Can you please explain an answer in the Blue Book?

DUDE
Sat, 22 Jul 2006 20:52:50 +0000

it cant possibly be. ‘They were once persuasive but now go mostly unheeded’ isn’t consistent with what is stated in lines 21 to 24 - ‘…eighteenth century in the vain warnings that early cultural criticism sounded against the dangers of reading novels’ has a negative connotation.