ever, who benefited by his moralities. | vealed to me their love-secrets, in order to induce The following incident shows the lad in a more curious light:

:

"From my earliest youth I had a love of letter-writing. I was not eleven years old when I wrote, spontaneously, a letter to a widow of near fifty, who, pretending to a zeal for religion, and being a constant frequenter of church ordinances, was continually fomenting quarrels and disturbances, by backbiting and scandal, among all her acquaintance. I collected from the Scripture texts that made against her. Assuming the style and address of a person in years, I exhorted her, I expostulated with her. But my handwriting was known. I was challenged with it, and owned the boldness; for she complained of it to my mother with tears. My mother chid me for the freedom taken by such a boy with a woman of her years; but knowing that her son was not of a pert or forward nature, but, on the contrary, shy and bashful, she commended my principles, though she censured the liberty taken."

me to give them copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters; nor did any one of them ever know that I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word, or that expression, to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, I cannot tell you what to write; but (her heart on her lips), you cannot write too kindly; all her fear was only that she should incur slight for her kindness."

Never was a more distinct foreshadowing of the life to come. The quaint urchin, in his little coat and breeches, a wise little undergrown old man making his comments with the infinite complacency of precocious A certain delicious air of self-satisfaction childhood, keeping the young women's sein this narrative shows plainly enough that crets, knitting his soft brows over the the mature moralist, in the height of his composition of their love-letters, ready, no fame, approved, and was on the whole doubt, to go to the stake rather than betray somewhat proud, of these doings of the one of his confiding friends, is a picture baby prig. The little monster, we be-full of humour and a pleasant sentiment. lieve, might even now be matched in here If it were not that it is the fashion to sneer and there a virtuous Low Church house- at Richardson, one would say, indeed, that hold. The reader will recollect a set of American novels, much repandu some fifteen or twenty years ago, in which the creature flourishes, and is not "chid" but adored for its pious impudence. Pleasanter incidents, however, are in the life of this droll little precocious adviser and sage. It is clear that he was born with an old head upon his young shoulders, and his success was great among women—a “ success" of a character curiously out of tune with the manners of the time, and at which critics, born conservators of the sneers of all the ages, continue to jeer, notwithstanding that the cycle has run round again, and a Platonic counsellor of womankind has once

more become a favourite character in life and fiction. Here is a companion picture of a much more agreeable kind : —

"As a bashful and not forward boy, I was an early favourite with all the young women of taste and reading in the neighbourhood. Halfa-dozen of them, when met to work with their needles, used, when they got a book they liked, and thought I should, to borrow me to read to them, their mothers sometimes with them, and both mothers and daughters used to be pleased with the observations they put me upon mak

ing.

"I was not more than thirteen, when three of these young women, unknown to each other, having a high opinion of my taciturnity, re

there could scarcely be a prettier picture.
It is not, of course, the ordinary ideal of a
boy of thirteen; but yet it is indisputable
that there is a kind of man for whom, from
his childhood, the society and confidence
of women has an irresistible charm, and
that such a man is by no means of necessity
a milksop, as society in general is good
enough to suppose. This character, it is
evident, showed itself in the future novelist
at the earliest possible period, and as his
life developed it made itself more and more
apparent. There are many reasons which
strengthen this tendency when it exists in
the mind of a man in Richardson's position.
He was without education, and yet striving
for the best results of education, if we may
venture on such an expression. Books,
and discussions about books, and that
heavenly art of conversation which every
intelligent inexperienced being expects to
find in society, were to this lowly lad the
greatest things on earth. And where was
he to attain any semblance of these delight-
ful discussions - that feast of reason and
flow of soul of which he dreamt - except
Women are very badly
among women?
educated, everybody says, and everybody
has said it from the remotest antiquity,
and it is very wrong indeed that such a
state of affairs should continue to go on as
it has gone on for several thousand years;

