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warning; but if you have a desire to stay with me, you shall."--"To besure, ma'am," answered Mrs Honour, "I shall never desire to part withyour ladyship. To be sure, I almost cried my eyes out when you gave mewarning. It would be very ungrateful in me to desire to leave yourladyship; because as why, I should never get so good a place again. Iam sure I would live and die with your ladyship; for, as poor Mr Jonessaid, happy is the man----"Here the dinner bell interrupted a conversation which had wrought suchan effect on Sophia, that she was, perhaps, more obliged to herbleeding in the morning, than she, at the time, had apprehended sheshould be. As to the present situation of her mind, I shall adhere toa rule of Horace, by not attempting to describe it, from despair ofsuccess. Most of my readers will suggest it easily to themselves; andthe few who cannot, would not understand the picture, or at leastwould deny it to be natural, if ever so well drawn.BOOK V.CONTAINING A PORTION OF TIME SOMEWHAT LONGER THAN HALF A YEAR.Chapter i.Of the SERIOUS in writing, and for what purpose it is introduced.Peradventure there may be no parts in this prodigious work which willgive the reader less pleasure in the perusing, than those which havegiven the author the greatest pains in composing. Among these probablymay be reckoned those initial essays which we have prefixed to thehistorical matter contained in every book; and which we havedetermined to be essentially necessary to this kind of writing, ofwhich we have set ourselves at the head.For this our determination we do not hold ourselves strictly bound toassign any reason; it being abundantly sufficient that we have laid itdown as a rule necessary to be observed in all prosai-comi-epicwriting. Who ever demanded the reasons of that nice unity of time orplace which is now established to be so essential to dramatic poetry?What critic hath been ever asked, why a play may not contain two daysas well as one? Or why the audience (provided they travel, likeelectors, without any expense) may not be wafted fifty miles as wellas five? Hath any commentator well accounted for the limitation whichan antient critic hath set to the drama, which he will have containneither more nor less than five acts? Or hath any one living attemptedto explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by that word_low_; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all humourfrom the stage, and have made the theatre as dull as a drawing-room!Upon all these occasions the world seems to have embraced a maxim ofour law, viz., _cuicunque in arte sua perito credendum est:_ for itseems perhaps difficult to conceive that any one should have hadenough of impudence to lay down dogmatical rules in any art or sciencewithout the least foundation. In such cases, therefore, we are apt toconclude there are sound and good reasons at the bottom, though we are