'^iim -Sy *^^'^''^ i\ ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES PiQdi you \}Cfc-\jovf\\l \}(\a 0n7etf7if?g oo\oi li|e:n7or?ei)Jove- 50n?e ??^UTHERN BRANCH ^ u.^lVtRSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LlBftARY, tjQS ANGELES. CAUtF. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF :SAMUEJL MICHAMJDSOK, AUTHOR OF TAMEXA, CLARtSSA, and SIR CHARLES GRANDISON. SEL-ECTBD FROM THE ORIGINAL MA NUSCRIP TS, BEeUEATHFD tV HIM TO HIS FAMILY, To which art rrcSx^'''-V ymore nearly resembling it than Theagenes ^^^^^ /ind Chariclea, the production of Heliodo- ^^V'^ i:us, a Christian bishop of Trieca, in Thes- r#c^^ *S*^* Though his romance was unexcep- o jb*''^ionably pure and virtuous, he was called ^^ ' upon either to burn his book, or resign his bishopric ; upon which, with the heroism of an author, he chose the latter. But, after Europe had sunk into bar- barism, a taste was again to be formed ; and a taste for the natural, the grace- ful, and the simple-pathetic, is generally the late result of a long course of civili- zation. a 6 Every Xn THE LIFE Every one knows the character of the- romances of chivalry. Aniadis de Gaul at their head, with whose merits the English reader has lately been made acquainted in. an elegant abridged version. They were properly historical, but they heightened the traditionnry adventures of the heroes of their different countries, with the more wonderful stories of giants, enchantments, and other embellishments of the superna- tural kind. But we are not to suppose that even these fictions were considered, as we now consider them, the mere play of the imagination : " le vrai seal est ahnable'' was always so far a maxim, that no work of imagination can greatly succeed, which is not founded upon popular belief j but what is le vraiP In those times talismans, and wounds cured by sympathetic powder, and charms of all kinds, were seriously cre- dited. A great deal of love adventure was in- termixed in these narratives, but not always of OF MR. RICHARDSON. xiii of the purest or most delicate kind. Poetry was often made the vehicle of them, parti- cularly in Italy : the Orlando Furioso of AriostOy is a chivalrous romance in verse. As, however, the spirit of military ad- venture subsided, these softened, by de- grees, into the languishing love romances of the French school the Clelias and Cas- sandras, the laboured productions of the Calprenedes and Scuderis. I might indeed have mentioned before these a romance of a peculiar kind, the Astrea of d'Urfe, which all France read with eagerness at the time it was published. It is a pastoral romance, and its celebrity was, in a great measul'e, owing to its being strongly seasoned with allusions to the amours of the court of Henry the Fourth. But to return to the Romances de longue kaleine. The principle of these was high honour, impregnable chastity, a constancy unshaken by time or accident, and a spe- cies of love so exalted and refined, that it bore XIV THE LIFE bore but little resemblance t6 a natural passion. In the story, however, they were a step nearer to nature j the adventures were marvellous, but not impossible. Their personages were all removed from common life, and taken from ancient history ; but without the least resemblance to the heroes whose names they bore. The manners therefore, and the passions, referred to an ideal world, the creation of the writer ; but the situations were often striking, and the sentiments always noble. They would have reigned longer, had they been less tedious ^there exists no appeal for an au- thor who makes his readers weary. Boi- lieu ridiculed these, as Cervantes had done the others, and their knell was rung : peo- ple were ready to wonder they had ever admired them., A closer imitation of nature began now to be called for : not but that, from the earliest times, there had been tales and s.tories imitating real lifcj a few serious, but OF MB. RICHARDSON. XV but generally comic. The Decamerone of Boccacio, the Cent Nouvelles of the Queen of Navarre, contes and fabliaux without num- ber, may be considered as novels, though of a lighter texture ; they abounded with adventure, generally of the humourous, often of the licentious kind, and, indeed, were mostly founded on intrigue, but the nobler passions were seldom touched. The JRonian Comiquc of Scarron is a regular piece of its kind, and possesses great merit in the humourous way ; but the Zaide, and the Princesse de Cleves, of Madame de la Fayette, are esteemed t be the first that approach the modern novel of the serious kind, the latter especially j they were writ- ten in the reign of Louis XIV. greatly ad- mired, and considered as making a new era in works of invention. Voltaire says of them, that they were '* Les premiers Bc' " mans oh ron vit les moeurs des honnctes gens^ " et des avantiires naturelles, deci'ites avec grace, Avant elk on ecrivait d'un stile em' pouUj XTl THE LIFE " poiile, des chases pen vraisemblables.' ' "The " first romances in which were seen natural " incidents, and the manners of good com- " pany, described with elegance. Before " her time, improbable adventures were de- " scribed in aturgidand affected stile." The novels of Madame la Fayette are certainly beautiful, but a step is still wanting 3 they no longer speak, indeed, of Alexanders and Brutus's, still less of giants and fairies -, but the heroes and heroines are princes and princesses they are not people of our ac- quaintance. The scene is, perhaps, in Spain, or amongst the Moors ; it does not reflect the picture of domestic life, they are not the men and women we see about u& every day. Le Sage, in his Gil Bias, a work of infi- nite entertainment, though of dubious mo- lality, presented us such people ^ but his portraits were mostly of the humourous kind, and his work was rather a series of separate adventures than a chain of events con Of MR. RICHARDSON. xvif eoBcurring, in one plan, to the production of the catastrophe. There was still want- ing a mode of writing which should con- nect the high passion, and delicacy of sen- timent of the old romance, with characters moving in the same sphere of life with our- selves, and brought into action by inci- dents of daily occurrence. In the earlier periods of English historj^ we had our share in the rude literature of the times, and we were familiar, either by translations or stories of our own growth> with the heroes of the chivalrous times^ many of whom belonged to our own coun- try. We had also, in common with our neighbours, the monkish legends, a species of romance abounding with the marvellous, and particularly suited to the taste of a superstitious age. Many of these merit attention as a branch, and no small one^ of fiction ; they have been properly ex- ploded for their falsehood j they should now be preserved for their invention : they are XVili THE LIFE are now harmless j they can no longer ex- cite our indignation, let them be permitted to amuse our fancy. In the reign of dueen Elizabeth, we had the once famous romance Sidnei/'s Arcadia, of the pastoral heroic kind, if the expres- sion may be permitted. It is a book that all have heard of, that some few possess, but that nobody read&. From that period, to the middle of the last reign, we had tales and stories of va- rious kinds, but scarcely one that continues to be read to the present day, and, I believe, not any (the singularly ingenious allegori- cal fiction of the Pilgrim's Progress ex- cepted) that was known out of our own country. We had poets, we had philoso- phers, long before we had attained any excellence in the lighter kinds of prose composition. Harrington's Oceana is po- litical, and will grievously disappoint those who look into it for amusement. The Ata- lantis of Mrs. Manley lives only in that line of OF MR. RICHARDSON. xix of Pope which seems to promise it immor- tality, " As long as Atalantis shall be read." It was, like Astrea, filled with fashionable scandal. Mrs. Behn's novels were licen- tious : they are also fallen. Till the middle of the last century, theatrical productions and poetry made a greater part of polite reading than novels, which had not at- tained cither elegance or nice discrimina- tion of characters ; some adventure and a love story, were all they aimed at. Tlie La* dies' Libraryy described in the Spectator, contains " tJie Grand Q/rw^, with a pin stuck " in one of the leaves, and Cleliay which " opened of itself in the place that describes " two lovers in a bower i" but there does not occur either there, or, I believe, in any other part of the work, the name of one English novel, the Atalantis excepted. Plays are often mentioned as a favourite and dangerous part of ladies' reading. The first XX THE LIFE first author we had, whodistinguisiiedhmt" self by natural painting, was that truly ori- ginal genius De Foe ; and if from any onx3 Richardson caught, in some measure, his peculiar manner of writing, to him it must be traced, whose Robinson Crusoe and Family Instructor (the latter consisting of don:iestic dialogues,) he must have read in- his youth. They were both accurate de- scribers, minute and circumstantial, but with this difference, that the minuteness of De Foe was more employed about things, and that of Richardson about persons and sentiments. No one ever knew like De Foe to give to fiction, by an accumulation of circumstance, and a grave natural way of telling the story, the most serious air of truth ; except, indeed. Swift, in his Gulli- ver's Travels. De Foe wrote also some novels ; I cannot speak of them, for I have not seen them : they do not appear to have attained much celebrity. Richardson was- the man who was to introduce a new kind of OP MR. RICHAUDSON. XXi f moral painting ; he drew equally from nature and from his own ideas. From the world about him he took the incidents, manners, and general character, of the times in which he lived, and from his own beautiful ideas he copied that sublime of virtue which charms us in his Clarissa, and that sublime of passion which interests us in his Clementina. That kind of fictitious writing of which he has set the example, disclaims all assistance from giants or ge- nii. The moated castle is changed to a modern parlour ; the princess and her pages to a lady and her domestics, or even to a simple maiden, without birth or for- tune ; we are not called on to wonder at improbable events, but to be moved by natural passions, and impressed by salu- tary maxrims. The pathos of the story, and the dignity of the sentiments, interest and charm us ; simplicity i warned, vice rebuked, and, from the perusal of a novel, jve rise better prepared to meet the ills of life KXii THE LII^ life with firmness, and to perform our re- spective parts on the great theatre of life. It was the high and just praise given by our great critic. Dr. Johnson, to the author of Clarissa, that " he had enlarged the *' knowledge of human nature, and taught *' the passions to move at the command of ** virtue." The novelist has, indeed, all the advantage of the preacher in introducing useful maxims and sentiments of virtue ; an advantage which Richardson made large use of, and he has besides the power of impressing them upon the heart through the best sensibilities of our nature. Rich- ardson prided himself on being a moral and religious writer j and, as Addison did be- fore him, he professed to take under his particular protectiou that sex which is supposed to be most open to good or evil impressions ; whose inexperience most requires cautionary precepts, and whose sensibilities it is most important to se- cure against a wrong direction. The manner or MK. RICHARDSON. xxiii :iaanner of this captivating writer was also new. There are three modes of carrying on a story: the narrative or epic as it may be called; in this the author relates him- self the whole adventure ; this is the man- ner of Cervantes in his Don Quixote, and of Fielding in his Tom Jones. It is the most common way. The author, like the muse, is supposed to know every thing; he can reveal the secret springs of actions, and iet us into events in his own time and manner. He can be concise, or diffuse, according as the diifereut parts of his story i-equire it. He can indulge, as Fielding has done, in digressions, and thus deliver senti- ments and display knowledge which would not properly belong to any of the charac- ters. But his narration will not be lively, except he frequently drops himself, and runs into dialogue: all good writers there- fore have thrown as much as possible of the dramatic into their narrative. Mad. d'Arblay XXIV THE LIFE d'Arblay has done this so successfully, that we have as clear an idea, not only of the sentiments, but the manner of expres- sion of her l)een adopted by many both at home and abroad, especially by the French writers; 4jieir language, perhaps, being particularly asuited to the epistolary stile, and Rousseau himself, in his Nouvelle Heloise, has fol- io wed the steps of our countryman. Our author had a most ready pen, in- deed it was seldom out of his hand, and this readiness, with the early habit of writ- ing letters, made him take pleasure in an extensive correspondence, with which he filled the interstices of a busy day. Be- fore this -correspondence is presented te the reader, it may not be undesirable to preface the collection with all the particu- lars which can now be collected, relative to him who vvas the centre of it. The facts are taken either from the letters themselves, or the obJigiiig communications of some of his surviving cotemporaries, or from printed biographical anecdotes. Mr. Samuel llichardson, whose name and genius no English readers, and it may be added. OF MR. RICHARDSON. XxU added, few foreign ones, are nnacquaintcd with, is one instance, among innumerable others, of natural talents making their way to eminence, under the pressure of narrovV circumstances, the disadvantage of obscurer birth, and the want of a liberal education. The following is the account he gives of his family, in a letter to Mr. Stinstra. " My ** father was a very honest man, descended " of a family of middling note, in the county " of Surry, but ^vhich having for several ge- " nerations aliirge number of children, the ** not large possessions were s-plit and di- ** vidcd, so that he and his brothers were " put to trades j and the sisters were mar- " ried to tradesmen. My mother was also " a good woman^ of a family not ungen- * teel i but wliose father and mother died in: " her infancy, within half-an-hour of eachr *' other, in the London pestilence of 1665. " My father's business was that of a join- ^ er, then more distinct from that of a car-* " nenter than now it is with us. He was b 3 a good XiX THE LIFE " a good draughtsman, and understood ar* " chitecture. His skill and ingenuity, and ** an understanding superior to his busi- ** ness, with his remarkable integrity of " heart and manners, made him person- ** ally beloved by several persons of rank, ' among whom were the Duke of Mon- * mouth and the first Earl of Shaftsbury, " both so noted in our English history; " their known favour for him having, on " the Duke's attempt on the crown, sub- *' jected him to be looked upon with a ** jealous eye, notwithstanding he was ** noted for a quiet and inoffensive man, " he thought proper, on the decollation " of the first-named unhappy nobleman, ** to quit his London business, and to re- " tire to Derbyshire, though to his great ** detriment ; and there I, and three other " children out of nine, were born." As it was probably a great disadvantage to Mr. Richardson's father to leave his flourishing business in London, and as it is not OF MR. RICHARDSOK. XXxi not very likely that a man in his way of life should have so companionable an inti- macy with the Duke of Monmouth and the Eail of Shaftsbury, as to subject him to dan- ger on that account merely; it is probable that he entered further into their political views, than appears from the foregoing ac- count. Mr. Samuel Richardson was born in the year 1689, in Derbyshire, but in what particular place cannot be traced out. It is said that Richardson, from some mo- tives known only to himself, always avoid- ed mentioning the town which gave him birth. If this concealment arose from a reluctance to bring into view the obscu- rity and narrow circumstances in which his childhood was involved, the motive was an unworthy one, since they only served to reflect honour on the genius which could break through so thick a cloud. But, in truth, the candour and openness with which he relates the circumstances of his early life, ought to clear him from this imputa- b 4 tion. XXXil THE LIFE tion. He goes on to inform his friend;^ that his father intended liim for the church, a designation perfectly agreeable to his wn inclinations, and which indeed his strong sense of religion, and the sobriety of his conduct, gave him an appropriate litness for. But he adds : " But while I " was very young, some heavy tosses hav- " ing disabled him from supporting me aS: " genteelly as he wished in an education " proper for the function, he left me to ** choose, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, " a business; having been able to give me ** only common school-learning." Some of the admirers of Richardson have wished to raise his character by asserting, that he possessed a knowledge of the clas- sics s but his own assertions are frequent- in his letters, that he possessed no lan- guage but his own, not even French. It is- said, indeed, that Dr. Young and he have been heard to quote Horace and other' classics in their familiar conversations, and the OF MR. RICHARDSON. XXxiil- the letters of the pedant Brand in Clarissa, which are larded with Latin quotations, are adduced as proofs of his scholarship ; but, with regard to the latter, it seems proba- ble, as mav be seen in the letters, that he was assisted by his friend Mr. Channing; and, as to the former, it is not unlikely that he mighfc be familiar with a few of those I^atin phrases which are used, in a manner proverbially, by scholars, as the garniture of their discourse; and that he might also re- member something of the rudiments, which he probably learnt at school, neither of which circumstances imply any real knowledge of the language. His deficiencies in this respect he often lamented; and it is certain his 3tyle is as far as possible from that of a scholar. It abounds with colloquial vul- garisms, and has neither that precision, nor that tincture of classic elegance, which is generally the result of an early familiar- ity with the best models. But, however an ignorance of the learned b 5 languages XXXIV THE LIFE languages might, some centuries ago, have precluded the unlearned Englishman from those treasures of literature which open the faculties and enlarge the understanding, our own tongue now contains productions of every kind sufficient to kindle the flame of genius in a congenial mind. Reading, provided a man seeks rather after good books than new books, still continues to be the cheapest of all amusements j and the boy who has barely learned to read at a village school-dame's, is in possession of a key which will unlock the treasures of Shakespeare and of Milton, of Addison and of Locke. Nor is time generally wanting ', the severest labour has its intervals, in which the youth, who is stung with the thirst of knowledge, will steal to the page that gratifies his curiosity, and afterwards brood over the thoughts which have been there kindled, while he is plying the awl, planing the board, or hanging over the loom. To have this desire implanted in the young: OF MR. RICHARDSON. XXXY young mind, does, indeed, require some pe- culiarly favourable circumstances. These Can sometimes be traced, oftener not. In regular education, the various stimuli that produce this effect are subject to our ob- servation, and distinctly marked ; in like manner as we know the nature and qua- lity of the seed we sow in gardens and cultured ground ; but of those geniuses called self-taught, we usually know no more than we do of the wild flowers that spring up in the fields. We know very well they had a seed, but we are ignorant by what accidental circumstances the seed of one has been conveyed by the winds to some favourable spot, where it has been safely lodged in the bosom of the ground, nor why it germinates there, and springs up in health and vigour, while a thousand others perish. Some observation struck the young sense j some verse, repeated in his hearing, dropt its sweetness on the unfolding ear ; some nursery story, told with impressive b 6 tones XXXVl THE LIFE tones and gestures, has laid hold on the kindling imagination, and thus have been formed, in solitude and obscurity, the ge- nius of a Burns or a Shakespeare. With regard to Richardson,, it is not often we possess such particular informa- tion as he has given us, in his own w ords, of his early invention, and powers of af- fecting the heart. " I recollect, that I was " early noted for having invention. I " was not fond of play, as other boys : my " school-fellows used to call me Serious and " Gi'avifij i and five of them particularly " delighted to single me out, either for a ** walk, or at their father's houses, or at " mine, to tell them stories, as they phrased " it. Some I told them, from my reading, " as true ; others from my head, as mere ** invention ; of which they would be most ** fond, and often were affected by them. " One of them particularly, I remember, ** was for putting me to write a history, as ** he called it, oh the model of Tommy < Pots : OF MR. RICHARDSON. XXXvii- ** Pots; I now forget what it was, only " that it Avas of a servant-man preferred " by a fine young lady (for his goodness) " to a lord, who was a libertine. All my " stories carried with them, I am bold to " say, an useful moral." It is in like manner related of the Abbe Prevost, one of the most affecting of the French novelists, that, when he was among the Carthusians, into which order he had originally entered, he was accustomed to amuse the good fathers with telling them stories of his invention ; and once, it is re- corded, they sat up the whole night listen- ing to him. But not only our author's in- ventive turn, the particular mode in which he exercised it was very early determined. He was fond of two things, which boys have generally an aversion to letter-writing, and the company of the other sex. An in- cident, which he relates in the following words, shews how early he had devoted himself to be the Mentor of his female ac- quaintance : 4 5 3 ] Z " '^" Xxxviii THE LIFE '* 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 back- " biting and scandal, among all her ac " quaintance. I collected from the scrip- ** ture texts that made against her, As- * suming the style and address of a person ** in years, I exhorted her, I expostu- * lated with her. But my hand-writing ** was known. I was challenged with it, ** and owned the boldness; for she com- " plained 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 com- ** mended my principles, though she ccn- " sured the liberty taken." OF MR. RICHARDSON. xxxix Notwithstanding the ill-will which this freedom might draw upon him from indivi- duals, he was, he tells us, a general favourite with young and old. " As a bashful and not forward boy, * I was an early favourite with all the * young women o^* taste and reading in ' the neighbourhood. Half a dozen of * them, when met to work with their * needles, used, when they got a book * they liked, and thought I shoi^Id, to ^ borrow me to read to them 3 their mo- * thers sometimes with them j and both * mothers and daughters used to be pleased ' with the observations they put me upon * making. " I was not more than thirteen, when * three of these young women, unknown * to each other, having an high opinion ' of my taciturnity, revealed to me their * love-secrets, in order to induce me * to give them copies to write after, or * correct, for answers to their lover's " letters : xl THE LIFE " 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 affence 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 re- ** pulser, 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 ferv-our, 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." Human nature is human nature in every class J the hopes and the fears, the per- plexities and the struggles, of these low- bred girls in, probably, an obscure village, supplied the future author with those ideas, which. OF MR. RICHARDSON. xli which, by their gradual development, pro* duced the characters of a Clarissa and a Clementina ; nor was he probably hap- pier, or amused in a more lively manner, when sitting in his grotto, with a circle of the best informed women in England about him, who, in after-times, courted his so- ciety, than in reading to these girls in, it may be, a little back-shop, or a mantua- maker's parlour, with a brick-floor. In the mean time, years went on, and the fa- ther of Richardson, being disappointed in his views of bringing him up to a profes- sion, it became incumbent on him to chuse a humbler employment, and he fixed upon that of a printer ; chiefly, as he informs usj because he thought it would gratify his thirst for reading. He was bound apprentice to M?'. John Wilde J of Siafioner's-hall, in the year 1706. He did not, however, find it easy to gratify this thirst, though the stream ran by his lips, " I served," (says Ue) " a diligent seven years to iti to a " master xlii THE LIFE " master who grudged every hour to mc " that tended not to his profit, even of " those times of leisure and diversion, ** which the refractoriness of my fellow- " servants obliged him to allow them, and " were usually allowed by other masters " to their apprentices. I stole from the *' hours of rest and relaxation, my read- ** ing times for improvement of my mind ; " and, being engaged in a correspondence ** with a gentleman, greatly my superior " in degree, and of ample fortune, who, " had he lived, intended high things for * me J those were all the opportunities " I had in my apprenticeship to carry it * on. But this little incident I may men- ** tion ; I took care that even my candle " was of my own purchasing, that I might " not, in the most trifling instance, make ** my master a sufferer (and who used to *' call me the pillar of his house) and not ** to disable myself by watching or sitting- ** up, to perform my duty to him in the " day- OF MR. RIGHARDSON. xliii " day-time." The correspondence with the gentleman just mentioned, must have been of great service to the young ap- prentice, in gaining that fluency of pen which he was remarkable for, though it appears he was deprived by death of the patronage he expected. " Multitudes of " letters passed between this gentleman " and me ; he wrote well, was a master " of the epistolary style. Our subjects '* were various : but his letters were mostly ** narrative, giving me an account of his " proceedings, and what befel him in " the different nations through which he " travelled. I could from them, had I " been at liberty, and had I at that time " thought of writing as I have since done, " have drawn great helps : but many years *' ago, all the letters that passed between " us, by a particular desire of his (lest they *' should, ever be published) were com- ** mitted to the flames." After the expiration of his appren- ticeship. xHv ' THE LIFE ticeship, our author continued five of six years working as a compositor and corrector of the press to a printing-office, and part of the time as an overseer ; and; at length thus working his w^ay upwards into day-light, he took up his freedom, and set up for himself.j at first m a court in Fleet-street,. from whence, as his business grew more extensive,- he removed into Sa- lisbury-court, Richardson was not one of those who make genius an excuse for idleness. H had been diligent and conscientious as an apprentice, he was assiduous and liberul as a master. Besides the proper work of a printer, he did a good deal of business for the booksellers, in writing for them in- dexes, prefaces, and, as he stiles them, honest dedications. These humble em- ployments tended to facilitate to him the use and management of the pen. Mr. Richardson's punctuality, and the honour and generosity of Ijis dealings,, soon -gained , hiiiL- OF MR. RICHARDSON. xlv 4iim friends, and his business greatly flou- 4*ished. He printed, for a while, the True Briton, a periodical paper, published in 1723, under the auspices of the Duke of AV^harton, who, at that time, was endea- vouring to foment a spirit of opposition in the City ; and, to gain popularity, became .a member of the Wax-chandler's Company. Richardson, though his principles were very different, was intimate with him, as was also, in early life. Dr. Young. Some of the numbers of the True Briton were prosecuted, but Air. R. escaped, as his name did not appear. He was engaged yome time in printing a newspaper, called T/ie Daily Jouriialy and afterwards, Tlie Daiiij Gazetteer. Through the interest of tlie Speaker, Mr. Onslow, he had the print- ing of the Journals of the House of Com- mons, in twenty-six volumes, folio. Mr. Onslow had a great regard for him, and often received him at his house in Ember- court. Polite regards are sometimes more easily Xlvi THE LIFE easily obtained than money from the court end of the frown. Mr, R. did not find this branch of his business the one which yielded him the quickest returns. He thus writes to his friend Aaron Hill: " As to my '* silence, I have been at one time exceed- ** ingly busy in getting ready some vo- ** lumes of Journals, to entitle myself to ** a payment which yet I never had, no, *' not to the value of a shilling, though the " debt is upwards of three thousand pounds, " and though I have pressed for it, and *' been excessively pressed for the want " of it." He was chosen master of his company, an oflice, which, in the Stationer's Com- pany, is not only honourable but lucrative, in 1 7oA ; on which occasion one of his friends tells him, that though he did not doubt his going very well through every other part of the duty, he feared his habi- tual abstemiousness would allow him to make but a tery poor figure at the city feasts. OF MR. RICHARDSON. xlvii feasts. His indulgencies were not of the sensual kind he had, according to the sa- lutary custom of the London citizens, a country residence ; first at North-end, near Hammersmith, and afterwards at Parsons's- green, where he spent the time he could spare from business, and seldom without visitors. He loved to encourage diligence and early rising amongst his journeymen, and often hid a half-crown amongst the letters, so that the first who came to work in a morning might find it. At other times 'he brought, for the same purpose, fruit from his garden. Mr. R. was twice married, his first wife was Allington Wilde, his master's daugh-' ter, she died in 1731. His second was the sister of Mr. James Leake, bookseller, at Bath, with whom he always maintain- ed a very friendly intercourse : this lady survived him. Of his family, history, and the many wounds his affectionate nature received in the loss of those dear to him, be xhiii THE LIFE he thus speaks in a letter to Lady Brad- shaw, who had been pleading against a melancholy termination to Clarissa. " Ah ! Madam ; and do you thus call " upon me ! Forgive an interrupting sigh, " and allow me a short abruption. " I told you. Madam, that I have been " married twice; both times happily : you " will guess so, as to my first, when I " tell you that I cherish the memory of " my lost wife to this hour : and as to " the second, when I assure you that I " can do so without derogating from the " merits of, or being disallowed by my '* present ; who speaks of her on all oc- ** casiohs, as respectfully and atfectionately " as I do myself. " By my first wife I had five sons and " one daughter; some of them living, to " be delightful prattlers, with all the ap- *' pearances of sound health, lively in " their features, and promising as to their " minds ; and the death of one of them, I doubt, OF MR. RICHARDSON. xlix " doubt, accelerating from grief, that of '* the otherwise laudably afflicted, mother. ** I have had, by my present wife, five " girls and one boyj I have buried of " these the promising boy, and one girl : " four girls I have living, all at present " very good ; their mother a true and in- " structing mother to them. " Thus have I lost six sons (all my sons) ** and two daughters, every one of which, " to answer your question, I parted with * with the utmost regret. Other heavy *' deprivations of friends, very near, and " very dear, have I also suffered. I am " very susceptible, I will venture to say, *< of impressions of this nature. A father* " an honest, a worthy father, I lost by the " accident of a broken thigh, snapped by ** a sudden j irk, endeavouring to recover " a slip passing through his own yard. " My father, whom I attended in every *' stage of his last illness, I long mourned " for. Two brothers, very dear to me, I VOL. I. c " lost 1 THE LIFE " lost abroad. A friend, more valuable " than most brothers, was taken from ** me. No less than eleven affecting deaths " in two years ! My nerves were so affect- ** ed with these repeated blows, that I have " been forced, after trying the whole ma- " teria medica, and consulting many physi- " cians, as the only palliative (not a reme- ^* dy to be expected) to go into a regimen ; " and, for seven years pasc have I forborne * wine and flesh and fish ; and, at this " time, I and all my family are in " mourning for a good sister, with whom " neither I would have parted, could I " have had my choice. From these af- ^ fecting dispensations, will you not allow " me. Madam, to remind an unthinking " world, immersed in pleasures, what a " life this is that they are so fond of, and " to arm them against the affecting " changes of it?'