" and whoever is obliged to
read it from cover to cover for the purpose of describing it to others,
must find himself, at the end of his task, in sore vexation of spirit.
Human depravity is never an agreeable subject for a work of
entertainment, and while Swift's genius holds the reader fascinated
with the horror of his Yahoos, the ability of a Manley or a Johnstone
is not sufficient to aid the reader in wading through their vicious
expositions of corruption. It must be said that Johnstone had some
excuse. If he were to satirize society at all, it was better that he
should do it thoroughly; that he should expose official greed and
dishonesty, the orgies of Medenham Abbey, the infamous extortions of
trading justices, in all their native ugliness. It must be said that
the time in which he lived presented many features to the painter of
manners which could not look otherwise than repulsive on his canvas.
But his zeal to expose the vices of his age led him into doing great
injustice to some persons, and into grossly libelling others. He
imputed crimes to individuals of which he could have had no knowledge;
and he shamefully misrepresented the Methodists and the Jews. If
Johnstone had wished to see how offensive a book he might write, and
how disgusting and indecent a book the public of his day would read and
applaud, he might well have brought "Chrysal" into the world. If he had
intended, by exposing crime, to check it, he had better have burned his
manuscript. He has added one other corruption to those he exposed, and
one other evidence of the lack of taste and decency which characterized
his time. No man can plead the intention of a reformer as an excuse for
placing before the world the scenes and suggestions of unnatural crime
which sully the pages of "Chrysal," and if men do, in single instances,
fall below the level of brutes, he who gloats over their infamy and
publishes their contagious guilt deserves some share of their odium.

The novels of Henry Mackenzie have a charm of their own, which may be
largely attributed to the fact that their author was a gentleman.
Whoever has read, to any extent, the works of fiction of the eighteenth
century, must have observed how perpetually he was kept in low company,
how rarely he met with a character who had the instincts as well as the
social position of a gentleman. A tone of refined sentiment and dignity
pervades "The Man of Feeling," which recalls the "Vicar of Wakefield,"
an