and therefore it is most right and just to he lived, intended high things for me," he institute ladies' colleges, and courses of informs us. Who this mythical personage lectures, and university examinations. was, or how the 'prentice had become acBut yet the fact is that, so far as talk is quainted with him, no information is given. concerned, the sisters of the boy upon But “multitudes of letters," says Richardwhom we are spending heaps of money at son, "passed between this gentleman and Eton and Oxford, are not only much me. He wrote well- -was a master of the pleasanter to talk to, but very much more epistolary style. Our subjects were variready and better qualified in many in- ous; but his letters were mostly narrative, stances to take a part in those mild intel- giving me an account of his proceedings lectual encounters, those little incursions and what befell him in the different nations over the borders of metaphysics, discus- through which he travelled." This romansions of motives, sentiments, cases of con- tic episode of his youth, which looks very science, points of social honour, which are much as if it might belong to the fabulous the most prolific subjects of conversation, era which occurs in most men's history, than not only their brother, but their was terminated by the early death of "the brother's tutor, and all the learned commu- gentleman," and henceforward nothing but nity to which he belongs. Mr. Helps, in sober prose occurs in the narrative. Richhis Friends in Council,' and all the remote ardson served out his apprenticeship, worked descendants of that popular work, reduces five or six years as a compositor, and finally his feminine interlocutors to a very small set up for himself in a court in Fleet Street. share in the talk; but had the talk been He must have been a man about thirty real, the chances are it would have been when he thus ventured to try his individual they, and not Ellesmere or Milverton, fortune. Everything had evidently gone who had the lion's share. Among them- with him in the soberest, most methodical selves, women discuss such subjects. And way. No exaggerated good luck nor suso long as there remains a prejudice in perlative energy had been his. A few years favour of Shakespeare and the musical later he became the publisher of the True glasses as subjects of refined conversation, Briton,' one of the factious newspapers of men in Richardson's position, painfully the time; and subsequently two or three climbing the social ladder, will always find other papers passed through his hands. their best aids in the help and guidance of Like a true London 'prentice, he married women. Had the young novelist attempted his master's daughter-a step which no to read or elicit any sympathy about his doubt promoted his modest fortunes; and books from the boors in the village ale- on her death, married again the daughter house, what a downfall would his have of a bookseller at Bath-keeping his affecbeen! But their sisters in the mantua- tions strictly within the trade. An acmaker's parlour responded by nature to quaintance with the Speaker of the House any fine sentiment or case of delicate dis- of Commons, Mr. Onslow, procured him the tress. It was no doubt of as much import- printing of the Journals of the House, in ance to Richardson that he thus came in twenty-six folio volumes: a work in which contact with the young women and their there was apparently more honour than love-letters, instead of the village wits in profit, since he complains to one of his corthe alehouse, as it is of importance to a respondents that he had never yet had payfreshman at Oxford to begin his course ment, no, not to the value of a shilling, under the auspices of a good or a bad though the debt is upwards of three thou"set." sand pounds." But it is clear that the man who could be the nation's creditor to the extent of three thousand pounds must have thriven in his affairs. He had a large family of sons and daughters, most of whom he lost in infancy a house in the country near Hammersmith, and all the comforts of a well-to-do and thriving citizen. In this pleasant, unexciting routine of busy life, working hard early and late, yet taking his leisure and seeing his friends, fifty years of Richardson's life were spent. He had his trials and his joys like the rest of us; but nothing occurred to distinguish him from any other printer in the trade, except, perhaps, a knack he had of compiling indices,

In the year 1706, Richardson began his active life as apprentice to a printer. He thought it would gratify his thirst for reading," says Mrs. Barbauld: an interpretation of the motives of a "devil" which ought to make authors in general benevolent towards the imp. But the young printer did not find the facilities he had hoped for. His master naturally wanted him to work, and not to read; and he had to steal from sleep and amusement the time which he felt himself bound to devote to the improvement of his mind. He "engaged in a correspondence with a gentleman greatly my superior in degree, and of ample fortune, who, had

