Montesquieu

“ I am sure you would not approve of a sorceress causing an army to spring out of the earth, or of a hero destroying single-handed a hundred thousand men. Yet such are our romances; the repetition of these dull adventures tires us out, and these absurd marvels disgust us. ”

“ They are as unnatural as yours, and, on account of our manners, excessively tedious; it takes ten years of devotion before a lover may be allowed as much as to see the face of his mistress. Yet the authors are compelled to conduct their readers through these wearisome preliminaries. As it is impossible that incidents should be endlessly varied, they have recourse to an artifice worse than the evil they would remedy ”