Excerpt from The Eighteenth-Century Novel in Theory and Practice: A Dissertation The investigation begins with the novel of character, and includes within its compass the literary productions by leading authors only, from Richardson to Godwin. The inordinate length of many eighteenth-century novels made it apparent from the outset that a detailed study of every English novel in this period would be impossible within the scope of this dissertation. But such, fortunately, was not necessary; for the really great novelists blazed the trail and pointed the way. Writers of less importance added no new theory, nor did they vary the practice except wherein imitation and inferior literary talents led to cor ruption. Very few references have been made to their works;' for in what they said and did, they but reflected the judgments of their superiors. Their opinions would not materially strengthen this work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.