the
worst social abuses. Under the leadership of the noble John Howard, the
prisons, so long the abandoned haunts of squalor, oppression, and
misery, were considerably redeemed from their shameful condition. Beau
Nash marked the progress of peaceful and law-abiding habits by formally
forbidding the wearing of swords wherever his fashionable authority was
recognized. In the fiction of the latter half of the eighteenth century
is illustrated a gradual transition of morals and taste from the
unbridled c