Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 2).djvu/237

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both with the pleasing and pathetic, as to hurry on the reader wherever the writer chose. Such were the reflections of our hero, when the "Romance of the Forest" was first sent for his critical examination. The able and inventive author chusing a different tract from a Burney and a a Smith, and accommodating herself to the growing taste for the gigantesque, admitted it with the modifications of judgment in her scenery and machinery, but did not chuse it as the ground-work of her story. The actual tale is natural, and during the age and manners which she describes, is probable. No object is actually presented which was not within the compass of known existence at the time. The impressions though arising from imaginary beings, were natural in the characters and state of mind represented. An innocent and inexperienced girl, dejected with the consciousness of