“The stage how loosely doth Astraea tread,
      Who fairly puts all characters to bed.”

apply almost equally well to her novels.  But still the contemporary reader found nothing in their pages to offend his sense of propriety.  And Mrs. Behn, who simply put into a literary form ideas and scenes which were common in the society about her, cannot with justice be accused of an intention to pander to the lowest tastes of her readers.  She said herself, when reproved for the tone of her plays, which was much inferior to that of her novels:  “I make challenge to any person of common sense and reason, that is not wilfully bent on ill nature, and will, in spite of sense, wrest a double entendre from everything * * * but any unprejudiced person that knows not the author—­to read one of my comedies and compare it with others of this age, and if they can find one word which can offend the chastest ear, I will submit to all their pevish cavills.”  All this is worthy of note, if we are to follow the course of English fiction without prejudice.  For it will be shown that the nineteenth century, with all its well-deserved pride in an advanced refinement and morality, has produced a large number of novelists, both male and female, whose works are as immoral as those of Mrs. Behn, without her excuse.  Who, with all the advantages accruing from life in a refined age, with every encouragement to pursue a better course, have deliberately chosen to court an infamous notoriety by making vice familiar and attractive.  And this too, at a time when a general confidence in the purity of contemporary literary works has practically done away with parental censorship; when books of evil tendency are as likely to fall into the hands of the young and susceptible as those of elevating tendency—­a circumstance which adds a new responsibility to the duties of the conscientious writer.

[Footnote 87:  Dunlop’s “History of Fiction,” chap. iv.]

[Footnote 88:  “The Fair Hypocrite,” “The Physician’s Stratagem,” “The Wife’s Resentment,” “The Husband’s Resentment,” in two parts; “The Happy Fugitive,” “The Perjured Beauty.”]

[Footnote 89:  “History of Oroonoko,” Mrs. Behn’s “Collected plays and novels.”]

CHAPTER VI.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
  I.—­ENGLAND UNDER ANNE AND THE FIRST TWO GEORGES. 
 II.—­SWIFT, ADDISON, DEFOE. 
III.—­RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT.

I.

The advance of a nation in numbers and civilization is accompanied by so great a complexity of social conditions that in this volume it is possible only to attempt to seize such salient characteristics of the eighteenth century as may serve to throw light on the course of English fiction.  No age presents a more prosaic aspect.  If we consider the condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the prevalence of abuses and corruption left by the