Jonathan Edwards wrote the story of one of his youthful experiences, but it
was "the story of a spiritual experience so little involved with the earth,
that one might fancy it the story of a soul that had missed being born."
Timothy Dwight (p. 92), who became president of Yale in 1795, said that
there is a great gulf fixed between novels and the _Bible_. Even later than
1800 there was a widespread feeling that the reading of novels imperiled
the salvation of the soul. To-day we know that certain novels are as
dangerous to the soul as leprosy to the body, but we have become more
discriminating. We have learned that the right type of fiction, read in
moderation, cultivates the imagination, broadens the sympathetic powers,
and opens up a new, interesting, and easily accessible land of enjoyment.
A quarter of a century before the _Declaration of Independence_, the great
eighteenth-century English writers of fiction had given a new creation to
the literature of England. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) had published
_Pamela_ in 1740 and _Clarissa Harlowe_ in 1748. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
had given his immortal _Tom Jones_ to the world in 1749.
Mrs.
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