nstant pleasure and satisfaction.

The novels of Richard Cumberland, "Henry," "Arundel," and "John de
Lancaster," contain some well-drawn characters and readable sketches of
life. But Cumberland had little originality. He aimed without success
at Fielding's constructive excellence, and imitated that great master's
humor, only to reproduce his coarseness. The character of Ezekiel Daw,
the Methodist, in "Henry," is fair and just, and contrasts very
favorably with the libellous representations of the Methodist preachers
in Graves' "Spiritual Quixote," and other contemporary novels. Another
writer of fiction of considerable prominence in his day, but of none in
ours, was Dr. Moore, whose "Zeluco" contained some very lively "Views
of human nature, taken from life and manners, foreign and domestic,"
but also some very disagreeable exhibitions of human degradation and
vice.

The influence of the French Revolution in England is apparent in the
works of several novelists who wrote at the end of the eighteenth
century. Thomas Holcroft embodied radical views in novels now quite
forgotten.[197] Robert Bage has left four works containing opinions of
a revolutionary character--"Barham Downs," "James Wallace," "The Fair
Syrian," and "Mount Henneth." These novels are written in the form of a
series of letters and have little narrative interest. The author has
striven, sometimes successfully, at a powerful delineation of
character, but his works are too evidently a vehicle for his political
and philosophical opinions. He represents with unnatural consistency
the upper classes as invariably corrupt and tyrannical, and the lower
as invariably honest and deserving. His theories are not only
inartistically prominent, but are worthless and immoral. He looks upon
a tax-gatherer as a thief, and condones feminine unchastity as a
trivial and unimportant offence.

The novelist most deeply embued with the doctrines of the French
Revolution was William Godwin--a man of great literary ambition, and
less literary capacity. His "Life of Chaucer" has the merits of a
compilation, but not those of an original literary work. His political
and social writings were merely reproductions of French revolutionary
views, and were entirely discredited by Malthus' attacks upon them. The
same lack of originality and of independent power characterized
Godwin's novels. They all have a patch-work effect, and in all may be
found the traces of imitation. "St. Leon" a