CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PN 511.P54 1914 Essays on books. 3 1924 026 942 130 ESSAYS ON BOOKS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY - CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO ESSAYS ON BOOKS BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS M.A. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Tale) LAMPSON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS WeiD gorft THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 Ail rights reserved Copyright, 1907, by The North American Review Publishing Company; Copyright, 1909, by The Forum Publishing Company; Copyright, 1910, by The Independent; Copyright, 1910, by The Review of Reviews Company; Copyright, 1912, 1913, by The Century Company; Copyright, 19x4, by The Yale Publishing Association, Inc. Copyright, 1914, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October , 19x4. ^ t^ c^ NotiDoati ]Pngs J. S> Cushlng Co. — Berwick ii Bmlth Go. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE Most of the essays in this volume have ap- peared in various periodicals — the Century Maga- zine, the North American Review, the Forum, the New Englander, the Yale Review, and others. Some were written as introductions to limited edi- tions. The first essay was originally read at a joint meeting of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, at New York, in 191 2; the essay on Schiller was read at Yale University, on the one hundredth anniversary of the poet's death, in 1905. W. L. P. Seven Gables, Lake Huron, Tuesday, n/uly 1914. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026942130 CONTENTS PAGE Realism and Reality in Fiction . . . . i Richardson i6 Jane Austen 129 Dickens 178 Carlyle's Love-Letters 192 Whittier 202 Notes on Mark Twain 211 Marlowe 223 The Poet Herrick 255 Schopenhauer and Omar 265 Lessing as a Creative Critic .... 277 Schiller's Personality and Influence . . 295 Conversations with Paul Heyse .... 314 Vll ESSAYS ON BOOKS REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION DxjRiNG those early years of his youth at Paris, which the melancholy but unrepentant George Moore insists he spent in riotous living, he was on one memorable occasion making a night of it at a ball in Montmartre. In the midst of the revelry a grey giant came placidly striding across the crowded room, looking, I suppose, something like GuUiver in Lilliput. It was the Russian novelist Turgenev. For a moment the young Irishman forgot the girls, and plunged into eager talk with the man from the North. Emile Zola had just astonished Paris with L'Assommoir. In response to a leading question, Turgenev shook his head gravely and said : " What difference does it make whether a woman sweats in the middle of her back or under her arms? I want to know how she thinks, not how she feels." In this statement the great master of diagnosis indicated the true distinction between realism and ESSAYS ON BOOKS reality. A work of art may be conscientiously realistic, — few men have had a more importunate conscience than Zola, — and yet be untrue to life, or, at all events, untrue to life as a whole. Realism may degenerate into emphasis on sensational but relatively unimportant detail: reality deals with that mystery of mysteries, the human heart. Realism may degenerate into a creed ; and a formal creed in art is as unsatisfactory as a formal creed in religion, for it is an attempt to confine what by its very nature is boundless and infinite into a narrow and prescribed space. Your microscope may be accurate and powerful, but its strong regard is turned on only one thing at a time ; and no matter how enormously this thing may be en- larged, it remains only one thing out of the in- finite variety of God's universe. To describe one part of life by means of a perfectly accurate micro- scope is not to describe life any more than one can measure the Atlantic Ocean by means of a per- fectly accurate yardstick. Zola was an artist of extraordinary energy, sincerity, and honesty; but, after all, when he gazed upon a dunghill, he saw and described a dunghill. Rostand looked steadfastly at the same object, and beheld the vision of Chantecler. Suppose some foreign champion of realism should arrive in New York at dusk, spend the whole REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION night visiting the various circles of our metropolitan hell, and depart for Europe in the dawn. Suppose that he should make a strictly accurate narrative of all that he had seen. Well and good ; it would be realistic, it would be true. But suppose he should call his narrative America. Then we should assuredly protest. ' ' You have not described America. Your picture lacks the most essential features." He would reply : "But isn't what I have said all true? I defy you to deny its truth. I defy you to point out errors or exaggerations. Everything that I de- scribed I saw with my own eyes." All this we admit, but we refuse to accept it as a picture of America. Here is the cardinal error of realism. It selects one aspect of life, — usually a physical aspect, for it is easy to arouse strained attention by physical detail, — and then insists that it has made a picture of life. The modern Parisian society drama, for example, cannot pos- sibly be a true representation of French family and social life. Life is not only better than that ; it is surely less monotonous, more complex. You cannot play a great symphony on one instrument, least of all on the triangle. The plays of Bernstein, Bataille, Hervieu, Donnay, Capus, Guinon, and others, brilliant in technical execution as they often 3 ESSAYS ON BOOKS are, really follow a monotonous convention of theatrical art rather than life itself. As an English critic has said, "The Parisian dramatists are liv- ing in an atmosphere of half-truths and shams, grubbing in the divorce courts and Uving upon the maintenance of social intrigue just as comfort- ably as any bully upon the earnings of a prosti- tute." An admirable French critic, M. Henry Bordeaux, says of his contemporary playwrights, that they have ceased to represent men and women as they really are. This is not realism, he declares ; it is a new style of false romanticism, where men and women are represented as though they pos- sessed no moral sense — a romanticism sensual, worldly, and savage. Life is pictured as though there were no such things as daily tasks and daily duties. Shakespeare was an incorrigible romantic; yet there is more reality in his compositions than in all the realism of his great contemporary, Ben Jonson. Confidently and defiantly, Jonson set forth his play Every Man in His Humour as a model of what other plays should be; for, said he, it contains deeds and language such as men do use. So it does : but it falls far short of the reality reached by Shakespeare in that impossible tissue of absurd events which he carelessly called As You Like It. In his erudite and praiseworthy attempt 4 REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION to bring back the days of ancient Rome on the Elizabethan stage Jonson achieved a resurrection of the dead : Shakespeare, unembarrassed by learning and unhampered by a creed, achieved a resurrection of the living. Catiline and Sejanus talk like an old text; Brutus and Cassius talk like living men. For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The form, the style, the setting, and the scenery of a work of art may determine whether it belongs to reaHsm or romanticism ; for realism and roman- ticism are affairs of time and space. Reality, however, by its very essence, is spiritual, and may be accompanied by a background that is contem- porary, ancient, or purely mythical. An opera of the Italian school, where, after a tragic scene, the tenor and soprano hold hands, trip together to the footlights, and produce fluent roulades, may be set in a drawing-room, with contemporary, realistic furniture. Compare La Traviata with the first act of Die Walkure, and see the difference between realism and reality. In the wildly roman- tic and mythical setting, the passion of love is intensely real ; and as the storm ceases, the portal swings open, and the soft air of the moonlit spring night enters the room, the eternal reahty of love makes its eternal appeal in a scene of almost intol- erable beauty. Even so carefully realistic an opera 5 ESSAYS ON BOOKS as Louise does not seem for the moment any more real than these lovers in the spring moonlight, deep in the heart of the whispering forest. A fixed creed, whether it be a creed of optimism, pessimism, realism, or romanticism, is a positive nmsance to an artist. Joseph Conrad, all of whose novels have the unmistakable air of reahty, declares that the novelist should have no programme of any kind and no set rules. In a memorable phrase he cries, "Liberty of the imagination should be the most precious possession of a noveHst." Optimism may be an insult to the sufferings of humanity, but, says Mr. Conrad, pessimism is intellectual arrogance. He will have it that while the ultimate meaning of life — if there be one — is hidden from us, at all events this is a spectacular universe ; and a man who has doubled the Horn and sailed through a typhoon on what was unintentionally a submarine vessel may be pardoned for insisting on this point of view. It is indeed a spectacular universe, which has resisted all the attempts of realistic novelists to make it dull. However sad or gay life may be, it affords an interesting spec- tacle. Perhaps this is one reason why all works of art that possess reality never fail to draw and hold attention. Every critic ought to have a hospitable mind. His attitude toward art in general should be like 6 REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION that of an old-fashioned host at the door of a coun- try inn, ready to welcome all guests except crimi- nals. It is impossible to judge with any fairness a new poem, a new opera, a new picture, a new novel, if the critic have preconceived opinions as to what poetry, music, painting, and fiction should be. We are all such creatures of convention that the first impression made by reality in any form of art is sometimes a distinct shock, and we close the windows of our intelligence and draw the bhnds that the fresh air and the new light may not enter in. Just as no form of art is so strange as Ufe, so it may be the strangeness of reality in books, in pictures, and in music that makes our attitude one of resistance rather than of welcome. Shortly after the appearance of Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence, " There was a roaring in the wind all night, The rain came heavily and fell in floods," some one read aloud the poem to an intelligent woman. She burst into tears, but, recovering herself, said shamefacedly, "After all, it isn't poetry." When Pushkin, striking off the shackles of eighteenth-century conventions, published his first work, a Russian critic exclaimed, "For God's sake don't call this thing a poem !" These two poems seemed strange because they were so natural, 7 ESSAYS ON BOOKS so real, so true, just as a sincere person who speaks his mind in social intercourse is regarded as an eccentric. We follow conventions and not life. In operas the lover must be a tenor, as though the love of a man for a woman were something soft, something delicate, something emasculate, instead of being what it really is, the very essence of mascu- line virility. I suppose that on the operatic stage a lover with a bass voice would shock a good many people in the auditorium, but I should Uke to see the experiment tried. In Haydn's Creation, our first parents sing a bass and soprano duet very sweetly. But Verdi gave that seasoned old soldier Otello a tenor r61e, and even the fearless Wagner made his leading lovers all sing tenor except the Flying Dutchman, who can hardly be called human. In society dramas we have become so accustomed to conventional inflections, conventional gestures, conventional grimaces, that when an actor speaks and behaves exactly as he would were the situation real, instead of assumed, the effect is startling. Virgin snow often looks blue, but it took courage to paint it blue, because people judge not by eye- sight, but by convention, and snow conventionally is assuredly white. In reading works of fiction we have become so accustomed to conventions that we hardly notice how often they contradict reality. In many novels I have read I have been 8 REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION introduced to respectable women with scarlet lips, whereas in life I never saw a really good woman with such labial curiosities. Conversations are conventionally unnatural. A trivial illustration will suflSce. Some one in a group makes an attrac- tive proposition. "Agreed !" cried they all. Did you ever hear any one say "Agreed" ? I suppose that all novels, no matter how osten- sibly objective, must really be subjective. