Which sermon did Mr. Collins read by the fire?

antiquated notions of gallantry

You remember the scene when Mr. Collins is asked to read a novel aloud to the Bennet girls and he is shocked, declaring instead that he brought Fordyce’s Sermons, the full title of which is Sermons to Young Women.

So, the inevitable question: which sermon did he read?

I was perusing Fordyce in the library recently, and it was surely Sermon IV. This sermon deals with the hobby-horse of the age: the immorality of novels. But, perhaps more importantly, it contains some sound common-sense about marriage.

Reading Fordyce is a strange experience when you have Jane Austen in mind. She would surely object to his crabbed and demeaning attitude to proper femininity, which occurs on what feels like every page. No long walks over muddy fields for him!

But who can read this invective against marrying a reformed rake and not feel regret that Lydia did not listen more closely?

That he who has been formerly a rake may after all prove a very tolerable husband, as the world goes, I have said already that I do not dispute. But I would ask, in the next place, is this commonly to be expected? Is there no danger that such a man will be tempted by the power of long habit to return to his old ways; or that the insatiable love of variety, which he has indulged so freely, will some time or other lead him astray from the finest woman in the world? Will not the very idea of a restraint, which he could never brook while single, make him only the more impatient of it when married?

And look at this warning about the folly of wasting your time. Could there be a more suitable passage to read aloud at Longbourn?

If your mornings be spent in rambling and dressing, your evenings in visits and cards, or public entertainments; if this be the general tenor of your transactions, on which side, I beseech you, can the balance be expected to lie at the bottom of the account?

It is when Fordyce inveighs against the reading of Novels that he becomes most Janeite.