40, 41 and 52, for
Lyttleton
read Lyttelton
1
## p.
1
## p.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v10
Lucidity of style.
Faults and shortcomings
of the work. Middleton's Life of Cicero. Adam Ferguson's
Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. Mitford's
History of Greece. Whitaker's History of Manchester
297
CHAPTER XIV
PHILOSOPHERS
By W. R. SORLEY, Litt. D. , F. B. A. , Fellow of King's College,
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
I. DAVID HUME
Hume's literary ambition. His life and literary career. His post-
humous Autobiography. His disclaimer of his earliest and greatest
work, A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume’s ‘New Medium. '
His analysis of 'Philosophical Relations. The Problem of Cauga-
tion. Hume's Theory of Belief. His sceptical solution. His
Theological Writings: 'Of Miracles'; Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion. Political and Economical Essays
II. ADAM SMITH
Life and Writings. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Wealth
of Nations. Its relation to Sir James Steuart's Inquiry into the
Principles of Political Economy. Adam Smith's Scientific Treat-
ment of Economic Facts. The System of Natural Liberty: Free
Trade.
321
335
III. OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS
David Hartley. Abraham Tucker. Richard Price and Joseph Priestley.
Paley and his Theological Utilitarianism. Reid, Campbell and
Beattie. The Principles of 'Common Sense' .
341
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
xiv
Contents
CHAPTER XV
DIVINES
By the Ven. Archdeacon W. H. HUTTON, B. D.
PAGR
General character of the English Theological Literature of the Period.
Its abhorrence of Enthusiasm. Earlier Writers distinguished by
power or outspokenness: Samuel Johnson. Atterbury and his
career. Smalridge. The Convocation Controversy: Wake. Hoadly
and the Bangorian Controversy. The later Nonjurors: the
Wagstaffes; Deacon; Henry Dodwell; Bonwicke. Robert Forbes.
Bingham. Thomas Sherlock. Butler, Wilson and Waterland:
A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist. Butler's Analogy.
Herring and Secker. The Methodist Movement: Whitefield.
James Hervey. Fletcher of Madeley. John and Charles Wesley. 350
:
CHAPTER XVI
THE LITERATURE OF DISSENT (1660—1760)
By W. A. SHAW, Litt. D. Vict, Public Record Office
The Historical Evolution of Dissent reflected in its Literature. The
principle of Liberty of Conscience and the struggle for Toleration.
The Literature of Dissent from Defoe to Watts. Michaijah
Towgood. Controversial Literature on Church Polity and Dogma.
The 'Happy Union,' and the Disruption between Independents
and Presbyterians. The spread of Arianism and the First Socinian
Controversy. The Arian Controversy proper: Peirce and Hallett.
The Salters' Hall Synod and the question of Subscription: John
Taylor and Samuel Bourn. The Free Thought effect of the
Unitarian Movement. Conservative contributions by Dissenters
to the Deistic Controversy. The Nonconformist Academy System,
Hymns and Devotional Literature
Appendix. List of Nonconformist Academies .
370
384
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
Contents
ху
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICAL LITERATURE (1755-1775)
By C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON, M. A. , Fellow of St John's
College
PAGE
Revival of Controversy after the death of Henry Pelham. The
Monitor. John Shebbeare and Arthur Murphy. Accession of
George Ill: Loyal Tory Pamphleteers. Smollett and The Briton.
Wilkes and The North Briton. Wilkes's literary triumph.
Antipathy to the Scots. Churchill: his earlier life. His begin-
nings as a Satirist. The Rosciad. Night. The Prophecy of
Famine. The Epistle to William Hogarth. The Duellist.
Gotham. The Conference and its personal confession. Churchill's
Later Satires. Force of his invective. Political Pamphlets in
Prose. Candor in The Public Advertiser. Woodfall's editorship
of the Advertiser. The Letter-Writers. Junius. His literary
personality and antecedents. The Letters of Junius proper.
Their substance and characteristics. Their supremacy in slan-
derous polemic. The Mystery of Junius. The Franciscan claim.
Junius the culmination of a notable series of Political Writings
388
:. 411
Bibliographies.
Table of Principal Dates
Index of Names
528
532
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
CORRIGENDA ET ADDENDA
VOL. IX
p. 62, note 1, for 1764 read 1744
p. 106, 1. 11 and Index, for Histoires comiques and Voyage à la Lune read Histoires
comique de la Lune and du Soleil (if Didot is right, M. Bastide is not quite right)
p. 196, 1. 12 and Index, for Mancroix read Maucroix
p. 235, 1. 13 from bottom, for Thomas read Thoyras
p. 502, 1. 16 from bottom, for Fuigallian read Fingallian
p. 577, 1. 19 from bottom, The Examiner was established in 1710, not 1712
VOL. X
p. 18, 1. 9 from bottom, for der Fräulein read des Fräuleins
p. 72, 11. 9 and 8 from bottom, read its sequel (1710), later known as Marplot in
Lisbon,
p. 73, 1. 12 from bottom, for up, read up
p. 80, ll. 2 and 1 from bottom, for The author's read Yet the later writer's
p. 83, 1. 20, for 1734 read 1737
1
p. 86, 1. 12 from bottom, for Carlia read Caelia
p. 87, l. 15 from bottom, for John read Benjamin (John is supposed to have
assisted his brother)
p. 89, 1. 13, for 1748 read 1768, and read footnote thus : It was reprinted, in 1773,
with the title A School for Fathers
p. 119, 1. 7 from bottom, for Acevonia read Aceronia
p. 123, 1. 1 from bottom, for purpose read propose
p. 144, 1. 13, for fellow-contributor read fellow. contributors
p. 199, 1. 5 from bottom, read or the favourite minuet in Ariadne
p. 213, 1. 6 from bottom, for younger read elder. (This has recently been
established by reference to tablets in Weybridge church, and the researches of
Sir Ernest Clarke and others)
p. 236, 1. 15, for coffin read coffer
p. 270, 1. 19 from bottom, for Bennet read Bennett
p. 358, 1. 3 from bottom, for Latham read Lathom
p. 375, 1. 24 and p. 384, 1. 20, for Micaijah read Michaijah
p. 377, 1. 9 and p. 384, 1. 20, for Chawney and Chauncey read Chauncy
p. 380, 1, 5, for John Barrington Shute read John Shute Barrington
p. 412, before l. 2 from bottom, add:
Dibelius, W. Englische Romankunst. Die Technik d. engl. Romans im 18. u. zu
Anfang d. 19. Jahrh. Vol. 1. Berlin, 1910.
p. 482, 1. 16 from bottom, add: Performed, on 22 February, the day of publica-
tion, at Mrs Cornely's rooms in Soho square
p. 490, add after 1. 16: Percy had a copious correspondence with literary men of
his time. Practically the whole of the 856 pages of vol. 1 (1848) and 436 pages of
vol. viii (1858) of Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th Century
are occupied by letters to and from Percy, his correspondents including George Steevens,
Dr Grainger, James Boswell, Michael Lort, Dr Thomas Birch, Archdeacon Nares,
Dr Thomas Campbell, the Moira family, John Nichols and John Pinkerton.
p. 513, 1. 20, for 1717 read 1714
p. 549, col. 2, 11.
40, 41 and 52, for Lyttleton read Lyttelton
1
## p. 1 (#27) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
RICHARDSON
AFTER a protracted period of tentative effort, the English
novel in the eighteenth century sprang into complete being from
a soil not upturned by any violent social upheaval, but in which
a deep movement of vitality had been secretly at work. The
moral revolution sometimes called the renascence of sentiment
cannot be said to have preceded the birth of Richardson's master-
pieces; but their success, to some extent, was favoured by it, while
they contributed to give it weight. The literary growth into
which the sap that had permeated the Elizabethan drama was
again to flow could thus be sustained by a radical energy equal in
depth, if not in breadth, to that by means of which Shakespeare's
plays had flourished. From the age of Milton to that of Wesley,
puritanism, to all appearance, had been struck out of art, as it had
out of the brilliant, superficial life of the world. Yet, Bunyan
had dreamt his dream, and visualised for ever his imaginings;
Addison had reconciled literature with the earnest purposes of
human life; Defoe had grasped the concrete substance of things
and breathed truth into fiction. From the beginning of the
Georgian era, the rise of the trading class had been slowly
infusing into public opinion a new spirit of probity and fervour.
About 1740, the methodist movement was in full activity, and
the sentimental reaction was gathering an impetus destined to
contribute to no less a result than the romantic revival. A
contemporary as he was of Wesley and of Young, Richardson
signalises the advent of a momentous change, the full extent of
which was never to become perceptible to himself. But the new
birth of puritanism, together with the resurrection of emotion
as a native energy, bore along his naturally narrow genius with
something of the amplitude and force of a tidal wave.
the poet, as he was one of the prophets, of middle-class religious
faith, and united in himself much of the literary significance of
1
He was
E. L. X,
CH, I.
## p. 2 (#28) ###############################################
2
Richardson
Bunyan, Addison and Defoe. Like Bunyan, he owed a vivid
strength of imagination to spiritual intensity; like Addison, he
turned to account for dramatic purposes a wealth of psychological
observation and insight into human character; like Defoe, he
established the greatness of the English novel on its unique faculty
of graphic realism. With him, the moral purpose of art reigned
supreme, and, from it, he derived alike his wonderful power and
his most obvious limitations. The score of edifying volumes in
which he conveyed instruction through emotion make up a triple
allegory, a thrice-told Pilgrim's Progress, illustrating the road to
salvation by both positive and negative examples. Pamela's trials,
Clarissa's sufferings, Sir Charles Grandison's difficulties, all open
the way to final happiness; and the inner drift and purpose of the
three novels is no other than the traditional impulse which had
driven Bunyan's naïve fancy, together with the pilgrim soul, from
the slough of despond to the eternal city. But Richardson's faith
and hope fall short of Bunyan's rapt singlemindedness. In Clarissa
only, the higher regions and finer air of religious enthusiasm are
approached; in the other books, a more grossly utilitarian atmo-
sphere prevails, and it is in this world that Sir Charles's, like
Pamela's, conscious expectations meet with their reward.