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Every artist feels the imperative need of self- expression. Milton used to sit in his arm-chair, waiting impatiently for his amanuensis, and cry, "I want to be milked." Even so dignified, so reticent, and so sober-minded a novelist as Joseph Conrad says, "The novelist does not describe the world : he simply describes his own world." Sid- ney's advice, ''Look in thy heart, and write," is as applicable to the realistic novelist as it is to the lyric poet. We know now that the greatest novel- ist of our time, Tolstoi, wrote his autobiography in every one of his so-called works of fiction. The astonishing air of reality that they possess is owing largely to the fact not merely that they are true to life, but that they are the living truth. When an artist succeeds in getting the secrets of his inmost heart on the printed page, the book lives. This accounts for the extraordinary power of Dos- 9 ESSAYS ON BOOKS toevski, who simply turned himself inside out every time he wrote a novel. The only reality that we can consistently demand of a novel is that its characters and scenes shall make a permanent impression on our imagination. The object of all forms of art is to produce an illu- sion, and the illusion cannot be successful with ex- perienced readers unless it have the air of reality. The longer we Uve, the more difficult it is to deceive us : we smile at the scenes that used to draw our tears, we are left cold by the declamation that we once thought was passion, and we have supped so full with horrors that we are not easily frightened. We are simply bored as we see the novelist get out his little bag of tricks. But we never weary of the great figures in Fielding, in Jane Austen, in Dickens, in Thackeray, in Balzac, in Turgenev, for they have become an actual part of our mental life. And it is interesting to remember that while the ingenious situations and boisterous swash- bucklers of most romances fade like the flowers of the field. Cooper and Dumas are read by genera- tion after generation. Their heroes cannot die, because they have what Mrs. Browning called the "principle of life." The truly great novelist is not only in harmony with fife ; his characters seem to move with the stars in their courses. "To be," said the phi- 10 REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION losopher Lotze, "is to be in relations." The moment a work of art ceases to be in relation with life, it ceases to be. All the great novelists are what I like to call sidereal novelists. They belong to the earth, like the procession of the seasons; they are universal, like the stars. A commonplace producer of novels for the market describes a group of people that remains nothing but a group of people; they interest us perhaps momentarily, Uke an item in a newspaper; but they do not interest us deeply, any more than we are really interested at this moment in what Brown and Jones are doing in Rochester or Louisville. They may be interesting to their author, for children are always interesting to their parents ; but to the ordinary reader they begin and end their fictional life as an isolated group. On the contrary, when we read a story like The Return of the Native, the book seems as inevitable as the approach of winter, as the setting of the sim. All its characters seem to share in the diurnal revolution of the earth, to have a fixed place in the order of the universe. We are considering only the fortunes of a little group of people living in a little corner of England, but they seem to be in intimate and necessary relation with the movement of the forces of the universe. The recent revival of the historical romance, which shot up in the nineties, flourished mightily II ESSAYS ON BOOKS at the end of the century, and has already faded, was a protest not against reaUty, but against realism. Realism in the eighties had become a doctrine, and we know how its fetters cramped Stevenson. He joyously and resolutely burst them, and gave us romance after romance, all of which except the Black Arrow showed a reality superior to realism. The year of his death, 1894, ushered in the romantic revival. Romanticism suddenly became a fashion that forced many new writers and some experts to mould their work in its form. A few specific illustrations must be given to prove this statement. Mr. Stanley Weyman really wanted to write a realistic novel, and actually wrote one, but the public would none of it: he therefore fed the mob with The House of the Wolf, with A Gentleman from France, with Under the Red Robe. Enormously successful were these stirring tales. The air became full of obsolete oaths and the clash of steel — " God's bodikins ! man, I will spit you like a lark ! " To use a scholar's phrase, we began to revel in the glamour of a bogus antiquity. For want of a better term, I call all these romances the "Gramercy" books. Mr. Winston Churchill, now a popular disciple of the novel of manners, gained his reputation by Richard Carvel, with a picture of a duel facing the title- page. Perhaps the extent of the romantic craze REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION is shown most dearly in the success attained by the thoroughly sophisticated Anthony Hope with The Prisoner of Zenda, by the author of Peter Stirling with Janice Meredith, and most of all by the strange Adventures of Captain Horn, a bloody story of buried treasure, actually written by our beloved humorist, Frank Stockton. Mr. Stockton had the temperament most fatal to romance, the bright gift of humorous burlesque ; the real Frank Stockton is seen in that original and joyful work, The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine. Yet the fact that he felt the necessity of writing Captain Horn, is good evidence of the tide. This romantic wave engulfed Europe as well as America, but so far as I can discover, the only work after the death of Stevenson that seems destined to remain, appeared in the epical historical romances of the Pole Sienkiewicz. Hundreds of the romances that the world was eagerly reading in 1900 are now forgotten like last year's almanac ; but they served a good purpose apart from temporary amusement to invalids, overtired business men, and the young. There was the sound of a mighty wind, and the close chambers of modern realism were cleansed by the fresh air. A new kind of realism, more closely related to reality, has taken the place of the receding romance. We now behold the *'life" novel, the success of 13 ESSAYS ON BOOKS which is a curious demonstration of the falseness of recent prophets. We were told a short time ago that the long novel was extinct. The three- volume novel seemed very dead indeed, and the fickle public would read nothing but a short novel, and would not read that unless some one was swindled, seduced, or stabbed on the first page. Then suddenly appeared Joseph Vance, which its author called an ill-written autobiography, and it contained 280,000 words. It was devoured by a vast army of readers, who clamoured for more. Mr. Arnold Bennett, who had made a number of short flights without attracting much attention, pro- duced The Old Wives' Tale, giving the complete Ufe-history of two sisters. Emboldened by the great and well-deserved success of this history, he launched a trilogy, of which two huge sections are already in the hands of a wide pubHc. No details are omitted in these vast structures ; even a cold in the head is elaborately described. But thousands and thousands Of people seem to have the time and the patience to read these volumes. Why? Because the story is in intimate relation with life. A gifted Frenchman appears on the scene with a novel in ten volumes, Jean Christophe, dealing with the life of this hero from the cradle to the grave. This is being translated into all the languages of Europe, so intense is the curiosity of 14 REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION the world regarding a particular book of life. Some may ask, Why should the world be burdened with this enormous mass of trivial detail in rather uneventful lives? The answer may he found in Era Lippo Lippi's spirited defence of his art, which differed from the art of Fra Angelico in sticking close to reality: "For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, thmgs we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." I find in the contemporary "Ufe" novel a sin- cere, dignified, and successful effort to substitute reality for the former rather narrow realism; for it is an attempt to represent life as a whole. IS n RICHARDSON Richardson was born somewhere in Derbyshire, in the year 1689. His father was a joiner, who originally intended that his son should enter the church — not a bad guess at the youth's talents for godly instruction. But financial embarrass- ments prohibited an expensive education : and when fifteen or sixteen years old, the diligent Samuel was compelled to earn his living at busi- ness. Like Shakespeare, he had only the book- training of the common school : he knew no lan- guage but his own : and although, as a printer, he had a bowing acquaintance with contemporary literature, he was never, to his bitter and lasting regret, either a learned or a well-read man. The Latin quotations in his books were prompted by his friends. At school, however, he learned something besides the three R's ; even at that tender age, the two things in which he chiefly excelled in later years — the manufacture of moral phrases and the knowl- edge of the hearts of women — are what he prac- tised and studied with unwearied assiduity. He 16 RICHARDSON was a childish anomaly — a wise and prudent prig. The boys called him "Serious and Gravity," but when did Richardson care for the opinion of boys and men, so long as he had their sisters on his side? As Mrs. Barbauld says, "He was fond of two things, which boys have generally an aversion to, letter-writing, and the company of the other sex." The author of Treasure Island represented exactly the opposite type ; Stevenson was always a boy at heart, while Richardson, whatever he was in his teens, was never a boy. Surely if it were ever given to any man to know the windings of a woman's heart, it was to Richard- son, and he began training as a novelist in a way that may be earnestly recommended to all youth- ful Uterary aspirants. "I was not more than thir- teen, when three . . . young women, unknown to each other, having a 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 : nor did any one of them know that I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection ; and the fair repulser, dread- ing to be taken at her word, directing this word, or c 17 ESSAYS ON BOOKS that expression, to be softened or changed. One highly gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I 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." Miss Clara Thomson remarks as follows on Richardson's early and unconscious training as a novehst: "It was this early experience that enabled him to describe with such astonishing accuracy the intricacies of feminine passion, and to realise the fallacy of the prejudice that requires a woman's affections to be passive till roused to activity by the declaration of a lover. He under- stood that . . . the ordinary heroine of the mascu- line dramatist or novelist is rather an exposition of what he thinks a woman should be, than an illus- tration of what she is." It is interesting to remember that the greatest living English novelist, Thomas Hardy, had early training similar to Richardson's. He acted as amanuensis for the village girls, when he was only a child, and though he did not compose, but only wrote their letters, his impressionable brain, receiv- ing so many warm outpourings of the feminine heart, reproduced them afterwards with the fidelity that Tess and Eustacia show. RICHARDSON When seventeen years old, Richardson was bound as an apprentice to John Wilde, of Stationers' Hall, a printer. He had hoped, in selecting this business, to devote all his spare hours to general reading ; but unfortunately he had no spare hours. Mr. Wilde soon discovered that he had a faithful and valuable apprentice ; and he forthwith deter- mined to use all the boy's energy and time to his master's profit; rewarding him with well-merited praise, and calling him the pillar of his house. Hard-pressed as Richardson was, his insatiable passion for letter-writing became ungovernable ; and he carried on a full correspondence with a gentleman, his superior in rank and fortune. Richardson's similarity in deeds and maxims to Hogarth's faithful apprentice has naturally im- pressed many. His only diversion was letter- writing. He was careful never to write when by any possibility he could be serving his master, and the candle whose light flickered o'er his manuscript was bought by his own money. The young man's steadiness and industry met with their natural and edifying reward : graduat- ing from the apprentice school, he became a jour- neyman printer, and finally the foreman. In 1 7 19 he opened business for himself, removing in 1724 to Salisbury Court, now Salisbury Square, identified with Richardson from that day to this. 19 ESSAYS ON BOOKS There his warehouse and his city residence re- mained till his death. We need not follow further his fortunes as a printer. He became one of the best-known men of his class in London ; through the Speaker's influence, he printed the Journals of the House of Commons, and acquired a snug for- tune, which enabled him to have a pleasant country- house, and to indulge himself in another passion — hospitality — one of his noblest and most delightful characteristics. Miss Thomson has shown that on 23 November 17 2 1, Richardson was married to Martha Wilde, and that all the circumstances indicate that she was the daughter of his former master, the Dic- tionary of National Biography to the contrary notwithstanding. Could anything carry out more completely the parallel to Hogarth, or could we ever find a better model for the hero of a Sunday- school book ? The youth's father loses his fortune ; the boy leaves school, and becomes an apprentice ; by faithful and diligent toil, by a sober, righteous, and godly life, he rises steadily in fortune and repu- tation ; he becomes the independent head of a flour- ishing business ; and places the capstone in position by marrying his original employer's daughter ! Richardson was twice married, both times happily. His first wife died in 1731, and the next year he made his second matrimonial venture, RICHARDSON marrying Elizabeth Leake, of Bath. She was then thirty-six years old. She survived her husband, dying in 1773. Richardson had just a dozen children, six by each wife. Martha Wilde bore him five sons and one daughter, and Elizabeth Leake presented him with five daughters and one son. The satisfaction that so exceedingly methodi- cal a man as Richardson must have obtained from so symmetrical branches of offspring was seriously impaired by the fact that they were so soon blighted by death. All the children of his first wife died practically in infancy, and of the