...very tedious, doubtless because he tried to read him for the story. " Why, sir," said Dr. Johnson, " if you were to read Richardson for the story, your...the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." The plots of Elizabethan playwrights rarely display originality. The greatest of them, Shakespeare...

...not seemingly suitable to be spun out through two volumes.1 But in Dr. Johnson's trenchant phrase, ' If you were to read Richardson for the story, your...read him for the sentiment, and consider the story only as giving occasion to the sentiment.' It is in delicate sentimental analysis, subtle delineation...

...Johnson's dictum about Richardson : ' Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your patience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself....the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.' 2 When Richardson, in a letter written during the composition of Sir Charles Grandison, remarks ' I...

...Richardson is very tedious," protested a friend to Dr. Johnson, and the Doctor in his famous reply conceded, "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the...yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment." Besides tediousness (which implies a deficiency in sense of style), Richardson also suffered from a...

...Honourable Thomas Erskine said to the great man, 'Surely, Sir, Richardson is very tedious.' Johnson replied: Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story...the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment. By 'the sentiment' Johnson meant what we could call the morality or even the 'message'. Both Richardson...

...rather than by way of any storytelling narrative. The plot was less than challenging, as noted by Samuel Johnson: "Why Sir, if you were to read Richardson...yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment." Considered by some to be the first "true" novel, Pamela is primarily a novel of character. Substituting...

...made more than two decades after the novel appeared, may reflect the emphasis of fond familiarity: "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the...the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." 1 Nevertheless, the evidence of Richardson's readers, then and now, belies him. What is happening among...

...slights the story in a way that would certainly have offended a writer as sensitive as Richardson: "Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the...the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." 163 Amelia, on the other hand, both satisfied Johnson's moral demands for fiction and accomplished...

...more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all ' Tom Jones.' " EUSKINE : " Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." JOHNSON...be so much fretted that you would hang yourself." The Doctor's remarks, as usual, are worth serious reflection. Fielding was a novelist of manners; in...

..."sentiment" over "story." Boswell reproduces that preference when he quotes Samuel Johnson saying that "if you were to read Richardson for the story, your...read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as giving occasion to the sentiment."'-* That pronouncement itself appears in a biography in the form...