Of Samuel Richardson's life, not much is interesting, and little
need be said here. Though his family resided in London before,
and soon after, his birth, he was born in Devonshire, as the son of
a well-to-do joiner. It is characteristic of leanings which were
natural to him that, of his early history, he left what he could in
the dark, wbile what he mentioned he tried to idealise. He seems
to have received but a slight education, and certainly was without
any university training. Recent investigation has not materially
added to the scant knowledge of his boyhood and youth derived
from eighteenth century sources.
His father's wish was, first,
to make him a clergyman; but, owing to money losses, young
Richardson remained unprovided with the usual accomplishments;
and, eventually, he chose to be apprenticed to a printer. Due
emphasis is commonly laid on the early symptoms of his later
literary temperament, as revealed in the boy's love of letter-writing
and propensity to preaching, as well as on the experience which the
moralist was enabled to gather from his employment by girl friends
as penman and inditer in their love affairs. He set up a printing
business in 1719, and, in 1721, married the daughter of his old
master; she bore him six children, five of whom died in infancy.
A year after her death, in 1731, Richardson married a second time;
វ។
## p. 3 (#29) ###############################################
a
Pamela
3
and, again, he had to undergo sad family bereavements. The tenor
of his blameless but humdrum existence was broken only by a few
unimportant incidents, while his steady rise in the world can be
gauged from his employment as printer to the House of Commons,
and from his taking on lease a country residence at Hammer-
smith, in 1739.
By this time, Richardson was fifty years of age; he had
long shown signs of declining health, was much troubled with
nervousness and adopted the diet of a valetudinarian. He had not
produced anything of consequence in the way of literature, when,
in the same year, he was asked by two friends, printers like
himself, to prepare for them 'a little volume of letters, in a
common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country
readers who were unable to indite for themselves. ' These letters
came out in January 1741 and, as was intimated on the title-page,
furnished not only a pattern in style and form, but, also, directions
“ how to think and act justly and prudently in the common
Concerns of Human Life. One of the subjects emphasised in this
collection was the danger surrounding the position of a young
woman-especially when goodlooking—as a family servant. How
Richardson's first novel grew out of the treatment of this theme
is pretty generally known. That the book should have been
written in the form of letters was thus due to the accident of its
origin; but, underlying all mere chance and circumstance were
a deep-seated habit and the irresistible bent of genius. Pamela;
or, Virtue Rewarded, was published in two volumes (November
1740), and immediately met with an eager reception; two further
volumes, describing Pamela’s life after her marriage, were given
to the public in December 1741.
Pamela's supposed indebtedness to Marivaux's Marianne has
been discussed, and definitively negatived, by Austin Dobson, in his
study of Richardson. It seems safer to consider the first notable
English novel of sentimental analysis, in the light in which its
author looked upon it, as an entirely spontaneous production, the
rough outline of which had been suggested to him by facts. From
this point of view, it is impossible not to agree with the verdict
generally passed upon the book, as, in truth, a crude first attempt,
redeemed by unmistakable genius. The originality and power of
Richardson are recognisable throughout; but, both matter and
manner are spoiled by his characteristic faults, which are here
at their worst. The novel, as a whole, lacks unity of conception
and construction; one readily perceives that the plan was not
1-2
## p. 4 (#30) ###############################################
4
Richardson
decided upon from the first, but that it grew on the author as he
became more conscious of his faculties and aim. The two volumes
added as an afterthought are a mere tag and make a very heavy
demand upon the reader's patience; whatever interest we may
take in Pamela's fate, her triumph and happiness bring all our
anxieties to an end, and we should like to be spared her married
experiences, together with all the new ensamples furnished by
her unfailing virtues. If she no longer appeals to us, so soon
as her persecutor has been reformed into her husband, it is
because she is the least sympathetic of Richardson's heroines ;
and this, again, is closely connected with the fact that his
moral teaching, in this work, is at its lowest. The deeplying
energy of the puritan spirit makes itself felt in its most un-
critical and narrowest form; it relies entirely on our acceptance
of religious utilitarianism as an all-sufficient principle and motive.
That Pamela's honour should be threatened is held out as an
irresistible demand on our sympathy; that her resistance should
be rewarded, as an edifying conclusion and a most improving
lesson. That Pamela's innocence should be self-conscious and
designing is an unavoidable corollary of a moral ideal of this
nature; and the indelicacy implied in the plot and in the treat-
ment of many scenes is only a natural consequence of the hard,
materialistic, calculating and almost cynical view of virtue and
vice stamped on the whole book.
But the student of literature cannot forget that the publication
of Pamela produced an extraordinary effect; it swept the country
with a wave of collective emotion; indeed, few readers, even in our
days, are likely to give the story a fair trial without feeling its grip.
The most interesting feature of Richardson's works, in general,
and more particularly of his first novel, is that he should have
found a substitute and an equivalent for conscious art in the
creative power of moral earnestness and imaginative intensity.
The instrument which the new writer had unwittingly chosen for
himself was shapeless and unwieldy; the difficulties and conventions
implied in the development of a narrative by means of letters
make themselves felt more and more, as the action proceeds; a
moment soon comes when Pamela's epistles are exchanged for her
journal, and, though the patience and fertility of correspon-
dents in Richardson's circle may have equalled the stupendous
performances of his heroine, yet, it is difficult to reconcile an
impression of truth or likelihood with the literal record of lengthy
conversations. Nevertheless, the reality of the story grows upon
## p. 5 (#31) ###############################################
The Qualities and the Success of Pamela 5
us from the very first. It is due, partly, to the vividness of
presentment which the epistolary form makes possible; partly, to
that realistic grasp of minute facts which Richardson shared with
Defoe, though, perhaps, not in the same measure. This faculty may
be traced back to the positive bent of his middle-class instincts, as
well as to the mysterious affinity of the traditional puritan genius
with the concrete. Throughout the story, the reader remains aware
that the unspeakable importance of each trifling event in the moral
order of things, according as it makes for eternal life or perdition,
is the source of the unfailing attention which it exacts from him,
as well as the incentive to the imagination which forces the series
of events upon his notice. Only the grim pathos of the life-drama
of all religious souls can account for the strange and cruel power
with which Richardson wrings the very heart of his heroine-and
the hearts of his readers.
Last, the energy of the puritan scrutiny of motives and searching
of conscience develops into a wonderful intuition of character.
Richardson's experience had made him acquainted with the nature
of women; and his tremulous, sensitive temperament was spon-
taneously attuned to theirs; so, by far the most remarkable of his
creations are feminine. Mr B. is almost a woman's man; of the
secondary figures, only those of Lady Davers and Mrs Jewkes are
carefully particularised, and testify to Richardson's power of bitter
realism; but Pamela herself stands out in strong relief. Our
predominant impression of her is not, as might have been
expected, that of a tame and rose-pink, or dull and priggish,
character, marked with conventional idealism or moral pedantry.
Though there is a good deal of both in her, she is far more real
than the heroines of works against which Richardson's common
sense and puritan strictness rose in protest. The artist in him,
unknown to himself, got the better of the moralist; and Pamela's
personality seems to grow, as it were, independently of his purpose,
according to the inner law of her being. Her little tricks and
ways, her conscious or semi-conscious coquetry, her more than
innocent weakness, counterbalance the almost miraculous correct-
ness of her conduct, as judged by the author's ethical standard.
The growth of her affection for her master and persecutor, the
subtle traits which reveal it to us and the fine gradation of her
confession of it to herself, belong to an order of artistic achieve-
ment and psychological truth to which English literature had
hardly risen since the decay of the Elizabethan drama.
The success of Pamela, whether it was due to a dim recognition
## p. 6 (#32) ###############################################
6
Richardson
a
of this merit, or, more simply, as we have reason for thinking, to
the sentimental interest taken in a moving tale, is a landmark in
the history of the novel. Directly through the imitations, or
indirectly through the satires or parodies which it called forth, the
book stands at the very fountain-head of the teeming period in
which the ascendency of modern fiction asserted itself. (A fourth
edition came out within six months of the first. ) We know from
contemporary evidence that it was the fashion to have read
Pamela ; and that, while fine ladies made a point of holding a copy
of it in their hands, it stirred the emotions of middle-class or lower-
class readers; and, in at least one instance, it was recommended
from the pulpit. In September 1741 was published an anonymous
sequel, Pamela's Conduct in High Life, which thus preceded the
author's own continuation of his novel. The story was adapted for
the stage so early as 1741. According to Richardson, 'the pub-
lication of the History of Pamela gave birth to no less than 16
pieces, as remarks, imitations, etc. Among the less famous skits
directed against it, mention should be made of An Apology for the
Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (April 1741), the authorship of
which is still under discussion; it was followed by Fielding's
History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his friend
Mr Abraham Adams (February 1742). It must be left to a
subsequent chapter to show how Richardson's sentimentalism
and overstrained morality provoked into expression the broader
naturalism of his great rival, and how the English novel thus
started, at the same time, on the two main lines of its modern
advance.