second brood, a son and a daughter died not long after birth. This boy was the third that Richardson called Samuel, the mortality of the sons being equalled only by the immortality of the father — as if Fate had determined to reserve that name for only one individual. Four daughters survived him, cheer- ing his way in the Valley, and showing him constant devotion and love. A busy time they had, writing and copying his long letters, but they seemed in somewhat similar circumstances to exhibit more cheerfulness than the daughters of Milton. About 175s Richardson's health became so shat- tered that he looked forward with quiet composure to advancing death. One by one his old friends passed away; in 1757 his eldest daughter Mary was married, the only one of his children wedded 21 ESSAYS ON BOOKS before his death. Patty and Sarah took husbands not long after their father's funeral, and Nancy, who constantly suffered from ill-health, survived them all, dying a spinster in 1803. Richardson loved his daughters, but they were always afraid of him, as is commonly the case where too much formality obtains between children and parents. His stiffness, arising partly from shyness, partly from self-consciousness, and partly from vanity, made it difl&cult for him ever to put any one, even his own children, entirely at ease in his presence. Furthermore, he solemnly believed that the pater-familias was the Head of the House; and should never be treated by his womankind on terms of exact equality. In 1 76 1 his increasing infirmities showed that the last catastrophe was nigh. On the fourth of July in that year he died, and was buried in the centre aisle of St. Bride's church, London, close by his home in Salisbury Court. An epitaph on the floor above his dust sets forth his many virtues. The gallant cavalier poet, Lovelace, had been buried in the same church; and his noble and dashing qualities had suggested to the novelist the name of his most famous hero, by merit raised to a bad eminence. Richardson's personal appearance, owing to our fortunate possession of a number of portraits, is 22 RICHARDSON as familiar to us as it was to his contemporaries. We have him in his habit as he lived. The best portrait of him was by the artist Highmore, whose daughter Susannah was one of Richardson's most intimate friends. This picture now hangs in Sta- tioners' Hall, off Ludgate Hill. It represents him standing, his right hand thrust within the breast of his coat, and his left hand holding an open book, presumably one of his own compositions. The inevitable quill is within easy reach, and it was with this inspired instrument that he sketched a portrait of himself, far more animated than even Highmore's talent could portray. In a letter to his favourite correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh, he thus gives a picture by which she is to recognise him in the Park. "Short; rather plump than emaciated . . . about five foot five inches : fair wig ; . . . one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support, when attacked by sudden tremors or startlings, and dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as for- merly: looking directly foreright, as passers-by would imagine; but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck ; hardly ever turning back: of a light-brown com- 23 ESSAYS ON BOOKS plexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish faced and ruddy cheeked : at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much yoxmger : a regular even pace, stealing away ground, rather than seeming to rid it : a grey eye, too often over- clouded by mistinesses from the head : by chance lively; very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and honours : his eye always on the ladies." It was by no accident that the genius of Richard- son is most evident in his portrayal of women. They were his chosen companions and confidants ; though in the matter of confidences, Richardson felt that it was more blessed to receive than to give. He was not a ladies' man, though he knew them well, any more than he was a man-of-the-town, though he knew that well : he was something quite different — a woman's man. Were he living to-day he would be the hero of Women's Sewing Circles, of the W. C. T. U. and Foreign Missionary Bands, and the incense that would arise from the thousands of Women's Clubs may best be left to the imagi- nation. During the years of his fame, women clung to his coat-tails with passionate devotion. It is curious, by way of contrast, to remember that as the young wits of the seventeenth century loved to call themselves the Sons of old Ben Jonson, so the young women of the next century gloried 24 RICHARDSON in the appellation of Richardson's "Daughters": and the novelist loved to drink tea and talk senti- ment with them, even as Ben loved to sit in the tavern, tankard in hand, surrounded by his beloved Sons. This difference in hero-worshippers illus- trates sufficiently the contrast in temperament be- tween a robust nature like Jonson's and a deli- cate one like Richardson's. "My acquaintance lies chiefly among the ladies," he writes; "I care not who knows it." It was not merely because he understood them sympathetically that the women opened their hearts to the great novelist; it was largely because of his goodness, his purity, his dis- cretion, and the absolute safety of even the closest and most confidential relations with the little man. He was no avantour; secrets were safe. So re- splendent a genius united with a moral character so lofty was a rather unusual combination in the social conditions of eighteenth-century life; and it drew the hearts of idolatrous women with irre- sistible power. They felt, too, that in Pamela and Clarissa he had glorified women, and had given a final and immortal answer to the gibes on female virtue and constancy, which were the staple of satirical literature and polite conversation. And yet Richardson accepted the worship of the fair without disguising his opinion that men were the lords of creation. A strong-minded woman, or 2S ESSAYS ON BOOKS what we call to-day, a "new" woman, Richardson would not have admitted to the circle of his "Daughters." Lady Bradshaigh, in her charming correspondence with him, said she disliked learned women. "I hate to hear Latin out of a woman's mouth. There is something in it to me, mascu- line." In a half-bantering way, Richardson gently rebuked her for this utterance, but it is evident that he thought the chief duty of a married woman was to please her husband, and attend to domestic affairs. Furthermore, he shocked his fair corre- spondent, as he does his admirers to-day, by theo- retically advocating polygamy. He declared that he would not openly support it as an institution, or practise it, because the laws of England forbade it, but in theory he argued with considerable warmth, that it was never forbidden by God, and that it was a natural and proper condition of life. "I do say," he writes to Lady Bradshaigh, "that the law of nature, and the first command (increase and multiply), more than allow of it; and the law of God nowhere forbids it." He continued to press similar arguments upon his horrified friend, who finally tried to close the con- troversy by writing to him, "I remember how you terrified poor Pamela with Mr. B.'s argument for polygamy. The deuse take these polygamy notions ! " 26 RICHARDSON Richardson's shyness - in company, previously spoken of, caused him, as well as his associates, many unhappy hours, and upon casual acquaint- ances produced a false impression of his character. No one knew this better than he, as is shown in a letter to Miss M'ulso, dated 15 August 1755. '■' Never was there so bashful, so sheepish a creature as was, till advanced years, your paternal friend; and what remained so long in the habit could hardly fail of showing itself in stiffness and shyness, on particular occasions, where frankness of heart would otherwise have shown forth to the advantage of general character." That Richardson was by nature both frank and sincere is fully shown in the long list of his letters. The constitutional seriousness of his mind was deepened by the frequent deaths in his family, and his health, never robust, and undermined by hard work, was sadly shaken by these misfortunes. He writes : "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, 27 ESSAYS ON BOOKS snapped by a sudden jirk, 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 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 affected with these repeated blows, that I have been forced, after trying the whole materia medica, and consulting many physicians, as the only palliative (not a remedy to be expected), to go into a regimen ; and, for seven years past 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 would I have parted, could I have had my choice. From these affecting 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?" It is certainly natural that a man, over whose family circle the King of Terrors so frequently presided, should have been both grave and didactic in temper ; and if careless readers criticise him for lacking the ease and gaiety of Fielding's disposition, it is well to remember the grim facts in the print- er's career. Nor can we withhold admiration for 28 RICHARDSON Richardson's constancy, self-control, and evenness of disposition, under misfortunes so crushing that many another man would have been changed into a misanthrope. His courage was neither showy nor spasmodic ; it was the highest courage human- ity can exhibit ; for the heaviest blows of circum- stance found and left him upright, composed, and calm. He faced the future, "breast and back as either should be." He feared only two realities : God, whom he adored, and Sin, which he hated. One of the noblest traits in his character was Generosity. As a master, he did not forget that he had been an apprentice ; he was encouraging and kind-hearted, and often gave financial assist- ance to the hands he employed. All sorts and con- ditions of men constantly wrote begging letters to him, and the number who were unostentatiously aided by him was remarkable. The poetaster, Aaron Hill, repeatedly shared his bounty ; he never seemed to grow weary of this particular well- doing. The famous adventuress, Leetitia Pilking- ton, whose correspondence with CoUey Gibber forms some of the most amusing portions of Mrs. Barbauld's volumes, was materially helped by Richardson. Here is an example of one of her letters to him: "I believe it will not greatly sur- prise you to hear that I am quite broke ; indeed, it was what I might naturally expect, having under- 29 ESSAYS ON BOOKS taken trade without any fund to carry it on ; and whether I had business or not, quarter-day came." The relations between this clever and corrupt woman and the pious, respectable printer make delightful reading. Each perfectly understood the other. In entreating Richardson to spare Clarissa from violation, she writes, "Consider, if this wounds both Mr. Cibber and me (who neither of us set up for immaculate chastity), what must it do with those who possess that inestimable treasure?" At every hour, in every season, the door of Richardson's house was open to all, either to entertain his friends or to relieve the needy. His hospitality knew no bounds, and we cannot be sure that his wife, on whom the burdens of house- hold management fell, always approved of his indiscriminate invitations. The worthy Thomas Edwards spent his last days in Richardson's house, and his dying hours were cheered by his friend's loving care. Innumerable women frequented the place, and wrote rapturous epistles of its delecta- ble atmosphere. A neighbour's house suffered by fire ; Richardson immediately suggested that he move into his own first floor, and stay as long as he wished ; once hearing of a repentant Magdalen, he wrote: "Let her come to us; she shall do just what she can, and stay till she is otherwise provided 30 RICHARDSON for." This astonishing hospitality, always cour- teously and tactfully proffered, attracted wide attention. "I think I see you," a friend writes, "sitting at your door like an old patriarch, and inviting all who pass by to come in." A clear view of the domestic circle may be obtained by reading a letter written by a foreign visitor, Mr. Reich of Leipsic. "I arrived at London the eighth of August, and had not much difficulty in finding Mr. Richardson in this great city. He gave me a reception worthy of the author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Grandison ; that is, with the same heart which appears through- out his works. . . . Sunday following, I was with him at his country house, where his family was, with some ladies, acquaintances of his four daughters, who, with his lady, compose his family. It was there that I saw beauties without affection ; wit without vanity; and thought myself trans- ported to an enchanted land. . . . "Everything I saw, everything I tasted, recalled to me the idea of the golden age. ttere are to be seen no counterfeits, such as are the offsprings of vanity, and the delight of fools. A noble simplicity reigns throughout, and elevates the soul. . . . In the middle of the garden, over against the house, we came to a kind of grotto, where we rested ourselves. It was in this seat . . . that Pamela, 31 ESSAYS ON BOOKS Clarissa, and Grandison received their birth; I kissed the ink-horn on the side of it. . . . Mr. Richardson observed to me, that the ladies in company were all his adopted daughters. ... It was necessary, at last, to quit that divine man. . . . He embraced me, and a mutual tenderness de- prived us of speech. He accompanied me with his eyes as far as he could : I shed tears." More intimate friends noticed at times a certain amount of irritability in Richardson's manners, but this was largely excusable on account of his constant ill-health. He suffered keenly from cruel nervous disorders, so that often he could not raise a glass to his lips, nor hold a pen, nor endure an- noyances