Art. 25. Letters of Miss Riversdale.
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: October 1804

Elizabeth Moody Art. 25. Letters of Miss Riversdale. 12mo. 3 Vols. 13s. 6d. Boards. Johnson. [The Monthly Review , vol. 45, second series, October 1804, pp. 212-13. Benjamin Nangle identifies Elizabeth Moody as the author of this review from an editor's marked copy of The Monthly Review . See Nangle, The Monthly 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.]

The heroine of this novel resides with her widowed mother, Lady Riversdale, at Geneva; and her brother, Sir Henry, is a very accomplished gentleman absent on his travels. The separation of this affectionate brother and sister induces the necessity of a punctual correspondence, as a means of alleviating the regrets of that state; and the scene opens with lamentations on this subject. Miss R. tells us that it is her brother's request that four⸱and⸱twenty hours may never pass without something being committed to paper; and the request is faithfully fulfilled on the part of Louisa, who, after the manner of other journalists, details every minute event of her life, and every emotion of her heart. As she is very young, and very beautiful, no man of course sees Miss Riversdale without being fascinated: hence ensue lovers [See Vol.xxxviii, &c. [Moody's note].] innumerable; and, as it is the natural consequence of abundance to occasion a perplexity on the subject of choice, we perceive our heroine occasionally fluctuating between two opinions; till at last she decides in favour of Colonel Malcolm, who is such an Othello in jealousy that we tremble lest she should encounter a Desdemona's fate. We are, however, at length relieved from this anxiety by a sudden change of the scene; in which the Colonel retires to the back ground, drops his love and his jealousy, and accommodates his behavior in a very gentleman-like manner to the imperious necessity of the history, which insists on his marrying Lady Mary Melville, who must have died had he not rescued her by a coup de bague. Miss Riversdale, having dissolved this chain, welcomes the return of liberty, and flies from place to place with the velocity of a bird. To-day, she is in London; to-morrow, she is at York; the next day she is in Scotland; and in every place she meets with great variety of characters, which she paints rather too much in the caricature style. They are merely sketches, hastily conceived and hastily executed; and by no means worthy of being classed as pictures of the general habits, manners, or language of the people whom Miss Riversdale describes. In many of the letters, however, we meet with good sense and good sentiments; and the student or proficient in French will be pleased with some parts of the dialogue, and some whole letters, which are written in that elegant language. We think that the story of this work does not excite sufficient interest on the point of incident, to rank in the class of novels; and that it should rather have been intitled, as the editor intimates, "Characters and Sketches of Manners."