Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.‪)‬

According to the high authority of Charles Lamb, it has sometimes happened 'that from no inferior merit in the rest, but from some superior good fortune in the choice of a subject, some single work' (of a particular author) 'shall have been suffered to eclipse, and cast into the shade, the deserts of its less fortunate brethren'. And after quoting the case of Bunyan's 'Holy War' as compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress', he adds that', in no instance has this excluding partiality been exerted with more unfairness than against what may be termed the secondary novels or romances of De Foe'.