Art. 20. The Morlands. Tales illustrative of the Simple and Surprising.
author: Elizabeth Moody
source date: July 1806

Elizabeth Moody Art. 20. The Morlands. Tales illustrative of the Simple and Surprising. By R. C. Dallas, Esq. 12mo. 4 Vols. 1l. 1s. Boards. Longman and Co. [The Monthly Review , vol. 50, second series, July 1806, pp. 317-318. 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 created this edition for The Criticism Archive.]

We perfectly agree with Mr. Dallas that the value of these works of imagination consists in the faithful picture of mankind which they present; and that 'when the author transports the reader into the regions of improbability, his only view is to amuse idleness and to gratify wonder,—the passion of children.' Mr. D's just discriminations of character are evidences of his acquaintance with the world; and the blended lights and shades, with which his pictures, make them as the French say "sauter aux yeux." [Springs to the eyes; to become vividly evident.] These lights and shades constitute the tempered virtues which form that kind of equivocal character "good in the main;" and personages of this description are the friends of Morland. The Curate of Reading, though affectionately interested in Morland's welfare, comes suddenly into his room like Job's messenger, and acquaints him with the series of misfortunes that had befallen him,—the death of his only protectress, the privation of his little fortune, of his situation, of his studies, of his every happiness in life,—with the most philosophic apathy, though with tears in his eyes, and the sympathetic address on opening his Pandora's box, of "having bad news to tell his dear Ned." In this well wrought dialogue, we see one of Job's comforters sitting for the picture of the Reading Curate; and from this conference we pass to the reception which Morland experiences from the Vicar of Holcomb, and which may serve as a farther illustration of the truth of the proposition, "that gifts of benevolence and humanity are not always brought in baskets of flowers."—The comic scene of the passionate Whitaker, who quarrels with his tables and chairs for being placed on castors, and spinning him round the room, owing to an angry jerk given by himself in the rage of disappointment, it is worthy of Moliere ; and the dialogue that follows, between Morland and the Vicar, is a finish to the picture.—The reader will not resign his pleasure here, but will pursue the narrative with sufficient interest in the fate of the hero, through a long journey of three volumes, without impatience for that harbour of rest, the denouement; yet, that we may not trespass on the rules of our critical veracity, we must confess a gape or two on the fantastic scenery at Broke Hall, and the exaggerated character of the lady of that mansion. Many excellent reflections, and precepts of the best morality, occur in the work: we wish that our young Collegians were all Morlands; and that the family of the Jones's would people a colony!—Having already given our sentiments on works of the imagination, and agreed with Mr. D. that such will please most as are most restrained within the pale of probability, we may be supposed to have no partiality for the second tale, which forms the fourth volume; indeed we may be allowed to wish that Mr. D. had not thought it necessary to maintain his position by the proof of illustration, which exhibits a narrative of events as romantic as the fictions of Ariosto. We also disapprove the plan of fabricating one story on the basis of a preceding tale: it is building one house on the top of another, and exposing them to the chance of both falling together.