Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/60

"Saint George, he is for England." Sir Walter and Squire Western had a stirring taste in songs. Dr. Johnson gave his allegiance without reserve to Fielding's Amelia. He read the inordinately long novel which bears her name at a single sitting, and he always honoured her as the best and loveliest of her sex,—this, too, at a time when Clarissa held the hearts of Christendom in her keeping. Amelia Booth, like Amelia Sedley, is a "thorough woman;" that is, she embodies all the characteristics which the straightforward vice of the eighteenth century conceived to be virtues in her sex, and which provoke the envious admiration of our own less candid age. "Fair, and kind, and good," so runs the verdict. "What more can be desired?" And the impatient retort of the feminine reader, "No more, but possibly a little less," offends the critic's ear. "Where can you find among the genteel writers of this age," asks Mr. Lang hotly, "a figure more beautiful, tender, devoted, and, in all good ways, womanly, than Sophia Western?" "The adorable Sophia," Mr. Austin Dobson calls her,—"pure and womanly, in spite of her unfavourable sur-