Art. 19. Novelle Morali.
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: April 1801

Elizabeth Moody Art. 19. Novelle Morali, di G. Polidori, Maestro di Lingua Italiano. Small 12mo. Two Parts. 4s. sewed. Wallis, &c. [The Monthly Review , vol. 34, second series, April 1801, p. 426. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Montly Review, Second Series, 1790-1815: Indexes of Contributors and Articles , Clarendon Press, 1955. Jonathan Pinkerton and Mary A. Waters prepared this edition of the article for The Criticism Archive.]

These two small volumes contain pretty little Italian stories, ingeniously calculated to answer the purpose for which the author tells us they were written; namely, that of conveying instruction in the Italian language through the medium of a moral narrative. In his Dedication, he asserts this to be his plan:

The end, (he says) which I propose to myself, is to combine instruction with morality; and at the same time that I am teaching the Italian language, to give such examples of virtue rewarded and vice punished, as may lead the minds of my young scholars to the knowlege of morals on which the happiness of their lives will in a great measure depend.

The stories are very amusing, and the comic and the grave have their several merits.