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,” and introduces the reader to better company and more elevated thoughts than the novels of the time usually afford.  “The Man of Feeling” is hardly a narrative.  Harley, the chief character, is a sensitive, retiring man, with feelings too fine for his surroundings.  The author places him in various scenes, and traces the effect which each produces upon his character.  The effect of the work is agreeable, though melancholy, and the early death of Harley completes the delineation of a man too gentle and too sensitive to battle with life.