with his customary cheerfulness. A man compelled to live on a rigid diet, omitting every- thing liquid and solid that the stomach craves, can easily be forgiven occasional petulance and a lack of boisterous joviality. His vanity is by no means pleasant to contemplate, and it is harder to forget ; but a man living in perpetual flattery will sooner or later come to agree with his worshippers. Furthermore, Richardson had, by his own efforts, reached fame and fortune from an obscure origin ; and when his praises resounded through all England and Europe, he would have been more than mortal if he had refrained from regarding his edifying career with considerable complacency. He was 32 RICHARDSON so admirable an illustration of his own maxims, that he could not help seeing it himself. All his biographers and critics have condemned his hostility to Fielding and Sterne, but although, in the case of the former, jealousy and pride fanned the flames of hatred, he inevitably would have despised both men had he never written a line. Sterne simply disgusted him; and the natures of Fielding and Richardson were as wide asunder as the poles. Each had a thorough and wholly natural contempt for the other. The righteous indignation that Richardson felt toward the author of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones totally blinded him to the man's splendid genius ; and when we reflect that Fielding's books represented to Richardson exactly the vicious influence that he had spent his whole power and pains to fight, and that the success of Joseph Andrews was gained at his expense, we cease to wonder that the virtu- ous printer failed to see the bright side of his brilliant contemporary. Let him who has always rejoiced at a rival's success cast the first stone at Richardson. It was gall and wormwood to the good man to find even his friends admiring Field- ing. "The girls are certainly fond of Tom Jones," cheerfully writes Lady Bradshaigh, and she was grieved that she could not persuade Richardson to read the book. He contented himself with D 33 ESSAYS ON BOOKS the epigram, "The virtues of Tom Jones are the vices of good men," which was well said, but only half true. What we must condemn is the fact that Richardson spoke with brutal harshness of his enemy to Fielding's own sister ; outraged vanity, jealousy, and zeal for morality, getting the better for once of his natural courtesy. She seems indeed to have accepted this opinion as' final, and she probably devoutly wished that her talented brother had written a Pamela instead of a parody ; for she never wavered in her devotion to the printer. Some things are apparently thicker than blood. We smile at Richardson's calmly assigning Fielding's works to obhvion, and speak- ing of their popularity as only ephemeral ; but he forced himself to beUeve that such was the truth. In summing up his character, we find in his favour. Prudence, Honesty, Chastity, Generosity, Hospitality, Courage, and many of the fruits of the Spirit; against him we find Vanity, Jealousy, FormaHty, and occasional IrritabiHty. This bal- ance sheet exhibits as creditable a moral showing, as did his accounts at Salisbury Court from the financial point of view. Let us take another look at his household, with the eyes of a frequent feminine visitor : "My first recollection of him is in his house in the centre of Salisbury-square, or Salisbury-court, 34 RICHARDSON as it was then called ; and of being admitted, as a playful child, into his study, where I have often seen Dr. Young, and others; and where I was generally caressed, and rewarded with biscuits or bonbons of some kind or other, and sometimes with books, for which he, and some more of my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, even at that early age, which has adhered to me all my life long, and continues to be the solace of many a painful hour. . . . "The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity, that prevailed in his family, were of infinite use to train the mind to good habits, and to depend upon its own resources. It has been one of the means, which, under the blessing of God, has enabled me to dispense with the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasures, such as are found in crowds ; and actually to rehsh and prefer the calm deUghts of retirement and books. As soon as Mrs. Richard- son arose, the beautiful Psalms in Smith's Devo- tions were read responsively in the nursery, by herself, and daughters, standing in a circle : only the two eldest were allowed to breakfast with her, and whatever company happened to be in the house, for they were seldom without. After breakfast the younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms, and lessons for the day. . . . These are childish and trifling anecdotes, and savour, 35 ESSAYS ON BOOKS perhaps you may think, too much of egotism. They certainly can be of no further use to you, than as they mark the extreme benevolence, con- descension, and kindness, of this exalted genius, toward young people ; for, in general society, I know that he has been accused of being of few words, and of a particularly reserved turn. He was, however, all his life-time, the patron and protector of the female sex. . . . Most of the ladies that resided much at his house acquired a certain degree of fastidiousness and delicate re- finement, which, though amiable in itself, rather dis- qualified them from appearing in general society, to the advantage that might have been expected, and rendered an intercourse with the world un- easy to themselves, giving a pecuUar shiness and reserve to their whole address, of which habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has been thought by some, a little to obscure those really valuable qualifications and talents they undoubtedly possessed. Yet, this was supposed to be owing more to Mrs, Richardson than to him ; who, though a traiy good woman, had high and Harlowean notions of parental authority, and kept the ladies in such order, and at such a dis- tance, that he often lamented, as I have been told by my mother, that they were not more open and conversable with him. . . . His benev- 36 RICHARDSON olence was unbounded, as his manner of diffus- ing it was delicate and refined." Surely no one can deny to Richardson the highest of all titles — a good man. If a man be known by the company he keeps, our knowledge of Richardson by this test would be too general to have any value, for he kept all kinds. It is often said, especially by those who have never read his books, that Richardson was a narrow-minded man, as if any great novelist who makes a universal appeal to human nature could possibly be narrow ! The real width of his sympathies is shown by the kaleidoscopic variety of character displayed by the guests at North End. From the pious author of Night Thoughts, to the irrepressible Weltkind Colley Gibber — these Hmits exhibit the generous size of Richardson's mantle of charity. Fielding he had every reason to hate ; and doubtless he hated him; yet more in sorrow than in anger. It is sometimes remarked, that Richardson's attitude toward Fielding was hypocritical, for while affect- ing to despise Fielding's character, he allowed Gibber to enter within his gates. It should be remembered that he regarded the books of Field- ing as dangerously immoral in their influence; while Gibber, though an unblushing sinner him- 37 ESSAYS ON BOOKS self, had laboured long, with powerful effect, toward the moral elevation of the stage. As it was the ungovernable passion for pen, ink, and paper that has preserved to us the thoughts of Pamela and Clarissa, so the story of Richard- son's friendships is simply the story of his corre- spondence. In letter-writing he practised what he preached, and as he himself remarked, he wrote so much, he scarcely had any time to read. One of his early correspondents was Aaron Hill, a well-known figure in the dynasty of Pope, who hated the reigning sovereign as only an unsuccess- ful man can hate the popular idol. He tried to persuade himself and others, that Posterity, the friend of all unrecognised literary merit, would judge aright between the author of the Dunciad and his victim ; and that to the men of the twen- tieth century, Pope would be a forgotten name, while the works of Aaron Hill would embellish every anthology. Meanwhile, this neglected genius had to Uve, as Posterity's name at the foot of a check has no commercial value ; and Richardson's cash must have been even more welcome to the struggling poet than his sympathy, and Richard- son was ever free with both. The printer even forgave Hill's surprising attempt to rewrite Clarissa more briefly, an undertaking which Hill jauntily began, and speedily abandoned, for, as Mrs. Bar- 38 RICHARDSON bauld sagely observes, "He soon found that he should take a great deal of pains only to spoil it, and the author found it still sooner than he did." The pangs of literary failure in Hill's case were edged by his loss of health, and the final exit from the planet of this colossal bore was pathetic in the extreme. It is pleasant to remember that Richardson, who had nothing to gain from Hill's friendship, and much to lose, should have stood by him as faithfully as though the poor feUow were really all he claimed to be. There was another struggling genius in London in those days who had all of Hill's energy, all of Hill's misfortunes of early neglect and bad health, but who finally forced from the age the recogni- tion he was bound to have, and whom Posterity has treated with constantly increasing favour. This was Samuel Johnson. When Richardson first met him, the future Doctor, Dictionary-maker, and heir to Pope's throne was more obscure than HiU, cursed by Hi-health, and often too poor to secure a night's lodging except in jail. As Miss Thomson says, "The days of his fame were still to come, and Richardson's attitude toward him at first was that of a generous and successful man of letters to a younger aspirant for Hterary fame." Johnson's Rambler appeared in March 1750, and was by no means wildly popular. Richardson, however, greeted it with warm ap- 39 ESSAYS ON BOOKS probation, and Number 97, the issue for Tuesday, 19 February 1751, appeared with the following introduction by Johnson : "The Reader is indebted for this Day's Enter- tainment, to an author from whom the Age has received greater Favours, who has enlarged the Knowledge of human Nature, and taught the Passions to move at the Command of Virtue." Richardson's solitary contribution to the Rambler greatly extended its circulation for that one day. In 1756, Richardson gave even more tangible proof of his friendship by assisting financially the debt-embarrassed hero, or as Mrs. Barbauld remarks, "He had the honour to bail Dr. Johnson." In return for the six guineas advanced by the author of Clarissa to the author of the Dictionary, the following letter was written : "Dear Sir, I return you my sincerest thanks for the favour which you were pleased to do me two nights ago. Be pleased to accept of this little book, which is all that I have pubUshed this winter. The inflammation is come again into my eye, so that I can write very little. I am Sir, Your most obliged and most humble Servant Sam Johnson Tuesday." 40 RICHARDSON Johnson brought Mrs. Williams, one of his house- hold menagerie, to call on Richardson at North End, and Miss Mulso wrote pleasantly of John- son's kindness to the poor creature. That a man of Johnson's sturdy sincerity and robust virility so highly admired and respected Richardson, is additional proof of the solid qualities in the char- acter of the novelist. The poet Yoxmg was for many years an intimate friend of Richardson, as we see by their corre- spondence, which began about 1750. Young's letters are as solemn as his verses, and are largely taken up with predicting his own speedy death, which, however, Richardson awaited in vain, as the aged poet survived him. Death seemed un- willing to take from the world a man who so viv- idly portrayed his terrors. Young's remarks on Richardson's novels, particularly Clarissa, form the most interesting and valuable part of the correspondence. It is small matter for wonder that Richardson tolerated the company of CoUey Gibber, for no one can read the delightful autobiography of the latter without feeling the charm of the author's personality. Even his egregious vanity is irre- sistibly attractive, and his wonderful flow of spirits and vivacious cheerfulness must have made him a welcome visitor at many firesides. 41 ESSAYS ON BOOKS Gibber went wild with excitement over the stories of Richardson, and such enthusiastic appreciation from the Laureate undoubtedly affected the vanity of the novelist. No reader of Stevenson's great essay, jEs Triplex, can possibly withhold his admiration from Colley Gibber, who, in his eigh- tieth year, laughed heartily at his success in baf- fling the approaches of Death. The unabashed old profligate celebrated the Ghristmas Day of his eightieth year by writing the following letter to the apostle of domestic virtue : "Sir, Thougli Death has been cooUng his heels at my door these three weeks, I have not had time to see him. The daily conversation of my friends has kept me so agreeably alive, that I have not passed my time better a great while. If you have a mind to make one of us, I wiU order Death to come another day. To be serious, I long to see you, and hope you wiU take the first opportunity: and so with as merry a Christmas, as merry a new year, as your heart can hope for, I am, Your real Friend and Servant, C. CtBBER." Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? He lasted seven years longer, and was apparently in excellent health three hours before his death, which came finally without a warning; as though weary of trying to frighten his victim by faces, Death had at last suddenly seized him from behind. 