“Sally [Fielding] has mended her style in her last volume of David Simple, which conveys a useful moral, though she does not seem to have intended it:  I mean, shows the ill consequences of not providing against casual losses, which happen to almost everybody.  Mrs. Orgueil’s character is well drawn, and is frequently to be met with.  The Art of Tormenting, the Female Quixote[15] and Sir C. Goodville are all sale work.  I suppose they proceed from her pen, and heartily pity her, constrained by her circumstances to seek her bread by a method, I do not doubt, she despises.  Tell me who is that accomplished countess she celebrates.  I left no such person in London; nor can I imagine who is meant by the English Sappho mentioned in Betsy Thoughtless, whose adventures and those of Jenny Jessamy, gave me some amusement.”

[Footnote 15:  By Charlotte Lennox.]

“I have read The Cry[16] and if I would write in the style to be admired by good Lord Orrery, I would tell you The Cry made me ready to cry, and the Art of Tormenting tormented me very much.  I take them to be Sally Fielding’s, and also the Female Quixote; the plan of that is pretty, but ill executed:  on the contrary, the fable of The Cry is the most absurd I ever saw, but the sentiments generally just; and I think, if well dressed, would make a better body of ethics than Bolingbroke’s.  Her inventing new words, that are neither more harmonious or significant than those already in use, is intolerable.

[Footnote 16:  By Sarah Fielding and Miss Collier.]

“The next book I laid my hand on was The Parish Girl which interested me enough not to be able to quit it till it was read over, though the author has fallen into the common mistake of romance-writers; intending a virtuous character, and not knowing how to draw it; the first step of his heroine (leaving her patroness’s house) being altogether absurd and ridiculous, justly entitling her to all the misfortunes she met with.

“Candles came (and my eyes grown weary), I took up the next book, merely because I supposed from the title it could not engage me long.  It was Pompey the Little,[17] which has really diverted me more than any of the others, and it was impossible to go to bed till it was finished.  It was a real and exact representation of life, as it is now acted in London, as it was in my time, and as it will be (I do not doubt) a hundred years hence, with some little variation of dress, and perhaps government.  I found there many of my acquaintance.  Lady T. and Lady O. are so well painted, I fancied I heard them talk, and have heard them say the very things there repeated....

[Footnote 17:  By Francis Coventry.]