Though Pamela was published without its author's name,
and Richardson was not, at once, generally associated with it, its
unexpected reception gradually raised him to literary fame. No
material change, however, seems to have taken place in his regular,
precise and laborious way of living; and he did not give up his
business as a printer. But the circle of his friends and corre-
spondents was much enlarged; and he was brought into contact
with not a few of the distinguished men of the time. The group of
admirers, principally ladies, of which he was the centre, and the
ways of the quiet country household in which he was wont to read
out his morning's work to appreciative listeners, are of moment to
us here only because they throw light upon the far more deliberate
method and clearer knowledge of his own powers which dis-
tinguish his second novel from the first. How far he was indebted
1 See chap. II, post.
## p. 7 (#33) ###############################################
Clarissa
7
to the suggestions and criticism of his daily audience cannot, of
course, be estimated; but we know that he expanded in an
atmosphere of warm, responsive sympathy, and that, to his sensitive
nature, encouragement and praise were as the bread of life.
The conception of Clarissa was prompted by something besides
his natural desire to turn his newly revealed faculties to fuller use.
Indeed, the design of the book was not only to convey a moral; it
was to improve on the teaching of Pamela, and to correct any
rash or unfair inference that might have been drawn from it.
Well might Richardson be alarmed lest the teaching of his first
novel should be misconstrued: would not romantic serving-maids
and confident damsels dream of conquering their masters' or
lovers' unruly passions, and was not Mr B. too apt a confirmation
of that dangerous axiom that 'a reformed rake makes the best
husband'? While the author of Pamela had been optimistic,
because it was his main purpose to point out a positive example,
the author of Clarissa thought it his duty, rather, to offer a warn-
ing, and to lay stress on the exceptional nature of conversions.
Clarissa, or, the History of a young Lady, was, thus, doomed to
end in gloom, and to be a demonstration of the perfidy of man.
As the title-page declared, the book was designed to show the
Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and
Children in relation to Marriage. ' The first edition consisted of
seven volumes, two of which were issued in November 1747, two
more in April 1748, and the last three in December of the same
year.
The higher merit and the unique place of Clarissa among
Richardson's works are due to a deepened consciousness of his
purpose and to a nobler energy of conscience. Puritan ardour and
intensity is better able here to take the place of the suggestions of
art, inasmuch as it is itself exalted into its most refined essence.
That Clarissa's heroic virtues should be sustained by her trust in
a heavenly reward is, no doubt, a lesson unpleasantly thrust upon
us during the latter part of the story; indeed, the piety of the poor
sorely-tried soul partakes of the strictest and sternest spirit of an
austere Christianity, and, in the rapture of her penitence and
expectation, she refuses to see her friends, because ‘God will have
no rivals. ' Again, the gusto with which the author deals out fit
endings and terrible deaths to the wicked, and his claim that every
personage in the novel finally receives his or her due, belong, rather,
to the sphere of edification than to that of realistic observation or
artistic effect. But, leaving out the last episodes, and the constantly
## p. 8 (#34) ###############################################
8
Richardson
implied or expressed hope of a Providential remedy for human
wrongs, the tragedy of suffering and sorrow which Richardson's
genius has spun out of itself reaches a greater breadth and height
on the familiar stage of this world; it is free from the trammels of
religious utilitarianism as well as of moral convention. The literary
formula he had invented and made his own is thus afforded a wider
scope. Whatever intrinsic artificiality it may contain is, of course,
not less apparent here than elsewhere; the reader's goodwill and
complaisance are required on many points; a painful ingenuity has
to be expended by the author in order to squeeze the writing, and,
frequently, even the copying, of the epistles, into the bare limits
of time allowed by the story; the network of the letters retains
many items of trifling interest and, necessarily, implies a good
many repetitions, while not a few incidents of the plot which could
hardly be transmuted into the self-consciousness of the personages
of the novel or into their knowledge of one another have to be
allowed to slip through. The deliberate style of almost all the
correspondents drags along into unparalleled lengthiness; and
Lovelace's self-revelation in his cynical confessions to his friend is,
at times, irreconcilable with psychological truth. Still, when all is
said, the clumsy framework of this epistolary drama is so constantly
hidden under the creative wealth of a wonderfully minute imagina-
tion, and the enormous body of the narrative, as a whole, is borne
along by so irresistible a flow of emotion, that Richardson's
masterpiece remains one of the great novels of the world's litera-
ture,
Its appeal is to the heart. No doubt, the psychological interest
of the book is broader and more varied than that of Pamela.
Though Clarissa is proposed as an example to all young ladies, she
accomplishes the all but impossible feat of remaining an attractive
pattern of virtue. Not that she is faultless-a fact of which
Richardson was well aware, though, perhaps, less so than he would
have allowed. But there is a true nobleness, a natural dignity in
Clarissa, a power of stedfast suffering, a true delicacy, an ardour
of affection; while, together with her serious bent of mind, she has
the supreme touch of a winning naturalness, fresh, unexpected and
even provokingly spontaneous, which makes her a match for her
friend, the sprightly Miss Howe. Nothing is finer or truer than the
evolution of her feeling for her unworthy lover; nowhere else did
Richardson's knowledge of the feminine heart stand him in better
stead. Lovelace, undoubtedly, is the forerunner of a long series of
romantic heroes; the drawing of this character reveals a strangely
## p. 9 (#35) ###############################################
The Power of Clarissa
9
penetrating insight, on the part of the author, into motives and
moods, together with an almost naïve exaggeration. His is a
divided soul, a study in the subtle degradation wrought by desire;
he is, at the same time, more than a mere human personage-a power
of darkness, the prince of lies; and the weird letter in which he
murders his own conscience and himself tells the tale of the bloody
deed is a triumph of imaginative art though a sin against realistic
truth. The Harlowe family, and several of the less important
figures, are depicted with a remarkable wealth and vigour of
characterisation. In the history of the English novel, no such
group of boldly and strongly sketched personalities had, hitherto,
served as a background for so individualised a pair of lovers.
And yet, the mere aesthetic appreciation of a profound study of
the working of the human mind is, as we read, lost in our sympathy
with a heart-rending story of undeserved woe. The family tragedy
of the first volumes seizes upon our emotions like the slow,
oppressive, inevitable approach of a storm; the circle of fate grows
narrower and narrower as it closes round the unprotected Clarissa ;
and the chain of circumstance and event is woven with an extra-
ordinary strength of dramatic cohesion. No sooner has Clarissa
fallen into Lovelace's power, than the crushing of her will and
pride in a hopeless struggle is impressed upon us with the relent-
less, terrible determination of religious enthusiasm; only Dante or
Bunyan could have painted such scenes with the same inflexible
rigour. When her heart is broken, and she has nothing left to her
but to die, the pathos of her long agony is overdone. Such cheap
means of emotion as the coming of death, with all its attending
circumstances, had not yet been exploited to satiety by domestic
dramatists and sentimental novelists; Richardson avails himself of
them only too fully, and our overwrought nerves are offended by
his want of artistic taste. But, as is well known, his contem-
poraries were not so fastidious. During the months of breathless
suspense when Clarissa's fate hung in the balance, many letters
reached the author deprecating a catastrophe; and, when the
heroine, having settled all her affairs and written her eleven
posthumous letters, actually departed this world, England burst
into a wail of lament; nor was it long before the contagion of
sorrow spread to the continent.
As Clarissa had grown out of Pamela, so Sir Charles Grandison
grew out of Clarissa. Richardson's female friends would not rest
satisfied with his portrait of a good woman; he must now give
them a good man. Moreover, had not Fielding's Tom Jones (1749)
## p. 10 (#36) ##############################################
ΙΟ
Richardson
insolently, and, as Richardson thought, most unfairly, encroached
upon his own province of holding up examples and depicting
heroes, and, immediately, found many readers for itself? The easy
morals and low' tone of his rival's book were all the more odious
to Richardson's sense of propriety, because his vanity, ever a weak
point with him, was sorely tried. Before the end of 1749, he
had, though reluctantly, undertaken the difficult task which his
admirers and his conscience were, alike, pressing upon him. The
slow progress of the novel bears witness to the particularly arduous
nature of the task; it came out, in seven volumes, between
November 1753 and March 1754. The History of Sir Charles
Grandison; in a Series of Letters published from the Originals
professed to be 'by the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa'; but, in
the preface, Richardson practically admitted his authorship.
None of his three novels has set modern criticism so much at
variance as Grandison. The student of literature must, primarily,
bear in mind that the success of the last effort was not unequal
to that of its predecessors. At the same time, the aim and con-
ception of the book show a marked falling off from the higher
artistic level of Clarissa. The didactic purpose is as glaring as it
is in the previous novels, without being, in the present instance,
relieved by the wealth of human pathos which made the story of
Clarissa, in itself, a moving tragedy. Sir Charles's trials are but
slight, as befits the good fortune of a man not less beloved by
Providence than by a consensus of mere mortals; and the embar-
rassing predicament in which he finds himself between half-a-dozen
women admirers—even the annoying prospect of being obliged,
on principle, to marry Clementina, while, at heart, preferring
Miss Byron-cannot ruffle the well-founded composure of his mind.
Richardson, of course, took care that the Italian signorina should
be very attractive indeed, though we feel sure that where Sir
Charles's duty lies his affections will soon enough follow. Those
readers—and they are not few—who find Harriet Byron lacking in
genuine delicacy and unaffected charm, are, of course, not privileged
to take an interest in her doubts and anxieties. The disappointed
ladies—Clementina and Emily-certainly appeal more strongly to
our sympathies; though Clementina’s madness is not so successfully
devised that the touch of cheap romanticism in it can be passed
over. Thus, our emotions, on the whole, are little stirred. Apart
from the first incidents, which concern Miss Byron's abduction and
her rescue by Sir Charles, the development of the story is not very
exciting to blunted tastes; while the Italian episodes, and the
## p. 11 (#37) ##############################################
Sir Charles Grandison
II
lengthy negotiations with the della Porretta family, are wholly
tedious.