42 RICHARDSON Quite the opposite in temperament was the solemn sonneteer Thomas Edwards, the author of Canons of Criticism. His letters contain many interesting literary allusions, especially to the poems of Spenser, which he warmly admired. He was one of the early apostles of Spenser in the beginnings of the romantic movement in England, and is interesting also in connection with the revival of the Sonnet as a literary form. Since 1660 practically no English sonnets were written until the fifth decade of the next century. Ed- wards, however, from 1748 to 1754, made the sonnet his chief form of poetical expression, and thus unconsciously earned for himself a much more important place in English literary history than he obtained by his learned Canons. He was a sad and lonely man, devout and deeply religious, and his friendship with the novelist was perhaps the brightest part of his life. He died, as has been mentioned, at Richardson's house. But while the novelist was admired and respected by many men of the day, his adorers were chiefly among women, and to them he naturally unlocked his heart. The letters to his feminine admirers show all sides of the novelist's character, and the reasons for his close intimacy with so many in- telligent women. The letters to and from Sara Fielding are particularly interesting; she was 43 ESSAYS ON BOOKS often entertained at his house, and, as has been seen, bore with meekness Richardson's wholesale condemnation of her brother. The most brilliant and clever woman whom Richardson knew was Lady Bradshaigh, and the frankness with which the two friends argued on all kinds of vital themes makes interesting reading. This correspondence began in a way that is rather remarkable. After perusing the first four volumes of Clarissa, this lady was horri- fied at the rumour that the story was to end tragi- cally ; she therefore, labouring under great excite- ment, wrote to Richardson under the assumed name of Belfour, beseeching him to spare his heroine and to answer her letter by printing a few lines in the Whitehall Evening Post. This being done, a correspondence began, which con- tinued for years ; but it was a long time before Richardson met his fair critic, or knew her real name. It was to her that Richardson wrote the famous pen-portrait of himself, that she might be able to recognise him while walking in the Park. With true feminine waywardness, she made the great man trace and retrace many steps before she granted him the pleasure of an inter- view ; and he finally obtained a clew to her name only by accident. They did not meet in mutual recognition until March 1750. 44 RICHARDSON Their intimacy had much of the excitement of an intrigue, without any of its guilt; for though she treated the respectable printer with charming coquetry, she loved her husband dearly, and her spirited description of her home Hfe and duties shows her to have been a womanly woman and a model wife. Her shrewd insight into Richard- son's peculiar characteristics is repeatedly evi- dent ; she knew he did not Uke to hear certain authors praised, even when he stoutly aflSrmed that he did. The long discussions the two friends had about subjects so abstract as polygamy, and so concrete as rakes, are well worth reading; and her remark that rakes are often more popular than good men, not because of their wickedness, but because of their superior appearance in society, has more truth than impopular good men will sometimes allow. When she first wrote to the novelist, she was about forty years old, and later she described her personal appearance as follows, in order that he might recognise the original should he happen to meet her on the street. "Middle-aged, middle- sized, a degree above plump, brown as an oak wainscot, a good deal of country red in her cheeks, altogether a plain woman, but nothing remarkably forbidding," a description that if we may judge by her portrait, rather vmderestimates her charms. 45 ESSAYS ON BOOKS The most beautiful letters that Richardson ever received came from a woman whom he never saw. This was Mts. Klopstock, the young wife of the famous German author of the Messiah. In the most naive and intimate language, its charm heightened by her imperfect English, this child of God told Richardson the whole story of her love for Klopstock, and the overwhelming happi- ness of her married life : " After having seen him two hours, I was obliged to pass the evening in company, which never had been so wearisome to me. I could not speak, I could not play, I thought I saw nothing but Klop- stock. I saw him the next day and the follow- ing, and we were very seriously friends. But the fourth day he departed. It was a strong hour, the hour of his departure ! He wrote soon after, and from that time on, our correspondence began to be a very diligent one. I sincerely believed my love to be friendship. I spoke with my friends of nothing but Klopstock, and showed his letters. They raillied at me, and said I was in love. I raillied them again and said that they must have a very friendshipless heart, if they had no idea of friendship to a man as well as to a woman. Thus it continued eight months, in which time my friends found as much love in Klopstock's letters as in me. I perceived it likewise, but I would not 46 RICHARDSON believe. At the last, Klopstock said plainly, that he loved ; and I startled as for a wrong thing. I answered, that it was no love, but friendship, as it was what I felt for him ; we had not seen one another enough to love (as if love must have more time than friendship!). This was sincerely my meaning, and I had this meaning till Klop- stock came again to Hamburg. This he did a year after we had seen one another the first time. We saw, we were friends, we loved ; and we be- lieved that we loved ; and a short time after I could even tell Klopstock that I loved. [In two years they were married.] I am the happiest wife in the world. In some few months it will be four years that I am so happy, and still I dote upon Klopstock as if he was my bridegroom. " If you knew my husband, you would not wonder. . . . But I dare not to speak of my husband ; I am all raptures when I do it !" And in view of the tragic outcome of her hopes, can we find anywhere in the annals of domestic life a letter that makes so irresistible, because so unconscious, an appeal to our hearts? " Have you not guessed that I, summing up all my happinesses, and not speaking of children, had none ? Yes, Sir, this has been my only wish ungratified for these four years. I have been more than once unhappy with disappointments, 47 ESSAYS ON BOOKS but yet, thanks, thanks to God ! I am in full hope to be mother in the month of November. The little preparations for my child and child-bed (and they are so dear to me !) have taken so much time, that I could not answer your letter. . . . My husband has been obliged to make a Uttle voyage alone to Copenhagen. He is yet absent — a. cloud over my happiness ! He will soon return. . . . But what does that help? He is yet equally absent ! We write to each other every post. . . . But what are letters to presence ? — But I will speak no more of this little cloud; I will only tell my happiness ! But I cannot tell how I rejoice ! A son of my dear Klopstock ! Oh, when shall I have him ! — It is long since that I have made the remark, that geniuses do not engender geniuses. No children at all, bad sons, or, at the most, lovely daughters, like you and Milton. But a daughter or a son, only with a good heart, without genius, I will nevertheless love dearly. . . . When I have my husband and my child, I will write you more (if God gives me health and life). You will think that I shall be not a mother only, but nurse also ; though the latter (thank God ! that the former is not so too) is quite against fashion and good-breeding, and though nobody can think it possible to be always with the child at home !" 48 RICHARDSON The next letter Richardson received was by another hand, and began, "As perhaps you do not yet know that one of your fair correspondents, Mrs. Klopstock, died in a very dreadful manner in child-bed, I think myself obhged to acquaint you with this most melancholy accident." As we read the artless EngHsh of this young wife, the interval of one hundred and fifty years is nothing, and we stand by her grave as though it were freshly made. "Everjrwhere I see in the world the intellect of man, That sword, the energy his subtle spear, The knowledge which defends him like a shield — Everywhere ; but they make not up, I think. The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower She holds up to the softened gaze of God !" Maturity in years and experience seems to be as necessary to the successful novelist as it is superfluous to the poet. Defoe was fifty-eight when he wrote Robinson Crusoe, and it was his first important novel. Richardson had passed the half-century mark, not only with no prospect of a literary reputation, but without having made an attempt to secure one. He had spent his life printing the thoughts and language of other minds. In his fifty-first year, he turned for a moment his attention from the outside of Uterature to the inside. In 1739, the pubUshers Rivington and E 49 ESSAYS ON BOOKS Osborne requested him to compose a book of familiar letters. It was to be a kind of manual of epistolary etiquette, showing the proper forms for all circumstances and emergencies, seasoned with Richardson's inevitable homiletics. Could a respectable man possibly begin his literary career more humbly? Miss Thomson describes this little book, as it finally appeared, as follows : "The title-page sets forth its advantage in 'direct- ing not only the requisite style and forms to be observed in writing familiar letters, but how to think and act justly and prudently in the common con- cerns of human life.' This purpose is further emphasised in the preface, which tells us that the author has endeavoured to point out the duties of masters, servants, fathers, children, and young men entering the world. But especially — and this is characteristic of the future novelist — he has given much attention to the subject of court- ship. . . . Love is his predominant theme, but he treats it always as a passion to be sternly con- trolled and kept within bounds." This book, interrupted by the composition of Pamela, he completed later, and it was published anony- mously: not till after his death, if an Irish bull may be permitted, did Richardson allow his name to formally sanction it. That it fully accomplished its purpose is evident from its great popularity SO RICHARDSON below stairs ; it was hungrily read by house-maids and footmen, and according to Mrs. Barbauld, it "not infrequently detained the eyes of the mistress." To-day, however, it is a forgotten work, and instead of being read by the class of people for whom it was designed, it is known only to students of fiction, and interests them only because it was the stalking-horse to Pamela. For it was while writing this useful but unpretentious book that a fortunate idea occurred to the author. Doubt- less surprised at his own readiness in invention, and facility in composition, Richardson conceived the plan of creating, with materials all ready at hand, an original work of art. "In the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct hand- some girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue ; the above story [see below] recurred to my thoughts : And hence sprung Pamela." As Richardson has given with such obliging fulness of detail the source and manner of com- position of his first novel, we cannot do better than transcribe his own words in full, from a letter to Aaron Hill. " I will now write to you your question — Whether there was any original groundwork of SI ESSAYS ON BOOKS fact, for the general foundation of Pamela's story. "About twenty-five years ago, a gentleman, with whom I was intimately acquainted (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 ... he asked who was the owner of a fine house, . . . which he had passed by. ... It was a fine house, the land- lord said. The owner was Mr. B., a gentleman of large estate in more counties than one. That his and his lady's history engaged the attention of everyone who came that way, and put a stop to all other enquiries, though the house and gar- dens were well worth seeing, the lady, he said, was one of the greatest beauties in England; but the qualities 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 sweetness of her manners and modesty, and for an understanding above her years, by Mr. B.'s mother, a truly worthy lady, to wait on her person. Her parents, ruined by suretiships, were remarkably honest and pious, and had instilled into their daughter's mind, the best principles. When their misfortunes hap- pened first, they attempted a Httle school, in their village, where they were much beloved, he teach- 52 RICHARDSON ing writing and the first rules of arithmetic to boys ; his wife, plain needle-work 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 kind 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 prin- ciples, 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 drown- ing; that, at last, her noble resistance, watchful- ness, and excellent qualities, subdued him, and he thought fit to make her his wife. That she behaved herself with so much dignity, sweetness, and humility, that she made herself beloved of everybody, 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 husband. "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 S3 ESSAYS ON BOOKS 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 transport. "This, Sir, was the foundation of Pamela's story ; but little did I think to 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 Httle 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 importunity, and began to recol- lect such subjects as I thought would be useful in such a design, and formed several letters accord- ingly. And, among the rest, I thought of giving one or two as cautions to young folks circum- stanced as Pamela was. Little did I think, at first, of making one, much 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 