* Severely tried as he was, he had yet great comfort in his family j his daughters grew OF MR. RICHARDSON. li grew up under his tuition, amiable and worthy; they were carefully educated, and engaged his fondest affections. It is remarkable that his daughter Anne, whose early ill-health had often excited his ap- prehensions, was the last survivor of the family. They were all much employed in writing for him, and transcribing his let- ters ; but, his chief amanuensis was his daughter Martha. In addition to his other business, Mr, Richardson purchased, in 1760, a moiety of the patent of law printer to his majesty, which department of his business he car- ried on in partnership with Miss Catherine Lintot. From all these sources he was enabled to make that comfortable provision for a rising family, which patient industry, judiciously directed, will, generally, in this country, enable a man to procure. But the genius of Richardson was not des- tined to be for ever employed in ushering into the world the productiqns of others. c 2 Neither Hi THE LIFE Neither city feasts and honours, nor printing Jaw books and acts of parliament, nor the cares of a family, and the management of so large a concern of business, could quench the spark that glowed within him, or hinder the lovely ideas that played about his fancy, from being cloathed in words, and produced to captivate the public ear. The printer in Salisbury-court was to create a new species of writing j his name was to be familiar in the mouths of the great, the witty, and the gay, and he was destined to give one motive more to the rest of Europe, to learn the language of his country. The early fondness of Mr. Richardson for episto- lary writing has already been mentioned, as also thgj; he employed his pen occasionally for the booksellers. They desired him to give them a volume of Familiar Letters, upon a variety of supposed occasions. He began, but, letter producing letter, like John Bunyan, " as he pulled, it came ;" till, unexpected to himself, the result was his OF MR. RICHARDSON. lii his History of Pamela. His account of it is as follows : " Tiie writing it, then, was ** owing to the following occasion : ^Two ** booksellers, my particular friends, en- " treated me to write for them a little vo- " lume 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 >ict in *< common cases, as well as indite ? They *' were the more urgent with me to begin " the little volume for this hint.J-I set " about it 'y 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 j the abcv8 siory " recurred to my thought: And hence *' sprung Pamela. This volume of letters c 3 "is iir THE LIFE '* is not worthy of your perusal. I laid * aside several letters after I had written ** them f6r this volume, as too high for the " vi^ of my two friends." This was written, (it was then only in |(P70 volumes) in three months. The idea he set out with of writing letters for rather the lower class, probably determined him to the station of his heroine, and the sim- plicity of her language. The author's object in Pamela is two- fold ; to reclaim a libertine by the influence of virtuous affection, and to conduct virtue safe and triumphant through the se- verest trials, to an honourable reward. For this purpose Pamela, a young girl, born of poor, but pious and worthy parents, taken by a lady of fashion to wait upon her person, and brought up by her with great tenderness and attention to her improve- ment, is, after the lady's death, at which event the story opens, exposed to the soli- citations of her youthful master, the only OF MR. RICHARDSON. Iv son of her benefactress. The story is car- ried on by letters, chiefly between Pamela and her father and mother. Her youth and innocence render her, for some time, unsuspecting of the passion she has in- spired ; and, when she can no longer mis- understand the purposes of her master, she prepares to leave his house, but he detains her under various pretences, and attempts liberties with her person, which she resists with firmness, as well as his pecuniary offers J though not disinclined to his per- son, and though she has no resource, on the supposition of leaving him, but to return to hard country labour. Her behaviour is all the while full of humility and respect to her master, in every instance consistent with the defence of her honour. Her mas- ter, who, though young, is a practised li- bertine, finding her protected by the watchful advice of her parents, and by the care of a virtuous house-keeper, who had belonged to his mother, determines to con- c 4 vey Ivi THE LIFE vey her to a place where she shall be en- tirely in his power. Under pretence, therefore, of sending her home to her pa- rents, he has her conveyed to another of his seats, where she is absolutely confined, under the guardianship of an abandoned woman, whose office it has been to minis- ter to his pleasures. The poor Pamela forms many schemes to get away, and en- deavours, by means of a young clergyman, to engage some of the families of the neigh- bourhood in her favour, but without effect. She then endeavours to escape alone, and actually gets through a barred window into the garden, from whence she hopes to escape into the fields, though ignorant of any ne who will receive her 5 but she falls, and bruises herself in attempting to get over the high brick wall. Her sulferings in this attempt are aftectingly described. Finding all her schemes abortive, she is greatly tempted to free herself from the danger of dishonour, by throwing herself into OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ivil into the pond, but considerations of piety at length prevail, and she determines to trust to Providence. Her master at length, after many ineffectual attempts to vanquish her resistance, begins to relent, professes honourable love to her ; and, after a severe struggle between his passion and his pride of birth and fortune, offers her his hand in marriage. Pamela acknowledges her love for him, and accepts (almost upon her knees it must be allowed) his proposal. Difficulties remain to be got over with Lady Davers, a proud and termagant woman of quality, sister to Mr. B. but the sweetness and prudence of Pamela overcome her dis- like, and the whole concludes with the per- fect happiness of the wedded pair. Such is the outline of this first work of our author, which was published in 1740. It was received with a burst of applause from all ranks of people. The novelty of the plan, the strokes of nature and pathos I with which the work abounds, the simpli- c 5 city Iviii THE LIFE city of the language, the sentiments of piety and virtue that are brought forward, took at once the taste of the public. Num- berless were the compliments Mr. Richard- son received upon it, as soon as he was known to be the author, for in the publi- cation he only assumed the character of editor, and that not by name. He had earnestly wished, he saidyto be concealed ; probably he did, till its reception was known. All that read were his readers^ Even at Ranelafth, those who remember the \ publication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up the volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew they had got the book that every one was talking of. The ten- dency of this novel was held to be so ex- cellent, that it was recommended by Dr. . Slocock, even from the pulpit. The friends j of the author were lavish, not to say ex- I travagant, in their compliments, and he received spontaneous eulogiums from many of the first authors of the age. Mr. Leake thus OF MR. RICHARDSON. lix thus writes of Mr. Allen and Mr. Pope: Mr. Pope says, " it will do more good than many ** volumes of sermons ; I have heard them " both very high in its praises, and they " will not bear any faults to be mentioned " in the story ; I believe they have read it " twice a-piece at least; I believe Mr. Pope " will call on you." Mr. Chetwynd sa3^s, " that if all other books were to be burnt,' " this book, next to the Bible, ought to " be preserved." Mr. Lobb talks of bringing-up his son to be virtuous, by giv- ing him Pamela as soon as he could read, a choice of books for a youth which we, at present, should be very much sur- prised at; and Mr. Lucas, the esteemed author of the Search after Happiness, thus writes : " I am inform'd that the ** author of Pamela, (the best book ever ** published, and calculated to do most " good) is one Mr. Richardson, Printer. * I think it a piece of common justice, ** to shew my regard to this common bc- c ^ " nefactor \ Ix THE LIFE " nefactor of mankind, by making him a " tender of my best services. Accord- " ingly, being about to publish a volume " of sermons, I take the liberty of making " him the offer of them." It was im- mediately translated into French and Dutch. The fame of this once favourite work is now somewhat tarnished by time, as well as eclipsed by the author's subsequent pub- lications j but the enthusiasm with which it was received, shews incontrovertably, that |a novel written on the side of virtue was 'considered as a new experiment. Appreciating it at this distance of time, we must acknowledge that the faults are great, but the beauties are genuine. The character of Pamela, so long as her sole object was to resist her master's attempts, is beautifully drawn, with many affecting incidents, and little strokes of nature. Her innocent prattle to Mrs. Jervis, the rustic dress in which she equips herself, when de- termined OF MR. RICHARDSON*. Ixl termined to leave her place, her stealing down to the kitchen to try if she could scour the pewter, in order to accustom herself to course household work " I see I could do it," says she, " it only blistered my hand in two places j" the sudden spring* she gives on seeing her father, by which she overturns the card-table, and the af- fecting account of her sufferings on at- tempting to make her escape, are all wor- thy of a master-hand. There are not many under-characters in this work ; the most pleasing, and perhaps the I)est sustained, of the whole, are those of Goodman An- drews and his wife, Pamela's father and mother. It would not be easy to find a prettier picture of low life, and of true English low life, in its most respectable gurb ; made respectable by strict honesty, humility, patience of labour, and domestic affection ; the whole rendered saintly and venerable by a touching air of piety and resignation, which pervades all their senti- ments. Ixii THE LIFE ments. The behaviour of the old man, when he walks to Mr. B.'s to enquire after his child ', and his humble grief, is truly pathetic. The language of the good cou- ple is simple, without being vulgar. It is not the simplicity of Arcadian shepherds : It is such as people in low life, with the delicacy of a virtuous mind, might fall into without any other advantages than a bible education. It is the simplicity of an Eng- lish cottage. Mrs. Jervis, the virtuous house-keeper, is well-intentioned, grateful, but timid. The other, Mrs. Jewkes, is drawn in coarse but natural colours. The pride and passion of Lady Davers are strongly drawn, some may think, perhaps too strongly, for a lady of her fashion ; but we every now and then see instances in which nature will get the better of the de- corums of life, and one of Richardson's correspondents tells him he could find him half a dozen Lady Davers's (her wit ex- cepted) amongst his q^uality acquaintance.. The OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixili The character of Mr. B. himself is drawn with less address than that of any one in the piece ; he is proud, stem, selfish, for- bidding, (selfish, that is' to say, in his love, for he has generosity enough in money matters) and his ideas of the authority of a husband are so high, that it is not easy to conceive of Pamela's being rewarded by marrying him, unless her regard for ex- ternal circumstances was greater than the author would wish to have supposed. The moral of this piece is more dubious than, in his life time, the author's friends were willing to allow. So long as Pamela is solelj' occupied in schemes to escape from her persecutor, her virtuous resistance ob- tains our unqualified approbation -, but from the moment she begins to entertain hopes of marrying him, we admire her guarded prudence, rather than her purity of mind. She has an end in view, an interested end, and we can only consider her as tlie conscious possessor of a treasure, which she Ixiv THE LIFE she is wisely resolved not to part with but for its just price. Her staying in his house a moment after she found herself at liberty to leave it, was totally unjustifiable ; her repentant lover ought to have followed her to her father's cottage, and to have married her from thence. The familiar footing upon which she condescends to live with the odious Jewkes, shews also, that her fear of offend- ing the man she hoped to make her hus- band, had got the better of her delicacy and just resentment, and the same fear leads her to give up her correspondence with honest Mr. Williams, who had gene- rously sacrificed his interest with his patron in order to effect her deliverance. In real life we should, at this period, consider Pa- mela as an interested girl ; but the author says, she married Mr. B. because he had won her affection, and we are bound, it may be said, to believe an author's own account of his characters. ' But again, is it quite natural that a girl, who had such a genuine OF MR. RICHARDSON. IxT genuine love for virtue, should feel her heart attracted to a man who was endea- vouring to destroy that virtue ? Can a wo- man value her honour infinitely above her life, and hold in serious detestation every word and look contrary to the nicest purity, and yet be won by those very attempts against her honour to which she expresses so much repugnance ? Does not pious love to assimilate with pious, and pure with pure ? There is, indeed, a gentle seduction of the affections, from which a virtuous woman might find herself in danger, espe- cially when there existed such a bar to a legitimate union as great disparity of rank and fortunes but this kind of seduction was not what Mr. B. employed. He did not possess, with Sedley, That prevailing gentle art. Which can, with a resistlesis force, impart The loosest wishes to the chasest heart ; ' Raise such a conflict, kindle such a fire 'Between declining virtue and desir, ;That the poor vanquished niaid dissolves away, la drearas all uight, in sighs and tears all day. Hi& Ixvi * THE LTFE His attempts were of the grossest nature, and, previous to, and during those attempts, he endeavoured to intimidate her by stern- ness. He puts on the master too much to win upon her as the lover. Can affection be kindled by outrage and insult ? Surely, if her passions were capable of being awa- kened in his favour, during such a perse- cution, the circumstance would be capable of an interpretation very little consistent with that delicacy the author meant to give her. The other alternative is, that she mar^ lied him for *' The gilt coach, and dappled Flanders* mares.** Indeed, the excessive humility and grati- tude expressed by herself and her parents on her exaltation, shews a regard to rank and riches beyond the just measure of an independent mind. The pious Goodman Andrews should not have thought his vir- tuous daughter so infinitely beneath 'her licentious master, who, after all, married her to gratify his own passions^ /^^ OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixvii The indelicate scenes in this novel have been justly found fault with, and are, in- deed, totally indefensible. Dr. Watts, to ^ whom he sent the volumes, instead of com- pliments, writes him word, that he under- stands the ladies complain they cannot read them without blushing. Great curiosity was expressed by many, to know whether the story was founded in fact 5 just as children ask eagerly, when they hear a story that pleases them, " Is it " true ?'* The author received anonymous letters from six ladies, who pressed him to declare, upon his honour, which they were sure he was too much of a gentleman to violate, whether the story was true or false, and they hoped Mrs. B. if there was such a lady, would not be against satisfying a request which redounded so much to her honour ; they tell him also, that they have taken an oath to keep the secret, if he will entrust them with it ; and that they will never cease writing till he has obliged them. Ixviii THE LIFE them. He jtells them, in his answer, that it was never known, since the world began, that a secret was kept which had been en- trusted to six ladies, and pretends that he was not at liberty to break the trust ; also, that they are very unreasonable in expect- ing him to give up the name of his heroine to ladies who keep their own names a se- cret. The real Pamela was said by some to be the wife of Sir Arthur Hazelrig, who had then lately married his maid ; others affirm- ed, with great confidence, that she was daughter to the gamekeeper of the Earl of Gainsborough, who had rewarded her vir- tue by exalting her to the rank of Coun- tess. Both these ladies were of exemplary characters ; but the author *s own account of the matter is given in the following words, in a letter to his friend and great admirer Aaron HilL .L "Dear S ^..r^ OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixix V" Dear Sir, " I will now write to your question *' AVhether there was any original ground- ** work of fact, for the general foundation ** of Pamela's story. " About twenty-five years ago, a gen- ** tleman, with whom I was intimately ac- ** quainted (but who, alas! is now no ** more!) met with such a story as that of *' Pamela, in one of the summer tours ^* which he used to take for his pleasure, ** attended with one servant only. At " every inn he put up at, it was his way * to inquire after curiosities in its neigh- ** bourhood, either ancient or modern ; *' and particularly he asked who was the ** owner of a fine house, as it seemed to ** him, beautifully situated, which he had ** passed by (describing it) within a mile or " two of the inn. " It was a fine house, the landlord said. " The owner was Mr. B. a gentleman of " a large estate in more counties than ** one. Ixx THE LIFE " one. That his and his lady's history- ** engaged the attention of every body ** who came that way, and put a stop to " all other enquiries, though the house " and gardens were well worth seeing. " The lady, he said, was one of the great- ** est beauties in England ; but the quali- " ties of her mind had no equal : beneficent, " prudent, and equally beloved and admired " by high and low. That she had been taken " at twelve years of age, for the sweet- ** ness of her manners and modesty, and '' for an understanding above her years, " by Mr. B's mother, a truly wordiy " lady, to wait on her person. Her pa- ** rents, ruined by suretiships, were re- " markably honest and pious, and had in- " stiUed into their daughter's mind the ** best principles. When their misfortunes " happened first, they attempted a little " school, in their village, where they were ** much beloved ; he teaching writing and ** the first rules of aritlunetic to boys ; his wife OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixxi " wife plain needle-works to girls, and to ** knit and spin ; but that it answered not : ** and, when the lady took their child, the " industrious man earned his bread by " day labour, and the lowest kinds of ** husbandry. " That the girl, improving daily in ** beauty, modesty, and genteel and good ** behaviour, by the time she was fifteen, " engaged the attention of her lady's son, " a young gentleman of free principles, " who, on her lady's death, attempted, by " all manner of temptations and devices, ** to seduce her. That she had recourse ** to as many innocent stratagems to escape ** the snares laid for her virtue ; once, '* however, in despair, having been near " drowning j that, at last, her noble re- " sistance, watchfulness, and excellent ** qualities, subdued him, and he thought " fit to make her his wife. That she be- " haved herself with so mi^ch. dignity, "sweetness, ajgyd humility, that she made ** herself Ixxii THE LIFE " herself beloved of every body, and even *^ by his relations, who, at first despised ** her; and now had the blessings both of ** rich and poor, and the love of her hus- band. " The gentleman who told me this, " added, that he had the curiosity to stay ** in the neighbourhood from Friday to ** Sunday, that he might see this happy * couple at church, from which they never " absented themselves : that, in short, he " did see them ; that her deportment was " all sweetness, ease, and dignity mingled : " that he never saw a lovelier woman: " that her husband was as fine a man, and " seemed even proud of his choice: and " that she attracted the respects of the " persons of rank present, and had the " blessings of the poor. The relater of " the story told me all this with trans- " port. " This, Sir, was the foundation of Pa- ** mela's story s but little did I think to " make OF Mi:i. RiCflAtlDSON. Ixxiii ^' make a story of it for the press. That " was owing to this occasion. ; ** Mr. Rivington and Mr. Osborne, "" whose names are on the title-page, had " long been urging me to give them a *' little book (which, they said, they were " often asked after) of familiar letters on *' the useful concerns in common life; " and, at last, I yielded to their importu- ** nity, and began to recollect such sub- " jects as I thought would be useful in " such a design, and formed several letters ^^ accordingly. And, among the rest, I " thought of giving on or two as cautions " to young folks circumstanced as Pamela , ** was. Little did I think, at ftrst, of " making one, nmcli less two volumes of ** it. But, when I began to recollect what ". had, so many years before, been told me '* by my friend, I thought the story, if ** written in an easy and natural manner, " suitably to the simplicity of it, might I " possibly introduce a new species #f ' VOL. I. d " writing. XXIV THE LIFK *' writing, that might possibly turn young " people into a course of reading different " from the pomp and parade of romance- ** writing, and dismissing the improbable " and marvellous, with which novels gene- *' rally abound, might tend to promote " the cause of religion and virtue. I " therefore gave way to enlargement : and " so Pamela became as you see her. But " so little did I hope for the approbation " of judges, that I had not the courage to " send the two volumes to your ladies, until " I found the books well received by the " public. ** While I was writing the two volumes, " my worthy-hearted wife, and the young " lady who is with us, when I had read " them some part of the story, which I had " begun without their knowing it, used to " come in to my little closet every night, " with '* Ha^ e you any more of Pamela, " Mr. R. ? AVe are come to hear a little *' more of Pamela,' &c. This encouraged ** me OF MR. RICHARDSON. IxXV mc to prosecute it, which I did so dili- gently, through all my other business, that, by a memorandum on my copy, I " began it Nov. 10, 1739, and finished it " Jan. 10, 1739-40. And I have often, censurable as I might be thought for my vanity for it, and lessening to the taste of my two female friends, had the story of Molicre's Old Woman in my thoughts upon the occasion. " If justly low were my thoughts of thi.s little history, you will wonder how it came by such an asuming and very im- pudent preface. It was thus: The ap- probation of these two female friends, and of two more, who were so kind as lo give me prefaces for it, but which were mucli too long and circumstantial, as I thought, made me resolve myself on writing a preface ; I therefore, spirited by the good opinion of these four, and knowing that tlie judgments of nine parts in ten of readers were but in hang- d 2 ing txxvi THE LIFE "^ ing-sleeves, struck a bold stroke in the *' preface you see, having the umbrage of " the editor's character * to screen myself *' behind. And thus, Sir, ail is out. " The success of the work gave occasion to a spurious continuation of it, called Pamela in High Life. The author had, in reality, no reason to be disturbed at tHis ; the continuation would have had the same fate with that of Marianne, afterwards pub- lished, which no one ever confounded with the Marianne of i\larivaux. However, up- on this, the aut^ior prepared to give a second part. Pope and Warburton, who heard he was about it, advised him to make it a vehicle for satire upon tlie fashions and follies of the great world, by representing the light in which they would appear to the rustic Pamela, when she was introduced to them. The plan might have * Under the character of Editor, he g.ave great commendations to the letters, fur wliich "he was blamed by some of his friends. suited . OF MK.. lUCHARDSON. Ixxvil suited Pofre or Swift, but Ricliardson did not, hy any means, possess those light touches, o delicate humour which were required iij it: and the knowledge of the great world he had yet to acquire. These volumes, two, ill number, are, like most second parts, greatly inferior to the first. They are su- pertluous, for the plan was- already com,-, y^leted, and they are dull, for instead of incident and passion, they are tilled with heavy sentiment, in diction far from ele- gant. A great part of it aims to palliate, by counter criticism, the faults which had been found in the first part. It is less a continuation than the author's defence of himself. The only incident of consequence is, the adventure at the masquerade, and Mr. B.'s beginning intrigue with a lady there, which gives Pamela an opportunity to shine in so critical a circumstance as a married jealousy J her behaviour under it is very well drawn, with a proper mixture of acute feeling, spirit, and gentleness, and (13 is hcxviii THE LIFE is supposed to have the effect of finally and ,J completely reclaiming her repentant hus- ily^O band. Goldoni has written two plays on / the story of Pamela; his Pamela Nubile j j and Pamela Marttata. It may be worth mentioning, that this novel changed the pronunciation of the name Pamela, which before was pro- nounced Pamela, as appears from that line of Pope " The gods to curse Pamela with her prayers". Aaron Hill thus writes about it: "I " have made" (viz. in some commendatory verses he wrote upon the occasion) * the " e short in your Pamela j I observe it is " so in her own pretty verses at parting. " I am for deriving her name from her ** qualities; only that the Greek iixs and " t>.t\os allude much too faintly to the all- " reaching extent of her sweetness:" and he adds, " that ISIr. Pope has taught half " the women in England to pronounce " it wrong. It Y y OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixxix It is well known that Fielding, who started in his career of fame soon after Richardson, wrote his Joseph Andrews in ridicule of Pamela. Joseph is sup- posed to be the brother of Pamela, and Mr. B. is 'Squire Booby. Richardson was exceedingly hurt at thisj the more so, as~tTiey Tia^HBeen upon good terms, and he was very intimate with Fielding's two sisters. He never appears cordially to have forgiven it, (perhaps it was not in human nature that he should) and he always speaks in his letters with a great deal of asperity of Tom Jones, more indeed than was quite graceful in a rival author. No doubt he himself thought his indignation was solely excited by the loose morality of the work and of its author, but he couhl tolerate Cibbcr. Richardson and Fielding possessed very dilTerent excellencies. Fielding had all the ease which Richard- son wanted, a genuine flow of humour, and a rich variety of comic character ^ nur was he wanting in strokes of an amiable d 4 S(^usi- sensibility, but he could not deseribie a consistently virtuous character, ajid ift deep pathos he was far excelled by hi^J rival. When we see Fielding parodyiix^ Pamela, and Richardson asserting, as he cioes in his letters, that the run of Tom Jones is over, and that it would be soon completely forgotten : we cannot but smile on seeing the two authors placed on the same shelf, and going quietly down to posterity together. Richardson, encou- raged by the applauses, and benefited by the criticisms he had received, soon pro- ceeded to a new work. But Pamela, captivating as was the pub-? lication, shewed only the dawn of our au- thor's genius; and, if he sunk in the se- cond part of it, it was only to rise with new lustre in ClariTssa, the first two volumes of which were published eight years after the preceding. The production upon which the fame of Richardson is principally founded, that which OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixxxi which will transmit his name to posterity, as one of the first geniuses of the age in which he lived, is undoubtedly his Clarissa. Nothing can be more simple than the story, A young lady, pressed by her parents to many a man ever}^ way disagreeable to her, and placed under the most cruel restraint, leaves her father's house, and throws herself upon the protection of her Jover, a man of sense and spirit, but a li- bertine. AVhen he finds her in his power he artfully declines marriage, and conveys her to a house kept for the worst of pur- poses. There, after many fruitless attempts to ensnare her virtue, he at length violates her person. She escapes from further out- rage: he finds her out in her retreat; offers her marriage, which she rejects. Her friends are obdurate. She retires to solitary lodg- ings ; grief and shame overwhelm her, and she dies broken-hearted; her friends lament their severity when too late. Her violator is transiently stung with remorse, but not d 5 reformed i Ixxxii THE LIFE reformed ; he leaves the kingdom in order to dissipate his chagrin, and is killed in a duel by a relation of the lady's. - On this slight foundation, and on a story not very agreeable or promising in its rude outline, has our author founded a most pathetic tale, and raised a noble temple to female virtue. The ftrst volumes are somewhat tedious, from the prolixity incident to letter-writing, and require a persevering reader to get through them: but the circumstantial manner of writing which Richardson practised, has the ad- vantage of making the reader thoroughly acquainted with those in whose fate he is to be interested. In consequence of this, our feelings are not transient, elicited here and there by a pathetic stroke j but we regard his characters as real personages, whom we know and converse with, and whose fate remains to be decided in the course of events. The characters, much more numerous than in Pamela, are all distinctly OF MR. RrCHARDSON. Ixxxiia distinctly drawn and well preserved, and there is a proper contrast and variety in the casting of the parts. The plot, as we have seen, is simple, and no under-plots interfere with the main design. No di- gressions, no episodes. It is w^onderful that without these helps of cotnmon wri- ters, he could support a Avork of such length. With Clarissa it begins, with, Clarissa it ends. We do not come upon un- expected adventures and wonderful recog- nitions, by quick turns and surprises : we see her fate frorn afar, as it were through a long avenue, the gradual approach to which, without ever losing sight of the object, has more. of simplicity and gran- deur than the most cunning labyrintli that can be contrived by art. In the approach to the modern country seat, we are made to catch transiently a side-view of it through an opening of the trees, or to burst upon it from a sudden turning in the road; but the old mansion stood full d G " in Ixxxiv THE LIFE in the eye of the traveller, as he dre\r near it, contemplating its turrets, which grew larger and more distinct every step that he advanced; and leisurely filling his eye and his imagination with still increas- ing ideas of its magnificence. As the work advances, the character rises ; the distress is deepened; our hearts are torn with pity and indignation; bursts of grief succeed one another, till at length the mind is composed and harmonized with emotions of milder sorrow ; we are calmed into re^ signation, elevated with pious hope, and dis- missed glowing with the conscious triumphs of virtue. The first group which presents itself is that of the Harlowe family. They are suf- ficiently discriminated, yet preserve a fa- mily likeness. The stern father, the pas- sionate tmd darkrsouled brother, the en- vious and ill-natured sister, the money- loving uncles, the gentle, but weak-spirit- 43d mother, are all assimilated by that stiffness. OF MR. RICHARDSON. IxxxV stiffness, love of parade, and solemnity^ which is thrown over the whole, and by the interested family views in which they all concur. Miss Howe is a young lady of great generosity and ardent feelings, with a high spirit and some love of teaz- ing, which she exercises on her mother, a managing and notable widow lady, and on her humble servant Mr. Hickman, a man deserving of her esteem, but prim and formal in his manner. Miss Howe is a character of strong lights and shades, but her warmest affections are all along directed to her friend, and the correspond- ence between them is made the great ve- hicle of Clarissa's narrative of events, as that between Lovelace and his friend Bed- ford is of his schemes and designs. The character of Clarissa herself is very highly wrought: she has all the grace, and digni- ty, and delicacy, of a finished model of female excellence. Her duty to her pa- rents is implicit, except in the article of sacrificing Ixxxvi THE LIFE sacrificing herself to a man utterly dis- gustful to her^ and she bears, with the greatest meekness, the ill usage she re- ceives from the other branches of the fa- mily. Duty, indeed, is the great princi- ple of her conduct. Her affections are always compleatly under command; and her going off with Lovelace appears a step she w as betrayed, not persuaded, into. His persuasions she had withstood, and it was fear, not love, that at last precipitated her into his protection. If, therefore, the au- thor meant to represent her subsequent misfortunes as a punishment, he has scarce- ly made her faulty enough. That a young lady has eloped from her father's house with a libertine, sounds, indeed, like a grave offence; but the fault, when it is examined into, is softened, and shaded off by such a variety of circumstances, that it becomes almost evanescent. Who that reads the treatment she experienced, docs not wonder at her lang-uffering. After Clarissa OF MR. RICHARDSON. Ixxxvil Clarissa finds herself, against her will and intention, in the power of her lover, the story becomes, for a while, a game at chess, in which both parties exert great skill and presence of mind, and quick observation of each others mo- tions. Not a moment of weakness does Clarissa betray, and she only loses the game because she plays fairly, and with integrity, while he is guilty of the basest frauds. During this part of the story, the ge- nerality of readers are perhaps inclined to wish, that Lovelace should give up his wicked intentions, reform, and make Cla- rissa happy in the marriage state. This was the conclusion which Lad\^ Bradshaw so vehemently and passionately urged the author to adopt. But when the imfeeling cliaracter of Lovelace proceeds to deeper and darker wickedness, when his unre- lenting cruelty meditates, and actually perpetrates, the last unmanly outrage upon unpro- Ixxxvin THE UFE unprotected innocence and virtue j the heart surely cannot have right feelings that does not cordially detest so black a villain, notwithstanding the agreeable qua- lities which are thrown into his character, and that woman must have little delicacy, who does not feel that his crime has raised an eternal wall of separation between him and the victim of his treachery, whatever affection she might have previously enter- tained for him. Yet it is said by some, that the author has made Lovelace too agreeable, and his character has been much tlie object of criticism. But a lit- tle reflection will shew us, that the au- thor had a more difficult part to manage, in drawing his character, than that of any other in the work, and that he could not well have made him different from what he is. If he had drawn a mean-spirited dark villain, without any specious quali- ties, his Clarissa would have been degrad- ed. Lovelage, as he is to win the aflections of OF MRv RIClI-AilDSON. Ixxxi?