The despairing reader falls back upon the psychological value of
the book. Here, indeed, lies its greatness—if great it can, indeed,
be said to be. The characters are more numerous than in either
Pamela or Clarissa; they are more varied, and more of them are
interesting. Sir Hargrave and the wicked personages in general
are merely awkward performers who play at being naughty while
remaining very conscious of the difference between good and evil;
so that their conversion, in due time, by Sir Charles's triumphant
example, seems to us merely a matter of course. But there
is a vein of fresh observation in such comic figures as that of
Sir Rowland Meredith, and an almost delicate intuition of girlish
feeling in Miss Jervois; as for Charlotte Grandison, she is not less
true to life than she is perversely and abnormally provoking. It
seems as if the artist in Richardson had availed himself of this
character to wreak some obscure unavowed revenge on the
constraint wbich the moralist was imposing upon him in the rigid
self-consistency of Sir Charles. Of the hero and overwhelmingly
predominant personage of the book, it is difficult to speak in cold
blood-so irritating to our noblest (and to some of our worst)
instincts is his self-possessed, ready-made, infallible sense of virtue.
The most we can say in his favour is that, considering the difficulties
of the task, Richardson has managed to create a remarkably
acceptable 'beau idéal' of a gentleman, more genuine in his ways,
and freer from the most objectionable features of puritanic priggish-
ness, than might reasonably have been expected.
All through the composition of his last novel, Richardson had
been aware of declining powers and failing health. He still kept
up his epistolary intercourse with his admirers and friends; and
his letters, most of which, duly prepared by himself for the use of
posterity, have been preserved and handed down to us, are a mine
of information for the student of the period. Our knowledge of
his life is, to this day, mainly based on the selection of his corre-
spondence, published, in 1804, by Mrs Barbauld. Besides a
pamphlet (1753) aimed against certain piratical Irish booksellers
who had forestalled the authorised issue of the last volumes of
Grandison, and a letter to The Rambler on the change in the
manners of women (no. 97, for 19 February 1751), perhaps his
most characteristic, though not his most interesting, literary
productions still remain to be mentioned. One of these is A Col-
lection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions,
6
## p. 12 (#38) ##############################################
I 2
Richardson
and Reflexions, contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa,
and Sir Charles Grandison (1755). As every reader of the novels
knows only too well, they are rich with the ore of wisdom ready
coined; and on such subjects as duelling, education, marriage and
family relations, Richardson has even provided us with elaborate
treatises. The other is Meditations collected from the Sacred
Books, and adapted to the different Stages of a Deep Distress;
gloriously surmounted by Patience, Piety and Resignation.
Being those mentioned in the History of Clarissa as drawn up
for her own Use (1750). These meditations are thirty-six in
number, only four of which are inserted in the novel.
In 1754, Richardson removed from North end to Parson's
green, Fulham; and, in the following year, his printing-house in
Salisbury square had to be rebuilt on an adjoining site. This
expenditure points to a prosperous condition of affairs; in fact,
Richardson's means and social position were so far improved that
he had become master of the Stationers' company. Though he
never was in touch with the most brilliant society of the time, he
numbered among his acquaintances men of a standing far superior
to his own, and certainly did something to promote the gradual
recognition of literary genius as a distinction equal to any other.
His eldest daughter, Mary, made a good match in 1757; and, on
the occasion of her marriage, he wrote his will, which Austin
Dobson describes as 'very lengthy, and having four codicils. His
last years were afflicted with increasing nervous disorders, and
insomnia. He died, from a paralytic stroke, on 4 July 1761.
At the present day, the interest taken in Richardson's works
is very largely historical. Their popularity, which did not show
any symptoms of decline down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, is now, mainly, a thing of the past. Several causes may
help to account for the neglect of them, even by cultivated readers,
in our liberal-minded age. The length of the novels is, ob-
viously, the first stumbling-block, as is testified by the many
abridgments which have, more or less in vain, sought to adapt
the cumbrous volumes to the exigencies of a more hurried life.
Their epistolary form, probably, is another drawback. If, as has
been said above, it permits a fresh and particular presentment of
everyday facts to us, yet it is apt to seem hopelessly slow and
antiquated; it savours of a time when letters were a work of
leisure and love, and people liked to piece together the different
threads of a story. More subtle elements in Richardson's writings,
certainly, contribute to envelop them in an atmosphere of faint
6
1
1
1
## p. 13 (#39) ##############################################
Limitations of Richardson's Art
13
appreciation and widespread indifference. Together with the
limitations of his art, those of his psychology and of his morals
have grown more and more apparent, while their real strength is
easily forgotten. His essential power was hardly personal; it was
that of puritanism. His genius reached as deep as the conscious-
ness of sin and the source of tears; but, in the depth of his emotions
and in matters of conscience, he did not pass beyond the bounds of
his time and of his class; and his intuitions possessed but little
creative originality. With the passing of the sentimental age,
and with the toning down of the puritan spirit, he ceased to be a
prophet and sank into the part of a representative thinker and
writer. The light thrown by him into the obscure undergrowths
of the soul does not break from heaven like the flashes of a
Shakespeare ; it is a humble ray of poring, searching intensity.
In these latter days, new shades have been added to our notions
of conduct; morality has been revived in new forms and touched
with an unwonted delicacy, a more anxious self-diffidence; and
Richardson's hard, plain idea of duty cannot but appear blunt
and harsh to us, as his analysis of the soul seems poor when com-
pared with the luxuriant growth of modern psychology. Thus,
the wonderful penetration of his genius has not maintained its
supremacy, and time has pitilessly revealed its narrowness.
But his novels deserve more than the disinterested curiosity
of students; their significance is other than relative. Taken by
themselves, they constitute a literary achievement of enduring
worth. The moral passion with which they are instinct may not
appeal to us unreservedly; yet the forceful grasp of the stories
holds us fast so soon as we have become reconciled to the atmo-
sphere; and those regions of the human heart in which nature and
grace, selfishness and love are always at war slowly and pitilessly
open themselves to us, while we read, together with some part, at
least, of the free, individual, spontaneous life of the shallow self.
Richardson's realism is great in its handling of minute details,
its imaginative power, its concatenation of events. Though the
picturesque aspects of the world are hardly ever called up by him,
the material circumstances of the drama in which his characters
are engaged stand depicted with diligent fulness, and the inner
incidents of the sentient, struggling soul have never been more
graphically or abundantly narrated. His style is a self-created
instrument of small intrinsic merit but of excellent utility; it
shows variety enough to adjust itself to the personalities of different
correspondents; it moves on with a certain elaborate ease, but
## p. 14 (#40) ##############################################
14
Richardson
3
knows how to rise, at times, to a straightforward, telling energy.
It is not free from artistic, or even from grammatical, flaws, but,
considering Richardson's personal lack of culture, it bears witness
to a remarkable natural gift. Its tone is most often slightly self-
conscious, with a preference for Latin, genteel words and phrases ;
but it not unfrequently displays the strength of racy idioms and
the charm of native English simplicity.
Richardson's influence upon the course of English and European
literature cannot be overestimated. To understand the extent and
meaning of the effect exercised by him at home, the state of the
English novel before and after him should be borne in mind. The
assertion, frequently made, that he put an end to the romance
of fancy, after the pattern of The Grand Cyrus, should not be
repeated without qualification; the vogue of the D'Urfé and
Scudéry school had long been on the wane, and the tendency
to realism had already come to the front, principally through
Defoe and Swift. But it is certain that Pamela, besides being
the first notable English novel of sentimental analysis, heralded
the advent of everyday manners and common people to artistic
acceptance. The claims of Richardson to the favour of contem-
porary readers were, thus, manifold; he stirred their emotions,
and gave definite satisfaction to their latent thirst for sentiment;
he presented them with living, actual, flesh-and-bone heroes and
heroines, and responded to their longing for reality and substance
in fiction; he imparted a moral lesson, and, thus, found himself
at one with the rising reaction against the sceptical levity of the
preceding age. One more point should be emphasised: at the very
moment when the social power of the middle classes was growing
apace, Richardson, himself one of them, exactly expressed their
grievances and prejudices. His novels are filled with a spirit of
bourgeois—it might almost be said, popular--criticism of the
privileges and the corruption of the great; and, at the same time,
they are flavoured with the essence of snobbishness. It is easy
to exaggerate the fondness with which Richardson dwells on the
manners of servants or 'low' people; the class with which he
deals, that forming, so to say, the social plane of his novels, is
the gentry. To him, the right of birth is an all but impassable
barrier, and Pamela is no exception; she remains an inferior in
her own eyes, if not exactly in those of her husband. No doubt,
the higher circles of society in which Sir Charles Grandison moves
were not known to Richardson from personal experience, and it is
unnecessary to dwell on the mistakes with which he has been
## p. 15 (#41) ##############################################
Richardson's Influence on the English Novel 15
charged in his description of aristocratic life; still, he took a secret
delight in holding intercourse, though it were of a more or less
imaginary sort, with the nobility, and his conception of a gentle-
man was certainly not in advance of his time. Both the impatient
self-assertion of the middle class, and its quiet settling down into
conservative grooves of feeling, are thus foreshadowed.
of the work. Middleton's Life of Cicero. Adam Ferguson's
Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. Mitford's
History of Greece. Whitaker's History of Manchester
297
CHAPTER XIV
PHILOSOPHERS
By W. R. SORLEY, Litt. D. , F. B. A. , Fellow of King's College,
Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy
I. DAVID HUME
Hume's literary ambition. His life and literary career. His post-
humous Autobiography. His disclaimer of his earliest and greatest
work, A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume’s ‘New Medium. '
His analysis of 'Philosophical Relations. The Problem of Cauga-
tion. Hume's Theory of Belief. His sceptical solution. His
Theological Writings: 'Of Miracles'; Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion. Political and Economical Essays
II. ADAM SMITH
Life and Writings. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The Wealth
of Nations. Its relation to Sir James Steuart's Inquiry into the
Principles of Political Economy. Adam Smith's Scientific Treat-
ment of Economic Facts. The System of Natural Liberty: Free
Trade.