possibly introduce a new species of writing, 54 RICHARDSON 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 generally 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 ap- probation of judges, that I had not the courage to send the two volumes to your ladies, until I found the books were 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 into my little closet every night, with — 'Have you any more of Pamela, Mr. R. ? We are come to hear a little more of Pamela,' &c. This encouraged me to prosecute it, which I did so diUgently, through all my other business, that, by a memorandum on my copy, I began it Nov. lo, 1739, and finished it Jan. 10, 1739-40. ... If justly low were my thoughts of this little history, you will wonder how it came by such an assum- ing and very impudent preface. It was thus : — The approbation of these two female friends, who were so kind as to give me prefaces for it, but which were much too long and circumstantial, SS ESSAYS ON BOOKS as I thought, made me resolve myself on writing a preface : I, therefore, spirited by the good opinion of these four, and knowing that the judgments of nine parts of ten readers were but in hanging- 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, all is out." With no author's name on the title-page, and unheralded by the puffery of publishers, Pamela appeared, in two modest volumes, in November 1740. The surprisingly short time in which it was written — two months — is a sufficient illus- tration of Richardson's speed in composition. His genius, kindled so late in life, blazed with aU the brilliance of youth ; and the fact that in sixty days so extraordinary a work, wholly original in method, could be begun and completed, makes us wonder at the long, silent, unillumined years of patient mechanical industry, which preceded his first essay at literature. The success of the book was instantaneous. Society women were com- pelled to read it, as it was "the book everyone was talking of." It formed the chief staple of conversation at all the popular resorts. Old and young, grave and gay, united in a shout of universal applause. The Reverend Dr. Slocock, of the old church of St. Saviour's, Southwark, S6 RICHARDSON publicly indorsed it from his pulpit. This gave the final seal of approval to all who had hoped, but hardly dared, to discuss a work of fiction in public. Anxious mothers then allowed their daughters to read the new book. Pope got the better for once of his habitual jealousy, and spoke highly of Pamela's powerful moral influence. We may give an illustration of the keen joy with which the happy denouement was greeted. "At Slough, near Windsor, the inhabitants used to gather around the village forge while the blacksmith read the story aloud. As soon as he came to the place where the fate of the heroine is decided by a happy marriage, his hearers were so excited that they cheered for joy, ran for the church keys, and rang the bells to give expression to their gladness." In publishing the book, Richardson had as- simied to be only the editor; but his authorship became known almost immediately. He was overwhelmed with letters of congratulation and enquiry. One enthusiast remarked, "If all other books were to be burnt, this book, next to the Bible, ought to be preserved." Another deter- mined to bring up his son in the paths of virtue by giving him Pamela just as soon as he should be able to read, "a choice of books for a youth," comments Mrs. Barbauld, "which we, at present, [1804] should be very much surprised at." 57 ESSAYS ON BOOKS Aaron Hill related the following incident. A lively little boy, lying unnoticed in a room while Pamela was being read aloud, and apparently asleep, — "on a sudden we heard a succession of heart-heaving sobs, which, while he strove to con- ceal from our notice, his httle sides swelled as if they would burst, with the throbbing restraint of his sorrow. I turned his innocent face to look towards me, but his eyes were quite lost in his tears; which, running down from his cheeks in free currents, had formed two sincere Uttle foun- tains on that part of the carpet he hung over." Nor were these things revealed only to babes; they were not hidden, like an older gospel, from the wise and prudent. All sorts of confidential letters of enquiry proceeding from serious-minded men and women, followed hard upon the thunders of applause. The burden of these epistles is the famiUar cry at the end of a startling tale. Is it true? Was there ever a Pamela in real life, and did Mr. Richardson have the honour of her ac- quaintance ? People immediately began to point out among their contemporaries the original of the portrait, until Richardson finally gave the real source of the story in the long letter to Hill, quoted above. That Richardson did not draw Pamela from any person of his acquaintance, we learn from a S8 RICHARDSON letter to Thomas Edwards, in 1753. "I am charmed, my dear Mr. Edwards, with your sweet story of a second Pamela. Had I drawn mine from the very life, I should have made a much more perfect piece of my first favourite — first, I mean, as to time." In view of this statement, it is rather singular that Richardson accused Field- ing of having little or no invention, because his characters were all drawn from Ufe. Pamela speedily went into a second edition, and by 1 77 1 ten editions of this separate work had appeared. It was translated into French and Dutch, and it was dramatised in both English and Italian. Imitations naturally followed. A book purporting to be a genuine continuation, called Pamela in High Life, surreptitiously appeared. This unfortunately drove Richardson to the com- position and publication of an authentic sequel, giv- ing, in two additional volumes, the social triumphs of Pamela, as the amiable consort of Mr. B. Though these volumes are now necessarily included in every complete edition of the novel, they are, as some one has remarked, well worth skipping. Overloaded with moral platitudes, the only episode that approaches human interest is Mr. B.'s temp- tation to renew his vicious habits. For once, and with just the opposite intention, Richardson made vice more attractive than virtue. 59 ESSAYS ON BOOKS But a greater sequel, and one that pleased Richardson even less than the spurious book above mentioned, was Fielding's Joseph Andrews, which appeared in 1742. For stirring up this particular enemy, even the best friends of Rich- ardson to-day must be thankful. With the keen eye of the humorist, Fielding saw clearly the vulnerable points in Richardson's armour, and had Mr. B. really been alive, even his complacency would have been ruffled by Fielding's Mr. Booby. Even in 1741 there had been published a parody on Richardson's style in the following work, which Richardson thought had been written by Field- ing. "An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, in which the many notorious falsehoods and misrepresentations of a book called 'Pamela' are exposed and refuted, and all the matchless arts of that young politician set in a true and just light." It ridiculed the pretended virtuous motives of Pamela, her epistolary style, and Richardson's egotistical preface. Pamela has many striking defects, both in artistic and moral values. The frankly told scenes of attempted outrage are narrated with ill-concealed gusto. It is an interesting comment on the age, that what was then regarded as an ideal " Sunday- school" book would never be allowed to-day to enter the precincts of a sacred edifice. The spec- 60 RICHARDSON tacle of a man attempting a girl's virtue by every subtlety that art and nature can suggest, and the keen-witted girl, harmless as a dove, but wise as a serpent, checkmating him by marriage, does not, to our notions, wholly make for righteousness. At heart, however, Richardson was an uncom- promising realist, and his genius for detail did not allow him to omit any episode that he considered vital to the story. In our democratic days, many readers are in- censed with Pamela's agreeing even to marry Mr. B., and her gushing gratitude for his con- descension grates harshly on ears that love to hear the scream of the eagle. We should remem- ber, that though Mr. B. before his marriage was unquestionably a black-hearted villain, and that Richardson represents him as such, the social gulf that separated him from his hand-maid was enormous; to an eighteenth-century mind, prac- tically impassable. He was the head of the house, and she one of the many humble servants. The question looked at from the standpoint of the housemaid is not — Did Pamela act rightly in expressing gratitude to a would-be ravisher for marrying her ? The question is — Would an eighteenth-century Pamela really have felt and expressed gratitude under similar circumstances? To this second and only admissible question, we 6i ESSAYS ON BOOKS must unhesitatingly give an affirmative answer, which destroys at once all adverse criticism on Pamela's final attitude. If Richardson has repre- sented her emotions true to life, we cannot blame him for making her real. Nor do I share a common opinion that it would have been impossible for Pamela to feel anything but disgust toward her pursuing villain. Mrs. Barbauld says: "Is it quite natural that a girl, who had such a genuine love for virtue, should feel her heart attracted to a man who was en- deavouring to destroy that virtue? Does not pious love to assimilate with pious, and pure with pure?" To this serious question we may reply that if love were a matter of judgment instead of instinct, thousands of marriages would never happen at all, and many wives would hate their husbands. Pamela unquestionably ought to hate Mr. B. and after she perceived his intentions ought never to think tenderly of him again. She does try to hate him. Why does she not succeed? Because she loves him. There lies the whole truth of the matter, and if we ask further. Why should So-and-So love So-and-So, we get at once into insuperable difficulties. Miss Thomson says, "No woman will forgive her for . . . the passion supposed to be aroused in her by her unworthy lover." Perhaps not; women find it hard to 62 RICHARDSON forgive other women for many things. But the fact remains, that thousands of dead and living women, wholly virtuous in character and conduct, have loved evil-minded men, and the growth of Pamela's passion has been sketched by Richard- son with consummate art. Depend upon it, he knew what he was about; and he has shown to those who see with their eyes and not with their prejudices, that the only reason why Pamela in her heart of hearts did not hate Mr. B. was be- cause in her heart of hearts she loved him. My objection to the book is not directed against its fidelity to life, but at its final moral applica- tion. The secondary title. Virtue Rewarded, has a false ring. Pamela is praised for her skill and perseverance in preserving her virtue; she is re- warded by finally disposing of her person in mar- riage at the highest possible figure. The moral seems to be, that if comely girls will hold their would-be seducers at arm's length for a sufficiently long time, they may succeed in marrying the men, and incidentally securing worldly fortime and social position. Such a moral standard is not any too high ; and in so far, the novel is defective. No such accusation can be brought against that wonderful masterpiece, Clarissa. Yet Pamela, with all its defects, is a great book. The heroine is absolutely real, both in the tragic 63 ESSAYS ON BOOKS and comic scenes. An extraordinary fascination accompanies this girl ; she is as attractive to-day as she was one hundred and sixty years ago, sim- ply because she is an incarnation of the eternal feminine. Many may wonder why she loved Mr. B. No one has ever wondered why Mr. B. loved her. Her girlish beauty, her demure man- ner, her charming prattling — even her vanity and self-righteousness combine to make her irre- sistible. Her vivacity is the lovely vivacity of youth in radiant health, joined to the pleasing consciousness of possessing both internal virtue and external charms. Mr. B. is unfortunately not so convincing. He is as impeccable in appearance and about as in- teresting as a well-executed fashion-plate. Mrs. Jewkes is a monster rather than a woman, but, it must be admitted, an impressive monster. Her horrid exterior, rum-soaked soul, and filthy speech are as loathsome as they were meant to be: and the contrast between the graceful Pamela and this unspeakable dragon is as striking as that between the white Andromeda and the hideous snake of the sea. Mr. WilUams is by no means so great a character as Parson Adams, but he is an addition to our acquaintance, and supplies exactly the touch of jealousy needed to bring Pamela's affairs to a crisis. Goodman Andrews, 64 RICHARDSON the girl's father, is admirable if only we remember that he hved in the eighteenth and not in the twentieth century. Once more we must not ask, Do we approve? but. Is he true to life? As for Lady Davers, her manners are surely not Christ- like, and they lack, it must be confessed, some- thing of the repose that we love to associate with good-breeding; and Richardson has been con- demned for making her so cruel and so coarse. But I am inclined to think that high society in that age knew her only too well, and that her coarseness of speech was not natural vulgarity, but sprang from the assurance of her social posi- tion. One is often taken for the other, when we read the annals of fashionable society in the days before the French Revolution. In making a final estimate of this extraordinary book, let us remember that it is really the first analytical novel in the language ; that its style, plan, and aim were wholly original ; that it is a study of a section of real hfe that had been neg- lected; that it produced a powerful effect on EngUsh Uterature, founding a whole school of fiction, and spurred a rival to activity ; that with painstaking and deUcate art, its author presented one great character to the world, whom no reader