* of the heroine, is necessarily, in some sort, the hero of tlie piece, and no one in it must be permitted to outshine him. The author, therefore, gives him wit and spirit, and courage, and generosity, and manly genteel address, and also transient gleamn of feeling, and transient stings of remorse ; so that we are often led to hope he mayj follow his better angel, and give up his atrocious designs. This the author has done, and less he could not do, for tho man whom Clarissa was inclined to favour. Besides, if it was part of his intention to warn young women against placing their affections upon libertines, it was certainly only against the agreeable ones of that class, that he had any occasion to warn them. He tells us in one of his letters, that finding he had made him too much a favourite, he had thrown in some darker, shades to obviate the object ion j and surely the shades are dark enough. In one par- ticular, however, the author might per- haps XC THE LIFE haps have improved the moral efFect of the worki he might have given more of hor- ror to the last scene of Lovelace's life. When Clarissa and he were finally sepa- rated, there was no occasion to keep mea- sures with him; and why should Belton die a death of so much horror, and Love- lace of calm composure and self-posses- sion. Lovelace dies in a duel, admirably well described, in which he behaves with the cool intrepidity of a gentleman and a man of spirit. Colonel Morden could not behave better. Some tender strokes are thrown in on his parting with Belford, and on other occasions, tending to interest the reader in his favour ; and his last words, " Let this expiate," are manifestly intend- ed to do away our resentment, and leave a favourable impression on our minds with regard to his future prospects. Somethiug, indeed, is mentioned of impatience, and a desire of lifej but Richardson could have drawn a scene which would have made us turn OP MR. RICHARDSON. xci turn with horror from the features of the gay, the agreeable seducer, when changed into the agonizing countenance of the despairing self-accuser. But, if the author might have improved, in this respect, the character of Lovelace, that of Clarissa comes up to all the ideas we cttu form of female loveliness and dig- nified suffering. The first scenes with her hard-hearted fomily, shew the severe strug- gles she had with herself, before she could withdraw her obedience from her parents. The measure of that obedience, in Richard- son's mind, was very high j and, therefore, Clarissa seems all along, rather to lament the cruelty, than to resent the injustice, of im- posing a husband upon her without her own consent. It is easy to see she would have thought it her duty to comply, if he had not been quite so disagreeable. The mother is a very mean character ; she gives a tacit permission to Clarissa, to correspond with Lovelace, to prevent mischief, and yet xpH Tini: LIFE- : ) yet consults to be the tool of. the family iit persecuting her innocent and generous daughter ; but, this was her duty to her husband ! Yet, distressing as Clarissa a situation is in her father's house, the author has had tlie address to make the readec feel, the moment she has got out f it, that he would give the world to have her safe back again. Nothing takes place of that pleasure and endearment which might na- turally be expected on the meeting of two lovers J we feel that she has- been hunted into the toils, and that every avenue is closed against her escape. No young per^ son, on reading Clarissa, even at this pe- riod of the story, can think of putting herr self into the power of a lover, without aur nexing to it the strongest sense of degrar dation and anxiety. A great deal of con- trivance is expended by the author, in the various plots set on foot by Lovelace, to keep his victim toterably easy in her ambi- guous situation ^ and> though someof thesis are OF MR. RICHARDSON. xciri ere tedious, it was necessary, for Clarissa's honour, to make the reader sensible that she had an inextricable net wound around her, and that it was not owing to her want of prudence or vigilance, that she did not escape. In the mean time the wit of X*0velace, and the sprightliness of Miss Howe, prevent monotony. In one instance, however, Clarissa certainly sins against the delicacy of her character, that is, in allow- ing herself to be made a show of to the loose companions of Lovelace : But, how does her character rise, when we come to the more distressful scenes ; the view of her horror, when, deluded by the pre- tended relations, she re-enters thje fata! house, her temporary insanity after the outrage, in which she so affectingly holds up to Lovelace the licence he had procured, and her dignified behaviour when she first sees her ravisher, after the perpetration of .his crime. What fmer subject could be presented 5CC1V THE LIFE presented to the painter, than that in which Clarissa grasps the pen-knife in her hand, her eyes lifted up to heaven, the whites of them only visible, ready to plunge it in her breast, to preserve herself from further outrage ; Lovelace, aghast with terror, and speechless, thrown back to the further end of the room ? Or, the prison .scene, where she is represented kneeling amidst the gloom and horror of the dismal abode ; illuminating, as it were, the dark chamber, her face reclined on her crossed arms, her white garments floating round her in the negligence of ^^oe ; Belford con- templating her with respectful commisera- tion; or, the scene of calmer, but heart- piercing sorrow, in the interview Colonel Morden has with her in her dying mo- ments: She is represented fallen into a slumber, in her elbow-chair, leaning on the widow Lovicly, whose left arm is around her neck ; one faded cheek resting on the good OF MR. RICHARDSON. XCV good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of which had overspread it with a faintish flush, the other pale and hollow, as if al- ready iced over by death ; her hands, the blueness of the veins contrasting their whiteness, hanging lifelessly before her, the widow's tears dropping unfelt upon her face Colonel Morden, with his arms folded, gazing on her in silence, her coflin just appearing behind a screen. AVhat admiration, what reverence does the author inspire us with for the innocent sufferer, the sufferings too of such a peculiar na- ture. There is something in virgin purity, to which the imagination willingly pays ho- mage. In all ages, something saintly has been attached to the idea of unblemished chastity. Hence the dignity of the lady in Comus ; hence the interest we take in those whose holy vows have shrowded them from even the wanton glancci> of an as- sailer ; sailer ; hence the supposed virtue df Sprayers From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate, " To nothing earthly. Beauty is a flower which was meant in due time to be gathered, but it attracts the fondest admiration whilst still on the stalk, before it has felt the touch of any-t^^ude hand. ^ ' > '^-:. Sic virgo, dum intacta manety dum cara suis est. It was reserved for Richardson to over- come all circumstances of dishonour and disgrace, and to throw a splendour round the violated virgin, more radiant than the possessed in her first bloom. He has made the flower, which grew Sweet to sense and lovely to the eye. throw out a richer fragrance after " the " cruel spoiler has cropped the fair rose, " and rifled its sweetness ^ He has drawn the OF Mft. RICHARDSON. XCViV the triumph of mental chastity; he has drawn it uncontaminated, untarnished, and incapable of mingling with pollution. The scenes which follow the death of the heroine, exhibit grief in an affect- ing variety of forms, as it is modified by the characters of different survivors. They run into considerable length, but we have been so deeply interested, th.it we feel it a relief to have our grief drawn off, as it wer^, by a variety of sluices, and we are glad not to be dismissed till we have shed tears, even to satiety. We enjoy, besides, the punishment of the Harlowes, in the contemplation of their merited anguish. Sentiments of piety pervade the whole work ; but the death-bed of Clarissa, her Christian forgiveness, and her meek resig- nation, are particularly edifying. Richard- son loved to draw deatli-beds : He seems to have imbibed, from his friend Dr. Young, an opinion of tiieir being a touch-stone of merit or demerit. There are three de- scribed in this work, besides that of Love-, Vol. I. e lacci XCVIU THE LIFE lace ; that, it has already been mentioned, would have had a more moral effect, if it had been fuller of horror. Lovelace is made to delare, that he cannot be totally unhappy, whatever be his own lot in a fu- ture state, if he is allowed to contemplate the happiness of Clarissa : He exclaims. Can I be at worst? avert that worst, O thou Supreme, who only canst arert it ! So much a wretch, so A'ery far abandoned. But that I must, even in the horrid*st glooni. Reap intervenient joy; at least, some respite From pain and anguish in her bliss. This is a sentiment much too generous for a Lovelace. The author has shewn him- self embarrassed with regard to the duel, by his principles, which forbade duelling. Yet, it was necessary to dispatch Lovelace ; for what family could sit down with such an injury unpunished? or which of his readers could be satisfied to see the perpe- trator of so much mischief escape ven- geance. Colonel Morden was a man of the OF MR. RICHARDSON. xcix the world, acted upon the maxims of it, and, therefore, it seemed hardly necessary to make him express regret at having pre- cipitated Lovelace into a future state ; Richardaon was not then drawing his per- fect character, and did not seem called upon to blame a duel, which, in our hearts we cannot, from Colonel Morden, but ap- prove of. That Clarissa is- a highly moral work, has been always allowed j but what is the moral ? Is it that a young lady who places her affections upon a libertine, will be de- ceived and ruined. Though the author, no doubt, intended this as one of the con- clusions to be drawn, such a maxim has not dignity or force enough in it, to be the chief moral of this interesting tale. And, it has been already mciitioned, that Cla- rissa can hardly stand as an example of such a choice, as she never fairly made the choice. On the contrary, she is always ready, both before her elopement and afler e 2 it. C THE LIFE it, to resign the moderate, the almost insen- sible predilection she feels for Lovelace, to the will of her parents; if she might only be permitted to refuse the object of her aversion. Is she, then, exhibited as a rare pattern of chastity ? Surely this is an idea very degrading to the sex. Lovelace, in- deed, who has a very bad opinion of women, and thinks that hardly any woman can resist him, talks of trying her virtue, and speaks as if he expected her to fail in the trial. But, surely, the virtue of Cla- rissa could never have been in the smallest danger. The virtue of Pamela was tried, because the pecuniary offers were a temp- tation which many, in her station of life, would have yielded to ; and, because their different situations in tife opposed a bar to their legitimate union, which she nnght av ell believe would be insuperable. The virtue of Werter's Charlotte was tried, and the virtue of the wife of Zeleuco was tried, h;ecause the previous marriage of one of tlie par- ties OF MR. KICHARDSON. CI ties made a virtuous union impossible. But Clarissa! a young lady of birth and for- tune, marriage completely m her lover's power she could have felt nothing but in- dignation at the first idea which entered her mind, that he meant to degrade her into a mistress. AVas it likely that she, who had shewn that her alfections were so much under her command, while the object of his addresses appeared to be honour- able marriage, should not guard against every freedom with the most cautious vigi- lance, as soon as she experienced a beha- viour in him, which must at once destroy her esteem for him, and be offensive to her JAist pride, as well as to her modesty ? It is absurd, therefore, in Lovelace to speak of trying her chastity j and the author is not free from blame in favouring the idea that such resistance had any thing in it uncom- mon, or peculiarly meritorious. But the real moral of Clarissa is, that virtue is tri- umphant in every situation ; that in cir- e 3 cumstances CH THE LIFE cumstances the most painful and degrad- ing, in a prison, in a brothel, in grief, in distraction, in despair, it is still lovely, still commanding, still the object of our veneration, of our fondest affections j that if it is seated on the ground it can still say with Constance, '* Here is my throne, kings come and bow to it !** The Novelist that has produced this effect, has performed his office well, and it is imma- terial what particular maxim is selected un- that this work should be diversified with a greater variety of characters than his for- mer ones. It has, particularly, many more of the pleasing cast. The author shews in it, that he had improved in the knowledge of life and the genteel world > and there are none of those warm descriptions in it which were justly blamed in its two elder sisters. OF MR. niCHARDSON. CXVii sisters. He has an enlevevient^ a incident he seems to have been fond of, since it occurs in all the three works ; but the object is only marriage, and it is managed with perfect decorum, at the same time that it presents a truly aft'ecting scene. The early part of the novel presents a rich display of incidents and personages. The history of Sjr Thomas and Lady Grandison is admirably executed, and highly moral. The behaviour of Sir Charles to his father's mistress, to his sisters, to his uncle Lord W., to the Danbys, is all excellent, and opens his character to the greatest advan- tage. But the chief intrigue of the piece arises from the double love of Sir Charles to Miss Byron and Clementina. A double love, say the critics in that passion, is no love at all ; and tht'y will insist upon it, that Sir Charles is all along actuated by com- passion solely for both the ladies. The character of Miss B} ron is meant by the author as a model of true female excellence; CXVili THE LTFE excellence; but it is judiciously kept down, not only with relation to Sir Charles, but to the high-wrought portrait of the Italian lady. Miss Byron is gentle, timid, and somewhat passive ; her character has no very prominent feature, except her love for Sir Charles. As she was destined to reward the hero, the author has shewn great ad- dress in previously interesting his readers in her favour, before wq become acquainted with Clementina ; so that, notwithstanding our admiration for the latter, and the strong feelings she has called out, we all along consider the Italian family, as intruders, and are glad, upon the whole, when Sir Charles is disengaged from them. We adore Clementina, but we come home to Miss Byron. Richardson had been accused of giving a coldness to his female characters in the article of love. The accusation was ill- founded ; for the circumstances of the story in his two former pieces forbade the display OF MR, RICHARDSON. CXix display of a very tender sensibility ; but he has made ample amends for the imputed omission in his Grandison, where he has entered into the passion with all the mi- nuteness, and delicacy, and warmth, that could be desired, and shewn the female heart to be open to him in all its folds and recesses. In his Olivia, his Harriet, his Emily, his Clementina, he has well ex- emplified the sentiment of the poet Love, various minds does yariously inspire ; In gentle bosoms kindles gentle fire. Like that of incense on the altar laid ; But raging flames tempestuous souls invade, A fire which every windy passion blows, Wi|j pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows. But, as the character of Sir Charles is the most instructive, that of Clcnu'ntina is the highest effort of genius in this piece. In her, he has drawn a young creature in- volved in a passion expressed with the utmost innocence and delicacy, yet so strong as to overturn her reason; and af- terwards, CXX THE LIFE terwards, on the recovery of her reason, after a severe struggle, voluntarily sacri- ficing that very passion at the shrine of re- ligious principle. Clementina is indeed a heroine, and her conduct is truly noble, because, with her articles of faith, the ob- stacle was, in reality, insurmountable to a well principled mind. Her faith might be erroneous J but her conduct, grounded on that faith, was just and rational. This sentiment is insisted on, because some good protestants have called Clementina a poor narrow-minded bigot. A bigot she certainly was ; but it had been strange if she had not believed the religion in which she had been carefully educated, and she only acted consistently with that belief. It were superfluous to any one who has perused this work, to remark the masterly manner in which the madness of Clemen- tina is painted. Dr. Warton speaks thus of it : ** I know not whether even the madness of OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXl ** of Lear is wrought up and expressed " by so many little strokes of nature and " passion. It is absolute pedantry to pre- " fer and compare the madness of Orestes, '* in Euripides, to this of Clementina.'* There is such a tenderness and innocence in her wanderings, such affecting starts of passion, such a significant woe in her looks and attitudes, such a sanctity of mind, with so much passion, that he who is not moved with it, must resign the pretension of being accessible to fictitious sorrow. It is the fault of Richardson that he never knew when to have done with a character : that of Clementina would have been dismissed with dignity after her re- fusal of Sir Charles ; instead of which, he resumes her story in the last volumes, brings her to England, a step little con- sistent with the delicacy of her character, nor necessary to any event ; and, finally, leaves the reader to conclude that she will be brought to accept the hand of the Count de Belvedere. How easily and na- VOL. I. r turally CXXll THE LIFE turally might he have disposed of her in a convent, there to complete the sacrifice she had made of her love to her religion. He probably would have done so, if a de- sire of making his piece instructive had not, in this instance, warped his judgment, and restrained -his genius. He was in the habit of inveighing to his young friends against romantic ideas of love, and parti- cularly the notion that a first passion could not be conquered, and he feared it would have a bad effect if he represented the contrary in his works.* But though, in real life, a passion, how- ever strong, will generally give way to time, at least so far as to perjnit the disappointed party to fill her proper station in social life, and fulfil the relative duties of it with calm complacence, if not with delight, we cannot easily figure to ourselves that Cle- mentina, with such a high-toned mind, * I want to have young people thii.k there is no (iach mighty business as they are apt to suppose, in conquering a first love. Leitei- to Miss Mulso, and OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXxiil and a passion so exalted, a passion that had shaken the very seat of reason in her soul, could, or with so shattered an intel- lect ought, to turn her thoughts to a second lover. Novels will always be different from real life, and therefore always, per- haps, in some degree, dangerous to the young mind ; but they must be consistent with themselves ; and if the author chose to describe a passion which unhinged the reason of one lady, and was sinking the other to the grave, a catastrophe which we are led to suppose would have been the effect of Miss Byron's final disappoint- ment, he should not then have been scrupu- lous of allowing it to have its full effect. Great debates took place in the author's female senate concerning the point we have been discussing. Some voted for kil- ling Clementina, and very few were satis^ fied with the termination, as it stands; which, however, is only distantly implied, as, at the conclusion of Le Cid of Cor- neille, we are led to suppose that Chimene f2 will. CXxiv THE LITE will, m due time, give her hand to Don :p,Qdrigue. The correspondence, in these volumes, #s carried on, for the most part, between Miss Byron and her friends and Lady G. Sir Charles's sister, on the one side, and Sir Charles and Dr. Bartlett, (a respectable clergyman) on the other. Lady G.'s cha- racter ifi sprightly and pettdant, and her letters have a good deal of wit, though sometimes it degenerates into flippancy. She resembles Miss Howe, but with less of fire and ardour, and more of levity- She behaves to her husband ^>till more pro- vokingly than that lady to Mr. Hickman, Notwithstanding, however, the general re- semblance just suggested, and a few otliers that might be pointed out, there is no man, perhaps, who has written so much, and who has less repeated himself, than Rich- ardson. If we may judge by the variety of characters in this, his last publication, t^ie fertility of his fancy was by no means exliausted. OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXV cxha\isted. Of all the under characters, none is more delightful than Emily Jer- vois, the young ward of Sir Charles, in th beautiful and touching simplicity wifh which he has invested her. Her uncon- scious love for her guardian, arising so naturally, as she advances towards woman- hood, from her grateful affection and un- bounded esteem for him, her ingenuous shame at the bad conduct of her dissolute mother, and her generosity to that mother on the first symptoms of reformation, to^ gether with the naivett which is so happily hit off both in her ideas and her language, render her uncommonly interesting. Mrs. Shirley is a graceful portrait of mild and venerable age. Lady Beauchamp's cha- racter gives Sir Charles an opportunity to shew the address and dexterous manage- ment of a man of the world; Olivia, his virtuous forbearance ; the proud Porretta family, his manly spirit, tempered with presence of mind and a guarded prudence ; f3 the CXXVi THE LIFE the behaviour of Mr. Lovvther, and thi? French surgeons, shew a knowledge of professional character; and various parts of the work attest the author's improvement in general information, and more enlarged views of life. There is not, in any of Richardson's works, ne of those detached episodes, thrown in like make-weights, to increase the bulk of the volume, which are so common in other works : such is the story of The Man of the Hilly in Tom Jones. If his works are lair boured into length, at least his prolixity is all bestowed upon the subject, and increases the effect of the story. Flashes of humour, and transient touches of sensibility, shew, indeed, genius ; but patient and persever- ing labour alone can finish a plan, and make every part bear properly upon the main subject. Sir Charles Grandison, however, lies open, as what work does not ? to criticism. Besides the double love, which has been mentioned, there was another point which perplexed OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXVii perplexed the author much : Sir Charles, as a Christian, was not to light a duel, yet he was to be recognised as the finished gentleman, and could not be allowed to want that most essential part of the cha- racter, the deportment of a man of honour, courage, and spirit. And, in order to ex- hibit his spirit and courage, it was neces- sary to bring them into action by adven- tures and rencounterSk His first appear- ance is in the rescue of Miss Byron, a meritorious action, but one which must necessarily expose him to a challenge. How must the author untie this knot ? He makes him so very good a swordsman, that he is always capable of disarming his adversary without endangering either of their lives. But are a man's principles to depend on the science of his fencing-ma- ter ? Every one cannot have the skill of Sir Charles ; every one cannot be the best fiwordsman ; and the man whose study it 13 to avoid fighting, is not quite so likely f 4 m (CXXVMi THE LIFE as another to be the best. Dr. Young, in- deed, complimented the author upon his success in this nice point, in a flourishing epigram, which is thus expressed : What hast thou done ? I'm ravished at the sceae ; A sword undrawn, makes mighty Caesars mean. But, in fact, it was not undrawn. In the affair with Sir Har grave, he may be said to have really fought a duel ; for, though he refuses the challenge in words, he virtually accepts it, by going into the garden with him, knowing his purpose. In like manner he with Greville retires to a private spot, and there, on his adversary's drawing, which he might be sure he would do, draws, dis- arms, and gives him his life. But Greville might not have given him his, nor could every one turn a duel into such harmless play. Can, then, a better expedient be suggested ? If not, must we not fairly confess that, in certain cases, the code of the gospel and the code of worldly honour are OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXiX are irreconcileable, and that a man has Only to make his choice which he will give up. Another fault is, a certain stiffness which, it can hardly be denied, is spread over this admirable character. This results partly from the author's stile, which, where it aims to be elegant, wants ease ; partly from the manner in which the hero is pron^y as the French say, by all the othei: characters, and from the abundance of compliments which are paid on all sides ; for certainly Sir Charles is de la vitille cour. In part, too, it arises from the very circumstance of his being so per- fect and so successful. Perfection of character, joined to distress, will interest ; but prosperous perfection does not greatly engage our sympathy. We are apt i with a woman, whose very love for him must ex- pose him to continual distressing importur njties to change his religion. Italian ser- vants> OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXXl vants, an Italian confessor, a stipulated residence half thq year out of his native country, and, above all, the giving up half his children (it might happen to be all) to the errors of a faith which he believed to be erroneous these are among the sacri- fices which a conscientious man will scru- ple, and a wise man will refuse to make. Horrible must be a union, where the most tender affection can only serve to lacerate the heart, as must be the case, when the object of it is supposed to be under the wrath of God, and doomed to everlasting perdition. This must be the consequence of marrying a bigot to any mode of faith, where the other party is of a different one. Add to this, that the very proposal, made so often by tlie proud Porretta family to Sir Charles, to change his religion for a wife, and bind himself to live half the year out of his native county, was a high insult to him, considered only as an English gen- tleman. The author, however, valued him- self upon his management of tliis nice f 6 nego- CXXXU THE LIFE " negociation ; and, in a letter to one of his French translators, dexterously brings it forward, as a proof of his candour andP liberality towards the catholic religion*. The author of Sir Charles often men- tions in his letters, that he was impor-- tuned by many of his friends, to give them another volume, and the Gottenburg translators sent for the rest of the work, supposing it incomplete: he ought to have received it as a proof that it was too long, and not too short. He had already con- tinued it a whole volume beyond the pro- per termination, the marriage of his hero, and having done so, he might, without more impropriety, have gone on to the next point of view, and the next, till he had given the history of two or three ge- nerations. Clarissa, perhaps, runs out into * It is said, that an Italian translation of the bible appeared some years since at Naples, in the preface to which the translator warned his readers against English publicaUons; but excepted one, th Clarissa of Richardson* toa OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXxiH too great a length, but bold were the hand that should attempt to shorten it. Sir Charles, on the contrary, would be improved by merely striking out the last volume, and, indeed, a good part of the sixth, where descriptions of dress, and parade, and furniture, after the interest is completely over, like the gaudy colour- ing of a western sky, gives symptoms of a setting sun. But it is ungrateful to dwell on the faults of genius. Besides his three great works, Richard- son gave to the world a volume of Fami- liar letters; A paper in the Rambler; An edition of Msop's Fables, with Rejections ; and he was concerned in a few booksellers publications. The Familiar Letters is the book he laid by to write Pamela, and which he finished as soon as he had done with that work. He did not give his name to it. It is seldom found any where but in the servant's drawer, where it is a fa- vourite book, but when so found, it has not unfrequently detained the eye of the mistress. CXXXIV THE LIFE mistress, wondering all the while by what secret charm she was induced to turn over a book, apparently too low for her peru- sal; and that charm was Richardson. This book shews him intent, as he always was, to inculcate the duties of life, and it shews how accurately he had attended to the various circumstances and relations of it. The Rambler he wrote was the ninety-fifth number : it describes the pro- gress of a virtuous courtship, and pleased the public so much, that it is said to be the only paper which experienced a great demand, while the work was publishing in numbers. Richardson v/as a sincere friend of Dr. Johnson's, and interested himself much for the success of the Rambler, which, before the papers were collected in volumes, went off but heavily. He also published a large single sheet of the Du- ties of Wives to Husbands, and a Selec- tion of Maxims and Moral Sentiments, ex- tracted from his three novels, for he al- ways valued himself upon the morality of his OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXXXV his pieces, much more than upon his inven because his pathetic powers interested the feelings in the cause of virtue J but as he did not possess that kind of style, either of terseness or dig- nity, which is necessary to give brilliancy to moral maxin^s and observations taken separately, it was a vain expectation that bis should attract attention, when they were abstracted from all that had ren- dered them impressive. Yet he certainly did seem to expect, that this little volume would be used by his admirers as a kind of manual of morality. The style of Richardson, which it re- mains to take notice of, was not in pro- portion to his other excellencies of com- position. He wrote with facility j expres- sions, as well as thoughts, flowing readily to his pen j but we do not find in his writ- ings. exXXVi THE LfFE ings, either the ease and elegance of good company, or the polished period of st finished author. They are not only over- Joaded with a redundance of complimen- tary expression, wMch gives a stiffness to the dialogue, particularly in his Grandi- son, where he has most attempted to give a picture of genteel life, but they are blemished with little flippancies of expres- sion, aew coined words, and sentences in- volved and ill-constructed. One of his Correspondents, a Mr. Read, after giving him high and just praise, thus expresses himself: " But is there not here and there ** a nursery phrase, an ill-invented un- ** couth compound ; a parenthesis, which ' interrupts, not assists, the sense? If I " am wrong, impute it to the rudeness " of a college-man, who has had too little " commerce with the world, to be a judge ** of its language." If this was considered to be the case when Richardson wrote, it is a still greater impediment to his fame at present. OF MR. RICHARI>SON. CXXXVli present, when we are become more fasti- dious with regard to style, in proportion as good writing is become more common ; that degree, I mean, of good writing, which a habit of the pen will always give. The style of Richardson, however, has the pro- perty of setting before the reader, in the most lively manner, every circumstance of what he means to describe. He has the accuracy and fmish of a Dutch painter, with the fine ideas of an Italian one. Hfe is content to produce etfects by the patient labour of minuteness. Had he turned his thoughts to an observation of rural nature, instead of human manners, he would have been as accurate a describer as Cowper : how circumstantial is the following de- scription of a bird new caught ! " Hast " thou not observed how, at first, refusing " all sustenance, it beats and bruises it- " self against its wires, till it makes its gay ** plumage fiy about , and overspread its well- " secured cage. Now it gets out its head, " sticking CXXXTIli THE LIFE ** sticking only at its beautiful shoulders^ " then, with diiTiculty, drawing back its " head, it gasps for breath, and erectly *' perched, with meditating eyes, first sur*- " veys, and then attempts, its wired ca^ " nopy. As it gets breath, with renewed " rage, it beats and bruises again its pret- ** ty head and sides, bites the wires, and " pecks at the fmgers of its delighted " tamer J till, ait last, fmding its efforts " ineffectual, quite tired and breathless, ** it lays itself down, and pants at the " bottom of the cage, seeming to bemoan " its cruel fate, and forfeited liberty. And, " after a few days> its struggles to escape " still diminishing, as it finds it to no pur- " pose to attempt it, its new habitation " becomes familiar, and it hops about from ** perch to perch, and e\rery day. sings a *' song to amuse itself, and reward its " keeper." An idea prevailed at the time, and has gained credit with many, that RichardsoH was. or MR. RICHARDSON. CXXXix was assisted in his works, particularly his Grandison, by some of his lady corres- pondents. It is true that he often compli- mented them, by asking their advice and assistance, and was so far at least in earnest in the request, that, being very sensible of his deficiencies in his knowledge of fashion- able life, he hoped to be benefited by their hints and criticisms. How should he draw a fine gentleman, he often asks, except they would condescend to tell him what sort of a man he must be to please. Lady G.'s let- ters, in particular, were said to be written by Lady Bradshaigh ; but the author's own words, in a letter to that lady, are a sufficient confutation of the report, at the same time that they, mention a trifling insertion from another lady ; but, it should be observed, a mere insertion, and not at all connected with the story of the novel. " Your ladyship has been forced " to aver, you say, to some of your ac- " quaintance, that you had no hand in " the xl THE LIFE " the history of Sir Charles. Miss Mulso " has suffered from the same imputation: " so has that very worthy man Mr. Ed- " wards, the author of the Canons of *' Criticism. I once wished, that each of ** the ladies who honoured me with their " correspondence, would give me a let- " ter. But they would not favour me so " far. Yet one lady, on recollection, " shewed me some pretty observations on " the education of women, and their at- ** tainments. I begged a copy, telling " the use I intended to make of it. It " appears as good Mrs. Shirley's, in the " debate on the inferiority and superiority " of the two sexes, at the latter end of .