321
335
III. OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS
David Hartley. Abraham Tucker. Richard Price and Joseph Priestley.
Paley and his Theological Utilitarianism. Reid, Campbell and
Beattie. The Principles of 'Common Sense' .
341
## p. xiv (#24) #############################################
xiv
Contents
CHAPTER XV
DIVINES
By the Ven. Archdeacon W. H. HUTTON, B. D.
PAGR
General character of the English Theological Literature of the Period.
Its abhorrence of Enthusiasm. Earlier Writers distinguished by
power or outspokenness: Samuel Johnson. Atterbury and his
career. Smalridge. The Convocation Controversy: Wake. Hoadly
and the Bangorian Controversy. The later Nonjurors: the
Wagstaffes; Deacon; Henry Dodwell; Bonwicke. Robert Forbes.
Bingham. Thomas Sherlock. Butler, Wilson and Waterland:
A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist. Butler's Analogy.
Herring and Secker. The Methodist Movement: Whitefield.
James Hervey. Fletcher of Madeley. John and Charles Wesley. 350
:
CHAPTER XVI
THE LITERATURE OF DISSENT (1660—1760)
By W. A. SHAW, Litt. D. Vict, Public Record Office
The Historical Evolution of Dissent reflected in its Literature. The
principle of Liberty of Conscience and the struggle for Toleration.
The Literature of Dissent from Defoe to Watts. Michaijah
Towgood. Controversial Literature on Church Polity and Dogma.
The 'Happy Union,' and the Disruption between Independents
and Presbyterians. The spread of Arianism and the First Socinian
Controversy. The Arian Controversy proper: Peirce and Hallett.
The Salters' Hall Synod and the question of Subscription: John
Taylor and Samuel Bourn. The Free Thought effect of the
Unitarian Movement. Conservative contributions by Dissenters
to the Deistic Controversy. The Nonconformist Academy System,
Hymns and Devotional Literature
Appendix. List of Nonconformist Academies .
370
384
## p. xv (#25) ##############################################
Contents
ху
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICAL LITERATURE (1755-1775)
By C. W. PREVITÉ-ORTON, M. A. , Fellow of St John's
College
PAGE
Revival of Controversy after the death of Henry Pelham. The
Monitor. John Shebbeare and Arthur Murphy. Accession of
George Ill: Loyal Tory Pamphleteers. Smollett and The Briton.
Wilkes and The North Briton. Wilkes's literary triumph.
Antipathy to the Scots. Churchill: his earlier life. His begin-
nings as a Satirist. The Rosciad. Night. The Prophecy of
Famine. The Epistle to William Hogarth. The Duellist.
Gotham. The Conference and its personal confession. Churchill's
Later Satires. Force of his invective. Political Pamphlets in
Prose. Candor in The Public Advertiser. Woodfall's editorship
of the Advertiser. The Letter-Writers. Junius. His literary
personality and antecedents. The Letters of Junius proper.
Their substance and characteristics. Their supremacy in slan-
derous polemic. The Mystery of Junius. The Franciscan claim.
Junius the culmination of a notable series of Political Writings
388
:. 411
Bibliographies.
Table of Principal Dates
Index of Names
528
532
## p. xvi (#26) #############################################
CORRIGENDA ET ADDENDA
VOL. IX
p. 62, note 1, for 1764 read 1744
p. 106, 1. 11 and Index, for Histoires comiques and Voyage à la Lune read Histoires
comique de la Lune and du Soleil (if Didot is right, M. Bastide is not quite right)
p. 196, 1. 12 and Index, for Mancroix read Maucroix
p. 235, 1. 13 from bottom, for Thomas read Thoyras
p. 502, 1. 16 from bottom, for Fuigallian read Fingallian
p. 577, 1. 19 from bottom, The Examiner was established in 1710, not 1712
VOL. X
p. 18, 1. 9 from bottom, for der Fräulein read des Fräuleins
p. 72, 11. 9 and 8 from bottom, read its sequel (1710), later known as Marplot in
Lisbon,
p. 73, 1. 12 from bottom, for up, read up
p. 80, ll. 2 and 1 from bottom, for The author's read Yet the later writer's
p. 83, 1. 20, for 1734 read 1737
1
p. 86, 1. 12 from bottom, for Carlia read Caelia
p. 87, l. 15 from bottom, for John read Benjamin (John is supposed to have
assisted his brother)
p. 89, 1. 13, for 1748 read 1768, and read footnote thus : It was reprinted, in 1773,
with the title A School for Fathers
p. 119, 1. 7 from bottom, for Acevonia read Aceronia
p. 123, 1. 1 from bottom, for purpose read propose
p. 144, 1. 13, for fellow-contributor read fellow. contributors
p. 199, 1. 5 from bottom, read or the favourite minuet in Ariadne
p. 213, 1. 6 from bottom, for younger read elder. (This has recently been
established by reference to tablets in Weybridge church, and the researches of
Sir Ernest Clarke and others)
p. 236, 1. 15, for coffin read coffer
p. 270, 1. 19 from bottom, for Bennet read Bennett
p. 358, 1. 3 from bottom, for Latham read Lathom
p. 375, 1. 24 and p. 384, 1. 20, for Micaijah read Michaijah
p. 377, 1. 9 and p. 384, 1. 20, for Chawney and Chauncey read Chauncy
p. 380, 1, 5, for John Barrington Shute read John Shute Barrington
p. 412, before l. 2 from bottom, add:
Dibelius, W. Englische Romankunst. Die Technik d. engl. Romans im 18. u. zu
Anfang d. 19. Jahrh. Vol. 1. Berlin, 1910.
p. 482, 1. 16 from bottom, add: Performed, on 22 February, the day of publica-
tion, at Mrs Cornely's rooms in Soho square
p. 490, add after 1. 16: Percy had a copious correspondence with literary men of
his time. Practically the whole of the 856 pages of vol. 1 (1848) and 436 pages of
vol. viii (1858) of Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th Century
are occupied by letters to and from Percy, his correspondents including George Steevens,
Dr Grainger, James Boswell, Michael Lort, Dr Thomas Birch, Archdeacon Nares,
Dr Thomas Campbell, the Moira family, John Nichols and John Pinkerton.
p. 513, 1. 20, for 1717 read 1714
p. 549, col. 2, 11.
40, 41 and 52, for Lyttleton read Lyttelton
1
## p. 1 (#27) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
RICHARDSON
AFTER a protracted period of tentative effort, the English
novel in the eighteenth century sprang into complete being from
a soil not upturned by any violent social upheaval, but in which
a deep movement of vitality had been secretly at work. The
moral revolution sometimes called the renascence of sentiment
cannot be said to have preceded the birth of Richardson's master-
pieces; but their success, to some extent, was favoured by it, while
they contributed to give it weight. The literary growth into
which the sap that had permeated the Elizabethan drama was
again to flow could thus be sustained by a radical energy equal in
depth, if not in breadth, to that by means of which Shakespeare's
plays had flourished. From the age of Milton to that of Wesley,
puritanism, to all appearance, had been struck out of art, as it had
out of the brilliant, superficial life of the world. Yet, Bunyan
had dreamt his dream, and visualised for ever his imaginings;
Addison had reconciled literature with the earnest purposes of
human life; Defoe had grasped the concrete substance of things
and breathed truth into fiction. From the beginning of the
Georgian era, the rise of the trading class had been slowly
infusing into public opinion a new spirit of probity and fervour.
About 1740, the methodist movement was in full activity, and
the sentimental reaction was gathering an impetus destined to
contribute to no less a result than the romantic revival. A
contemporary as he was of Wesley and of Young, Richardson
signalises the advent of a momentous change, the full extent of
which was never to become perceptible to himself. But the new
birth of puritanism, together with the resurrection of emotion
as a native energy, bore along his naturally narrow genius with
something of the amplitude and force of a tidal wave.
the poet, as he was one of the prophets, of middle-class religious
faith, and united in himself much of the literary significance of
1
He was
E. L. X,
CH, I.
## p. 2 (#28) ###############################################
2
Richardson
Bunyan, Addison and Defoe. Like Bunyan, he owed a vivid
strength of imagination to spiritual intensity; like Addison, he
turned to account for dramatic purposes a wealth of psychological
observation and insight into human character; like Defoe, he
established the greatness of the English novel on its unique faculty
of graphic realism. With him, the moral purpose of art reigned
supreme, and, from it, he derived alike his wonderful power and
his most obvious limitations. The score of edifying volumes in
which he conveyed instruction through emotion make up a triple
allegory, a thrice-told Pilgrim's Progress, illustrating the road to
salvation by both positive and negative examples. Pamela's trials,
Clarissa's sufferings, Sir Charles Grandison's difficulties, all open
the way to final happiness; and the inner drift and purpose of the
three novels is no other than the traditional impulse which had
driven Bunyan's naïve fancy, together with the pilgrim soul, from
the slough of despond to the eternal city. But Richardson's faith
and hope fall short of Bunyan's rapt singlemindedness. In Clarissa
only, the higher regions and finer air of religious enthusiasm are
approached; in the other books, a more grossly utilitarian atmo-
sphere prevails, and it is in this world that Sir Charles's, like
Pamela's, conscious expectations meet with their reward.