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writing prefaces, and doing other humble encouraged me to prosecute it," says the necessary accidental jobs in the launching unconscious novelist. But so little was he of a book into the world. This knack, to- aware of any special merit in his work, wards the year 1740, suggested to some that I had not the courage," he tells his enterprising publishers the idea of a homely friend Aaron Hill, to send the two vollittle work, such as might be "useful" to umes to your ladies, until I found the the ignorant. The account of this sugges- books well received by the public." “I tion, however, had better be given in Rich- had no leisure," he adds, to another corresardson's own words: pondent, "nor knew I that I had so much the writing of Pamela.' And besides, litinvention, till I almost accidentally slid into tle did I imagine that anything I could write would be so kindly received as my writings have been by the world."

"Two booksellers, my particular friends, entreated me to write 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. Will it be any harm,' said I, 'in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well as indite?' They were the more urgent with me to begin the little volume from this hint. I set about it, and in the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue, the above story (one

of structure somewhat similar to that of Pamela ') recurred to my thoughts."

66

The story is sufficiently well known to want little description; and at the same time it is so completely contrary to the taste of the present age, that it is with difficulty that we can comprehend the wild plaudits with which it seems to have been received. That young women should be taught to guard their "virtue," and yet that the brutal squire who permitted himself all kinds of attempts upon it was, after all, not such an offender but that he might be pardoned when his "intentions" became "honourable," and married and made very happy ever after, is the astounding sentiment of the eighteenth century as expressed in Pamela. Those letters which the virtuous papa, in all the domestic purity of his slippers and his closet, read to his " worthyhearted wife" and her young lady friend, and which were written with the intention of turning " young people into a course of reading. which might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue," abound in nauseous details as explicit as the frankest of French novels. To be sure, Pamela is spotless; and there is no dangerous seduction of sentiment to confound the reader's sense of right and wrong; but it does not seem to occur to the author that his heroine's delicacy of mind is in the slightest degree impaired by the assaults made upon her, or that the coarse contest is anything but a sublime trial and victory of feminine purity. Such, there is no doubt, was to a great extent the sentiment of the age.

From this slight origin sprang a whole world of literary efforts, and some of the most notable books in the English language. Nothing can be more characteristic of the man who no more suspected himself of possessing that strange light of genius within his humdrum individuality than the whole world did. What the fatherly good soul meant was to assume in print the rôle which he had evidently come to by nature in the ordinary intercourse of life. He had daughters of his own, and preferred" I do not blush," he says 'to confess it," the society of women; and what more just than that, when the pen was thus put into his hand, he should employ it in warning young women against those snares of which the world was full? In the simplest good faith the bonhomme began his homely labours. There is no touch of inspiration, no thrill of poetic frenzy, about the matter. A little pleasant natural complacency, something of that unctuous amiability which characterizes the giver of good advice, a little fuss, a pleasant excitement, and flutter of interest in the dutiful feminine household. Thus 'Pamela' came into the world. Richardson was over fifty by this time. He had all the settled habits of a punctual tradesman, and for is not the sensation novel a resurrecof a man early married and long habituated tion of nastiness? — but yet we have adto the calm yoke of domestic life. His first vanced a little in our ideal of virtue and its critics were his wife and a young lady vis- props. No doubts on the subject, however, itor, who used to come to my little seem to have troubled the satisfaction of closet every night with, Have you any Pamela's original audience. The book was more of" Pamela," Mr. R. ?. -we are come published anonymously in the year 1740. to have a little more of "Pamela." This "It was received," says Mrs. Barbauld,

66

Why is old Lady So-and-So's staff like Pamela'?" said a pretty wit, in her patches and powder. "Because it is the prop of virtue!" Perhaps we are not so much better in reality as we think ourselves