*' vol. v. octavo, vi. duodecimo j you will " be pleased with this anecdote." The works of Richardson bear all the internal marks of having been written by one person. The same sentiments, the aame phraseology, the same plan sedu- lously followed from beginning to end, proclaim OF MR. RICHARDSON. CxU proclaim the hand of a single author. It is true, indeed, that when his female friends pressed him to give them another volume pf Sir Charles, he told them, that in that case they must each contribute. Whether he had reiUIy any serious design in what he said, cannot now be known, but Lady Bradshaigh seems to have been the only one who complied. She wrote one letter, in the character of Lady G. It is exe- cuted with a degree of liveliness and spi- rit, and not unsuitable to the character she had engaged to support, but it is evi- dent from Richardson's answer, that he did not like it weJl enough to have made use of it, had the intended volume taken place. But where could Richardson have found a pen able to supply his own, ex- cept in some detached ornament or trifling appendage? Mrs. Carter's beautiful Ode to Wisdom, made its first appearance in Clarissa, but indeetl, without the author's permission. T^iere is a fragment among the cxlii the' LIFE the unprinted correspondence, by the fa- mous Psalmanazer, written for the pur- pose of being inserted in Pamela, in the second part. It is an account of Pamela's charities to a poor family : but it is coarsely written ; attempting to move the heart by a mere representation of squalid misery, (a representation easy to execute) without a spark of the grace and delicacy which is necessary -to touch the fmer feelings: it was very properly laid aside. The frag- ment, entitled, the History of Mrs. Beau- mont, printed at the end of volume the fifth of this publication, was possibly meant for this additional volume; or, it may be, thrown out of the former ones, as what might be spared without injuring tli gene- ral effect, for Richardson shortened conside- rably all his works, voluminous as they are. Clarissa was reduced by two whole volumes after the first draught of it. He had never occasion to solicit his invention, his only care was to rein it in : a gjrong characte- ristic : OP MTl. RICHARDSON. cxiiii ristic of true genius. Clarissa underwent the criticism of CoJley Gibber, Dr. Young, and Aaron Hill. The latter undertook to go through it, and write the whole again more briefly : he wrote over again the first seven letters, but he soon found he should take a great deal of pains only to spoil it, and the author found it still sooner than he did. Dr. Young, sensible of the arduous task his friend would have, to support the re- putation he had gained by this work, had advised him to repose upon his laurels: but, when his Grandison was published, he retracted,, in the following couplet : I now applaud, what I presum'^ to blame, Jjter Clarissa you shall rise in fame. That "he rose in fame by it, is very true ; not, however, in tl>e general opinion, by the last surpassing the former, but by the accession it brought to what he had al- ready performed. He liimsclf used to say, that CXliv THE LIFE that he looked upon himself as the fatlier of three daughters, all of whom he loved with so much tenderness, that he enjoyed the praises of all equally, and it was in- different to him, whether the elder or the younger w ere thought the handsomest. A iady, indeed, told him, that they put her in mind of a story she had heard from her nurse, of a man who had three daughters, the first was the handsomest that ever was, the second was handsomer than she, and the third was the handsomest of all. His Grandison was published in 1753. While it was in the press, an aifair hap- pened which gave him great di.sgust and vexation, and considerably injured his well-e^ned property. This was the piracy of the Dublin booksellers. The printing Irish editions from published books, how- ever it might prejudice an author, was not forbid by any law, tliough it was illegal to vend them in England. But, at least, the author's edition had so much the start of OF MR. RICHARDSON. cxlv of any other, as made it worth-while for a Dublin bookseller to .purchase his concur- rence. But these men bribed the servants of Richardson to steal the sheets while they were under the press. They broke open the place where they were kept, as he says, under lock and key ; sent over what was prepared for publication, which was about half the work, and came out with a cheap dition of several of the volumes, before the author's English one ; and almost all the Dublin booksellers concurred in this atrocious act of robbery. Faulkner, who was the author's agent for his own edition, seems to have acted like the dog in tiie story, who, being set to defend a basket of meat, his master's property, which was at- tacked by a number of other dogs, kept them off for some time with great vigilance, but fniding that one snatched a piece, and another snatched a piece, abandoned the de- fence ; and, since he could not keep off the depredators, resolved to come in for VOL. 1. g his cxlvi THE LIFE his share. Richardson sent his own edi- tion to be sold there at a reduced price, but they were resolved to undersell him, and for what he did sell he could not get the money. His friends in Dublin ex- pressed great indignation at the behaviour of their countrymen, and endeavoured to serve him in the matter. Many letters passed, but to little purpose. This affair seems to have vexed Richardson to the heart. His reputation was at the highest, the sale of his works sure, and he reasonably ex- pected to reap the profit of of it. Not- withstanding, however, those disappoint- ments which people in business are liable to meet with, Mr. Richardson's assiduity and success was gradually encreasing his fortune. In the year 17^5 he was engaged in building, both in town and in the coun- try. In the country he removed from North End to Parsons Green, where he fitted up a house. In town, he took a range OF MR. RICHARDSON. cxlvii range of old houses, eight in number, which he pulled down, and built an ex- tensive and commodious range of ware- houses and printing-offices. It was still in Salisbury-court, in the north-west corner, and it is at present concealed by other houses from common observation. The dwelling-house, it seems, was neither so large nor so airy as the one he quitted ^ and, therefore, the reader will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to have been, in accusing his wife of perverseness, in not liking the new habitation so well as the old. " Every body (he says) is more " pleased with what I have done, than my " wife." Two years after, he married his daughter Mary (the only one married in his life-timel to Mr. Ditcher, a respectable surgeon at Bath. He now allowed him- self some relaxation from business ; and only attended from time to time, his print- ing-offices in London. He often regretted, g 2 that cxlviii THE LIFE that he had only females to whom to trans- fer his business ; however, he had taken in to assist him a nephew, who relieved him from the more burdensome cares of it, and who eventually succeeded him. He now had leisure, had he had health, to enjoy his reputation, his prosperous circumstances, his children, and his freinds; but, alas! leisure purchased by severe application, often comes too late to be enjoyed ; and, in a worldly, as well as in a religious sense. When we find The key of life, it opens to the grave. His nervous disorders increased upon him, and his valuable life was at length terminated by a stroke of an apoplexy, on the 4th of July, 1761, at the age of seventy- two. He was buried, by his own direc- tion, near his first wife, in the middle aisle, near the pulpit of St. Bride's church. The moral character of Mr. Richardson may be partly gathered from the preceding sketch OF MR. RICHARDSON. CXIlX sketch of his life. It was most respectable and worthy of his genius. He was sober and temperate, regular and assiduous in bu- siness, of high integrity, and undoubted honour. It is no small praise, that in his unfriended youth, and in the midst of those miscellaneous connections which a man who acts in the world unavoidably forms, (and of intercourse with the gay and the dissolute, the Gibbers and WHiartons of the time, he had his share) that, so circum- stanced, he should have firmness of mind to resist the temptations which offer them- selves in a licentious metropolis, and should be able to say thus of himself, " I never " was in a bad house, nor, to my knowledge, " in companywith a licentious woman in my " life." This assertion was drawn from him by his friend Mr. Stinstra, who had insi- nuated, that in order to draw a Lovelace, it was necessary he should have been some- thing of a libertine at one period or other of his life. His admirers, however, are g 3 coil- el THE LIFE constrained to acknowledge, that his ima- gination was not quite so pure as his con- duct. He seems, by some means or other, to have acquired a most formidable idea of the snares to which young women are ex- posed, and of their incapacity (in general) to resist them. He seemed to think women had a great deal to hide, and though his chief intimacies were with ladies, he sometimes betrays a mean opinion of the sex in ge- neral. Perhaps we might find the origin of some of these ideas, if we were in pos- session of the. love letters he wrote for his female companions, in the early period of his life, with their dangers and escapes ; but, it is certain his writings rather tend to inspire a certain bashful consciousness, and shrinking reserve, than the noble sim- plicity of truth and nature, in the inter- course between the sexes. Richardson was a careful, kind father, and a good husband in essentials ; but, it must be confessed, there appears to have been a certain for- mality OF MR. RICHARDSON. cli mality and stiffness of manner, but ill cal- culated to invite his children to that fami- liarity and confidence, which is so lovely when it does take place, but which fre- quently fails to do so, even where there is real affection, between such relations. Of this he was himself suflBiciently sensible, and often laments it. " My girls," says he, " are shy little fools." But manner does not depend on the wilK The manner of a bashful,, reserved man, is seldom encou- raging to others ; especially if he stands in a superior relation to them. Besides, he not only had high notions of filial as well as conjugal obedience, but expected all those reverential demonstrations of it in the outward behaviour, which are now, whether wisely or not I will not pretend to determine, so generally laid aside. Lady Bradshaigh writes him a very sensible letter on this subject. She finds fault with the stile of his daughter's letters, as too stiff, with the Honoured Sir, and the ever dutiful, constantly occurring, which, she tells him, g 4 iai tlii THE LIFE was not likely to produce the familiarity he wished to invite; and objects, that in his writings, filial awe is too much incul- cated. In his answer he acknowledges the too great distance of his own children ; but as to the general maxim observes, ** I ** had rather (as too much reverence is not * the vice of the age) lay down rules that " should stiffen into apparent duty, than " make the pert rogues too familiar with " characters so reverend ;" and adds, " I *' could wish, from the respectful manner * (avoiding formality and stiffness as much " as possible) in letters to a parent, let my ** eye fall on what part of the letter it " would, to be able to distinguish it from " one directed to a playmate." To young children Richardson was familiarly kind, and they were very fond of him ; he gene- rally carried sugar-plumbs in his pocket to make his court to them. It must also be observed, that one lady who knew him personally, imputes the formality of the fa- mily OF MR. RICHARDSON. cliii mily rather to Mrs. Richardson than to him. She was, by all accounts, a formal woman, but with a very kind heart. " My " worthy-hearted wife," her husband ge- nerally calls her, and, no doubt, always thought her, though he often affects to speak of her in a different style, and with a degree of petulance between jest and ear- nest, not unlike the captiousness of hi own uncle Selby ; and grievously does he complain of being governed by his meek wife. " Wliat meek woman," says he, " ever gave up a point that she had fixed " her heart upon ? O the sweet Parthians !" And, in another letter, " My wife,, a very " good woman, in the main, as I have often " said> governs me tlius ; She lets me bear " my testimony against what I dislike. I " do it, now-and-then, as I think reason " calls, with some vciicmence : she hears " me out. A day or two after, (if it be a " point she has her heart in, or her will, " which to a woman is the same thint^) with- in ^ '' out cliv THE LIFE " out varying much either lights or shades, " she brings the matter once more on the ** tapis. I have exhausted all my reason- ** ings, cannot bear to repeat what I had ** said before, and she carries her point; and, " what is the worst of it, judging by her " success, thinks me convinced, and that she " was right at first, and I was wrong ; and " so prepares to carry the next." In this kind of half captious pleasantry, his con- versation, as well as his letters, abounded. He was a benevolent and kind-hearted, but I do not feel sure that he was a good- humoured, man. For liberality, genero- sity, and charity, Richardson claims un- qualified praise. His generosity knew no bounds, but the necessary attention to the welfare of a growing family. Various in- cidents in the numerous volumes of his letters, both those which appear, and the far greater part which do not appear, shew how much he was in the habit of obliging. He assisted Aaron Hill with money ; he had OF MR. RICHARDSON. cIt had the honour to bail Dr. Johnson. He writes to a neighbour, who had suffered from a fire, and with whom he does not ap- pear to have been in habits of intimacy, offering the use 6( all his first floor for a week, fortnight, month, or as long as he should be unprovided ; and the attendance of his servants for himself and family, and an occasional bed at his country resi- dence, and all this he presses upon him with the most generous earnestness. In all these kindnesses his wife concurred with affectionate readiness. Miss Collier, it is evident, was in the habit of re- ceiving pecuniary assistance from him. The unhappy Mrs. Pilkington found a itiend in him. When Lady Bradshaigh men- tioned the case of the poor penitent girl, for whom she wanted a situation*: " Let " her come to us," he said, " she shall do " just what she can, and stay till she is ** otherwise provided for." He was a great promoter, if not the first mover, of the Magdalen charity. In short, his purse g was clvi THE LIFE was ever open to any proper call upon it, not to mention the many opportunities a man in business has, of doing essential fa- vours without any actual donation. Be- sides all this, he had a . brother's family thrown, in a great measure, upon his hands. He thus writes of the event in 1750: " It " is a brother's death I mourn for ; an " honest, a good-natured, but a careless " man ; of late years careless, so that his " affairs were embarrassed, and he has left " six children, five of them small and help- " less." In the affairs of a family diffe- rence, in which he was the mediator, his advice seems to have been prudent, con- ciliating, and judicious. His advice and opinion was greatly valued by all his friends, both literary and others, and his trouble, as a printer, was enhanced by the criticisms and remarks they engaged him to make, on the pieces they entrusted him with. In the qualities of courtesy and hospi- tality, Richardson was excelled by no man. " I think OF MR. RICHARDSON. clvii " I think I see you," says one of his corre- spondents, " sitting at your door like an old *' patriarch, and inviting all who pass by to " come in." Whether sick or well ; whether they could entertain him with vivacity and chearfulness, or wanted themselves the soothing and attentions of himself and fa- mily, they were always welcome. Two of his friends were nursed at his house in their last illness. In all the intercourses of ci- vility he loved to be the obliger, espe- cially if his friends were of rank and for- tune superior to his own. His letters, particularly to Lady Bradshaigh, are full of contests about little presents, which he loved better to give than to receive. In this there was, no doubt, a jealous fear of being treated otherwise than as an equal, and somewhat of a painful consciousness of inferiority of station prompting that fear ; for he possessed the dignity of an independent mind. When Lady Echlin expressed her wishes that he might be ac- quainted civiii THE LIFE quainted with her daughter, Mrs. Palmer, a lady of fashion ; " the advances, then," said he, " must come from her. She was " the superior in rank, but he knew ladies " of the west-end of the town did not wish " to pass Temple-bar ;" and, sometimes, perhaps, this consciousness made him a little captious with regard to the atten- tions he expected from ladies of fashion ; who, coming to town for a short period, could not devote so much time to him, as, perhaps, the warm affection expressed in their correspondence, might have led him to expect. It will not be supposed that a man who knew so well how to paint the passion of love, should be inaccessible to its influence. His matrimonial connections were, most probably, those of convenience and calm affection ; but he intimates that he once loved with ardour. The passage referred to is in a letter to Lady Bradshaigh, who had been desiring him to write, for his next OF MR. RICHARDSON. clqj next publication, the history of his own life. " The fortune of the man you hint at, was *' very low : his mind, however, was never ** mean. A bashfulness, next to sheep- " ishness, kept him down : but he always ** courted independence ; and, being con- " tented with a little, preserved a title to ** it. He found friends, who thought they * saw something of merit in him, through ** the cloud that his sheepishness threw " over him, and, knowing how low his * fortune was, laid themselves out to raise * him ; and most of them by proposals " of marriage, which, however, had al- * ways something impracticable in them. " A pretty ideot was once proposed, with " very high terms, his circumstances con- * sidered : her worthy uncle thought this ** man would behave compassionately to " her. A violent Roman Catholic lady ** was another, of a fine fortune, a zeal- " ous professor ; whose terms were (all her plx THE LIFE ' her fortune in her own power a very * apron-string tenure!) two years proba- tion, and her confessor's report in favour of his being a true proselyte at the end of them *. ^Another, a gay, high-spi- rited, volatile lady, whose next friend offered to be his friend, in fear of her becoming the prey (at the public places she constantly frequented) of some vile fortune-hunter. Another there was whom his soul loved ; but with a reve- rence Hush ! Pen, lie thee down ! " A timely check ; where, else, might I have ended? ^This lady how hard to forbear the affecting subject ! But I will forbear. This man presumed not Again going on ! not a word more this night." This lady, from hints given in other places, and from the information of Mrs. Duncombe, appears to have been the same whose history he has delicately and ob- scurely shadowed out in that of Mrs. Beau- * Might not this give the first hint of his Clementina ? monti OF MR. RICHARDSON. clxi mont ; and never, she adds, did he appear so animated as when he was insensibly led into a narration of any circumstances in the history or description of that most re- vered lady. The author of Clarissa was always fond of female society. He lived in a kind of flower-garden of ladies : they were his in- spirers, his critics, his applauders. Con- nections of business apart, they were his chief correspondents. He had generally a number of young ladies at his house, whom he used to engage in conversation on some subject of sentiment, and provoke, by artful opposition, to display the treasures of intellect they possessed. Miss Mulso, afterwards Mrs. Chapone ; Miss Highmore, now Mrs. Duncombe; Miss Talbot, niece to Seeker, and author of some much esteemed devotional pieces; Mi.ssPrescott, afterwards Mrs. Mulso; Miss Fieldings; andMissCol- liers, resided occasionally with him. He was accustomed to give the young ladies he esteemed the endearing ap[)ellatioii of his clxii THE LIFE his daughters. He used to write in a httle summer-house, or grotto *, as it was called, within his garden, before the family were 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 By- ron or Clementina ; every turn and every incident was eagerly canvassed, and the author enjoyed the benefit of knowing be- fore-hand how his situations would strike. Their own little partialities and entangle- ments, too, were developed, and became the subject of grave advice, or lively rail- lery. Mrs. Duncombe thus mentions the agreeable scene, in a letter to Mrs. Mulso. " I shall often, in idea, enjoy again the " hours that we have so agreeably spent in " the delightful retirement of North End : " For while this pleasing subject I pursue, ** The grot, the garden, rush upon my view ; , * The same of which an engraving is given in the TTork. **yher^ . OF MR. RICHARDSON. cxliii ' There, in blest union, round the friendly gate, ' Instruction, Peace, and chearful Freedom wait ; *' And there, a choir of listening nymphs appears " Oppress'd with wonder, or dissolved in tears ; " But on her tender fears when Harriet dwells, " And love's soft symptoms innocently tells, " They all,with conscious smiles, those symptomsvlew, " And by those conscious smiles confess them true.'* Mr. Richardson was a friend to mental improvement in women, though under all those restrictions which modesty and de- corum have imposed upon the sex. In- deed, his sentiments seem to have been more favourable to female literature, be- fore than after his intercourse with the fashionable world ; for Clarissa has been taught Latin, but Miss Byron is made to say, that she does not even know which are meant by the learned languages, and to declare, that a woman who knows them is an owl among the birds. The prejudice against any appearance of extraordinary cultivation in women, was, at that period, very strong. It will scarcely be believed, by clxiv THE LIFE by this generation, that Mrs. Delany, the accomplished Mrs. Delany, objects to the words intellect and ethics^ in one of the conversation pieces, in Grandison, as too scholastic to proceed from the mouth of a female. What would some of these critics have said, could they have heard young ladies talking of gases, and nitrous oxyd, and stimuli, and excitability, and all the terms of modern science. The restraint of former times was painful and humiliat- ing; what can be more humiliating than the necessity of affecting ignorance ? and yet, perhaps, it is not undesirable that female genius should have something to overcome ; so much, as to render it pro- bable, before a woman steps out of the common walks of life, that her acquire- ments are solid, and her love for literature decided and irresistible. These obstacles did not prevent the Epictetus of Mrs. Car- ter, nor the volumes of Mrs, Chapone, from being written and given to the world. OF MR, RICHARDSON. clxv The moral qualities of Richardson were crowned with a serious and warm regard for religion ; it is conspicuous in all his works; and we shall, probably, not find any writings, of the class of novels, in which virtue and piety are so strongly and uniformly recommended, without any party spirit, or view to recommend a particular system, and it would be doing injustice to he taste of the worhl not to say that they were highly valued on that account. The house of Richardson was a school of vir- tuous sentiment and good yiprals. The following letter, from Mr. Reich, of Leip- sic, shews the pleasing impression a visit to him made on the lively feelings of a foreigner. ** You know. Sir, I set out for England " purely with a view of cultivating a per- " sonal acquaintance with so great a man " as Mr. Samuel Richardson, who had so " long endeared himself to me by his " works, and who, afterwards, by the corrcs- " pondenrc clxvi THE LIFE " pondence established between ns, grant- " ed me his friendship. I arrived at Lon- " don the eighth of August, and had not " much difficulty in finding Mr. Richard- ** son in this great city. He gave me a ** reception w^orthy of the author of Pa- " mela, Clarissa, and Grandison ; that is, ** with the same heart which appears " throughout his works. His person, his " family, and even his domestics, all an- " swer this character. He carried me into " hisjibrary, and his printing-house, (for " he is a printer), in both which I never ** saw things so well disposed. Sunday * following, I was with him at his coun- " try-house, (Selby-house) where his] fa- *' mily was, with some ladies, acquaint- " ances of his four daughters, who, with ** his lady, compose his family. It was " there I saw beauties without affecta- " tion; wit without vanity j and thought " myself transported to an inchanted land. ** After chocolate, Mr. Kichardson brought " us OF MR. RICHARDSON. clxvii US into the garden, adjoining to the house. He invited me to partake of its fruits, of which the trees afforded the finest of their kind; and, perceiving that I hesitated, gathered some himself, which he presented to me. Every thing I saw, every thing I tasted, recalled to me the idea of the golden age. Here are to be seen no counterfeits, such as are the offspring of vanity, and the de- light of fools. A noble simplicity reigns throughout, and elevates the soul. The harmony of this charming family fur- nished me with many reflections on the common ill-judged methods of edu- cation, whence springs the source either of our happiness or misery. The ladies affected not that stiff preciseness peculiar to coquettes. Trained up by a parent who instructs them, still more by his example than by his works, they strive to imitate him ; and, if you feel a ten- derness for objects so lovely, you will surely clxviii ' THE LIFE " surely be sensible of a still greater re- " spect for them. " In the middle of the garden, over " against the house, we came to a kind " of grotto, where we rested ourselves. It " was on this seat, Mr. Le Fevre, (Mr. " Richardson's friend) told me, that Pa- " mela, Clarissa, and Grandison, received " their birth; I kissed the ink-horn on the " side of it. We afterwards proceeded to " table, (dinner,) where an opportunity " was offered me of reading the letters " written to me by Malle. Sack, from " Berlin, concerning my voyage, and Mr. " Richardson. One might in them dis- " cern that wit which is the peculiar cha- " racteristic of that lady; and, every one " listened with the closest attention to " whatever truth obliged me to say " concerning her. Whereupon Mr. Ri- " chardson observed to me, that the la- " dies in company were all his adopted " daughters : that he should be very proud to OF MR. niCHARDSON. choik **^ to give to them, as well as to his own, " so charming a sister; and desired to " signify as much to her, and to send her ** his picture, which he gave me for that " purpose. The rest of our discourse ** turned on the merits of Mr. Gellert, " and of some other Germans of distinc- *' tion. I told him, we had the same " reason to glory in our relationship, as " countrymen of these worthy gentlemen^ " as the English had in regard; tg^.J^imw " Mr. Richardson's usual njodesty dic- " tated his answaj-. Towards evening ha '* brought me to London, where he mad ^* me piomise to come and ^ee him a " often as I could.. On the Suuday fol- V lowing I*: was with him again at hia f .pleasant country seat. We found there f a large ;^cou)pany, all people of merit; V Mr. Miller, author of the Gaidener's '* Dictionary, ^ which has been translated *' at Nurnbnrg, with such success), and * Mr. Ilighmore, the famous painter, . VOL. I. h ** were elxx THE LIFE " were there. This last, two days after- " wards, conferred on me a genteel piece * of civility, which I shall never forget : " he must, indeed, be the accomplished ** gentleman he appears to be, by oblig- " ing with so good a grace. I was ex- " tremely concerned on not seeing his ** only daughter, v/ho was in the coun- " try. I have read some of her letters, " which excite in me the highest esteem " both for her understanding and her ** heart. In the evening I took my leave '* of the family, and returned with Mr. " Richardson. I saw him several times ** since, during the eight days I staid in * England; but it was necessary, at last, * to quit that divine man. I gave