of the book can by any chance forget; that the novel has been read with enthusiasm by judicious t 65 ESSAYS ON BOOKS readers in three centuries, and that it is impossi- ble to imagine any age when it will not be read and admired. Such a book is a great book, and was written by a great man. The first two volumes of Richardson's master- piece appeared in the month of November 1747, under the unassuming title, Clarissa; or, the history of a young lady. Published by the editor of Pamela. All three of Richardson's literary children, Pamela, who went out to service, Clarissa, whose cruel des- tiny flooded Europe with tears, and Sir Charles Grandison, the glass of fashion and the mould of form, were born in November, and gave the people of London something to think about besides the fog. The author's method of publishing his works had much the same effect on the public as the mod- ern style of issuing an exciting romance in the pages of a monthly magazine, each number of which is eagerly awaited by thousands of interested readers ; it resembled also the custom of Dickens and Thack- eray, of sending out their long novels in separate parts, printed once a month, the publication of the entire story often covering two years. We remem- ber, in the charming play, Rosemary, the intense eagerness with which the hero has seized the latest number of Dickens, how he cannot wait for his comfortable and bright library, but must stumble 66 RICHARDSON along with a lantern reading the fresh new pages on the lonely road in the night, and stirring up strange echoes with his shouts of laughter. Although the emotions they inspired were not comic, but deeply tragic, it was with the same fever of expectancy that the third and fourth volumes of Clarissa were opened, as they issued from the press in April 1748. The fifth, sixth, and seventh volumes, concluding the work, did not appear until December, and thus for over a year Richardson kept his readers on the rack, only to crush their hopes at the end. The excitement aroused among all classes by their anxiety as to the ultimate fate of the heroine may be partially understood by reading the letters ad- dressed to the author. They flowed in thick and fast, coining from every quarter, but commonly bearing the same burden, beseeching Richardson, some with tears, and some with curses, to spare Clarissa, and close the book with the jingle of wed- ding bells. "0 what shall I feel," wrote a fair cor- respondent, "when I read — 'This day is pubUshed a continuation of The History of Miss Clarissa Harlowe ! ' I am ashamed to say how much I shall be affected." A gentleman wrote that he had three daughters; that all three were reading the novel; that if Clarissa died, all three daughters would die too. But the grim little man, inexorable as fate, never swerved from the course his artistic 67 ESSAYS ON BOOKS instincts had shown ; deaf to hysterical entreaties, blind to the tears of lovely women, and weeping himself, over his heroine's fate, he slew her. Cla- rissa Harlowe was a glorious sacrifice on the altar of art. Lady Bradshaigh's inabihty to conceal her grief and terror, as the tragedy deepened, was the cause of the beginning of one of the closest friendships in Richardson's life. In October 1748, she wrote, " I am pressed, Sir, by a multitude of your admirers, to plead in behalf of your amiable Clarissa ; having too much reason, from hints given in your four vol- umes, from a certain advertisement, and from your forbearing to write, after promising all endeavours should be used toward satisfying the discontented ; from all these, I say, I have but too much reason to apprehend a fatal catastrophe. I have heard that some of your advisers, who delight in horror, (detestable wretches !) insisted upon rapes, ruin, and destruction ; others, who feel for the virtuous in distress, (blessings forever attend them !) pleaded for the contrary. Could you be deaf to these, and comply with those ? Is it possible, that he who has the art to please in softness, in the most natural, easy, humorous, and sensible manner, can resolve to give joy only to the ill-natured reader, and heave the compassionate breast with tears for irremediable woes ? . . . Therefore, Sir, after you have brought 68 RICHARDSON the divine Clarissa to the very brink of destruction, let me intreat (may I say, insist upon) a turn, that will make your almost despairing readers half mad with joy. ... If you think, by the hints given, that the event is too generally guessed at, and for that reason think it too late to alter your scheme, I boldly assert — not at all ; write a little excuse to the reader, ' that you had a design of concluding so and so, but was given to understand it would disappoint so many of your readers, that, upon ma- ture deliberation and advice of friends, you had resolved on the contrary.' ... If you disappoint me, attend to my curse : — May the hatred of all the young, beautiful, and virtuous, for ever be your portion ! and may your eyes never behold anything but age and deformity ! may you meet with ap- plause only from envious old maids, surly bachelors, and tyrannical parents ! may you be doomed to the company of such ! and, after death, may their ugly souls haunt you ! " She continued to write in this strain, using all her resources of argument, flattery, warning, and downright entreaty ; if he would only comply, she promised to read the entire work at least once in two years so long as she lived ; if he persisted, she would never open the concluding volumes. "I am as mad as the poor injured Clarissa," she writes, after Richardson had sent her the fifth volume ; 69 ESSAYS ON BOOKS "and am afraid I cannot help hating you, if you alter not your scheme." She tries to read the book, and fails. "I have been some time thinking your history over, and I find I cannot read it. . . . You would not wonder at my inflexibleness, if you knew the joy I had promised myself from a happy catas- trophe. I cannot see my amiable Clarissa die; it will hurt my heart, and durably. I know your man- ner, and I know my weakness — I cannot bear it." Richardson replied to her supplications at great length, showing, both on artistic and moral groimds, the necessity for a tragic close. In the following words, we see that his ideal in this painful story resembled that of the authors of Antigone and King Lear. "Nor can I go thro' some of the scenes my- self without being sensibly touched. (Did I not say that I was another Pygmalion?) But yet I had to shew, for example sake, a young lady strug- gling nobly with the greatest difficulties, and tri- umphing from the best motives, in the course of dis- tresses, the tenth part of which would have sunk even manly hearts ; yet tenderly educated, born to afHuence, naturally meek, altho', where an exertion of spirit was necessary, manifesting herself to be a true heroine." Seldom has there been heard a better statement of a great artist's conscientious purpose. It was not only the gentle hearts of women that 70 RICHARDSON were shaken by the appl-oach of Clarissa's awful doom ; while the women found relief in tears, the men swore wildly. CoUey Gibber's astonishing complacency for once deserted him, his impression- able nature seized and held by Richardson's power- ful grasp. Laetitia Pilkington wrote : "I passed two hours this morning with Mr. Gibber, whom I found in such real anxiety for Glarissa, as none but so perfect a master of nature could have excited. I had related to him, not only the catastrophe of the story, but also your truly religious and moral reason for it ; and, when he heard what a dreadful lot hers was to be, he lost all patience, threw down the book, and vowed he would not read another line. To express or paint his passion would reqiiire such masterly hands as yours, or his own : he shuddered ; nay, the tears stood in his eyes: — 'What! (said he) shall I, who have loved and revered the virtuous, the beautiful Glarissa, from the same motives I loved Mr. Richardson, bear to stand a patient spec- tator of her ruin, her final destruction ? No ! — My heart suffers as strongly for her as if word was brought me that his house was on fire, and himself, and his wife, and httle ones, likely to perish in the flame.' ... In this maimer did the dear gentle- man, I think I may almost say, rave ; for I never saw passion higher wrought than his. When I told him she must die, he said,/G — d d — n him, if she 71 ESSAYS ON BOOKS should ; and that he should no longer believe Provi- dence or eternal Wisdom, or Goodness governed the world, if merit, innocence, and beauty were to be so destroyed : nay, (added he) my mind is so hurt with the thought of her being violated, that were I to see her in Heaven, sitting on the knees of the blessed Virgin, and crowned with glory, her suffer- ings would still make me feel horror, horror dis- tilled.' " Gibber adopted a comically sincere manner of showing his interest. "I have gone every evening to Ranelagh, in order to find a face or mien resembUng Miss Harlowe, but to no purpose : the charmer is inimitable ; I cannot find her equal." Nor, essentially British as this novel is in sub- stance and in treatment, were its passionate ad- mirers confined to the circle of English readers. Diderot's almost frantic excitement while reading it is well known ; the Rev. J. Stinstra, who trans- lated the work into Dutch, wrote, "Multitudes of people earnestly beg the printing of the remaining parts may be expedited. Among them, a certain minister of the Gospel, who, when he had finished the first volume, complained that it was flat and tiresome; after he had, at my intreaty, read the volumes through, confessed, ' That he doubted not, but that if very many parts of these letters were to be found in the Bible, they would be pointed out as manifest proofs of divine inspiration.'" . . . 72 RICHARDSON Such was the manner in which Clarissa affected the men and women of the eighteenth century ; what is its effect to-day ? Do we read the rhap- sodies and entreaties of Richardson's correspondents with silent amazement, with smiHng contemptuous superiority, or possibly with some degree of intel- lectual sympathy? When, after receiving the Castle of Otranto, Gray wrote to Walpole, "It en- gages our attention here, makes some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o'nights," we read his words "smiling as in scorn," for we find it impossible to take the Castle oj Otranto seriously. The books that bring tears to the eyes of the chil- dren of one generation make the eyes of their chil- dren's children glisten with irrepressible laughter, or perchance make them heavy with sleep. Does Richardson, too, belong to the army of the obsolete ? Must we rummage "Those old odd corners of an empty heart For remnants of dim love the long disused. And dusty Grumblings of romance" to learn the secret of his power over our ancestors ? Or, is he, indeed, alive to-day as well as yesterday, with something of his former strength and charm ? To this last question we must return an emphatic afl&rmative. Trevelyan, in his Life of Macaulay, narrates the following incident, which shows that the freshness and force of Clarissa's story were 73 ESSAYS ON BOOKS proportionally as effective in the nineteenth as in the eighteenth century : "The ordinary amusements with which, in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile the rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately been reclaimed from the desert; . . . There were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had brought with him; among which, most luckily, was 'Clarissa Harlowe.' Aided by the rain outside, he soon talked his fa- vourite romance into general favour. The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight inac- curacies in order to have the story told by Thack- eray. "I spoke to him about 'Clarissa.' 'Not read " Clarissa ! " ' he cried out. ' If you have once read " Clarissa," and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season in the Hills ; and there were the governor-general, and the secretary of government, and the commander- in-chief, and their wives. I had "Clarissa "with me ; and as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe, and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace. The governor's wife seized the book ; the secretary waited for it ; the chief -justice could not read it for tears.' He acted the whole scene : he paced up and down the Athenaeum library. I dare say he could 74 RICHARDSON have spoken pages of the book : of that book, and of what countless piles of others !" "An old Scotch doctor, a Jacobin and a free thinker, who could hardly be got to attend church by the positive orders of the governor-general, cried over the last volume until he was too ill to appear at dinner. The chief secretary — afterward as Sir William Macnaughten, the hero and victim of the darkest episode in our Indian history — declared that reading this copy of ' Clarissa ' under the inspi- ration of its owner's enthusiasm was nothing less than an epoch in his life. After the lapse of years, when Ootacamund had long enjoyed the advantage of a book-club and a circulating library, the tradi- tion of Macaulay and his novel still lingered on with a tenacity most unusual in the ever-shifting society of an Indian station." To those who have ears to hear, the narrative of Clarissa is as thrilhng in its intensity and as power- ful in its accumulation of tragic suffering, as it was when first uttered. An American critic declared the other day that he attempted to reread Clarissa, and simply could not ; for he continually burst out crying. Mr. Birrell quotes Napoleon as "a true Richardsonian," and says, "Clarissa Harlowe has a place not merely amongst English novels, but amongst English women." And as a final shot to the Philistines, he remarks, "There is nothing to be 75 ESSAYS ON BOOKS proud of, I can assure you, in not being able to read Clarissa Harlowe, or to appreciate the genius which created Lovelace." "Clarissa," said one of the best modern French critics, M. Joseph Texte, "is a truly living creation. . . . Hers is the first complete biography of a woman in modern fiction." It is needless to multiply instances which prove that whatever rank in fiction Clarissa may finally reach, it is assuredly not a forgotten or a neglected book. It produces upon the readers of to-day, all things considered, about the same effect that it produced in the eighteenth century. Some were thrilled, and others were bored. Horace Walpole remarked, "Richardson wrote those deplorably tedious lam- entations, ' Clarissa,' and ' Sir Charles Grandi- son,' which are pictures of high life as conceived by a book-seller, and romances as they would be spiritualised by a Methodist teacher." On the other hand, the brilliant and beautiful Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, every whit as sophisticated, blasee, and worldly minded as Walpole, said : "This Richardson is a strange fellow. I heartily despise him, and eagerly read him, nay, sob over his works in a most scandalous manner." Enough has been said to show that Clarissa does not belong among literary curiosities ; and no one who weeps to-day over her fate need blush either for the impulses of his heart, or for the state of his literary taste. 