Of Samuel Richardson's life, not much is interesting, and little
need be said here. Though his family resided in London before,
and soon after, his birth, he was born in Devonshire, as the son of
a well-to-do joiner. It is characteristic of leanings which were
natural to him that, of his early history, he left what he could in
the dark, wbile what he mentioned he tried to idealise. He seems
to have received but a slight education, and certainly was without
any university training. Recent investigation has not materially
added to the scant knowledge of his boyhood and youth derived
from eighteenth century sources.
His father's wish was, first,
to make him a clergyman; but, owing to money losses, young
Richardson remained unprovided with the usual accomplishments;
and, eventually, he chose to be apprenticed to a printer. Due
emphasis is commonly laid on the early symptoms of his later
literary temperament, as revealed in the boy's love of letter-writing
and propensity to preaching, as well as on the experience which the
moralist was enabled to gather from his employment by girl friends
as penman and inditer in their love affairs. He set up a printing
business in 1719, and, in 1721, married the daughter of his old
master; she bore him six children, five of whom died in infancy.
A year after her death, in 1731, Richardson married a second time;
វ។
## p. 3 (#29) ###############################################
a
Pamela
3
and, again, he had to undergo sad family bereavements. The tenor
of his blameless but humdrum existence was broken only by a few
unimportant incidents, while his steady rise in the world can be
gauged from his employment as printer to the House of Commons,
and from his taking on lease a country residence at Hammer-
smith, in 1739.
By this time, Richardson was fifty years of age; he had
long shown signs of declining health, was much troubled with
nervousness and adopted the diet of a valetudinarian. He had not
produced anything of consequence in the way of literature, when,
in the same year, he was asked by two friends, printers like
himself, to prepare for them 'a little volume of letters, in a
common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country
readers who were unable to indite for themselves. ' These letters
came out in January 1741 and, as was intimated on the title-page,
furnished not only a pattern in style and form, but, also, directions
“ how to think and act justly and prudently in the common
Concerns of Human Life. One of the subjects emphasised in this
collection was the danger surrounding the position of a young
woman-especially when goodlooking—as a family servant. How
Richardson's first novel grew out of the treatment of this theme
is pretty generally known. That the book should have been
written in the form of letters was thus due to the accident of its
origin; but, underlying all mere chance and circumstance were
a deep-seated habit and the irresistible bent of genius. Pamela;
or, Virtue Rewarded, was published in two volumes (November
1740), and immediately met with an eager reception; two further
volumes, describing Pamela’s life after her marriage, were given
to the public in December 1741.
Pamela's supposed indebtedness to Marivaux's Marianne has
been discussed, and definitively negatived, by Austin Dobson, in his
study of Richardson. It seems safer to consider the first notable
English novel of sentimental analysis, in the light in which its
author looked upon it, as an entirely spontaneous production, the
rough outline of which had been suggested to him by facts. From
this point of view, it is impossible not to agree with the verdict
generally passed upon the book, as, in truth, a crude first attempt,
redeemed by unmistakable genius. The originality and power of
Richardson are recognisable throughout; but, both matter and
manner are spoiled by his characteristic faults, which are here
at their worst. The novel, as a whole, lacks unity of conception
and construction; one readily perceives that the plan was not
1-2
## p. 4 (#30) ###############################################
4
Richardson
decided upon from the first, but that it grew on the author as he
became more conscious of his faculties and aim. The two volumes
added as an afterthought are a mere tag and make a very heavy
demand upon the reader's patience; whatever interest we may
take in Pamela's fate, her triumph and happiness bring all our
anxieties to an end, and we should like to be spared her married
experiences, together with all the new ensamples furnished by
her unfailing virtues. If she no longer appeals to us, so soon
as her persecutor has been reformed into her husband, it is
because she is the least sympathetic of Richardson's heroines ;
and this, again, is closely connected with the fact that his
moral teaching, in this work, is at its lowest. The deeplying
energy of the puritan spirit makes itself felt in its most un-
critical and narrowest form; it relies entirely on our acceptance
of religious utilitarianism as an all-sufficient principle and motive.
That Pamela's honour should be threatened is held out as an
irresistible demand on our sympathy; that her resistance should
be rewarded, as an edifying conclusion and a most improving
lesson. That Pamela's innocence should be self-conscious and
designing is an unavoidable corollary of a moral ideal of this
nature; and the indelicacy implied in the plot and in the treat-
ment of many scenes is only a natural consequence of the hard,
materialistic, calculating and almost cynical view of virtue and
vice stamped on the whole book.
But the student of literature cannot forget that the publication
of Pamela produced an extraordinary effect; it swept the country
with a wave of collective emotion; indeed, few readers, even in our
days, are likely to give the story a fair trial without feeling its grip.
The most interesting feature of Richardson's works, in general,
and more particularly of his first novel, is that he should have
found a substitute and an equivalent for conscious art in the
creative power of moral earnestness and imaginative intensity.
The instrument which the new writer had unwittingly chosen for
himself was shapeless and unwieldy; the difficulties and conventions
implied in the development of a narrative by means of letters
make themselves felt more and more, as the action proceeds; a
moment soon comes when Pamela's epistles are exchanged for her
journal, and, though the patience and fertility of correspon-
dents in Richardson's circle may have equalled the stupendous
performances of his heroine, yet, it is difficult to reconcile an
impression of truth or likelihood with the literal record of lengthy
conversations. Nevertheless, the reality of the story grows upon
## p. 5 (#31) ###############################################
The Qualities and the Success of Pamela 5
us from the very first. It is due, partly, to the vividness of
presentment which the epistolary form makes possible; partly, to
that realistic grasp of minute facts which Richardson shared with
Defoe, though, perhaps, not in the same measure. This faculty may
be traced back to the positive bent of his middle-class instincts, as
well as to the mysterious affinity of the traditional puritan genius
with the concrete. Throughout the story, the reader remains aware
that the unspeakable importance of each trifling event in the moral
order of things, according as it makes for eternal life or perdition,
is the source of the unfailing attention which it exacts from him,
as well as the incentive to the imagination which forces the series
of events upon his notice. Only the grim pathos of the life-drama
of all religious souls can account for the strange and cruel power
with which Richardson wrings the very heart of his heroine-and
the hearts of his readers.
Last, the energy of the puritan scrutiny of motives and searching
of conscience develops into a wonderful intuition of character.
Richardson's experience had made him acquainted with the nature
of women; and his tremulous, sensitive temperament was spon-
taneously attuned to theirs; so, by far the most remarkable of his
creations are feminine. Mr B. is almost a woman's man; of the
secondary figures, only those of Lady Davers and Mrs Jewkes are
carefully particularised, and testify to Richardson's power of bitter
realism; but Pamela herself stands out in strong relief. Our
predominant impression of her is not, as might have been
expected, that of a tame and rose-pink, or dull and priggish,
character, marked with conventional idealism or moral pedantry.
Though there is a good deal of both in her, she is far more real
than the heroines of works against which Richardson's common
sense and puritan strictness rose in protest. The artist in him,
unknown to himself, got the better of the moralist; and Pamela's
personality seems to grow, as it were, independently of his purpose,
according to the inner law of her being. Her little tricks and
ways, her conscious or semi-conscious coquetry, her more than
innocent weakness, counterbalance the almost miraculous correct-
ness of her conduct, as judged by the author's ethical standard.
The growth of her affection for her master and persecutor, the
subtle traits which reveal it to us and the fine gradation of her
confession of it to herself, belong to an order of artistic achieve-
ment and psychological truth to which English literature had
hardly risen since the decay of the Elizabethan drama.
The success of Pamela, whether it was due to a dim recognition
## p. 6 (#32) ###############################################
6
Richardson
a
of this merit, or, more simply, as we have reason for thinking, to
the sentimental interest taken in a moving tale, is a landmark in
the history of the novel. Directly through the imitations, or
indirectly through the satires or parodies which it called forth, the
book stands at the very fountain-head of the teeming period in
which the ascendency of modern fiction asserted itself. (A fourth
edition came out within six months of the first. ) We know from
contemporary evidence that it was the fashion to have read
Pamela ; and that, while fine ladies made a point of holding a copy
of it in their hands, it stirred the emotions of middle-class or lower-
class readers; and, in at least one instance, it was recommended
from the pulpit. In September 1741 was published an anonymous
sequel, Pamela's Conduct in High Life, which thus preceded the
author's own continuation of his novel. The story was adapted for
the stage so early as 1741. According to Richardson, 'the pub-
lication of the History of Pamela gave birth to no less than 16
pieces, as remarks, imitations, etc. Among the less famous skits
directed against it, mention should be made of An Apology for the
Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (April 1741), the authorship of
which is still under discussion; it was followed by Fielding's
History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his friend
Mr Abraham Adams (February 1742). It must be left to a
subsequent chapter to show how Richardson's sentimentalism
and overstrained morality provoked into expression the broader
naturalism of his great rival, and how the English novel thus
started, at the same time, on the two main lines of its modern
advance.
