SOURCE: Review of The Father and Daughter by Amelia Opie, in Monthly Review, Vol. XXXV, 1801, pp. 163-66.

In the following excerpt, the critic describes the favorable impression made by Opie's The Father and Daughter in regard to its ability to describe pathos and distress and to elicit the appropriate feelings in the reader.

The pleasures of melancholy are suited only to minds of uncommon susceptibility,—to those persons who may be said to have a sympathetic taste for distress; and from readers of this class, the tale of woe now before us will meet with peculiar acceptance. For ourselves, we own that we have been truly affected by the perusal of it, since it is replete with interest, and possesses pathos enough to affect the heart of the most callous of critical readers. Our only consolation, under the first impression on our feelings, arose from the hope and...