him " the letter entitled No. I. he embraced ** me, and a mutual tenderness deprived " us of speech. He accompanied me ** with his eyes as far as he could: I ** shed tears." There is one fault of which it will not be OF MR. RICHARDSON. clxxi be easy to clear our author. It is said that he was vain; he was fed with praise, and, with regard to that diet, it may be truly affirmed, that increase of appetite doth erow By what it feeds on In the circle of his admirers, his own works occupied, naturally, a large share of conversation; and he had not the will, nor perhaps the variety of knowledge ne- cessary to turn it on other topics. The same subject forms the prominent feature in his correspondencies, -r- Impartiality, perhaps, requires a biographer to notice the opinion of such a man as Johnson, delivered llirough the medium of Mr. Boswell's memory, as follows, giving an account of a conversation at Mr. Nairne's, where Dr. Johnson drew the character of Richardson. " I only remember that he " expressed a high value for his talents and " virtues: But that his perpetual study h 2 " was olxxii THE LIFE ** was to ward off petty inconveniences,' " and to procure petty pleasures; that his " love of continual superiority was such, " that he took care always to be sur- " rounded by women, who listened to " him implicitly, and did not venture to " contradict his opinions ; and that his " desire of distinction was so great, that " he used to give large vails to Speaker " Onslow's servants, that they might treat ** him with respect." It may be observed upon this, that the ladies he associated with were well able to appreciate his works. They were both his critics and his models, and from their sprightly conversation, and the disquisi- tions on love and sentiment, which took place, he gathered what was more to his purpose than graver topics would have produced. He was not writing a dic- tionary, like Johnson, or a history, like Gibbon. He was a novel writer; his bu- siness was not only with the human heart, but with the female heart. No OF MR. RICHARDSON. clxxiri No man sought criticism with more di- ligence, or received it with more candour, than Richardson ; he asks it even from some who had little title to give it. The fault of his mind was, rather that he was too much occupied with himself, than that he had too high an opinion of his talents. Praise, however, he certainly loved, and all that remains to be said on this head is, that when a man of genius is humane, bene- volent, temperate, and pious, we may allow in him a little shade of vanity, as a tribute to human weakness. As to the vails, it was a disgraceful circumstance, not to Ri- chardson, but to the customs of our coun- try, and to Mr. Onslow, if he could not make his servants pay respect to his guests without it. But it were as candid to ac- count for Richardson's giving more than others, from his known generosity as from his desire of distinction. I cannot pass by in silence, though it is unpleasant to ad- vert to, the contemptuous manner in which h 3 Lady CJXxiv THE LIFE Lady Wortley Montagu has mentioned our author, in terms as little suited to the de- corum of her own rank and character, as to the merit and respectable situation in life of the person she speaks of. " The " doors of the great," she says, " were never ** opened to him." If the doors of the gi-eat were never opened to a genius whom ^very Englishman ought to have been proud of, if they were either tasteless of his merit, or so seliishly appreciated it as to be conterit to be entertained and in- structed by his writings in their closet, and to sufi'er the man to want that notice and regard which is the proper and de- served reward of distinguished talent, upon them let the disgrace rest, and not upon Richardson. And, I believe it is true, that in England genius and learning ob- tain less personal notice than in most other parts of Europe, and that men are classed here more by similiarity of fortune than by any other circumstance. Still, how- ever. GF MR. RICIIARDSONT. cIxX? ever, they do attract notice j and the reader must be ani})iy convinced, by the libt of Richardson's friends and correspon- dents, that Lady Wortley's assertions are as untrue as illiberal. It is strange that she, whose talents, not her rank, have trans- mitted her name to posterity, should not have experienced a more kindly fellow- feeling towards talent : but the public will judge which was most estimable, she whose conduct banished her from those with whom her birth entitled her to asso- ciate, or he who, by his merit, raised him- self above the class whence he drew hit bumble origin. I omitted to mention, in its proper place, that Richardson had a pressing invitation from the Moravians to go to Germany, He was written to, for that purpose, by the secretary of Count Zinzentlorf, their head, and solely, it should seem, from their high opinion of the moral tendency of his writings. h 4 Richardson clxxvi THE LIVE Richardson was, in person, below the middle stature, and inclined to corpu- lency j of a round, rather than oval, face, with a fair ruddy complexion. His fea- tures, says one, who speaks from recollec- tion, bore the stamp of good nature, and were characteristic of his placid and ami- able disposition. He was slow in speech, and, to strangers at least, spoke with re- ^e^ve and deliberation; but, in his man- ners, was affable, courteous, and engag- ing, and when surrounded with the so- cial circle he loved to draw around him, his eye sparkled with pleasure, and often expressed that particular spirit of arch- ness which we see in some of his cha- racters, and which gave, at times, a vi- yacity to his conversation, not expected from his general taciturnity and quiet manners. He has left us a characteristic portrait of himself, in a letter to Lady JBradshaigh, written when he was in his sixtieth year, before they had seen one another. or MR. RICIIARDSOX. clxxvil nn Other. She was to find him out by it (as she actually did,) as he walked in the Park. " Short, rather plump, about fivo " feet five inches, fair wig, one hand ge- " nerally in his bosom, the other a cane " in it, which he leans upon under the " skirts of his coat, that it may impercep- " iihly serve him as a support, when at- " tacked by sudden tremors or dizziness, " of a light brown complexion, teeth not **'yet failing him." What follows is very descriptive of the struggle in his charac- ter between innate bashfulness and a turn for observation. " Looking directly " forcright, as passengers would imagine, " but observing all that stirs on either " liand of him, without moving his short ** neck; a regular even pace, stealing away " ground ratlier than seeming to rid it i a " grey eye, too often overclouded by mis- " tiiiess from the head, by chance lively, " very lively if he sees any he loves j if he * approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed h 5 " iirst dxxviii THE LIFE " first on her face, but on her feet, and " rears it up by degrees, seeming to set ** her down as so or so." The health of Richardson was griev- ously affected by those disorders which pass under the denomination of nervous, and are the usual consequence of bad air, confniement, sedentary employment, and the wear and tear of the mental faculties. |t is astonishing how a man who had to raise his fortune by the slow process of his own industry, to take care of an ex- tensive business, to educate his own fa- mily, and to be a father to many of his relations, could find time in the breaks and pauses of his other avocations, for works so considerable in size as well as in merit, " nineteen close printed volumes," sls he often mentions, when insisting upon it, in answer to the instances of his cor- respondents, that he would write more, that he had already written more than enough. Where there exists strong ge- nius, S OF MR. RICHARDSON. clxxix nius, the bent of the mind is imperious, and will be obeyed : but the body too often sinks under it. " I had originally," (says he) " a good constitution; I hurt it " by no intemperance, but that of appli- " cation." Richardson scarcely writes a letter w^ith- out mentioning those nervous or paralytic tremors, which indeed are very observ- able in those letters written with his own hand, and which obligetl him often to employ the hand of another. Yet his writing, to the last, was small, even, and very legible. Though a strong advocate for public worship, he had discontinued, for many years, going to church, on ac- count, as he tells Lady B. of his not being able to bear a crowd. It is pro- bable, however, that he also wanted the relaxation of a Sunday spent in the coun- try. He took tar-water, then very much in vogue, and lived for seven years upoH a vegetable dietj but his best remedy was h 6 probably clxxx THE LIFE probably his country house, and the amusement of Tunbridge, which he was accustomed to frequent in the season. He never could ride, being, as he de- clares, quite a cockney, but used a cfiam- ber horse, one of which he kept at each of his houses. His nervous maladies not- withstanding increased, and for years be- fore his death he xjould not lift the quan- tity of a small glass of wine to his mouth, though put into a tumbler, without as- sistance. He loved to complain, but who. jthat suffers from disorders that affect the \ery springs of life and happiness, does not? Who does not wish for the friendly soothings of sympathy, under maladies from which more material relief is not to be expected ? That sympathy was feel- ingly expressed by Mrs. Chapone, in her Ode to Health, in the following apos- trophe : Hast OF MR. RICHARDSON. elxxxi Hast thou not left a Richardson unblest^ II that limited view (the defence of the one person's measures they write for) the gentlemen who manage that paper would find their purpose better answered, if they admitted the letters of opposite, or seeming-opposite, thinkers. For, besides that this would carry the face of a bold and generous impartiality, it would quicken their reader's curiosity, and multiply the enquirers after the paper -, to add nothing of its removing the present tiresome and servile pursuit of those tracks which are opened for them, by anti-ministerial, more popular, outstarters. There is something too narrow, in the very air, of perpetual dei'encer WITH AARON HILL. 17 for the kindness of your last night's en- quiry ; and for these books, which I return by the bearer ; and for the excellent basket of grapes, which you had the goodness to send me last week ; and for all and every your endless succession of thoughts and actions, for ever engaging ! I have been so pinched by the easterly winds, that I was under a reluctant neces- sity to let them begin vintage, in the x)oun- try, without me ; but I am endeavouring to flatter myself into a dependance on strength enough to venture to look on, before they can finish their laboui:. How crazily, my dear Mr. Richardson ! are our active souls lodged, in bodies too frail to preserve them from impressions of pain, and yet strong enough to confine them from changing their- WITH AARON HILL. 33^ their quarters ! Mine would quit its cap- tivity with rapture ; but it is chained to its too limited prison doing penance, I am afraid, (in your friend. Doctor Cheync's, conception) to prepare itself for some more extended capacity of acting hereafter. Would to God it had power, in its pre- sent situation, to transfer all the good which it must not be allowed to enjoy ! I would then tell you something more worthy your knowing, than that I am, faithfully and affectionately. Dear Sir, Your most obliged humble servant. A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Dec. 19, 1739. PEAR SIR, ]BeING come to town, in order to settle accounts with just such a tedious and slow- paced executor as I would wish to youj? C 5 enemy's 34 CORRESPONDENCE enemy's purposes (if there is such a wretch in the world as an enemy to Mr. Richard- son), one of the first things that I heard of was the kind and obliging concern you have shewn for my health in a succession of unwearied enquiries, for which I never can thank you sufficiently. I think I may say, with some confidence, that I have now almost perfectly recovered that constitutional firmtiess of health, which was, in a manner, the only full and unsha- dowed enjoyment it has pleased God to brighten my lot with ; and I tell it you with pleasure, because I know it will give you some to hear it 5 for you are one of the noble minority, who can taste the feli- city of others, as a generous increase of your own! Give me leave to hope your pardon for the too great and unpurposed delay I have made in returning you the interleafed vo- lumes of Plain Dealers and Prompters. The unpleasing situation of my affairs, and a mind WITH AARON HILL. 35 a mind endeavouring in vain to resist the impressions attacking it, took away, not the leisure so much as the temper that would have been necessary ; but, nov;^, I design to set about it with the proper at- tention. While I am writing, there is brought me, by one of the inhabitants of an out-quarter of the city, the ridiculous proposal inclosed. I was in hopes, that in a town where the best things I am able to write are so little regarded, the worst * might have been suf- fered to sleep in their merited neglect and obscurity. But I am apprehensive that malice has more share than judgment in this violation of the right of an author to his own nonsense. The bookseller, I suppose, has the same kind of reason in view which the players once had when they were for acting my LordGrinston's comedy, called, * Present State of the Ottoman Empire. c 6 Love 36 CORRESPONDENCE Love in a hollow Tree *. To confess the plain truth, I was so very a boy when I suffered that light piece of work to be pub- lished, that it is a sort of injustice to make me accountable for it. If you know any body who has influence with the under- taker, I should be very much pleased could a stop be put to his purpose ; and I know, if it lies in your way, you will be so good, to endeavour it. This moment I am agreeably inter- rupted by your servant's calling here with a new proof of your goodness, which hast- ens me (after having thanked you most heartily) to seal up my letter a page or two sooner than I else should have done it, that he might carry it with him, from. Dear Sir, Yours, &c. A. Hill. * Published when Lord Grimstone was candidate at; an election, by the opposite party, in order to make him ridiculous. WITEr AARON inLL. 37 TO MR. RICHARDSON. Jan. 8,1739-40. DEAR SIR, JIhOUGH, throughout all parts of the year, I prolong and increase my good "wishes for whatever can relate to your hap- piness, and might address to you the word* of Mr. Milton, to one of the possessors of paradise : With thee conversing, T forget all times. All seasons, and their change > Yet I cannot find it in my heart to begin tJiis first letter I have the pleasure of writ- ing to you, for the opening year, without charging it with every possible prayer for the long-lasting health and felicity of your- self, and your other-self; and, in the sin- cerest warm wishes of this kind, 1 am joined by those of my family of either sex : all which is so heartily and affectionately yours,. 38 CORRESPONDENCE yours, that I can say nothing in the name of any branch of it, on this head, which is not seriv)usly made good by their real conceptions. And of this, I wish your very kind and repeated invitations to North End may not draw upon you some trou- blesome proofs in the spring. In the mean time, while I am half frozen-up here in Essex, when I but venture to breathe the air of the garden, I never fail to remember the delight which you take in the country, and feel a fear or two for its effect to your prejudice. What shall I say to you, dear Sir, for such a deal of unpurposed trouble as I have led you into on account of that pue- rile sally of mine. The Present State of the Ottoman Empire } Had I ever heard, or imagined, that it had already been scattered abroad in that dirty low manner j'^ou men- tion, the tenderness of apprehension which I felt for this new purpose of Mar she's, had been a needless, as well as fruitless, anxi- ety. WITH AARON HILL. 59 ety. All the mischief, it seems, has been done, which I had in view to have hin- dered. But I am infinitely obliged to you for the measures you have had the good- ness to take, which may probably intimi- date the pirate. And, as to the other, less juvenile, and more pardonable, productions of my pen, which I begin to be desirous of publishing together, for no other reason but to pre- vent the probability of its being done after my death with less judgment, at least, with less severity, by some collector of quantity, not quality, I can think with no pleasure of their property in any hand but your own, and those of your chusing. This property (I speak of what is not already made yours) I am fully resolved to assign you. And, sincerely, am apprehensive, that, having always detested, as I shall always continue to detest, the poor arts of our poachers of popularity, the collection will make its way too slowly for you to fmd 4QP CORRESPONDENCE find your account in the sale of it; and therefore think, that I ought not only to offer it to you as a present, which I heart- ily wish might be worth your acceptance ;: but, in order to render it more certainly such, to be myself at the charge of youp printing and publishing it. I cannot close my letter without a word or two concerning your nei^ves. Your tel- ling me lately that those too sensible feelers are the root of your malady, made the most touching impression upon me in your be- half, from what I just then underwent in my own j the too little guard I had lield over my passions, in resentment of the baseness of a vile wretch, who has trifled with me these four or five years past, in matters of the utmost importance, having- hazarded the throwing me back into the danger, with regard to my health, from which I so lately escaped with such diffi-^ ulty. I hope, therefore, you have alwaya philosophy enough to balance your mind in^ WITH AARON HILL. 41 in that happy serenity which repels all attacks from, the follies and vices of otliers. It is a pity that things we can scorn should have power to disturb our tranquil- Hty. May you for ever keep free from the weakness, which shall never, (I think) for the future, get ground upon. Dear Sir,, Your's, A. Hill. TO MR. ftlCHABDSON* Sept. 17, 1740. DEAR SIR,. Jl HAVE been so long, and so shamefully silent, where I have been called upon daily, by the warmest affection, to break through the unaccountable languor, and send you my thanks for your many obliging enqui- ries after my healthy that nothing ought to procure me your pardon, but the almost incou' 42 CORRESPONDENCE inconceivable degree to which I have' wanted it. I knew your good-nature so well, that I ordered myself to be reported (to the messengers you so kindly and fre-* . quently sent) in a very different state from that which was a long time my true one. And, even after I was really recovered, in the usual signification of the word, my mind underwent a new malady, and I sickened into a restraint of my sentimentSr A restless feverish unaptness for repose or reflection, carried me about (like the children of Israel in their marches) with a cloud by day, and a J!re by night : and, in short, all the plague of our climate took an absolute and permitted possession of my faculties. If, in all this suffusion of thought, I re- member any thing with an idea of pleasure, it is, that I never forget t/ou a day j nor remembered you without impressions- of gladness. I am now, I thank God, greatly changed for the better ; and most heartily hope WITH AARON HILL. 43 hope I shall hear that you have continued to enjoy that new prospect you were be- ginning to form from the success of your last application. I have lately, with the greatest satisfac- tion, read over your beautiful present of Sir Thomas Roe's Negotiations in Turkey. But, as full as I acknowledge that author to be of a wisdom, discernment, and spirit, so much wanting in the feebleness of our modern state-maxims, I owe most of the pleasure he gave me to the discovery I made, with astonishment, as I turned over the book, that your comprehensive and ex- cellent index of heads had drawn every thing out of the body ! You was very obliging to send me Mr. Miller's new volume. I read all his pieces with profit. I do not love our swallow- like writers of gardening, who dip and skim into every body's pool. Mr. Miller dives under the surface, and brings up what he finds at the bottom. One is pleased with and instructed by his writings. 44 CORRESPONDENCE Biit I observe, in some parts of his dis"-- course on the new spirit for vineyards that is rising in England, Mr. Miller seems to think with discouragement concerning the success of that prospect. I hope he will soon have the pleasure to find that his wishes are more in the right than his fears. I think I can venture to promise my coun- try, that her wines, in a few jearsy shall hold at least equal rank with the Frenchi. It is not the inconsiderable advantage they have of us in regard to the difference of lati- tude that throws us behind them j it is rather the natural curtain that is drawn between us and the sun, the island vapours and clouds that hang over our fields and our spirits ! This unripening influence of mois- ture is the bar to our hopes without-doors j and compels us (if we would have wines fit for drinking) to correct in the cellar that green, hard, and tartarous quality, to which, we owe the disgrace of our vintages. But the diiliculty is, how shall this end be WITH AARON HILL, 45 be obtained ? They who mix foreign wines with the English, if French ^ marry beg- gars together, and by their union increase but their poverty : if ^Spanish, overlay our thin product, and induce the specifical flavour (though with the body a great deal diminished) of the additional wine they make choice of. All the while, this is no English produce. If they use raisins, the same disadvantage, as to flavour, prevails ; besides the unavoidable consequence of a heavy, flat, disgustive insipidness, which is made still worse by those who, instead of raisins, use sugar. And as for their endea- vours who by mixture of spirits would hope to add the strength they find wanting, they are, more than all others, mistaken ; and, instead of increasing the body, that is, the consistence and weight of the wine, only add a lean dryness, and thin sapid sharp- ness, to the native austerity of the liquor. I speak with assurance, concerning the foregoing weak helps, having, for a long course 46 CORRESPONDENCE course of years, made and varied, to no purpose, the experiments of them all ; till I grew weary, at last, of the trials, and threw them into the list of Solomon's va- nities. At length (that I might not have it to say, I once travelled much to no purpose at all) it came into my thoughts, that, in Candia, and Rhodes, and two or three other of the islands of Greece, I had seen them boiling their newly-pressed must (be- fore fermentation) into a very thick, syrup- like consistence; which I take to be the same thing the Spaniards call aite^ and put in practice in the parts about Alicant and Malaga. Though I was very young at that time, I remember I had the curiosity of asking the cause of the process ; and was answered, that the grapes in those coun- tries always ripening to a viscid and clam- my excess, the juice that they yielded came too thick into the vat, and carried along with it such a mucilaginous texture of fibres. WITH AARON HILL. 47 fibres, as not only prolonged fernientation till it induced an acidity on the wine, but also kept it in a ropy indisposition to set- tle ; so that, to accelerate the fining of the wine, they had found out this method of boiling" the must: whereby, the pulp be- coming liquified, the strings were no lon- ger suspended, but grew naked and thready, and sunk easily down with the faeces. You have met with a great many men in your time, who were unexpectedly got to the end of their lives, just as they were beginning the plan of their purposes. You see an image of it just now. I was come to the end of my sheet, when I had scarce reached the middle of my story. But I was telling you a remedy for wines, that are by nature too rich, and in a cli- mate where grapes ripen too much. You will wonder of what use such a practice can be, with regard to a country where the wines are so poor, that the] grapes scarce ever ripen at all. But it is so easy to graft difterent 4S CORRESPONDENCl: different fruits on one stock, that a very little reflection threw a benefit in my way from this slight observation, that will, I hope, prove no small one to my country. I considered that jejune unripe juices want two qualities of wine, that is, body and softness. It was obvious that the first of these two could not fail to be a consequence of boiling down new must to u third, more or less, of its original quantity; for nothing evaporating before fermentation, but the watery parts of a liquor, it follows, that if two parts be wasted in boiling, the third will be three times as thick as it would have been in its natural condition^ And, as to the second thing wanting, the softness, I expected, v/hat fell out in the experiment, that the boiling would not only sweeten the juice, but precipitate a great part of the tartar, to the increase of both smoothness and fla/voar. But here arose an unforeseen difficulty, wJiichi, at last, I had the good fortune to WITH AARON HILL. 49 get over. The mu^t, so enriched from its syruppy consistence of body, and an in- disposition to ferment (an effect it derived from the boiling), lay inactive and still in the pipes, and found the autumn and win- ter of England too cold to allow it to work; and, even when next summer came on, of- ten passed the warm months in the same calm condition, so that these were the two extremes of the prospect ; either improving the consistence of the must, it became in- capable of working so much as it ought, or leaving it in its natural greenness, it would fret, with renewed fermentations upon every mild change of the weather, till the poor body it brought from the grape was de- stroyed, and the wine became undrinkably acid. The medium I happened to find, was to boil down one proper proportion into an excessive thick cute, and therewith feed the other, left to work according to its na- tural tendency, so as to prolong and invi- VOL. I. D gorate S9 CORRESPONDENCE gorate the fermentation till the oils were Sufficiently rarefied, and the salts as com- pletely expanded; and a body produced of force to sustain all the tumult, and isheath the two contraries, in a flavorous and spirited smoothness. See, dear Sir, the history of the wine I have sent you a taste of. It waits on you, perhaps, before it is so bright, as it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have made it. But, none of the wine- cooper's arts having been permitted to de- bauch its true English firmness of heart, I Was resolved to use none in the fining it down, but have left it, in every particular, to nature; so led, but not pushed, as you have seen in the foregoing part of this let- ter ; and, I am mistaken, if France can produce such a Burgundy. I believe it would be proper to put the bottles (for one night at least), down into a cellar, before you taste the wine; it having been bottled 'but yesterday from the cask, and probably *^ little warmed by the cai'riage. And WITH AARON HILL. 51 And now, dear Sir, I will tell you why I send you the wine, with so long a descrip- tion of its manner of making. In the first, I consulted your health j in the second, your pleasure. What I mean by your plea- sure, I will explain by and by ; giving your health, as it deserves, the first place in my meanings. It is not above a month or six weeks since, when observing the quick lively taste to be just what I wished it; and that, notwitlistanding the brisk sprightly flavour, the wine seemed to carry a full and deep strength of body, I took a fancy to compare (in an experiment from distil- lation of two equal quantities), not foreign Burgundy, for that, I made no doubt, was much weaker, but the strongest French claret I could get, in order to try it against this product of England. The effect was, that from the claret I obtained a sixth part of the quantity in spirit ; from the English (Burgundy, a full fourth; which being more, by one in five, than the oldest port wines will produce, gave me an inclination to D 2 drink 52 COHRESPONDENCE drink it every day since that time : and my recovery so immediately and surprisingly followed, that I cannot help flattering my- self, you will feel some good consequences yourself, in regard to the disorder on your spirits. And now I am come to the last thing, your pleasure. You may remember that about the end of the summer before this, you sent me Mr. Miller's folio volume, wherein he had been very full on that head, though it had not been printed in the oc- tavo edition. He has there a paragraph, that hints at feeding thin wines, when they fret overmuch, with some of the same kind of grapes the must had been made of; and the idea yet arose in my mind, from his use of the significant expression oi^ feeding, to the new manner of using my cute, with a success that has answered my best expec- tation. And I am sure it will give you a pleasure to find yourself contributing, so immediately, the occasion to which I owed the improvement. I looked WITH AARON HILL. 53 I looked back in this place, and am frighted to see myself at the bottom of the eighth page of a letter ! I snatch oif my my pen, with astonishment ! and hasten to tell you that, whether too silent, as lately, or too much the reverse, as at present, I am always, your's, &c. A. Hill. IV^ TO MR. RICHARDSON. Bee. 17, 1740. DEAR SIR, JL OU have agreeably deceived me into a surprise, which it will be as hard to express, as the beauties of Pamela. Though I opened this powerful little piece with more expectation than from common designs of like promise, because it came from your hands for my daughters, ye^ who could have dreamed he shoidd fmd, under the modest disguise of a novel, all the soul of religion, good breeding, discretion, good- ie '^ nature,. 