Third Foundation on Nostr: "Reading the 18th Century novel is very much like riding a rambunctious horse. ...

"Reading the 18th Century novel is very much like riding a rambunctious horse. Actually, bowling along in a carriage; 100 years later, Eliot and the great Victorian novelists who were living with the noisy, fast, smoke-gouting trains would write with nostalgia of the grace and quietude and elegance of carriage travel. But the 17th Century novel depicts it as it more likely was, with its stuffy heat, travel-sickness from the jolts, and frequent breakdowns and overturns in the terrible roads, with highwaymen everywhere as there was no real law and order on the roads"
https://bookviewcafe.com/reading-the-classics-the-expedition-of-humphrey-clinker-by-tobias-smollett/