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"with a burst of applause from all ranks of tion. The spiteful meaning has all evapopeople." Its tendency was considered so rated by process of time; and perhaps the excellent that popular divines recommended highest claim of Pamela' to consideration it from the pulpit. Ladies at Ranelagh, in now is, that it was the occasion of producthe height of gaiety and fashion, held up ing another work of quality much less morthe slim volumes to each other "to show tal than itself. Fielding pays the kain or they had got the book that every one was toll to the devil - which seems to have talking of." Mr. Pope says it will do more been exacted from that age, as it was from good than many volumes of sermons. I the medieval artificers, who built bridges have heard them (Pope and Allen) very and founded cities by the help of the Evil high in its praises, and they will not have One - with a certain jovial readiness. But any faults to be mentioned in the story. I disgusting as are his preliminary chapters, believe they have read it twice apiece at we are not sure that they are really worse least," says Richardson's brother-in-law. than Pamela's elaborate defence and deMr. Chetwynd says," adds the same au- tailed account of her various dangers; and thority," that if all other books were to be Richardson has nothing which can compare burnt, this book, next to the Bible, ought with the conception of Parson Adams. to be preserved." Other enthusiastic con- This wonderful, simple, patriarchal, wise, temporaries declare it to be "the best book and innocent and foolish priest - with his ever published." learning and his absence of mind, his tender heart, his spotless character, his sympathy and severity is one of the first and finest figures in that gallery of worthies which has since expanded so widely. He stands between Sir Roger de Coverley and Uncle Toby, one of the earliest of those matchless pictures, made with a smile on the lip and a tear in the eye, which enrich English literature. And there are few greater marvels in literary history than the fact that such a conception was brought into the world, in the first place, by a rival's spiteful impatience of public approbation as shown to the author of the pioneer story the novel which had sounded the waters, and made the chart, and opened the dangerous yet triumphant way. Thanks to that alchemy of genius which works the base alloy out of the gold unawares, and defeats even its own evil motives when once its splendid activity is fully got to work, Fielding's book, which began in malice and filthiness, rapidly cleared into a real masterpiece of art. A greater compliment could not have been paid to Pamela. It is the grand distinction of that pretty, voluminous, simple, and prudent maiden.

"I opened this powerful little piece," says Aaron Hill, while still unaware, or affecting to be unaware, of its authorship, "with more expectation than from common designs of like promise, because it came from your hands for my daughters; yet who could have dreamed he would find, under the modest disguise of a novel, all the soul of religion, good-breeding, discretion, good-nature, wit, fancy, fine thoughts, and morality? It will live on through posterity with such unbounded extent of good consequences that twenty ages to come may be

the better and wiser for its influence."

Such was the reception afforded to a book which nowadays we should consider of very doubtful tendency, and upon which the most enthusiastic admirer would certainly never think of bringing up his son to virtue, as one of Richardson's admirers proposes. A still greater compliment was in reserve for it. Fielding, with a curious mixture of contempt and imitation, wrote his Joseph Andrews' avowedly as a parody upon, and trenchant satire of, the Waiting Gentlewoman, who had carried her purity to so good a market. The state of feeling which could permit such a proceeding is happily incomprehensible to our- The story was translated almost immediselves. It is said the two men had been on ately into English and Dutch- that langood terms before, though there never guage, now so unknown, being then the facould have been much friendship, one miliar tongue of our closest allies. And it would imagine, between the struggling produced for Richardson a crowd of correplayright afloat amid all the dissipations of spondents, and fame which was entirely betown, the ruined squire, with the best of yond his expectations. A spurious continblood in his veins but not a shilling in his pocket and the orderly sober citizen, warm and well-to-do, whose virtues and failings were alike respectable. Nobody except Richardson himself, who felt it deeply, seems to have considered that there was anything derogatory to the dignity of genius in this curious parody and adapta

uation, called Pamela in High Life,' was published shortly after, and led the author to give forth two additional volumes, which, however, have fallen into utter oblivion. Warburton advised him, in his own name and that of Pope, to "make it a vehicle for satires upon the fashions and follies of the Great World, by representing the light in