54 CORRESPONDENCE nature, wit, fancy, fine thought, and mo- rality? I have done nothing but read it to Others, and hg ar others again read it to me, ever since it came into myharnis; and I find I am likely to do nothing else, for the Lord knows how long yet to come ; be- cause, if I lay the book down, it comes af- ter me. When it has dwelt all day long upon the ear, it takes possession, all night, of the fancy. It has witchcraft in every page of it ; but it is the witchcraft of pas- sion and meaning. Yet, I confess, there is one in the world, of whom I think with still greater respect than of Pamela, and that is of the wonder- ful author of Pamela. Pray who is he, dear Sir ? and where and how has he been able to hide, hitherto, such an encircling and all-mastering spirit ? I must venture to add, without mincing the matter, what I really believe of this book. It will live on, through posterity* with such unbounded extent of good con<- quences. WITH AARON HILL. 55 quences, that twenty ages to come may b^ the better and wiser for its influence. If it is not a secret, oblige me so far asr to tell me the author's name; for since I feel him the friend of my soul, it would be a kind of violation to pretend him a stran- ger. I am not able to thank you enough for this highly acceptable present ; and, as for my daughters, they have taken into their own hands the J^cknowledgments due from their gratitude, I am, &c. A. HiT.T... TO MR. RICHARDSOX. Dec. 29, 1740. ; , > ,V MY DEAR FRIEND, /" K/ ^^HOEVER considers your Pamela, ^-^ with a view to find matter for censure, is in / the condition of a passionate lover, who \ breaks in upon his mistress, without fear ) D 4 or S6 CORRESPONDENCE or wit, with intent to accuse her and quar- rel. He came to her with wrath in his pur- pose ; but his heart subdues his malice, and he goes away more enslaved for complain^ ing. The designs you have taken for frontis- pieces, seem to have been very judiciously chosen , upon pre-supposition that Mr. Hogarth is able (and if any-body is, it is he), to teach pictures to speak and to think. We have a lively little boy in the family, about the age of your dear eldest charmer ; but, alas for him, poor child, quite un- friended, and born to no prospect. He is the son of an honest, poor soldier, by a wife, grave, unmeaning, and innocent. Yet the boy (see the power of connubial simplicity !) is so pretty, so gentle, and gay- spirited, that we have made him, and de- signed him, our own, ever since he could tot- ter and aim at words. The wanton rogue is half air j and every motion he acts by, has a spring like your Pamela's, when she threw down WITH AARON HILL. 57 down the card-table. All this quickness, however, is tempered by a good-natured modesty; so that the wildest of his flights are thought rather diverting than trouble- some. He is an hourly foundation for laughter, from the top of the house to the parlours; and to borrow an attribute from the Rev. Mr. Peters, plays a very goodjid- dle in the family. I have told you the his- tory of this tom-tit of a prater, because, ever since my first reading of Pamela, he puts in for a right to be one of her hearers ; and, having got half her sayings by heart, Q talks in no other language but her's ; and f^'^j^ what really surprises, and has charmed me into a certain foretaste of her influence, he is, at once, become fond of his books, which (before) he could never be brought to attend to that he may read Pamela, he says, without stopping. The first discovery we made of this power, over so unripe and unfixed an attention, was one evening, when I Wiis reading her reflections at the pond to D 5 some ^ CORRESPONDENCE some company. The little rampant intru- der, being kept out by the extent of the circle, had crept nnder my chair, and was sitting before me on the carpet, with his head almost touching the book, and his face bowing down towards the iire. He had sat for some time in this posture, with a stillness that made us conclude him asleep ; "when on a sudden we heard a succession of heart-heaving sobs, which, while he strove to conceal fromi our notice, his little sides swelled as if they would burst, with the throbbing restraint of his sorrow. I turned- his innocent face to look towards me, but liis eyes were quite lost in his tears; which Tunning down from his cheeks in free cur- Tents, had formed two sincere little foun- tains on that part of the carpet he hung over. All the ladies in company were ready to devour him with kisses, and he has since become doubly a favourite ; and is, perhaps, the youngest of Pamela's converts. Your*s, &c. A. Hill, TO WITH AARON HILL. 59 TO MR. RICHARDSON. Dec. 1740. liy HAT a genteel well-lurned epigram have jou sent me, my (J^ar friend! But from so kind and so partial a hand, that whatever I may think, I will rather say nothing than confess myself charmed; ex- cept with that part of it which compares the ridge of rocks in the Shannpn, dividing and enfeebling its current, to the perplex- ing intervention of rhime, interrupting and weakening the sense of expression *. The ingenious complaint is too just (as our verse * When noble thoughts with language pure uuite>- To give. to Jiiiidred excellence its right; Tho' unencumberM with the clogs of rhyme. Where tinkling sounds for want of meaning chime; Which, like the rocks in Shannon's midway course. Divide the sease and interrupt its force; Well we may judge so strong and clear a rill, Flows hitljer from the Muses' sacred H1LL- D & is 60 CORRESPONDENCE is most commonly managed) for what page in what poet will not give in clt^r evidence, that rhyme is as sweet a misleader as love ? And yet, pray please to ask your lady and Miss M (whose judgments, I am sure, you have undeniable cause to confide in) whether it is not the fault or neglect of men's reason, when they follow beauty di- vided from merit? I have a commission to thank you, again and ag'uin, for my daughters. What a terrible condition would you be in, if you were bound to read half what they say of you ! It is a comfort (you will answer) when a man has to do with such menacing baggages, that women cannot send their tongues in a letter ! Yet it stands decreed that the very next day these bold threat- eners set their faces for London : Salisbury- square is to be the first place against which they will form their approaches. Nay, and that all may be out (as you say) they have WITH AARON HILL. 6\ have pressed me along with them, as an escort in the march ; but I shall discharge this my trust, like a true modern guide ; and give notice, when we dislodge, to tlie enemy. Here I thought to have closed ; but there is a never-to-be-wearied male tongue within hearing that makes twice as much noise (would you think it?) as two dozen of good girls all united ! And he (the six-year-old urchin you wot of) will not suffer me to be quiet a moment, till I promise him to let you know what an effect your kind notice had on him. And indeed, to say truth, I would give a great deal for a power ta impress your own generous heart but with just half the joy wherewith you have quite deluged over that of our volatile little bird of a boy, upon his sight of your so-prettily adapted kind present of books, and hearing some of those tender and compassionate expressions wherein your goodness eonde^ scended to speak of him. Never talk of a picture. M CORRESPONDENCE picture. ^What a faint gleam has painting against the bold glow of Nature ! Would I could describe to you the transported rogue in his ecstacy ! Every word would communicate a passion, and, by a kind of contagious felicity, spread his rapture from your ear to your fancy. My daughters and I were sitting with a table between us, and against a leaf of it, that fronted the fire, stood, bending, the Jittle scribbler, with his back to the chim- ney, scrawling letters and syllables (as un- restrained and as wild as his own active innocence) upon pieces of paper, which I allow him to collect, ^nd fill up his own way, that the pleasure which he takes in aspiring to meanings may attract him, by insensible stages, to mean something, at last, in good e3,rnest. It was easy to judge, upon opening (the books, to whose hand your indulgent and considerate elegance had consigned them. However, I laid them botix .down, and ^ai(^ nothings but pro- WITH AARON HILL. 63 proceeded to open one letter, after having given my daughters the other. The busy pirate, mean while, who had thrown aside his pen upon a glimpse of the pictures, fell to lifting the leaves, one by one, and was peeping between them with the archness and fear of a monkey ; and I left him (as he thought) unobserved to the enjoyment of his cautious discoveries, till I came to that paragraph in your letter where you call him the dear amiable boy, which I pur- posely read out aloud. At those words, up flSlied all the fire of his eyeSy with a mixture of alarm and attention; and just then one of my daughters happening to say " Now am I sure that this good-na- tured and generous Mr. Richardson has sent those two books for little Harry." " See there," added the other, " what it is ^to be praised for a boy that is wise, and loves reading." All the triumphs of fortu- nate love, war, and glory, would be cold if compared to his ecstacy ! Out burst a hun- dred 64 CORRESPONDENCE dred O Lords ! in a torrent of voice ren- dered hoarse and half choaked by his pas- sions. He clasped his trembling fingers together ; and his hands were strained hard, and held writhing. His elbows were ex- tended to the height of his shoulders, and his eyes, all inflamed with delight, turned incessantly round from one side, and one friend, to the other, scattering his triumph- ant ideas among us. His fairy-face (ears and all) was flushed as red as his lips^ and his flying feet told his joy to the floor, in a wild and stamping impatience of gra- titude. At last he shot himself, in acknow- ledgment, upon me, with a force like a bullet; and fastening his arms round my neck, fell to kissing me for a minute or two together, with so hard and so clinging an eagerness, that it was impossible, with- out hurting the little honest assaulter, to disposses him of his hold, or his rapture. Nobody could see such a scene without being touched with uncommon delight at this WITH AAROxN IIILL. 05 \ this strong sensibility in a child's appre- hension ! What, though his words wanted art to explain his conceptions? Nature spoke them (most expressively) in the pangs which adorned him ! So arose the first swell of this animal tempest; nor have the waves yet subsided, nor are they likely to subside, I assure you. He reads, laughs, and dances all day : and at night carries his two books to bed with him; and, as I began, about a fort- night ago, to encourage him to look some poor letters together, and scrawl out his notions upon small slips of paper (^bidding him look into written sheets which I lend him, or into printed books, for the words he would scribble, and if he hnds them not there, ask of any body in the house how to spell them), he brings me every morning some new piece of nonsense, from the mint of his own wanton fancy; and now, what a tedious long story of childisli insignificance were here; but that I know you 66 CORRESPONDENCE you feel a pleasure in observing with how early a tendency nature forms our first passions to virtue ! How unhappy is it, that the human degeneracy to evil should be a consequence but of increase in our know- ledge ! But for shame, let me now make an end, lest you should think there is no measure of conscience in. Dear Sir, &c. A. Hill. TO MR, RICHARDSON. April \Z, 174U DEAR SIR, JL SHOULD not be able to forgive myself for not writing to you so long, but that I can honestly plead in atonement, that I have never passed an hour without the pleasure of thinking of you. My daugh- ters are newly returned from a long coun^- try WITH AARON HILL. 67 try ramble, whither they went with a kind of regret, as it postponed a delight which dwelt (and still dwells), in the uppermost view of their hope. And, indeed, the de- lay is, at present, rather my fault than theirs ; or, to speak it more properly, it is the misfortune of us all ; as arising from a good deal of vexatious concern I have been under, at some juvenile weaknesses in the conduct of , whom, I begin to be afraid, I shall find quite incapable of the solid or serious turn of mind ^whether in learning or business. Well ! these are troubles we are heirs to by nature, and we must receive them as part of our patrimony. Neither ought I, I think, to complain of my lot, while I have two, out of four, who are just what I wish them. The two good girls above meant, are come home, quite filled and transported with the triumphs of Pamela ; and, I think, in my conscience, they could not feel so much 68 CORRESPONDENCE jnuch pleasure from a sense of their ownv if they made any worth their desiring. How does my dear Mr. Richardson do> and all his dear family ? And how runs the growing renown of his name, in a great, wicked town, which his genius does honour to ? I am so hid among green leaves and blossoms, that I read or see nothing that busies the public, except now and then a few newspapers ; but even from those I have the joy to discern the justice that is done to your Pamela ; and the oblique re- putation weaker writers endeavour to draw, from a distorted misuse of her name, for a passport to malice and faction. You will fmd, by what I now send yow, how sincerely I told you, that it hardly was possible to do what you have urged so re- peatedly, so far as to change any thing but a word, here and there, in your beau^ tiful work (for a work one. may call this fme piece, with propriety, that is built for ages !) Yet, as you so kindly and warmly insisted WITH AARON HILL. 69 insisted on the attempt, I, who love to con- sider your wishes as laws to my own- incli- nation, took a late resolution to try how far it was practicable, if a man could go over your Pamela with the eye and the heart of a cynic, at one reading, and, in the next, with the vigilance of friendship to pick out any thing that might not sutfer by altering. Upon the word of a friend and a gentle- man, I found it not possible to go farther, without defacing and unpardonably injur- ing beauties, which neither I, nor any man in the world, but their author, could sup- ply, with others as sweet and as natural ! If you conceive such an inspection of the rest worth your wishing, I will go through them all, with the same care and caution. I am, &c. A. Hill. TO 70 CORRESPONDENCE TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, April 2\i 1741. !^l1LY daughters being with me when I had the pleasure of receiving your letter, wherein you express a desire that some of j'^our praises might be retrenched, I read it out to them aloud, and proceeded to re- mark on it as follows: There are three sorts of men, said I, who can never have concurring opinions. The envious hates all praise, except that which is claimed by himself. The weak has a sneaking and cowardly doubt of his friend; because, wanting spirit to judge for himself, he hangs his ear upon other men's censures. But the candid examiner, neither partial to friendship, nor biassed fey fools or their fashions, gives way to no- thing but virtue and truth ^ and will* be qually warm and sincere in a reproach he finds WITH AARON HILL. 71 finds due to a friend, or in a praise that is the right of an enemy. It is easy, con- tinued I, to determine, that out of these three there are two, who deserve no regard from a writer of genius. And yet, what a pity it is, to see him resigning his judg- ment with a fruitless, however beautiful, hope, to reconcile inconsistent extremes, and unite all mankind in one sentiment ! Little Harry Campbell, whom you so kindly condescend to remember, had been listening all this while upon the floor, under the umbrage of a pair of out-strut- ting hoops; and sate so snugly concealed in his covert, that I had forgot we had the monkey so near usj till peeping out from his petticoat canopy, with his face twisted upward to find me, " Sir," said he, with an air of attentive importance, " that's just like one of my fables; there's no pleasing every body. I will shew you the man, and his little boy, and the ass; and pray let me write to my good Mr. Richardson about it, for 72 CORRESPONDENCE for it is in the book he was so kind as to send little Harry." I heard and have complied with the or- der of the volatile busy-body; because, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings ^you know the conclusion, and I leave it to your reflection. However, I have gone carefully over the sheet, and return it you, with a retrench- ment of every praise I found fit to give up. Sordid taste, of an age we are doomed to make part of! when to belie and ca- lumniate with spirit, is thought the highest attainment of wit ; and to applaud and dis- tinguish with judgment, the boldest adven- ture of folly. After all, there is something due from a man to himself, as well as to the rest of the world; and I do not know which of the two is exposed to tlie most dangerous error -he who (too tenacious of his own first impressions), gives up nothing to the judg- ment of others } or he who, resolving upon nothing WITH AARON HILL. 73 nothing without previous deliberation and forecast, quits his notions too easily, in respect to rasher and much weaker deci- sions ? As to that extraordinary exception, which has been taken by some of the cloth, against the word silly, applied to a parson, I have resumed it from Mr. Williams, and bestow it very heartily on the objectors. Sure these gentlemen forgot, who injoined his disciples to be wise as serpents. But if I understand the distinction you designed for Mr. Williams's character, he is drawn as a well-moaning weak man, of too credulous and unreflecting a confidence, to be hit by the epithet unguarded (my substitute, as it now stands, for silly; for I would hu- mour the sensibility it would be uncivil to call it the pride of the gentlemen who think themselves hurt through his sides). I am charmed at the good news you send me, concerning the progress of Pamela. But you are too obliging, dear Sir, to put VL. I. E me 74 CORRESPONDENCE me in mind of renewing a trouble, I hav been so often encouraged to give you ; and, excepting the pieces you have been so kind as to favour me with a sight of, I have read nothing, of what has been pubhsiied, for eighteen months past; so that any books, great or small, containing matter either so- lid or curious, cannot fail to be welcome and useful. Against we hear that your present hurry is a little abated, which, I suppose, may be upon the rising of the house, my good girls and I retain our purpose upon Salis- bury-square. And, in the mean time, they desire me to tell good Mrs. Richardson ^nd yourself, that they often dream of you j'n the night, and have the liveliest foretaste of your companies. I threatened them this morning, that 1 would send their true pictures before them, that you might ex- pect to see nothing extraordinary; and one of the baggages answered me, that the most extraordinary thing I could send, would WITH AARON HILL. 75 would be the pictures of women drawn truly. But I am running on, as if you had nothing to do, but amuse yourself with the prattle of two idle girls, and their imperti- nent father, who is, Your's, &c. A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. J'.ili/29, 1741.. jl "WILL not wound your apprehensive mind, my dear friend, with the particulars of what my days and nights have suffered, since the happy afternoon we passed in Salisbury-court. It was the last and live- liest of our pleasures ; and it seemed as if the checquer-work of human instability condemned us to this long vexation, be- cause no short or common one could be E 2 consi- 76 CORRESPONDENCE considered as a balance for it. It is not possible to tell you with how charmed a sensibility my daughters and myself re- turned from that delightful visit, and what schemes were formed between us for re- newing and extending the felicity. But there followed a discovery, of such domestic melancholy consequence, that I do not know; whether they, from sisterly, or I, from fatherly concern, have undergone the greatest share of restlessness. I fear vain application to prevent the ruin of a youth, who, being born without any aptitude to think,. was destined to be led away by every light temptation. Imagine for us, from this general hint of our affliction, that has many branches, and let it justify us to your generous thoughts. I have been long accustomed to prepare and arm my mind against impressions of calamity; but, whether frequent exercise of this too necessary virtue may now, at last. WITH AARON HILL. W last, have deadened its due power to make resistance, or what other M'eakness I should charge it on, I know not ; but I find my- self less able than I ought to be to shake ' off these successions of fresh evils, and support a frame of temper answerable to the shocks they give me. But I will turn aside myself, and be no part of my own prospect. Let me look at, and delight in you, through all your brightness of increasing fame : a fame that never was so well deserved before, and never can be hurt by envy ; yet, what a monstrous breadth of her coarse clouds have you drawn up, by shining on them with too strong a lustre ! Sometimes I pity, and am sometimes very angry at, the persisting dulness of their malice.r Hitherto, however, it is innocent of con- sequence. It must depend on you, not them, to give ability to their bad purpose. Should they prevail so far as to deprive the world of any part of what your promise to E 3 the 7S CORRESPONDENCE tlie public has now made a debt of honour, then, indeed, their influence would be felt : but this, dear Sir, you must not, cannot, suflfer. And yet, I almost dread to ask what I long ardently to hear: how far have you gone on in that bold, dangerous, glorious. Second Part, which no man breathing but the author of the First is equal to ? My two good girls, all-charmed and filled with the idea of that happy afternoon, will not allow me to say any thing about them; because, as soon as they can find their hearts at ease enough to tell their transports, they reserve themselves the pleasure of avowing what they feel. And, as for me, I never shall be able to express how truly I shall live and die. Dear Mr. Richardson's most humble and affectionate Servant, A. Hill. TO- WITH AARON HILL. 79 TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, Oct. 15, 1741. Al thousand thanks are due to you for the two delightful sheets of Pamela, part II. Where will your wonders end? or how could I be able to express the joy it gives me to discern your genius rising, not like a pyramid, still lessening at it labours upward, but enlarging its proportion witii the grace and boldness of a pillar, that, however high its shaft is lifted, still looks largest at its capital. Go on. Dear Sir, (I see you will and must) to charm and cap- tivate the world, and force a scribbling race to learn and practice one new virtue to be pleased with what disgraces them. My daughters are in Surry, preaching Pamela, and Pamela's author, with true apostolical attachment ; and they and I are, every where and every way, both his and his dear family's most faithful servant, A. Hill. E 4 TO 80 CORRESPONDENCE TO MR. RICHARDSON. Oct. 24, 1742. DEAR SIR, iL OU are, as usual, very kind and good ; and, because I know that your good-nature would be pleased if I could tell you what it wishes to hear from me, I am grieved it is not in my power to send you word that we are all, once more, recovered. On the contrary, I languish still, and hourly shrink away in flesh and spirit, without any other visible remains of my late fever. I have neither strength nor appetite -, and (which is quite aPnew afflic- tion to me) I am tortured with sharp head- aches. All my family have been, or are, in the sajne bad condition. Our gardener we have buried, who was taken ill the very day and hour that I was. And, truly, it was a loss beyond all likelihood or pro- mise from a man of his condition. He was WITH AARON HILL. 81 was one of those few servants who attach themselves by heart, as well as duty, to the will and interest of the family they live in. He was sober, modest, silent, ever busily laborious, and ingenious beyond any in- stance I have met with, of a person in his station. He turned his hand, with readi- ness and pleasure, to whatever interruption of his present applications he was called away to, and was never known to murmur, or even look dissatisfied. He was an ex- cellent mathematician j surveyed and mea- sured land, with great exactness ; was smith, cargenter, cooper, bricklayer, and whatever artizau the family had use for 5 and, in all these diflerent talents had at- tained a -handy and dispatchful readiness. He loved, and was beloved by every body in the family: and I will not ask your pardon for this story I have told you of him; because it would be doing an injus- tice to your humanity, who know to mea- sure the true value of a good and faithful E ^ servant. 82 CORRESPONDENCE servant, not as it often is, but as it should be measured. As soon as it please God we have the power to think of stirring, we shall quit, with proper haste and indignation, this unlucky and ill-chosen place, (most part of whose inhabitants we have seen buried) and are in hopes to find relief in the dry, smoaky air of London. My daughters (all that is left them of themselves) are most sincerely and affec- tionately your's, and your dear family's. My only comfort is, that I am able now to write and read, without much dilTiculty; and so I fdl up a large vacuum? which else would but make room for idle thoughts and vapours. I will yet delight myself with the idea of those future happi^jr hours, I hope to make myself amends by,, in your company, for all these sad and gloomy ones, that have so Long and cruelly affected, Your ever faitliful servant,, A. Hill. WITH AAKON HILL, 83. TO MR. HILL. Salisbury-court J Fleet-street, Oct. 29, n42. GOOD SIR, Jl CANNOT avoid troubling you with a few lines on the melancholy subject of your last, which so greatly affected me, that I could not help speaking of it to a skilfid friend, who greatly admires you. He desired me to recommend to your better consideration two things for your case '. the one to quit, with all possible haste, the air that has been so unkindly pernicious to you^ and to get into the town. His reason was more especially the season of the year, when, as he ob- serves, the fall of the leaved fills the pools, the ponds, and the dikes, as well as the mois- ter air, with particles, and animalcula, and perishables, of vegetable as well as animal nature, that are so noxious to tender con- stitutions 5 and which are qualified by the E. 6 Londoiv 84 CORRESPONDENCE London smoak, and the warmer air of a close compacted city. The other is, the asses milk ; and I have such hopes from both, that I should not have held myself excused, if I had not instantly ^the very moment while even my friend was but stepping from me, taken pen in hand on the occasion. In mean time. Sir, and till you can be provided to your wish, and that you may change your present air by such degrees for that of the town as may not be too sen- sible, I should think myself greatly favour- ed, if you would be pleased to fill a coach rom your dear family, and try the Ham- mersmith air. I have only a female ser- vant there, who is there all the year, and one of my town maids, whom I send thither for her health, which is amended by the air. And that you may see how free I will be, I will acquaint you, that, from this time to the 12th of November, I shall not have my ^tlier friead there : that, on that day, indeed. WITH AARON HILL. 85 indeed. Miss R , who is to change her name with her new friend, retires thi- ther, to avoid the noise of the town, for one week, or so ; and, after that, it will again be quite free, and at your service. And, as the parlours are distinct, as well as the bedchambers, and I can make ten beds within the house, I will be down or up, and not invade, but at your pleasure and that of the ladies, a moment of your retirement, nor shall any one else. The preparations for the solemnity I have men- tioned permit me not to make the same offer as to Salisbury-court ; else, with what pleasure should I do it ! And, I hope. Sir, my freedom in what I have mentioned will conyince you of the ease and convenience it would be to me to be thus favoured. My dear Sir, what can be done ? Change of air only, even sometimes of a good to a more indifferent one, is of benefit j what then may it not be of an indifferent to a better : for a swampy to a drier ? And there 86 CORRESPONDENCE there will not want one hour's time on my side to prepare for you or your's; for I will not make strangers of you, or do one thing for you that I would not otherwise do, as to the customary matters of the house, furniture, &c. What an excellent servant have you lost ! But he was happy in such a master and ladies ! That servant must be very bad in nature, that could not be made good in such a household. Yet, for his many other talents and abilities, where can such an- other, in his or in any station, be found \ But could he have known that he should have been thus lamented^ the loss of him thus regretted, by so excellent a master;, how happy to him must have been the last moments of his life ! I v/ill not dwell upon the melancholy subject, although it affords me another argument change of scene, as well as air, to support my earnest wishes in the favour begged for by. Sir, your's truly, S. Richardson. TO> WITH AARON IIILL. 8? TO MR. RICHARDSON. January 20, 1743-4. DEAR SIR, J.F, among the arts, whereby I delight myself, in amusing my retreat from the world, by the practical examination of their ideas, I could but find out some way to transmute a warm wish into benefit, ne- ver mortal was happier than I would make you feel and confess yourself. You should be puzzled by nothing, but how to raise a new hope ; or contrive a desire, which you already possessed not the end of. As it is, I must content myself with the simple power of sending you a few fruitless thanks, for the obliging regard you are so good to retain for me and my family^ not a branch of which but knows how to value it, at so just a rate, as to prefer it to any of the fashionaljle new-year's gifts, that are said to be sent abroad from St James's. Ibegaa SS CORRESPONDENCE I began to fear for the state of your health, and almost dreaded to ask how your spirits sustained the late sharp wea- ther, quite unheedful as I was j that I my- self had been the cause of your long si- lence, by forbearing to inform you, that "we were condemned (for one year, still, from Christmas last), to bear with the bad air of Plaistow. It is a quiet, and not quite unpleasant (were it but a healthy), soli- tude J a place that seems to have been only formed for books, and meditation, and the Muses. God give to you, and all you love, those pleasures, and a thousand livelier, for a long, long, happy length of years to <;ome, and every year still mending. I am. Dear Sir, ior ever your most faithful and affectionate servant, A. Hill. TO WITH AARON HILL. B9 TO MR. RICHARDSON. April 2, 1745. jl NOW daily gather better hopes, and will, as soon as I can bear the yet too pinching sharpness of the air, enjoy a few days with you, where your goodness has so often wished mej and whence some evil daemon, envious of my intended happiness, has seemed, as often, busy in contriving accidents to disappoint me ! Do me the favour to accept an Easter offering from me. It is a small one ; but, I hope, may be productive of some future ones, deserving your possession. I believe the piece may yet be out in a fit season, and before the town begins to thin. The title may a little startle you * ; but you will fmd the satire (as it should be al- ways), general, and levelled against things, * Go to bed Tom, afterwards The Faociad. not 00 CORRESPONDENCE not persons. I do not love the air of boast or vanity j but, if the world receives this poem coldly, I have done with hoping to content them. It will have novelty, at least (if that can recommend it) ; for many of the sentiments are such as are not only new, but for the most part opposite to the received opinions upon commercial, poli- tic, and military subjects j and that, too, in points, whose consequences deserved to have been better weighed than they have been, or seem to me to have been, by the managers of states, and their determinar- tions. So much for the general turn and matter of the poem, which I beg you to bestow, at leisure, an attentive reading on, and tell me frankly what effect it has upon you 1 shall, and safely may, from that; fore- judge its public fate ; for, if it does not please you,. more than commonly,.! have been cheated into an ill-grounded hope, from a fond parent's blind partiality : hav- ing: WITH AARON HILL. 91 ing bestowed more care and labour on this piece, than I shall dare confess, if you do not feel it in the reading you bestow upon the verses. As to what may seem particular in the poem, the compliments to the Marlborough family, my purpose is as public-spirited, even there, as every poet's ought to be, on every subject which he touches. If it can prove a means of stirring up an inclination to enable (by their family memoirs), some fit hand to write a history of the late duke's conduct of the war, that both the nation and the family may draw due glory from, I shall have been the instrument of no small future reputation to my country ; which is {I hope), l^am sure she ought to be, ashamed to see a length of victories, that shook one half of Europe, and redeemed the other, making so lame, so dark, so all- entangled and confused a figure; that what must certainly have been the laboured, and produced, eftect of genius, almost more than human, seems a mass of huddled and unpurposed 92 CORRESPONDENCE unpurposed accidents, wherein events were thrown for, and but followed fortune ! It is impossible for me to close this let- ter, before I have added the most import- ant affair it will speak of I mean, that obstinate weight and dizziness in your head shall I venture to tell you, that I am sometimes afraid, lest you should fall too far into the practice of your friend. Dr. Cheyne's cold doctrines, of abstinence and excess of evacuations. All extremes are reproachable ; and that gentleman, in many of his late writings, seems to forget, that his own case is not every-body's; and is for treating us, all, like valetudinarians. Nature ought to be followed (helped, in- deed, now and then), but fiever to be thwarted and crossed in her tendencies. I have strongly experienced this truth in my late long confinement. Among other joint causes, I owed the misfortune to a decay in the force of my spirits, under a too cold, too abstinent, regimen of diet. I will trouble you with no more, now, upon WITH AARON HILL. 93 iipon this subject, or on any other; but make haste to tell you, that in health, or out of health, in poetry or prose, in spirit And in truth, I never can be other than. Your faithful humble servant, A. Hill, TO MR. RICHARDSON. JprilSj 1743. DEAR SIR, JL OU are kind, with the usual partiality of your friendly good wishes, in what you hint about the hand wherein you would be glad to see the memoirs of the great family mentioned in the poem. To be sure, mine is infinitely too weak for the demand of the subject ; and so, I fear, will any other be found, to whose care such a trust has a probability of being committed. For, 1 do not know how it happens, but certain 04 CORRESPONDENCE ' certain it is, history is one of the rarest of all human accomplishments, and no plant, I am sure, of our climate. It is owing to a very long and unwearied application to its study, that I am more than ordinarily shocked at its too scandalous deficiency, upon a subject so replete with occasion for national glory ! But I am doubtful whether this defect is so obvious as it ought to be to the family in whose possession the papers lie, which alone can give foundation to a hope for the cure of it. I will tell you, very frankly, the whole extent of my scheme on this subject. I hope it is no extravagant supposition, that the poem may remind the family, and also the public, that such an undertaking ought to be promoted; and when, against next winter, (many general conversations on the subject being likely in the interval) they shall be prepared for the impression of a proof, that nothing that deserves the name of history has yet appeared in honour of the duke's WITH AARON HILL. 95 fluke's great actions, I have thoughts of get- ting ready an essay on the campaign of one year only; (for instance, that of Blenheim) wherein, when they discern how different a figure the duke makes from that which he has hitherto appeared in, they will infer that he might still be made to shine beyond comparison more brightly, by the help of those assistances which they can furnish for the future. For they will feel, that what they now beleive sufficiently