Though Pamela was published without its author's name,
and Richardson was not, at once, generally associated with it, its
unexpected reception gradually raised him to literary fame. No
material change, however, seems to have taken place in his regular,
precise and laborious way of living; and he did not give up his
business as a printer. But the circle of his friends and corre-
spondents was much enlarged; and he was brought into contact
with not a few of the distinguished men of the time. The group of
admirers, principally ladies, of which he was the centre, and the
ways of the quiet country household in which he was wont to read
out his morning's work to appreciative listeners, are of moment to
us here only because they throw light upon the far more deliberate
method and clearer knowledge of his own powers which dis-
tinguish his second novel from the first. How far he was indebted
1 See chap. II, post.
## p. 7 (#33) ###############################################
Clarissa
7
to the suggestions and criticism of his daily audience cannot, of
course, be estimated; but we know that he expanded in an
atmosphere of warm, responsive sympathy, and that, to his sensitive
nature, encouragement and praise were as the bread of life.
The conception of Clarissa was prompted by something besides
his natural desire to turn his newly revealed faculties to fuller use.
Indeed, the design of the book was not only to convey a moral; it
was to improve on the teaching of Pamela, and to correct any
rash or unfair inference that might have been drawn from it.
Well might Richardson be alarmed lest the teaching of his first
novel should be misconstrued: would not romantic serving-maids
and confident damsels dream of conquering their masters' or
lovers' unruly passions, and was not Mr B. too apt a confirmation
of that dangerous axiom that 'a reformed rake makes the best
husband'? While the author of Pamela had been optimistic,
because it was his main purpose to point out a positive example,
the author of Clarissa thought it his duty, rather, to offer a warn-
ing, and to lay stress on the exceptional nature of conversions.
Clarissa, or, the History of a young Lady, was, thus, doomed to
end in gloom, and to be a demonstration of the perfidy of man.
As the title-page declared, the book was designed to show the
Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and
Children in relation to Marriage. ' The first edition consisted of
seven volumes, two of which were issued in November 1747, two
more in April 1748, and the last three in December of the same
year.
The higher merit and the unique place of Clarissa among
Richardson's works are due to a deepened consciousness of his
purpose and to a nobler energy of conscience. Puritan ardour and
intensity is better able here to take the place of the suggestions of
art, inasmuch as it is itself exalted into its most refined essence.
That Clarissa's heroic virtues should be sustained by her trust in
a heavenly reward is, no doubt, a lesson unpleasantly thrust upon
us during the latter part of the story; indeed, the piety of the poor
sorely-tried soul partakes of the strictest and sternest spirit of an
austere Christianity, and, in the rapture of her penitence and
expectation, she refuses to see her friends, because ‘God will have
no rivals. ' Again, the gusto with which the author deals out fit
endings and terrible deaths to the wicked, and his claim that every
personage in the novel finally receives his or her due, belong, rather,
to the sphere of edification than to that of realistic observation or
artistic effect. But, leaving out the last episodes, and the constantly
## p. 8 (#34) ###############################################
8
Richardson
implied or expressed hope of a Providential remedy for human
wrongs, the tragedy of suffering and sorrow which Richardson's
genius has spun out of itself reaches a greater breadth and height
on the familiar stage of this world; it is free from the trammels of
religious utilitarianism as well as of moral convention. The literary
formula he had invented and made his own is thus afforded a wider
scope. Whatever intrinsic artificiality it may contain is, of course,
not less apparent here than elsewhere; the reader's goodwill and
complaisance are required on many points; a painful ingenuity has
to be expended by the author in order to squeeze the writing, and,
frequently, even the copying, of the epistles, into the bare limits
of time allowed by the story; the network of the letters retains
many items of trifling interest and, necessarily, implies a good
many repetitions, while not a few incidents of the plot which could
hardly be transmuted into the self-consciousness of the personages
of the novel or into their knowledge of one another have to be
allowed to slip through. The deliberate style of almost all the
correspondents drags along into unparalleled lengthiness; and
Lovelace's self-revelation in his cynical confessions to his friend is,
at times, irreconcilable with psychological truth. Still, when all is
said, the clumsy framework of this epistolary drama is so constantly
hidden under the creative wealth of a wonderfully minute imagina-
tion, and the enormous body of the narrative, as a whole, is borne
along by so irresistible a flow of emotion, that Richardson's
masterpiece remains one of the great novels of the world's litera-
ture,
Its appeal is to the heart. No doubt, the psychological interest
of the book is broader and more varied than that of Pamela.
Though Clarissa is proposed as an example to all young ladies, she
accomplishes the all but impossible feat of remaining an attractive
pattern of virtue. Not that she is faultless-a fact of which
Richardson was well aware, though, perhaps, less so than he would
have allowed. But there is a true nobleness, a natural dignity in
Clarissa, a power of stedfast suffering, a true delicacy, an ardour
of affection; while, together with her serious bent of mind, she has
the supreme touch of a winning naturalness, fresh, unexpected and
even provokingly spontaneous, which makes her a match for her
friend, the sprightly Miss Howe. Nothing is finer or truer than the
evolution of her feeling for her unworthy lover; nowhere else did
Richardson's knowledge of the feminine heart stand him in better
stead. Lovelace, undoubtedly, is the forerunner of a long series of
romantic heroes; the drawing of this character reveals a strangely
## p. 9 (#35) ###############################################
The Power of Clarissa
9
penetrating insight, on the part of the author, into motives and
moods, together with an almost naïve exaggeration. His is a
divided soul, a study in the subtle degradation wrought by desire;
he is, at the same time, more than a mere human personage-a power
of darkness, the prince of lies; and the weird letter in which he
murders his own conscience and himself tells the tale of the bloody
deed is a triumph of imaginative art though a sin against realistic
truth. The Harlowe family, and several of the less important
figures, are depicted with a remarkable wealth and vigour of
characterisation. In the history of the English novel, no such
group of boldly and strongly sketched personalities had, hitherto,
served as a background for so individualised a pair of lovers.
And yet, the mere aesthetic appreciation of a profound study of
the working of the human mind is, as we read, lost in our sympathy
with a heart-rending story of undeserved woe. The family tragedy
of the first volumes seizes upon our emotions like the slow,
oppressive, inevitable approach of a storm; the circle of fate grows
narrower and narrower as it closes round the unprotected Clarissa ;
and the chain of circumstance and event is woven with an extra-
ordinary strength of dramatic cohesion. No sooner has Clarissa
fallen into Lovelace's power, than the crushing of her will and
pride in a hopeless struggle is impressed upon us with the relent-
less, terrible determination of religious enthusiasm; only Dante or
Bunyan could have painted such scenes with the same inflexible
rigour. When her heart is broken, and she has nothing left to her
but to die, the pathos of her long agony is overdone. Such cheap
means of emotion as the coming of death, with all its attending
circumstances, had not yet been exploited to satiety by domestic
dramatists and sentimental novelists; Richardson avails himself of
them only too fully, and our overwrought nerves are offended by
his want of artistic taste. But, as is well known, his contem-
poraries were not so fastidious. During the months of breathless
suspense when Clarissa's fate hung in the balance, many letters
reached the author deprecating a catastrophe; and, when the
heroine, having settled all her affairs and written her eleven
posthumous letters, actually departed this world, England burst
into a wail of lament; nor was it long before the contagion of
sorrow spread to the continent.
As Clarissa had grown out of Pamela, so Sir Charles Grandison
grew out of Clarissa. Richardson's female friends would not rest
satisfied with his portrait of a good woman; he must now give
them a good man. Moreover, had not Fielding's Tom Jones (1749)
## p. 10 (#36) ##############################################
ΙΟ
Richardson
insolently, and, as Richardson thought, most unfairly, encroached
upon his own province of holding up examples and depicting
heroes, and, immediately, found many readers for itself? The easy
morals and low' tone of his rival's book were all the more odious
to Richardson's sense of propriety, because his vanity, ever a weak
point with him, was sorely tried. Before the end of 1749, he
had, though reluctantly, undertaken the difficult task which his
admirers and his conscience were, alike, pressing upon him. The
slow progress of the novel bears witness to the particularly arduous
nature of the task; it came out, in seven volumes, between
November 1753 and March 1754. The History of Sir Charles
Grandison; in a Series of Letters published from the Originals
professed to be 'by the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa'; but, in
the preface, Richardson practically admitted his authorship.
None of his three novels has set modern criticism so much at
variance as Grandison. The student of literature must, primarily,
bear in mind that the success of the last effort was not unequal
to that of its predecessors. At the same time, the aim and con-
ception of the book show a marked falling off from the higher
artistic level of Clarissa. The didactic purpose is as glaring as it
is in the previous novels, without being, in the present instance,
relieved by the wealth of human pathos which made the story of
Clarissa, in itself, a moving tragedy. Sir Charles's trials are but
slight, as befits the good fortune of a man not less beloved by
Providence than by a consensus of mere mortals; and the embar-
rassing predicament in which he finds himself between half-a-dozen
women admirers—even the annoying prospect of being obliged,
on principle, to marry Clementina, while, at heart, preferring
Miss Byron-cannot ruffle the well-founded composure of his mind.
Richardson, of course, took care that the Italian signorina should
be very attractive indeed, though we feel sure that where Sir
Charles's duty lies his affections will soon enough follow. Those
readers—and they are not few—who find Harriet Byron lacking in
genuine delicacy and unaffected charm, are, of course, not privileged
to take an interest in her doubts and anxieties. The disappointed
ladies—Clementina and Emily-certainly appeal more strongly to
our sympathies; though Clementina’s madness is not so successfully
devised that the touch of cheap romanticism in it can be passed
over. Thus, our emotions, on the whole, are little stirred. Apart
from the first incidents, which concern Miss Byron's abduction and
her rescue by Sir Charles, the development of the story is not very
exciting to blunted tastes; while the Italian episodes, and the
## p. 11 (#37) ##############################################
Sir Charles Grandison
II
lengthy negotiations with the della Porretta family, are wholly
tedious.
