Diary Entry by Henry Crabb Robinson.
29 May 1828.
Read to-day the first volume of Scargill’s Penelope—a dull but clever novel. Scargill says it has been praised by Lamb. I certainly could not have read it but as a duty, and yet the book has many good things in it. Its worst faults are too monotonous a tone of jeering against the privileged orders and too much commonplace remark. The characters are well conceived but also of a rather commonplace character.
Source: Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, ed. by Edith J. Morley, 3 vols (London: Dent, 1938), I, 358.