ex- plained is darkness, when they see the subject in the lights it ought to be pro- duced in ; whereas, till then, they may, and I believe they do, conceive that there is nothing wanting, to convey a full idea to posterity of actions, which (far from it!) must, as now related, carry down a gross and muddy bulk of ill-packed and hard- folded intricacies. My greatest difficulty would be to find, among our own and the Frejich tracts, ex- amined and considered together, matter enough ^ " CORRESPONDENCE enough wherefrom to disentangle facts and motives, in sufficient charity to form, at least, so much upon as to demonstrate, by another model, that the old ones are too heavy and defective to content the nation X)T the family; but, I believe, it might be practicable to select, one way or other, materials for that one year's history; and what defects the manuscript must have, for want of helps the family could furnish, may (if they please) be remedied before the public comes to judge of the performance. This is my plan : and my chief motive is that true and honest one insinuated in the poem, from the apprehension of our conquerors losing ground in histories so far inferior to the genius they pretend to celebrate, I know it is too likely, from my own experience. The duke's own modest silence on the actions he could have best described, who only could have executed tliem, and the confused and dark accounts which other hands perplexed my apprehen- WITH AARON HILL. 97 apprehension by, while they pretended to enlighten it, misled me to a rash conclu- sion, which I have since, but by mere ac- cident, discovered to have been a very false and unjust one. And, I am sure, it is rea- sonably to be suspected, that what now, so near the time wherein the actions were performed, could cause me to mistake the author of them so unjustly, will, in times still more and more removed, produce still grosser errors, to the disadvantage of that great man's future character. I am, &c. A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, 1 SEND you back LeUers XI. and XII. of your still growing, as well as lengthening, bfeauty. She is infinitely pleasing, and so VOL. I. F sweetly 98 CORRESPONDENCE sweetly natural in her movement, that you could not make her seem too tall, though you should stretch her out to as much vast- ness as the fame of Virgil. If there is any place that can be short- ened, without maiming this delightful com- position, you, who have created it, and have its whole proportion and connexion in your eye at once, are better justified in doing it, than it is possible for any other man to be, who, seeing it in parts, divided, and at distant times, w'ould use, methinl>s, a bold- ness too unpardonable in advising to re- trench the smallest piece of any of its pages, till he has revised and re-considered it in its conclusive and accomplished full- ness. You crowd, indeed, your observations and reflections, in this charming work. But is not that the very life, and soul, and fire, that makes the use and beauty of it impressive and so striking? Jn fact, it is in the first stages (if at. all) that you must look for WITH AARON HILL. 99 for lopping-places. All your after-growths are sacred, to the smallest twig ; and can ad- mit no cutting, without downright violation. I am greatly pleased at the small hint you give of a design to raise another Alps upon this Appenine ! We can never see too many of his works who has no equal in his labours. Forgive the haste I write this with, being called oif, by business, in the middle of it but, for ever. Dear Sir, your most obliged, &c. A. Hill, TO MR. RICHARDSON. January ']y 1744-5. DEAR SIR, JlT now seems so long since you ot)liged me with the two first pieces of your beau- tiful new work, that I am half ashamed to tell you why I have not sooner thanked f2 yo* 100 CORRESPONDENCK you for the pleasure they brought with them. I have (in weighed and oft-repeated read- ings), found your blank leaves doomed to an unspotted virgin purity. I must not, nay, I dare not, think of violating them. Indeed, I see no modest possibility of do- ing it ; since precision, in so natural a flow of drapery, would only serve to stiffen, what you bid me shorten. You have form- ed a style, as much your property as our respect for what you write is, where ver- bosity becomes a virtue; because, in pic- tures which you draw with such a skilful negligence, redundance but conveys re- semblance 3 and to contract the strokes, would be to spoil the likeness. In short, I cannot improve you. Would you have me frankly tell you why? It is, because I want the power to imitate you. You must be content to stand alone 3 and truly so you would, though fifty dwarf as- sistants were to croud into your shadow ! You WITH AARON IHLL. lOt You contain, like the new notion of philo* sophy in vegetation, a whole species in on# single kernel. Nothing will be ever of your kind, unless yourself produces it. I could not have said less than this ; and more I will forbear to say, till you have sent the wiiole performance to. Dear Sir, Your's, &c. A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, Jiili/ 24, 1744. JL HAVE, again and again, re-perused and reflected on that good and beautiful design I send you back the wide and ar- duous plan of It is impossible, after the wonders you have shewn in Pamela, to question your infallible success in this new, natural, attempt. But you must give me ^ 3 leave 102 CORRESPONDENCE leave to be astonished, when you tell me you have finished it already ! The honour you intended me, in such a trust as you once thought of*, is a com- pliment, you may be sure, of no small in- fluence ; since it had the power of giving me some pleasure, mixed, as k came to me, with so horrible, and not to be re- thought of, an idea ! As to Dr. Young, I know and love the merit of his moral meanings ; but am sorry that he overflows his banks, and will not remind himself (when he has said enough upon his subject), that it is then high time to stop. He has beauties scattered up and down in his complaints, that, had he not so separated them by lengths of cooling in- terval, had been capable of carrying into future ages such a fire, as few past ones ever equalled. What a pity want should be derived from superfluity! To bequeath to his friendly care and judgment my poor writings. he WITH AARON HILL. 106 To the author of the Seasons, will you be so good as to return my thanks, for his remembering an old friend ; who, though he had still been forgotten, would, not- withstanding that, have yearly traced him round with new delight, from Spring quite down to Winter. And, because I find myself obliged to another writer for his present, through such a hand as your's, pray please to let him know, I thank him for the favour. But, indeed, the more 1 read of these blank verse eruptions, tlie more beautifully ne- cessary I perceive the yoke of rhyming. It is a kind of trammel that compels close stepping; whereas the wild luxuriant wan- tonness of thosQ unfettered launchers into liberty, throws down enclosure, on pre- tence of latitude; and overtrampling all propriety, marked bound, or limitation, turns distinction into dcsart, and lays dry the Muses' districts. Good night, my dear Mr. Richardson.; F 4 be 104 CORRESPONDENCE be happy and healthy, and continue to write on and charm on, and instruct the true way by example ! Your's ever, A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, Sept, 10, 1744. Tt E cannot yet say a great deal of the health you are so kind to wish us. But our tedious lease is near expiring j and, by next spring, we shall have before us the advantage of some better choice, for mend- ing our bad situation. Mr. Pope, as you with equal keenness and propriety express it, is gojie out. I told a friend of his, who sent me the first news of it, that I was very sorry for his death, because I doubted whether he would live to recover the accident. Indeed, it gives me no surprise, to find you thinking he was in the wane of his popularity. It arose WITH AARON HILL. 105 arose, originally, but from meditated little personal assiduities, and a certain bladdery swell of management. He did not blush to have the cunning to blow himself up, by help of dull, unconscious, instruments, whenever he would seem to sail, as if his own wind moved him. The heart of man is said to be inscruta- ble : but this can scarce be truly said of any writing man. The heart of such still shews, and needs must aliew itself, beyond all power of concealment; and, without the writer's purpose, or even knowledge, will a thousand times, and in a thousand places, start up in its own true native co- lour, let the subject it is displayed upon bend never so remotely from the un-in- tended manifestation. How many have I heard declare (and people, too, who loved truth dearly, and believed they spoke it), that they charmed themselves in reading Pamela; when, all the while, it was Mr, Richardson they had been reading. F 5 In 106 CORRESPONDENCE In fact, if any thing was fine, or truly powerful, in Mr. Pope, it was chiefly cen- tered in expression : and that rarely, when not grafted on some other writer's precon- ceptions. His own sentiments were low and narrow, because always interested ; darkly touched, because conceived imper- fectly; and sour and acrid, because writ in envy. He had a turn for verse, without a soul for poetry. He stuck himself into his subjects, and his muse partook his ma- ladies ; which, M ith a kind of peevish and vindictive consciousness, maligned the healthy and the satisfied. One of his worst mistakes was, that un- necessary noise he used to make in boast of his morality. It seemed to me almost a call upon suspicion, that a man should rate the duties of plain honesty, as if they had been qualities extraordinary ! And, in fact, I saw, on some occasions, that he found those duties too severe for practice ; and but prized himself upon the character, in pto- WITH AARON HILL. 10? proportion to the pains it cost him to sup- port it. But rest his memory in peace ! It will very rarely be disturbed by that time he himself is ashes. It is pleasant to observe the justice of forced fame ; she lets down those, at once, who got themselves pushed upward ; and lifts none above the fear of falling, but a few who never teazed her. What she intends to do with me, the Lord knows ! The whole I can be sure of is, that never mortal courted her with less solicitude. And, truly, if I stood con- demned to share a place in her aerial store- house, with some- characters that fill up great voids there, as things go at present, I should ralher make a leg, shrink back, and ask her pardon. But, what have I to do with fame, who have only, now and then, thrown out a loose leaf (sybil-like), and given the wind free privilege to scatter it? Perhaps it is better they should so be scattered > for so F C I see 108 CORRESPONDENCE I see it would have been, for many of onr liberal entailers of their zvorks upon a public, that is scarce disposed to rank them among pastimes. I am. Dear Sir, Your's, &c. A. Hill. TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, 1744. Jl MET with your letter (as a most sea- sonable consolation), upon my return from an application, that of all applications I hate, a law plague, of tedious delays and attendances, which my very soul seems corroded by the oppressive chicaneries of. You are always so good, that I scarce knov/ where to begin or end the thanks I find due to you. Reading, to say truth, is the strongest holder-down of my thought, to WITH AARON HILL. 109 to a diversion from uneasier reflexions. Writing, possibly, might have the same effect; but that I mortify myself with a conscious distrust, that I think not to the taste of the public. What a monstrous new proof of it is, the reception that the Fanciad has met with! It is a year or more, too, since, upon information that they were bringing on Alzira, at Drury- lane House, I revised and altered that play, and sent it them, improved and strength- ened to a very great degree ; with the ad- ditional name to it of Spanish Pride hum- bled : and the seasonable popular prologue I here inclose you, which I writ at Mr. Fletewood's pressing desire. The play is given out in parts, and is (they tell me), to come on this season. But the manage- ment there is so loose, that I question whether it ought yet to be so far depended on, as to deserve your thinking of another edition, to be ready against its acting. You charm me by the generous truths you 110 CORRESPONDENCE you remark, on the mercenary malignity of Mr. Pope's narrow conduct. His ge- nius is not native nor niventive : it is a verbal flexibility of expressiveness, that now and then throws such light on his couplets. He can add a door or a window to another man's house j but he would build very badly on a new plan, or model, of his own disposition. He must have something to lean against, or would not move without falling. His imagination, therefore, is weak and defective ; and since his judgment too is demonstrably so, by his everlastingly correcting his new edi- tions for the worse, below comparison, to what else can we attribjite the prodigious success which his writings have met with, but to the industrious servility of the arts, which he used, in his youth, to cajole and hook in his supporters ? Never was any thing, I think, more visible than this ap- pears in the correspondence betwixt him and Mr. Wycherly j and every-where else, in- WITH AARON HILL. .111 indeed, throughout all that we see, of his beginnings. As to his Essay on Man (which is a battle between beauties and obscurities), you are very kind to his ge- nius, when you consider that as a proof of it, when the versification, I am afraid, is his whole and the matter and design my lord Bolingbroke's. And yet, in spite of these truths, there is always here and there, in whatever he writes, something so expres- sed to bewitch us, that I cannot, for my soul, help admiring him ; for he out-charms even a poet, though he is none. In this ridicu- lous combat against king CoUey, some Mi- nerva has lent the laureat a spear ; for there are strokes, of no Cibberine hand, in this new Sixpenny-worth of Scorn, that he has so wisely provoked the severity of God bless the new shoots of your family, and their dear root and sweet stem, and all the lovely little blossoming branches. I am, dear Sir, Your's, &c. A. Hill. TO 11^ CORRESPONDENCi: TO MR. RICHARDSON. DEAR SIR, Oct. 13, 1746. .A_S to the story promised you concerning Mr. ]Pope, I could not have forgot to give it you. It left a much more deep impres- sion on my memory than any vanity, that was but a mere vanity, could have been capable of fixing there. For a too partial sensibility to self is often but a harmless, to-be-pitied pride of head ; whereas here seemed to have been something worst than even a pride of heart something that blew up lightness into insolence; and added coarseness to. ingratitude. There was a verse, which Mr. Pope had drawn from a mistaken hint in Horace, which he would be oft repeating, and was very fond of: ** For fools admire; but men of sense approve,** I used WITH AARON HILL. 113 I used to tell him I abhorred the senti- ment ; both from its arrogance, and want of truth in nature. We had many con- tests of this kind : but there are arguers, whom heaven, as this same gentleman ex- presses it extremely well, " Has curs'd with hearts uaknowing how to yield.'^ And so our battles usually were drawn ones, where both sides laid claim to victory. In the last debate we had upon this sub- ject, I desired to know if he was still, as formerly, convinced Longinus's remark on the sublime was right ? " That the most certain way of knowing it is from the power in some idea touch'd enthusiasti- cally, to move the blood and spirits into transport, by a thrilling kind of joy, that raises pride in him who hears the passage, as if his soul grew wider, by expanding to conceive such images." He Itljfr CORRESPONDENCE He owned it was the strongest definitioi* of the true sublime that could be possibly imagined : but was sure, that only men of genius could conceive it. Whereupon I asked him whether joy^ and transport, and enthusiasm, and a thrill of blood, could pos- sibly consist with want of admiration ? He perceived the use I made of his concession, and said nothing, till I added this new question : whether only fools admire, if only men of. genius are susceptible of a subr limity of admiration ? In some perplexity to find a better an- swer, he was forced to satisfy himself with saying, that Longinus's remark was truth; but that, like certain truths of more im- portance, it required assent from faith, without the evidence of demonstration. I replied, that I had had the pleasure to be witness of its^ demonstration, in an instance that himself gave cause for. His curiosity was raised, and I informed him, that, at reading a new play at Lord Tyrconnel's, there was present a gentle- man. WITH AARON HILL. 11 J man, distinguished both for rank and ge- nius, who, on a discourse about the diffi- Gulty of a delicate and manly praise, re- peated those line lines, in compliment to the earl of Oxford, printed before D. Par- nell's poems. ^I added, that this gentle- man had been so generously warmed, in his repeating them, that he was the most undeniable example I had ever seen of all Longinus's effect of the sublime, in its most amiable force of energy ! for, (break- ing off into a humanised excess of rapture, that expressed philanthropy with such a natural beauty, that, had he been my greatest enemy, I must have, from that moment, been compelled to love him for it) he told us, " He could never read those verses without rapture j for, that sentiments such as those were, appeared to carry more of the god in them than the man, and he was never weary of admiring them !" I there looked on Mr. Pope, in expec- tation of a question that he asked in;- raediately " AVho was this gentleman ?" I an* 116 CORRESPONDENCE I answered, it was the Speaker of the House of Commons : and re-paused atten- tively for the effect his gratitude was brought in debt for. But here arose the groundwork of my story, in a vanity, that merited a name so much severer, that, I own, I never after- wards recovered the opinion I then lost of that (too loud) pretension to high morals^ which you know he loved ta make on all occasions. In short, he had so much unfeeling ar- rogance, as to receive this honour (done him in so noble and so natural a manner) as deserving only a strained supercilious smile J and all he said upon it was " The Speaker is a man remarkable for heat of passion j and such transports will be com- mon to such tempers !" I have done with this long little story. But, as painters better catch a likeness from some inaU unguarded glance of negligence,, (ban any set position of the coun- WITH A\RON HILL. 117 countenance, so, if I were disposed (as I am not) to give the world an ugly picture of this famous poet's mind, I could not chuse the help of a more strikingly charac- teristic feature. It affected me the more, because I knew him in the first gradations of his rise to notice j and compared his present ill-bred and contemptuous disre- gard of admiration, with the mean sedulity of all those arts of flattery wherewith he courted praise, in the beginnings of his growth to eminence. Many poor plots there aie which the least discerning eye can look through, in the letters between him and Mr. \V3xherly, and Harry Cromwell, and in a long et costera of observations on his QUtset conduct. But it is time to put an nd to letters on the fourth page of a diieet, and so. Dear Sir, Your's, &c. A. Hill. f: TO 118 CORRESPONDENCE TO MR. RICHARDSON. Nov. 1746* DEAR SIR, jiHERE is a manner, (so beyond the mat- ter, extraordinary always, too, as that is!) in whatever you say and do, that makes it an impossibility to speak those sentiments which it is equally impossible not to con- ceive in reverence and affection for your goodness ! This single word, upon receipt of your sixty, and two twenty pound bank notes, in so surprisingly obliging (yet so pain- inforcing) a manner, I could not but, in the fulness of my heart, compel an aching head to let me say to you, just now The rest I must refer to another day, and larger letter, having neither words, nor time, in this to say a hundredth part of what I feel ^who am, for ever. Dear Sir, Your obliged A. Hill. TO W:TII AARON niLL. 119 TO MR. HILL. Oct. 27, nis. DEAR SIR, ^V ITH regard to some parts of your fa- vour of the nineteenth, I will only say, that I am too much pained on your account to express any thing but my pain. A mind so noble ! so generous ! so under-rating intentional good from himself! so over- rating trilling benefits from others ! But no more on this subject. You are an alien, Sii:, in this world j and no wonder that the base world treat you as such. You arc so very earnest about transfer- ring to me the copyright to all your works, that I will only say, that that point must be left to the future issues of things. But I will keep account. I will, though I were to know how to use the value of your fa- vours as to those issues (never Ccan I the value of your generous intentions). You will 120 CORRESPONDENCE will allow me to repeat, / will keep account. It is therefore time enough to think of the blank receipt you have had the goodness to send me to fill up. "Would to heaven that all men had the same (I am sure I may call it just) opinion of your works that I have ! But shall I tell you. Sir ? The world, the taste of i;he world, is altered since you withdrew from it. Your writings require thought to read, and to take in their whole force; and the world has no thought to bestow. Simplicity is all their cry ; yet hardly do these criers know what they mean by the noble word. They may see a thousand beauties obvious to the eye : but if there lie jewels in the mine that require labour to come at, they will not dig. I do not think, 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. Your sentiments, even they WITH AARON HILL. 121 they will have it who allow them to be no- ble, are too munificiently adorned : and they want you to descend to their level. Will you. Sir, excuse me this freedom ? Yet I can no longer excuse myself, to the love and to the veneration mingled that I bear to you, if I do not acquaint you with what the world you wish to mend says of your writings. And 3^et, for my own part, I am convinced that the fault lies in that indolent (that lazy, I should rather call it) world. You would not, I am sure, wish to write to a future age only. A chance, too, so great, that posterity will be mended by what shall be handed down to them by this. And fewy very few, are they who make it their study and their labour, to stem the tide of popular disapprobation or prejudice. Besides, I am of opinion that it is necessary for a genius to accommodate itself to the mode and taste of the world it is cast into, since works published in this age must take root in it, to flourish in the next. As to your title, Sir, which you are VOL. I. G pleased 12 <:OTlRESrONt)ENCE pleased to require my opinion of, let me premise, that there was a time, and that within my own remembrance, when a pompous title was almost necessary to pro- mote the sale of a book. But the book- sellers, whose business is t<> watch the taste and foibles of the pubiie, soon (as they never fail on such occasions to do) wore out that fashion : and now, verifying the old observation, that good wie needs no bush, a pompous or laboured title is looked upon as a certain sign of want of merit in tlie performance, and hardly evef becomes an invitation t the purchaser. As to your particular title to this great work, I have your pardon to beg, if I refer to your consideration, whether epic, truly epic, as the piece is*, you would choose to call it epic in the title-page ; since hun- dreds who will see the title, will not, at the time, have seen your admirable defmi- tion of the word. Excuse, Sir, this free- "* Gidcoa J or, the Patriot. An epic Poem, dom WITH AARON HILL. 123 dom also, and excuse these excuses. ^I am exceedingly pressed in time, and shall be fqr some time to come, or, sloven as I am in my pen, this should not have gone. God forbid that I should have given you cause to say, as a recommendation, that there will be more prose than verse in your future works ! I believe. Sir, that Mr. Garrick, in par- ticular, has not in any manner entered into vindictive reflections. I never saw him on the stage j but of late I am pretty well ac- quainted with him. I know he honours you. But he thinks you above the present low taste ; (this I speak in confidence) and once I heard him say as much, and wish that you could descend to it. Hence one of the reasons that have impelled me to be so bold as I have been in this letter. The occasion of the black wax I use, is the loss of an excellent sister. We loved each other tenderly ! But my frequent, I might say constant, disorders of the nervous G 2 kind 124^ CORRESPONDENCE kind ought to remind me, as a consolation, of David's self-comfort on the death of his child, perhaps oftener than it does, im- mersed as I am in my own trifles, and in business, that the common parental care permits me noj; to quit, though it becomes every day more irksome to me than an- other, I am. Sir, With true affection. Your most faithful, and obedient servant, S. Richardson. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Nov. 2, 1748. Jl REALLY thought, ^ear Sir, that nei- ther my affection, admiration, or warm grateful sense of your inimitable virtues, could r^.^: ^--'^ \ARON HILL. 125 f ould have admitted the increase given v* it, by the sincere, kind, friendly plain- ness, of this last obliging letter. Yet, it tells me nothing new, of the low estimation of my writings : I have always known them, and expected them to be, unpopular : nor shall I live to. see them in another light. But there will rise a time, in which they wilL be seen in a far different one : I know it, on a surer hope than that of vanity. As for the present world and me, we are so well agreed in our contempt of one an- other, that (exclusive only of one amiable interest I would wish myself, more spee- dily, of some poor little use* to), I feel no desire at all to undergo the imputation of contenting it. The simplicity they make so great a cry about, is what I love as much as they pre- tend fo love it ; for, indeed, they talk of what they do not understand. Nor can such creatures as complain of poetry, be- C 3 cause 126 CORRESPONDENCE cause it puts them to the pain of thinking:, merit any poet's thinking of. Obscurity, indeed (if they had penetration to mean that), is burying sense alive j and some of my rash, early, too affected puerile scrib- blings must, and should, have pleaded guilty, to so just an accusation. But the case, thank God, is very different now j and these implicit mules, that carry malirje for their owners, might perhaps have mo- desty enough to think it so, if they could see with what unpardoning severity I do, and shall, revise my copies. But I am sure, that when my dear friend told me that the world has changed its taste, he gives that word the same re- strained sense I have used it in above. For no judge better knows, that with ex- ception to a Jev;ish and stock-jobbing city, and a foreign court (with their too numerous dependents), where our very language is despised, and in a manner out of use; and English taste, there, changed in WITH AARON HILL. 127 in consequence : I say, with due exception to deaf ears, the world was never more disposed than now, to English thought and English feeling. Nor shall we (if our period, as a people, is as distant as I hope in heaven it is), in any part of the now current century, want sufficient numbers of learned men, and persons of exacted geaius, to preserve all writings worth their notice J such, I mean, as carry figure to attract it: for small pamphlet pieces, I suspect, too seldom reach good hands, or run a hazard to be lost, among the rul- bish that sinks round them. What you hint of Mr. Garrick, with your usual and peculiar sweetness of in- tention, is just what I think of him, as to his own free sentiments, detached from wrong suggestions of malignant minds, which he too easily adopts, without exam- ining. We correspond but little, and it has been always on a civil footing. But I am not without reasons, no^ wojth telling Q 4 you, HS CORRESPONDENCE yoUj for fearing him (which is a weakness ^eTy strange, yet but too common through- out life !) pervertible by men, whose judg- ment, at the same time, he despises. But, I hope, my Merope is in a fair way to come down to him this season from a hand of power ; whence, if it does so come, I shall soon better know him. I cannot help saying something more about simplicity; because, as Mr. Dryden told some fools of his own days, that when they praised an easy way of writing, they meant that which men could write most easily ; so their successors, of the modern stamp, are far from meaning, when they cry up what they call simplicity, that na- tural and delightfully instructive elegance of unaffected passion, which your touched and thinking readers see, and suffer under, and grow better by, in the distresses and reflections of a Pamela, or a Clarissa. All that these dim humble wretches mean, by their abuse of it to a benumbing sense, is the WITH AARON HILL. 129 the unjogging slide of something, but they cannot tell what, that paces their lame un- derstanding smoothly on, and does not shake it out of a composure, necessary to its weakness. Simplicity (you know it best of all menr breathing), is a weaker word for the same thing, propriety. Whatever is conceived with and .expressed with that wants noi- thing; it has every ornament becoming its demand, not one beyond it. If it had none, it would be naked; if too few, de- fective; if too many, tawdry. This, my dear friend, is simplicity ; and this is your simplicity. Whether we take the word from simplex (sine plica), or from simplus (sine and plus), its true sense must l>e found in its reverse to duplex i so that every thing is simple, that has nothing added contrary to its own quality; and every thing un-simple, that has foreign and un- natural annexions. If a camel were to be described, it might be done with all the G 5 requisite "ISO CORRESPONDENCE requisite simplicity, however loftily the poet should express the beast's raised neck, majestic pace, and venerable countenance. ut from the moment he began to mention claws and courage, as the camel's attributes, iiis deviation from the rules of true simpli- city would justly call for the reproach of too magnificently adorned; not because xjamels ought not to be spoken of magnifi- cently, but because there should not be assigned them a magnificence repugnant to their nature. Xong as this letter is already, I have something still to add, relating to a prose ipiece I informed you I should want your judgment on. It is my tract of new im- provements in the art of war, by ^ea and land. This piece is v^ery full of novelty, ^id possibly will have jnuch future conse- quence. And yet the supercilious narrow- jDess in vogue -may make it be supposed, ithat nothing of this nature can be worth jrcgard, nor authorised by a commission, itO WITH AARON HILL. \3l to think rationally. To such heads it were of little influence to say, how much I saw and learned in armies of three different nations at the outset of my life (too soon engaged in foreign ramblings). A still less .effect would follow, if I went about to make them sensible, how preferable to whole lives of mill-horse rounds in practi- cal contractions, an extended theory may be, when exercising a not-unadapted ge- nius, long and obstinately bent on all ex- aminations prosper to that study. Would it fUot he better I should spare myself the trouble of these undeserved apologies, to such a .war-defaming race as we know where to Jook for? and, instead of a dry dissertation on what might be done in arms, present it to the entertained imagination, Sis rwhsLt had already beenj laying the scene, at some pretended time, in some imagi- nary country; and uniting, in a lively story, all the use, surprise, and pleasure, ;0f historical narration, filled with warlike G 6 and 132 CORRESPONDENCE WITH A. HILL. and political events, of a new turn and species to the active demonstrations of a theory, that else might pass for project only. I persuade myself that one might make a piece of this kind very pleasing ; and will throw it into such a form, If you conceive it would do better. Are you to hope no end to this long, long, long, nervous persecution ? But, it is the tax you pay your genius ; and I ra- ther wonder you have spirits to support such mixture of prodigious weights, such an effusion of the soul, with such confine- ment of the body, than that it has over- strained your nerves to bear yaur spirit's agitation! God Almighty bless you! I should never end at all, if I writ on till I had nothing left that I still wished to tell you, from your (beyond his power of tell- ing). Most obliged and grateful humble servant, A. Hill. LETTER % LETTER FROM Mr. W a R B U R T O N TO Mr. RICHARDSON. TO MR. RICHARDSON. GOOD SIR, Dec.28y 1742. Jl HIS very day, on receiving my things from London, I had the pleasm'e to find in the box an obliging letter from you, of the 1 7th past, with a very kind and valuable present of a fine edition of your excellent work, which no one can set a liigher rate upon. I find they have both lain all this time at Mr. Bowyer's. I have so tru6 an esteem for you, that you 134 LETTER FROM you may depend on any thing in my power, that you think may be of any service to you. Mr. Pope and I, talking over your work when the two last volumes came out, agreed, that one excellent subject of Pame- ila's letters in high life, would have been t diave passed her judgment, on first stepping dnto it, on every thing she saw there, just ^s simple nature (and no one ever touched -nature to the quick, as it were, more cer- tainly and surely than you) dictated. The effect would have been this, that it would have produced, by good management, a most excellent and useful satire on all the follies and extravagancies of high life; which to one of Pamela's low station and good sense would have appeared as absurd and unaccountable as European polite vices and customs to an Indian. You easily conceive the effect this must have added to the entertainment of the book ^ ajid for the use, that is incontestable. And jjvhat MR. 17ARBURT0N. 135 what could be more natural than this in Pamela, going into a new world, where every thing sensibly strikes a stranger? But, wheA I have the pleasure of seeing ^rou in town, we will talk over this matter ^t large ; and, I fancy, you will make some- thing extremely good of our hints. I have a great deal to say upon this subject, that, when we are together, you will not only understand more ^perfectly, hut I shall be able to conceive more clearly by the use of your true judgment. At least, I shall be always zealous of shewing how much I am, jQood Sir, Your very obliged and most affectionate, humble servant, W. Warburtoi^. COR. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN Mr. RICHARDSON AND Mr. strahan; TO MR. RICHARDSON. Edinburgh, Aug, 17, 1749. DEAR SIR, j'\.FTER an agreeable, though somewhat fatiguing, journey of five days, we arrived safely at this place, where we found all friends as well as we expected. The alte- rations in persons, places, and things, since I was here last, struck me exceedingly, and afibrded me the most convincing proof imaginable of the mutability of human affairs. Many people are strangely altered, many WITH MR. STRAHAN. 137 mkny have disappeared, and many are now no more, which it is impossible to think of without concern, and a degree of serious- ness not to be suddenly checked. Nay, so natural is it to be prejudiced in favour of the appearances things had when we were young, that even the alterations for the better please me not j at least, not till I have reasoned myself into the utility and propriety of the change. I am like to be very well entertained while I stay here. There are sensible men in plenty; though such as Mr. R. are rarely found any where. I assure you the most valuable folks here like your writings t)est. You may, with great propriety, say, exegi monumentum. There is nothing in this place worth WTiting you, only that there seems to be a great spirit of industry gone forth, which I am sure will turn to the advantage of botii parts of the united kingdom. I hope this will fmd you in perfect health, and 13 CORRESPONDENCE and happy in every sense None merits every good thing better than you do 5 nor is there any person better qualified for the enjoyment of every rational pleasure. J hope your little girl is somewhat better, and that the rest continue perfect models of what young ladies sliould be. You will he so good to give my best respects to the valuable Mrs. Richardson; and to Mrs. Poole and Miss Dutton, whom, you know, you and I both love. I remember your long-continued friend- ship for me with pleasure and gratitude. I admire your generosity, your benevo- lences your sagacity, your penetration, your knowledge of human nature, and your good heart; I esteem you as my iiiend, my adviser, my pattern, and my benefactor; I love you as my father ^ and let me, even me also, call you my Nestor. My wife and her mother bid me say erery thing that is kind and respectful t you WITH MR. STRAHAN. 139 jou and Mrs. Richardson: shall we have the pleasure of hearing from you ? Mr. Hamilton will, no doubt, have occasion to trouble you now and then. I know you will not grudge giving him your best ad- vice ^ whose every long day is filled with acts of benevolence to every body you know. I am, dear Sir, Your most obliged humble servant. W. Strahan. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Edinkurghy Aug, 24, 1749^ DEAR SIR, If I were to be long at a distance from you, I fancy I should become as trouble- some in writing, as you have experienced, to your cost, I have often been in talking to you, as every thing I see puts me in mlud 140 CORRESPONDENCE mind of you. ^AVhat would Mr. Richardson think of this ? Here is room for his praise; and here for his censure: this would raise his compassion; this his indignation ; this would touch his benevo- lent heart with joy; and here he would exercise his charity ; this man's solid sense would delight him; the ladies would, in general, charm him; and the honest preju- dices of many, in favour of their native country, would make him smile. These, and many other such-like thoughts often: occur to me, so that I am oftener in your company than you imagine. The civilities I daily meet with, and the hospitality with which I am entertained, are not to be ex^ pressed. I have nothing to do but go from feast to feast, the manners of the better part of this country bearing a very near resemblance to those of North End. I am overwhelmed with their kindness, so that I must really make my stay here as short as possible, lest living thus i lotously should- prejudice WITH MR. STRAHAN. 141 prejudice my health. But no more of this, till I see you a pleasure I truly long for. At intervals, as I am now almost become a stranger to this country, and am possibly now taking my leave of it, I visit what is ancient or curious. Yesterday I paid my compliments to the remains of King James the Fifth, and shook Lord Darnley by the hand ; he was Queen Mary's husband, you well know, and was seven foot eight inches in stature : a portly personage once, and now what we must all be. O what a pleasing melancholy filled me on beholding their veuera"ble remains. To see the very bodies of two such great men, who existed two centuries ago, is a curiosity indeed. They are in the chapel of Holyrood House, a very noble structure, but almost entirely demolished at the revolution, and since utterly neglected. Here monuments of men, like men, decay ! But, however, the outside is firm, so that it may easily be re- paired, when the government thinks proper. What 142 CORRESPONDENCE What else I have seen, with my observa- tions on every thing that occurs, will afford me matter of conversation with you, when my tongue, perhaps, would be more imper- tinently employed. I shall therefore say no more now. Suffer me only to take every occasion of making my sincere ac- knowledgments for your continued and uninterrupted kindness and friendship to me. When I think of particular instances of your goodness to me, all I can say to 3'ou upon that subject comes so very short of \\ hat I feel, that I do myself great in- justice in endeavouring to say any thing at all. I am. Dear Sir, Your most obliged servant, W. Strahan. TO WITH MR. STRAHAK. 145 TO MR. RICHARDSON. Seft,2, 1749. DEAR SIR, Could you communicate to me a very- small portion of your lively and creating fancy, my letters would be much more worthy of your perusal. The Israelites, who were obliged to make bricks without straw, were, in my opinion, in a much more tolerable situation than the man who is obliged to write without genius, because, though they had, indeed, no allowance of straw delivered out to them, they had the whole land of Egypt to glean it in j and as that, like Clarissa, was notoriously a most fruitful country, in which there were doubt- less many delicious spots, they unquestion- ably found very pretty pickings in it. Since my last, I have been at Glasgow, a town greatly altered for tlie better, in point of trade, since I was there last. Se- veral large manufactories are set on foot, in which 144 CORRESPONDENCE which the poor of all ages, and both sexes, are usefully employed. From thence I went to Paisley, where Mr. Millar's father is minister, a venerable old man, who, like the church he preaches in, is nodding to his dissolution, but beautiful even in riiins. The town is almost entirely composed of manufacturers, and is in so exceeding thriving a way, that it is, they tell me, considerably increased even since last year when Mr. Millar was there. I returned thence to Stirling, and visited the castle, and went over the noble monuments of the amazing grandeur of our kings before the union of the crowns that are crumbling into dust. Here is a fnie palace built by King James the Fifth, and a parliament-house, infinitely superior to that of AVestminster, Here is a chapel also, purposely erected for the christening of Prince Henry, King Charles the First's eldest brother. Had he been preserved, who knows how things might now have been altered irom what they WITH MR. STRAHAN. 145 they are. ^All these are hastening to de- cay, as no care is taken of any thing here except the fortifications. I had forgot to tell you, that the great church at Glasgow, and that noble structure at Paisley, are about 600 years old, and are most authen- tic proofs of the power of the church, or rather churchmen, in those days, who were able, in times of poverty and rudeness, to erect a variety of piles, any one of which would sensibly distress the whole kingdom, now, in its improved and flourishing state, to fniisli. On my return to Edinburgh, I passed by the ruins of the abbacy of Cul- ross, part of which is now turned into a sta- ble. The Temains of gentlemen's houses, of long standing, occur every where ; in which the builders have visibly studied strength and security, preferably to pleasure and convenieucy. During this excursion, I was continually comparing past times with the present ; the ancient glory of a prince, and a few noble families, supported at the VOL, I, H expence 146 CORRESPONDENCE expence of the lives of some, and the liber- ties of all the rest of the people, (who, the clergy excepted, laboured under the last degree of po\'rty, slavery, and ignorance) with the present economy of things, when our merchants are princes, and tradesmen enjoy the good things of the earth; when property may be acquired and safely en- joyed by the meanest labourer; and when superstition and ignorance can hardly find shelter in our meanest cottages. And yet, comfortable as this comparison is, the ruin of these ancient badges of our slavery, by reason of their splendour and magnificence, impresses me with a very deep concern. I have insensibly spun out a long letter, without saying hardly any thing ; and, least I tire you too much at once, I shall only add, at present, the assurances of my most perfect gratittide and esteem, being always, Dear Sir, Your's, &c. \V. Strahan. TO WITH MR. STRAHAN. 147 TO MR. RICHARDSON* Edinburgh y Sept. 16, 1749. DEAR SIR, Tt HEN I sit down to write to you, I present you before my eyes, with a smile of complacency overspreading your intel- ligent countenance, as if telling me, before I put pen to paper, that you expected to hear nothing new from me ; but that's your fault, not mine. Had you been less assi- duous in storing your mind with every sort of useful knowledge, you would yet have had something to learn. / have the plea- sure of daily making new discoveries, which you, who have long ago travelled over the whole territories of human nature, are al- ready intimately acquainted with. In this respect, I am happier than you. " I am glad of it, Mr. Strahan ; I envy not your superior ignorance, I assure you." This moment I was going to say several H 2 bright 148 cohrespondence bright things, which, as lam afraid I shall not be able to recollect again, I am sorry to tell you, you will probably lose for ver ; but was interrupted by several peo- ple, who insist on my company, whether I will or no. I must therefore hasten to tell you, that I have had the pleasure and honour of your kind epistle ; that my face, sleek as it is, I am very sensible will, in time, if it lasts, undergo a change, which I now neither hope for nor fear ^that I hope I shall be able to tell you this, to your f ace i twenty years hence :-^- that my wife says- she loves you, as does also her old infirm mother ; poor conquests you would say, if you were not Mr, Richard- son : that I have not yet seen Mrs. A , but intend it soon : that Mr. is in Ireland, from whom you need never expect any thing : that is in the North just now, but having got a good post, you will surely recover his XBLoney 5 please, therefore, send me down another WITH MR. STRjHiAN. H9 another copy of the bill, with a lettei' an- nexed, (directed to Mr. George Balfour, writer to the Signet in Edinburgh,) im- powering him to receive it for you; this you will be so good as to do directly. I have spoke to him, and he will take parti- cular care of it. Mr. Hamilton has franks to forward to town. That I am very greatly pleajsed Mr. Hamilton has your good opinion and approbation; he is full of your kindness in all his letters. Allow me also. Sir, to acknowledge, (and I do it with the utmost sense of gratitude) the great honour you have done me, in admitting me to such a share of your conversation and friendship, which I have reason to value and be proud of on many accounts. You have indeed laid me under so many repeated obligations, and oblige too in so obliging a way, that I am afraid I must remain your poor in- solvent debtor as long as I live: yet I will beg leave to say, that, if I do not deceive B 3 mvself. 150 CORRESPONDENCE myself, I think I shall ever endeavour to pay all I can towards the interest of them, since the principal I am afraid I shall never be able to discharge. I know you may justly reproach me with neglecting one affair in particular you recommended to me J but I can with great truth say, it proceeds not from indolence, or any worse cause, but purely from an almost irresis- tible dislike to that sort of employment, which I really did not perceive in myself before, but which I am determined never- theless to conquer. I take this opportunity also to acquaint you, that my spouse was yesterday, be- tween six and seven in the morning, safely delivered of a boy. She and I had long ago determined, if this child should be a male, to name it Samuel, after you ; to make him, as it were, a living monument of your friendship ; but without intention of putting you to expence, as I never make any formal christening. This, I hope, you will do me the honour to accept of. I shall WITH MR. STRAHAN. 15^1 I shall ever retain that just value and esteem for your singular humanity and goodness, which such a variety of amiable qualities never fail to command j and it shall always be my sincere wish, that you may enjoy a good state of health, to enable you to do all the good that is in your heart to do ; that your young and promis- ing family may exceed all your expecta- tions of them; and that they, with Mrs. Richardson, (whose invincible honesty of heart, and unaffected love and veneration for you, must daily gain ground in the affections of a heart like your's) may all concur to make life serenely agreeable to you. I am, &c. William Strahan. TO MR. RICHARDSON. September 21, 1749. DEAR SIR, jl THINK it is an observation of your own, that people cannot be at a loss for a II 4 subject 163 CORRESPONDENCE subject when they write to those they es- teem and love. I own I am entirely of your opinion, and therefore when I sit down to write to you, I am not at all puzzled to say enough, but only to say something that may in some degree de- , serve your reading. If this was not the case, you might expect to be overpowered with my letters, as you have often been with my talking, when, from a sincere de- sire to please and divert you, (however short I came of my intention) I have opened the sluice^ of every folly in my brain, and overwhelmed you with non- sense. Since I wrote last I have been in the north, seeing an old and a dear comrade, the parting from whom pierced me to the very soul. In my way I visited the ancient city of St. Andrew's, a most august mo- nument of the splendour of the Scots epis- copal church in former times. It is a most awful heap of ruins, to which I could wish all high-churchmen in Britain would take a visit WITH MR. STRAHAN. 153 a visit once a-year, in pilgrimage, where they will behold a tremendous and amaz- ing instance to what a deplorable degree of contempt and ruin they may reduce themselves, by their excessive arrogance, pride, and oppression. On my return I had the pleasure to re- ceive your letter. I shall set out for Lon- don in about eight days, and hope to have the pleasure to see you ten days after that. This recess from the hurry of business has been no disagreeable pause to me: it has, I may venture to say, aiforded me both amusement and instruction. It is like turning over another leaf in the book of life, which, though not so crowded with the most useful matter, is nevertheless much fairer to the eye, more legible and pleasant in the reading. In traversing the country I have had occasion to see seve- ral pictures of life, which, though not en- tirely new to'me, were yet nearly so. I have seen (a rare sight in London) indo- le 5 lence,, ISA CORRESPONDENCE lence, inactivity, poverty, tranquillity, and happiness, dwelling under one roof. I have seen the several gradations from that to the busy moiling trader, and from him again to those who were born to every earthly enjoyment. How seemingly dif- ferent their situations, how nearly equal their pretences to real happiness ! What an amazing variety in one little island. Here the poor reaper issues from his homely cot, in the bleak regions of the everlasting mountains, contented if after the weeks of hai'vest are over in the more fertile plains, he can return home with a few shillings to subsist him till the return of that season. This is the utmost his most laborious employment of cutting down the corn, can procure him. There, the merchant thirsts after a princely inheritance j or the ambitious statesman labours to lord it not only over all his fellow-subjects, but even over his prince. But I will tire you no longer than till I tell you, that I have seen Captain WITH MR. STRAHAN. 155 Captain C , who is a very pretty gen- tleman, and lives in the finest house in Scotland, which he is exceedingly fond of, and is indeed particularly pleased with this country. I am really greatly affected, and my wife more so, with the loss of my pretty little Anne, and could delineate the pangs I felt on that occasion, but that I write to one who is too susceptible of the most ten- der impressions, and who has had too many occasions (may he never have another) to exercise the most difficult of all christian duties, resignation to the will of heaven. I hope you will believe, that I remem- ber not only you, but your's, with very great respect and affection. I wish to fmd health even in that part of your family where you seem least to expect itj and my wife and her mother join me in every good wish to you all. I am, &c. W. Strahan. H 6 TO 156 CORRESPONDENCE TO MR. RICHARDSON. Answicky Oct. l, n4S>. DEAR SIR, Jl AM thus far on my road to you, and long to finish my journey; but as I travel with women and a child, we make but a slow progress. Had I a tolerable pen, I could describe to you, I think, in lively colours, what I felt at parting with dear friends, some of whom I am sure I shall see no more. I could tell you how exquisitely pleasing the sight of my native country has been to me ; and how easily, how naturally, how cordially, I have renewed old friendships. I could tire you with descriptions of the different states of my mind, as I was dif- ferently affected with joy, sorrow, surprise, &c. I could paint to you the analogy between an excursion of this kind, and the journey WITH MR. STRAHAN. 157 journey of life itself. But these things I must defer for a few days longer, and am, meanwhile. Dear Sir, Your most obedient humble servant, W. Strahan. P. S. There is a very pretty lady in com- pany, much resembling your Clarissa. TO MR. RICHARDSON. York, October 5 J 1749. DEAR SIR, Once more I am now half way, and shall have the pleasure of seeing you two days after you receive this: as nothing has occurred during our journey worth men- tioning, I have nothing to say on that sub- ject. The lady in my last postscript is one after 1>58 CORRESPONDENCE after your own heart; she has true sim plicity of manners, attended at the same time with a most becoming and easy dig '- nity. Her person is well proportioned and stately, and commands respect; her deportment, her unaffected and engaging affability and constitutional good-nature, commands your affection; she discovers a fund of good sense, and knowledge of life and manners, accompanied with a solidity of judgment rarely to be found with so few years, and so much beauty: her sweet temper is most engaging, whilst her con- versation is most instructive. Having seen much of the world, she seems to have made a very proper use of it, and made a just estimate of human life. Thus qualified, I prophesy you will be very fond of her. I have not done her half justice; your pene- trating judgment will soon discover a thousand beauties which I have not saga- city enough to find out: But from what I have said, you may easily perceive my wife WITH MR. STRAHAN. 159 wife has no small cause of jealousy ; but I am open and above-board with it, and freely own I cannot help admiring beauty and loving virtue, wherever I find it ; and she has good sense enough not to be of- fended, and is indeed as fond of her as I am. While I am writing, I cannot help look- ing back with some astonishment on my manner of life for these two months. In- stead of plodding in business; hunting after pleasure, roving from place to place, from company to company, with a degree of unconcern about my most material affairs, which I did not believe myself capable of. These scenes have, however, been inter- spersed with others of a distressful kind, which gave me pause; and while they melted my heart with grief, and stirred up all that was friendly and affectionate in me, at the same time afforded proper motives for recollection, and gave occasion for many serious, and, I hope, not unuseful reflections. Your 1.60 CORRESPONDENCE. Your goodness and your known friend- ship for me, will, I hope, excuse me for troubling you, upon all occasions, with whatever is uppermost in my heart. You, yourself, will answer for me, that I mean well; for you know how much I am. Dear Sir, Your most obliged and affectionate humble servant, Wm. Strahan. COR- CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN Mr. RICHARDSON AND Mr. HARRIS. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Sarunif June 13, 1749. DEAR SIR, Jl AM much obliged for your kind pre- sent; yet, not so much for that, as for the very friendly and benevolent manner in which you make it. As to the work itself, I shall always value it, as having that stamp or character which alone can make any work valuable, to the liberal and dis- interested; that is, I shall value it as the work not only of a sensible, but of an honest man. My wife begs your acceptance of her compliments. With her's I join my own to 162 CORRESPONDENCE to Mrs. Richardson, and your little family, for whose welfare you have our sincerest wishes. I am. Dear sir. Your most obedient servant, Ja^es Harris. TO MR. RICHARDSON. Saru7n, Jan. 19, 1752. DEAR SIR, jL AM glad that Hermes has been able to merit the approbation of so worthy a man, and so rational a reader, as yourself. It would be hard, indeed, if the notion of learning were confined to the mere know- ledge of one or two dead languages. Who- ever surely possesses a good understand- ing, duly exercised upon becoming sub- jects, may justly aspire both to the name and to the character. In this light I con- sider yourself, having withal this farther reason WITH MR. HARRIS. l63 reason to applaud you, that the sordid views of trade have not (as usual) been so far able to engross you, as to withdraw you from the contemplation of more ra- tional, more ingenuous, and (what per- haps may sound strange to many of your neighbours) more interesting subjects. Your kind wishes for my family I accept with thanks. Be pleased to accept, in re- turn, the sincerest wishes both of myself and wife, for the prosperity of all that you call your's, believing me to be, as I truly am. Dear Sir, Your very sincere friend, and humble servant, James Harris. COR- CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN Mr. RICHARDSON AND Mr. cave. TO MR. CAVE. Aug. 9, 1750. MR. CAVE, Jl HOUGH I have constantly been a pur- chaser of the Ramblers from the first five that you was so kind as to present me with, yet I have not had time to read any farther than those first five, till within these two or three days past. But I can go no fur- ther than the thirteenth, now before me, till I have acquainted you, that I am inex- pressibly pleased with them. I remember not any thing in the Spectators, in those Spectators WITH MR. CAVE. l65 Spectators that I read, for I never found time (Alas! my life has been a trifling busy one) to read them all, that half so much struck rac; and yet I think of them highly. I hope the world tastes them ; for its own sake, I hope the world tastes them ! The author I can only guess at. There is but one man, I think, that could write them; I desire not to know his name; but I should rejoice to hear that they succeed ; for I would not, for any consideration, that they should be laid down through discouragement. I have, from the first five, spoke of them with lionour. I have the vanity to think that I have procured thema ' engagement. 184 CORRESPONDENCE engagement, in order to perform that duty. A very kind one of your's, my dear Mr. Lobb, rises to my eye, bearing date Sept. 20, 1755. Can that be the last you wrote ? Have I not mislaid one of a later ? I had the pleasure of seeing you since ; I apolo- gized to you for my silence to that letter ; I told you how much I was engaged, mind and person, with workmen of almost all denominations; and you was so kind as to say, that if I were to be further hin- dered from writing in answer to your's that had come to hand, you would write again, despising form, &c. Surely, then, some other intermediate letter must have been written, and miscarried. September, Octo- ber, November, December. If you have not written in all this space of time, write now, to let me know how you have been engaged; what studies you have mastered ; what improvements are made, or hoped for, by the pupils entrusted to your care; what WITH THE REV, S. LOBB. 185 what more valuable correspondents have been gratified, &c. Your's, of the 20th of Sept. the last of your's that came to my hand, was a very pleasing one, as it gave me assurances, that you would copy into your life and practice, all that was copiable (No academical word, I doubt; but it is mine, not yours.) in your different station, in Sir Charles Grandison. Look to it, my dear Mr. Lobb ; I vedue not myself for any quality (invention, or any thing whatever,) so much as for the assurances of this nature, which you, and some of my young friends, have given me. If there be any thing amiable in the better characters of my humble performances, and thought so, and pointed out by young gentlemen and young ladies as such, and which they promise to make subjects for imitation, I hold them to it in my mind, and try them by their own professions. Have you the copy of that letter by you ? you promise largely in it, my dear young friend. 186 CORRESPONDENCE friend. You are esteemed much in ihtf university for the talents lent you: you have raised in me an high opinion of them. Take care; let me repeat. Not for my sake, but your own ! take care ! Wlio now are your rising geniuses at Cambridge ? What new works are in hand ? I love your Alma Malcr. May you be more and more an ornament to it, and a comfort and pleasure to the dear parents I love, and who so well deserve it, prays Your's, most sincerely, S. Richardson. TO MR. RICHARDSON. il^N answer already! Now is he wanting to know w hat I have heard about his Billy ^ Ha'n't I hit it, friend Lobb ? Not the only motive, I assure you ; yet I must ask my WITH THE REV. S. LOBB. 187 Tiiy friend, what he has heard of my boy, that occasioned such an affectionate con- gratulation. But, on second thoughts, I think I will not ; for why do I want to know what ? Do I pretend to be a stranger to the honour he has received? I do not. Indeed, I know enough to think myself under great obligations to the gracious giver of his parts, and of his opportunities and inclinations for improving them ; and I hope all his good friends and mine will join their best remembrances with our's for the favours he has received, and pray that they may be long continued, and always improved, to his being while he lives, and to his long being a most amiable example of a person's improving and employing fine parts to worthy pur- poses. ** As to his negligence in writing, do not suppose our Billy to be one of my correspondents : I have not for a long time received a letter from him.'* *' Our Billy!" how kind is that? How shall I bring 188 CORRESPONDENCE I bring my poor boy off, charged with a neglect that has such an ugly appearance of his not having been so grateful as he should have been ? You are a father, and cannot, in your heart, find fault with a fa- ther, for suggesting what shall occur to his thoughts to lessen his son's offence. But the truth of the case I take to be this. Ever since he has been at the university, he has had a larger acquaintance than has been common for an obscure country cler- gyman ; all along he has had, from princi- ple, a concern to answer his friends' ex- pectations, which could only be by a proper application. Every week, after the first month, during the time of his being from me, he has wrote to me once, and generally three parts of a sheet : when he is to write to a friend, he must write something worth writing : for that, every one of good parts is not so well qualified. I will not pretend to clear him absolutely; but to save him, at least, from so heavy a charge as that of WITH THE EEV. S. LOBB. 189 of having been ungrateful, I must ac- quaint you, that before the bishop left col- lege, he told him he had not yet done with him, by any means, and let him know he should expect to hear from him now and then. This obliged him to acquaint his lordship with his success on his trial for his degree ; to which his lordship wrote him a. very friendly answer : and about the same time I received a letter myself from his lordship, acquainting me as to the satisfac- tion he had had as to his parts, acquire- ments, and behaviour. I am^ &c. W. LOBB. TO THE REV. MR. LOBB. London y Nov. 10, 1756. Vv HY did my dear and reverend friend so severely and so repeatedly chide his son for not calling upon me in his way to the Devizes ? 190 CORRESPONDENCE Devizes ? You say you repeated your chidings oftener than he cared you should. Do we not know that love, were that, in the present case, wanting (the contrary of which I hope and believe), is not to be forced ? And, did I not know my young friend better, I should have been afraid he would have loved me less for your chidings. Is it not natural for young people to abate of their esteem for those by whom they suffer in that of their first friends ? But I know what your chidings were. Do not I see you in the very act, with tears of joy in your honest eyes " Billy, my love ! you might have called you should have called, methinks should you not, on our friend R ?" As if, as an abatement prudential of your sobbing joy, his merit at the university, his duty to you in pre- sence, after a considerable absence, were necessary to give expression to your over- flowing love. ^V^ell, but all has been made up on his return WITH THE REV. S. LOBB. 191 return from you. He called upon me here, with your very kind letters. He dined with me and my family at Parson's Green, and again called upon me here before he set out for Cambridge .; but I was not so lucky as to be within : and if he writes to me from college, as he has leisure, I shall think my- self much obliged to him. We elders love to be taken notice of by our ingenious and worthy juniors. How much more, then, to be defended by them when attacked, as in the extract in your son's letter, in an- swer to Mr. Greville's cavils? I am much obliged to the young gentle- man for his defence of my writings, and for his acknowledged friendship to me but be pleased to know, that if he had not rated me so high, I would not have been mortally displeased with him for his not calling upon me, though I am always very glad to see him. As to Mr. GrevUIe, I know not the gen- ;tleman by person ; by character, I jun told he W2 COPxRESPONDENCE. lie is a lively, gay man, one who knows what they call high life. I contented my- self to say to a friend, in perusing his cen- sure on me, that possibly the gentleman might be right in one half of what he said against me j and, as to the other half, if he valued hJnjself on the superior opportuni- ties he has had to be polite and well-edu- cated, and the writings of both were to be the test of our merits, it would, by compe- tent judges, perhaps be as much matter of wonder that I did no worse, than that he did not perform better. I am, dear Sir, your faithful servant, S. Richardson. END OF VOL. I. LEWIS aad RODtN, Friottrt, Patetnotter-row. ^^^^ '* TINIVERSITV OF ^AI 7FORNIA LIBRARY \//(^ lillll I V 3 1158 01 1052 6829 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIB"'^"^,[*H,'|,!|| A A 000 072 978 o PR 3666 A5 J804 v.l tWIVERSITY . ' -vTIFOWill 1 /-t^ . ikir^ L I Li^o