which they would appear to the rustic Pa- | am such a sorry pruner, though greatly mela when she was introduced to them." But luxuriant, that I am apt to add three pages satire was not Richardson's forte; and the for one I take away! Altogether I am frecontinuation of Pamela is as dead as any quently out of conceit with it." But still of the other secondary novels of the day. the work went on. It gave all his friends a After this curious blaze of sudden excite- subject to write about, and added a zest to ment and success, quiet fell once more upon his homely life. During those tranquil passthe printing-office, with the printer's house ing years, which seem to go like so many over it, in Salisbury Court, and over the days (the time of the '45, when Scotland pleasanter home at Hammersmith. The was being rent in sunder, and Charles Edgood tradesman went back to his business; ward going through his martyrdom, and the he opened his house hospitably to his inti- Scots lords being beheaded and quartered mates; he wrote his little letters, full of a almost under the eyes of our placid novelsoft purr of satisfaction and content. He ist!) Richardsou, in his snug closet, after was pleased with himself, pleased with his his day's work, went on slowly elaborating friends, and perhaps felt that the world it- his story. Some parts of it appear to have self could scarcely be so wicked, since Pa- been sent before publication for the critimela' had so lively a reception in it. The cism of his friends at a distance; and it was kindly simple heart of the man is very well regularly read and submitted to the judgexpressed in his letters, nothwithstanding ment of his home circle, which included a this purring of complacency. When he varying number of young ladies who seem hears that one of his friends has an unwhole- to have been in the habit of paying long vissome residence, and is subject to perpetual its at his hospitable house, and whom he illness in it, he puts his own country-house called his daughters, and corresponded with immediately at that friend's disposal. He in the most voluminous and sprightly mansends the young ladies copies of Pamela,' ner. and toy-books for the children. With a softer instinct still he consoles a dissatisfied poet over the apparent failure of his works. Your writings require thought to read and to take in their whole force, and the world has no thought to bestow. I do not think," he adds, as so many benevolent critics have said with the same object, "that, were Milton's Paradise Lost' to be now published as a new work, it would be well received. Shakespeare, with all his beauties, would, as a modern writer, be hissed off the stage." Everything he says is full of the same goodnature and bland patriarchal kindness. Success evidently had nothing but a softening effect upon him. The only touch of bitterness in all the six not over-lively volumes of his correspondence is directed against Fielding, of whom he speaks with a certain acrid offence which is quite comprehensible, to say the least.

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In this quietness, his biographer tells us, eight years were passed without any further appeal to popular sympathy and admiration. But the interval was not one of idleness. Within a year or two of his first publication, the plan of Clarissa' seems to have so far ripened in his mind that his correspondents were informed of it. In 1774 he informs Dr. Young (of the Night Thoughts') that "I have not gone so far as I thought to have done by this time; and then the unexpected success which attended the other thing," he adds, "instead of encouraging me, has made me more diffident. And I have run to such an egregious length, and

"He used to write in a little summer-house or grotto, as it was called, within his garden, before the family was up; and when they met at breakfast he communicated the progress of his story, which by that means had every day a fresh and lively interest. Then began the criticisms, the pleadings for Harriet Byron or Clementina; every turn and every incident was eagerly canvassed, and the author enjoyed the benefit of knowing beforehand how his situations would strike.”

One of the members of this little conclave

thus describes the scene; "The grot, the garden," she exclaims, "rush upon my

view

"And then a choir of listening nymphs appears
Oppressed with wonder, or dissolved in tears,
But on her tender fears while Harriet dwells,
They all with conscious smiles these symptoms
And love's soft symptoms innocently tells,

view,

And by those conscious smiles confess them

true,"

The patriarch himself gives, however, a description of this pretty domestic life from a point of view less reverential and more consistent with the light-mindedness which is common, we fear, to young womankind.

"I never knew one of you girls," he complains playfully," put out of your course for the pleasure of the poor man, whom, nevertheless, you profess to honour. His leisure time is generally in a morning. Did ever any one of you rise an hour sooner in favour to him? You were never visible till the breakfast-table had been