dear and honoured friend, Mr Wilberforce, in his celebrated
religious treatise, when speaking of the unchristian tendency of
the fashionable novels of the eighteenth century, distinctly
excepts Richardson from the censure. Another excellent person,
whom I can never mention without respect and kindness, Mrs Hannah
More, often declared in conversation, and has declared in one of
her published poems, that she first learned from the writings of
Richardson those principles of piety by which her life was
guided. I may safely say that books celebrated as works of art
through the whole civilised world, and praised for their moral
tendency by Dr Johnson, by Mr Wilberforce, by Mrs Hannah More,
ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief, that if
the law had been what my honourable and learned friend proposes
to make it, they would have been suppressed. I remember
Richardson's grandson well; he was a clergyman in the city of
London; he was a most upright and excellent man; but he had
conceived a strong prejudice against works of fiction. He
thought all novel-reading not only frivolous but sinful. He
said,--this I state on the authority of one of his clerical
brethren who is now a bishop,--he said that he had never thought
it right to read one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, Sir,
that the law had been what my honourable and learned friend would
make it. Suppose that the copyright of Richardson's novels had
descended, as might well have been the case, to this gentleman.
I firmly believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give
them a wide circulation. I firmly believe, that he would not for
a hundred thousand pounds have deliberately done what he thought
sinful. He would not have reprinted them. And what protection
does my honourable and learned friend give to the public in such
a case? Why, Sir, what he proposes is this: if a book is not