LIGHT READING, AS IT MAY BE SUPPOSED TO INFLUENCE In the morn and liquid dew of youth HOR. SHAKSP. LONDON: PRINTED FOR JAMES CARPENTER, OLD BOND STREET. AN ? ESSAY, &c. IN the following observations upon the subject of LIGHT READING, I shall not extend my view to works which might receive that title from such persons as Aristotle, Locke, or Newton; but, excluding from my definition of light literature, all folios, quartos, and crown-octavos of voyages, travels, tracts B of divinity, politics, metaphysics, &c., shall endeavour to call the attention of the reader to some remarks on a few of the various consequences which may be supposed to arise from the perusal of novels, romances, and poems of a particular class: in other words, to the ordinary contents of a circulating library. Vanity already prompts me to believe that this my little volume has itself some chance of a place in one of those repositories, and therefore a chance of being read. Already, methinks, I see it take its post in a sky-blue or rose-coloured covering, upon the counter or in |