The despairing reader falls back upon the psychological value of
the book. Here, indeed, lies its greatness—if great it can, indeed,
be said to be. The characters are more numerous than in either
Pamela or Clarissa; they are more varied, and more of them are
interesting. Sir Hargrave and the wicked personages in general
are merely awkward performers who play at being naughty while
remaining very conscious of the difference between good and evil;
so that their conversion, in due time, by Sir Charles's triumphant
example, seems to us merely a matter of course. But there
is a vein of fresh observation in such comic figures as that of
Sir Rowland Meredith, and an almost delicate intuition of girlish
feeling in Miss Jervois; as for Charlotte Grandison, she is not less
true to life than she is perversely and abnormally provoking. It
seems as if the artist in Richardson had availed himself of this
character to wreak some obscure unavowed revenge on the
constraint wbich the moralist was imposing upon him in the rigid
self-consistency of Sir Charles. Of the hero and overwhelmingly
predominant personage of the book, it is difficult to speak in cold
blood-so irritating to our noblest (and to some of our worst)
instincts is his self-possessed, ready-made, infallible sense of virtue.
The most we can say in his favour is that, considering the difficulties
of the task, Richardson has managed to create a remarkably
acceptable 'beau idéal' of a gentleman, more genuine in his ways,
and freer from the most objectionable features of puritanic priggish-
ness, than might reasonably have been expected.
All through the composition of his last novel, Richardson had
been aware of declining powers and failing health. He still kept
up his epistolary intercourse with his admirers and friends; and
his letters, most of which, duly prepared by himself for the use of
posterity, have been preserved and handed down to us, are a mine
of information for the student of the period. Our knowledge of
his life is, to this day, mainly based on the selection of his corre-
spondence, published, in 1804, by Mrs Barbauld. Besides a
pamphlet (1753) aimed against certain piratical Irish booksellers
who had forestalled the authorised issue of the last volumes of
Grandison, and a letter to The Rambler on the change in the
manners of women (no. 97, for 19 February 1751), perhaps his
most characteristic, though not his most interesting, literary
productions still remain to be mentioned. One of these is A Col-
lection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions,
6
## p. 12 (#38) ##############################################
I 2
Richardson
and Reflexions, contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa,
and Sir Charles Grandison (1755). As every reader of the novels
knows only too well, they are rich with the ore of wisdom ready
coined; and on such subjects as duelling, education, marriage and
family relations, Richardson has even provided us with elaborate
treatises. The other is Meditations collected from the Sacred
Books, and adapted to the different Stages of a Deep Distress;
gloriously surmounted by Patience, Piety and Resignation.
Being those mentioned in the History of Clarissa as drawn up
for her own Use (1750). These meditations are thirty-six in
number, only four of which are inserted in the novel.
In 1754, Richardson removed from North end to Parson's
green, Fulham; and, in the following year, his printing-house in
Salisbury square had to be rebuilt on an adjoining site. This
expenditure points to a prosperous condition of affairs; in fact,
Richardson's means and social position were so far improved that
he had become master of the Stationers' company. Though he
never was in touch with the most brilliant society of the time, he
numbered among his acquaintances men of a standing far superior
to his own, and certainly did something to promote the gradual
recognition of literary genius as a distinction equal to any other.
His eldest daughter, Mary, made a good match in 1757; and, on
the occasion of her marriage, he wrote his will, which Austin
Dobson describes as 'very lengthy, and having four codicils. His
last years were afflicted with increasing nervous disorders, and
insomnia. He died, from a paralytic stroke, on 4 July 1761.
At the present day, the interest taken in Richardson's works
is very largely historical. Their popularity, which did not show
any symptoms of decline down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, is now, mainly, a thing of the past. Several causes may
help to account for the neglect of them, even by cultivated readers,
in our liberal-minded age. The length of the novels is, ob-
viously, the first stumbling-block, as is testified by the many
abridgments which have, more or less in vain, sought to adapt
the cumbrous volumes to the exigencies of a more hurried life.
Their epistolary form, probably, is another drawback. If, as has
been said above, it permits a fresh and particular presentment of
everyday facts to us, yet it is apt to seem hopelessly slow and
antiquated; it savours of a time when letters were a work of
leisure and love, and people liked to piece together the different
threads of a story. More subtle elements in Richardson's writings,
certainly, contribute to envelop them in an atmosphere of faint
6
1
1
1
## p. 13 (#39) ##############################################
Limitations of Richardson's Art
13
appreciation and widespread indifference. Together with the
limitations of his art, those of his psychology and of his morals
have grown more and more apparent, while their real strength is
easily forgotten. His essential power was hardly personal; it was
that of puritanism. His genius reached as deep as the conscious-
ness of sin and the source of tears; but, in the depth of his emotions
and in matters of conscience, he did not pass beyond the bounds of
his time and of his class; and his intuitions possessed but little
creative originality. With the passing of the sentimental age,
and with the toning down of the puritan spirit, he ceased to be a
prophet and sank into the part of a representative thinker and
writer. The light thrown by him into the obscure undergrowths
of the soul does not break from heaven like the flashes of a
Shakespeare ; it is a humble ray of poring, searching intensity.
In these latter days, new shades have been added to our notions
of conduct; morality has been revived in new forms and touched
with an unwonted delicacy, a more anxious self-diffidence; and
Richardson's hard, plain idea of duty cannot but appear blunt
and harsh to us, as his analysis of the soul seems poor when com-
pared with the luxuriant growth of modern psychology. Thus,
the wonderful penetration of his genius has not maintained its
supremacy, and time has pitilessly revealed its narrowness.
But his novels deserve more than the disinterested curiosity
of students; their significance is other than relative. Taken by
themselves, they constitute a literary achievement of enduring
worth. The moral passion with which they are instinct may not
appeal to us unreservedly; yet the forceful grasp of the stories
holds us fast so soon as we have become reconciled to the atmo-
sphere; and those regions of the human heart in which nature and
grace, selfishness and love are always at war slowly and pitilessly
open themselves to us, while we read, together with some part, at
least, of the free, individual, spontaneous life of the shallow self.
Richardson's realism is great in its handling of minute details,
its imaginative power, its concatenation of events. Though the
picturesque aspects of the world are hardly ever called up by him,
the material circumstances of the drama in which his characters
are engaged stand depicted with diligent fulness, and the inner
incidents of the sentient, struggling soul have never been more
graphically or abundantly narrated. His style is a self-created
instrument of small intrinsic merit but of excellent utility; it
shows variety enough to adjust itself to the personalities of different
correspondents; it moves on with a certain elaborate ease, but
## p. 14 (#40) ##############################################
14
Richardson
3
knows how to rise, at times, to a straightforward, telling energy.
It is not free from artistic, or even from grammatical, flaws, but,
considering Richardson's personal lack of culture, it bears witness
to a remarkable natural gift. Its tone is most often slightly self-
conscious, with a preference for Latin, genteel words and phrases ;
but it not unfrequently displays the strength of racy idioms and
the charm of native English simplicity.
Richardson's influence upon the course of English and European
literature cannot be overestimated. To understand the extent and
meaning of the effect exercised by him at home, the state of the
English novel before and after him should be borne in mind. The
assertion, frequently made, that he put an end to the romance
of fancy, after the pattern of The Grand Cyrus, should not be
repeated without qualification; the vogue of the D'Urfé and
Scudéry school had long been on the wane, and the tendency
to realism had already come to the front, principally through
Defoe and Swift. But it is certain that Pamela, besides being
the first notable English novel of sentimental analysis, heralded
the advent of everyday manners and common people to artistic
acceptance. The claims of Richardson to the favour of contem-
porary readers were, thus, manifold; he stirred their emotions,
and gave definite satisfaction to their latent thirst for sentiment;
he presented them with living, actual, flesh-and-bone heroes and
heroines, and responded to their longing for reality and substance
in fiction; he imparted a moral lesson, and, thus, found himself
at one with the rising reaction against the sceptical levity of the
preceding age. One more point should be emphasised: at the very
moment when the social power of the middle classes was growing
apace, Richardson, himself one of them, exactly expressed their
grievances and prejudices. His novels are filled with a spirit of
bourgeois—it might almost be said, popular--criticism of the
privileges and the corruption of the great; and, at the same time,
they are flavoured with the essence of snobbishness. It is easy
to exaggerate the fondness with which Richardson dwells on the
manners of servants or 'low' people; the class with which he
deals, that forming, so to say, the social plane of his novels, is
the gentry. To him, the right of birth is an all but impassable
barrier, and Pamela is no exception; she remains an inferior in
her own eyes, if not exactly in those of her husband. No doubt,
the higher circles of society in which Sir Charles Grandison moves
were not known to Richardson from personal experience, and it is
unnecessary to dwell on the mistakes with which he has been
## p. 15 (#41) ##############################################
Richardson's Influence on the English Novel 15
charged in his description of aristocratic life; still, he took a secret
delight in holding intercourse, though it were of a more or less
imaginary sort, with the nobility, and his conception of a gentle-
man was certainly not in advance of his time. Both the impatient
self-assertion of the middle class, and its quiet settling down into
conservative grooves of feeling, are thus foreshadowed.