76 RICHARDSON The manner in which we approach the story, even if reading it for the first time, is of course quite different from that of CoUey Gibber, Lady Brads- haigh, and their contemporaries. For they read its pages with the feverish excitement of one who bends over the bedside of a dear friend, where life and death are trembling in the balance. To-day it is safe to assume that no intelligent person reads Clarissa without already knowing the plot. What impresses us chiefly is not the skilful manner in which Richardson has managed the details of his story, keeping the reader's mind constantly fluctu- ating between hope and despair ; much might be said in praise of this skill, for, if only the first four volumes were extant, no one could say with absolute certitude what the outcome might be. What en- thralls us is the horrible, yet strangely fascinating approach of Clarissa's fate — seen dimly from afar and looming nearer by almost imperceptible degrees, our terror and pity heightened by the extraordinary slowness of its march. An absolute kidnapping and outrage at the very start, such as came so near a fatality for Harriet Byron, would not begin to be so impressive as to watch the gradual unfolding of this sincere tragedy. We see Clarissa, panoplied with virtue, graced with culture and high breeding, armed with keen intelligence, making nevertheless an unequal struggle, only because she does not at 77 ESSAYS ON BOOKS the beginning realise that she is fighting for the highest stakes in life. The impressiveness of this drama to us is the impressiveness of suspense — of a delayed catastrophe sure to arrive, like that of Hamlet, rather than the shock of a surprise plot, where we greet the outcome with overwhelming amazement, as at the terrific cHmax of The Return of the Druses. As for the characters in this novel, Clarissa has already been assigned her place in the world's gal- lery of immortal portraits. She is as essentially fem- inine as Pamela, there being precisely the difference between them that would have existed in real life — the difference of birth, breeding, and social position. She inherits from her family the terrible Harlowe pride, and much of the poignancy of the tragedy lies in the humiliation of so inflexible a soul. She is "A Spirit, yet a Woman too ! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-Uberty ; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet ; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food ; * « # # # The reason firm, the temperate will. Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; A perfect Woman, nobly planned. To warn, to comfort, and command ; And yet a Spirit stUl, and bright With something of angelic light." 78 RICHARDSON Clarissa has been criticised for lacking passion; for worshipping at the shrine of the goddess Pro- priety. Profligates and prodigals do not enjoy a monopoly of passion ; for it burns fiercely in men and women of absolutely regular Uves. Who would have dreamed of the individual passion of woman for man that glowed in the heart of the invaUd EUzabeth Barrett, had Robert Browning never entered her sick-room ? Suppose Lovelace had crowned his ac- complishments with virtue, is it possible to place any limit to the devotion he would have received from Clarissa ? It was by no accident that Richard- son made his steadfast women, Pamela, Clarissa, Harriet, and Clementina, thrill with emotions un- known to the wajrward and capricious Miss Howe and Charlotte Grandison. Clarissa's capacity for passion is not less because she loves duty and obedi- ence. It is the frightful struggle between the dig- nity of her personality and her desire to obey her father that appeals to us most keenly ; and the cruel choice of lovers, one, endowed with every grace and charm, but lacking virtue, and the other, offensive as only a respectable boor can be, forms a dilemma with the prospect of happiness excluded. Were she less pure in heart, she might choose Lovelace ; were she less womanly, she might accept Solmes. We admire her because she will not have Lovelace ; we love her because she despises Solmes. 79 ESSAYS ON BOOKS From first to last she is always the same, in the most trying circumstances never acting in a way inconsistent with her personality. Apparently free, not seeing the meshes of her fate, then strug- gUng wildly in its slimy folds, then with broken heart, her baimer of virgin pride trailed in the dust, finally awaiting calmly the release of death, she is always the same Clarissa Harlowe, with the same integrity of soul. From the wreck of her earthly hopes and happiness she shines eternally serene, as through the cloud-rack gleams the even- ing star. Lovelace, while something of a stage villain, is the most convincing male character that Richard- son ever drew. Compare him with his predecessor Mr. B., whose name is as blank as his personal- ity ! Miss Thomson, by printing some extracts from Richardson's unpublished correspondence, shows that he drew Lovelace from life. On 26 January 1747, writing to Aaron Hill, he says, "I am a good deal warped by the character of a gentleman I had in my eye, when I drew both him (Lovelace) and Mr. B. in Pamela. The best of that gentleman in the latter ; the worst of him for Lovelace, made still worse by mingling the worst of two other char- acters, that were as well known to me, of that gentle- man's acquaintance, and this made me say in my last that I aimed at an uncommon, though I suppose 80 RICHARDSON a not quite unnatural character." The good quali- ties must therefore have been supplied by Richard- son's imagination, for nothing throughout the story is more constantly insisted upon than the excellent side of the villain. In another unpublished letter of 3 October 1 748, Richardson wrote : "Have you read Lovelace's bad and not his good ? Or does the ab- horrence which you have for that bad, make you forget that he has any good ? Is he not generous ? Is he not with respect to meum and tuum matters just? Is he not ingenious? Does he not on all occasions exalt the lady at his expense? Has he not therefore many sparks of goodness in his heart, though, with regard to the sex, he sticks at nothing ? " The good qualities in Lovelace were certainly not overlooked by Richardson's feminine readers. One lady remarked, Clarissa "should have laid aside all dehcacy ; and if Lovelace had not asked her in the manner she wished, she ought to have asked him. In short, Lovelace is a charming young fellow, and I own I like him excessively." A correspondent writes, "You know I love to tell you everything I hear concerning your Clarissa, or otherwise I should not furnish you with more instances of what you have reason to say you too often meet with ; namely, the fondness most women have for the character of Lovelace." In the course of her prayers to Rich- ardson, to make the story end happily. Lady Brads- G 81 ESSAYS ON BOOKS haigh writes, "I am very sensible of all the bad qualities you point out in the character of Lovelace : his villainies are hateful to my thoughts ; and I acknowledge your hero deserving of hate, contempt, and everything that you think he deserves, except the entire loss of Clarissa, and eternal misery ; one, I think, must be the consequence of the other. Sure you will think it worth your while to save his soul. Sir. I have many things yet to say in behalf of this savage. 'Lord!' you cry, 'how she loves to excuse this wicked man ! ' but pray be quiet. You say 'you are surprised and concerned that this character should meet with so much favour from the good and virtuous ' ; but you may assure your- self the good and virtuous are utter enemies to all his wickedness, and are only pleased with the dis- tant view and hopes of his becoming the good, the virtuous, and the tender husband of Clarissa. . . . I agree with you in thinking it a pernicious notion, that reformed rakes make the best husbands. . . . A rake, reformed by time, age, or infirmities, gener- ally wants only the power of being what he was ; but a sensible man, who reforms in the prime of his days, and apparently from laudable motives, may, I think, be esteemed worthy, and one whom even Clarissa need not be ashamed to accept of, though not at his own appointed time, and by way of favour to her." 82 RICHARDSON Clarissa's dilemma between Lovelace and Solmes was sufficiently cruel. But if her choice had been determined by the majority of women who read the novel at that time, I fear that the former would have polled an enormous vote, for in affairs of the heart, it is natural to be guided by inclination rather than by principle. On this basis, it was Solmes, and not Lovelace, who was guilty of the impardonable sin — the sin of being unattractive. Mrs. Barbauld, however, wisely sums up the question of a possible marriage with Lovelace in these final words, which represent precisely the author's unmistakable atti- tude. ' ' That woman must have Httle 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 entertained for him." It is indeed surprising that a character like Love- lace, who, compared with men of real life, or even with Don Juans of other great realistic novels, is at once seen to be impossible, should take so strong a hold upon our imagination. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Analyse him — he sim- ply will not do ; no such person ever lived. Read- ing his letters, we see his gay personality clearly, know him well, and never forget him. May not the real reason for this lie in the fact that while Clarissa is the heroine of a realistic novel of actual life, Love- 83 ESSAYS ON BOOKS lace is simply the hero of romance ? He is essen- tially a romantic character. Now in the great ro- mances, whether they be by Malory or Dumas, we do not ask that the persons in the story shall be like the men we meet on the street; we ask only that they shall make a permanent impression on our imagination. And Lovelace, though figuring in a great realistic novel, carries ever with him the at- mosphere of romance. Thus, impossible in real life, he nevertheless lives ; and even French critics, to whom one instinctively turns to learn whether or not the portrait of a rake is correct, agree that Lovelace is an artistic triumph. M. Texte remarks, "He is one of the most living of all the characters in Richardson's gallery." The minor characters are many of them impos- sible to forget. Miss Howe, with her charming vi- vacity and sparkling personaHty, throws sunshine over the earlier phases of the tragedy; and sun- shine is needed to dispel the shadows of the grim family of Harlowes. Father, mother, sister, brother, each plainly individualised, yet all unmis- takably akin — there is surely the work of genius. Belford stands out bold and rugged in outhne, faithful to the life. Curiously enough, the Rev. J. Stinstra thought Richardson was drawing his own portrait in Belford. He wrote, "Pardon me, Sir, but I was before of opinion, that you in your 8^ RICHARDSON Belford had drawn your own picture ; that you had seen the world, and loved it; but afterwards es- caped out of its incitements. In this case, I should not have been ashamed of corresponding with you ; for, am I not a follower of that Saviour, which de- clared that there was joy in heaven on a repenting sinner?" Nor, among the lesser characters, can we forget the wretched creatures of the brothel, who set off by their abominable shamelessness the fair purity of the heroine. However salutary may have been the moral effect of Pamela on the age in which and for which it was written, we feel that in this particular respect it has now outlived its usefulness. In short, a keener moral sense and a juster appreciation of moral values make us repudiate it. There are many critics to-day who insist that Pamela is a more im- moral book than Tom Jones. I would not myself go so far as that, though I realise the danger at this moment of saying anything of any sort against the works of Fielding. But about Clarissa there cannot be two opinions. The call to virtue rings clear and true. As Diderot cried in his excitement: "Who would be Lovelace, with all his advantages ? Who would not be Clarissa, in spite of her misfortunes ? " The ethics of this remarkable book are sound, be- cause the reward of virtue is seen to lie not in the abundance of things which one may possess, but in 8S ESSAYS ON BOOKS character. We are purified by this spectacle of pain, and realise that while the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eter- nal. It is a joint masterpiece of Morality and Art. Richardson's avowed aim in composing the story was a moral one. Discussing the Abbe Prevost's translation of Clarissa, he said, "He treats the story as a true one ; and says, in one place, that the Eng- lish editor has often sacrificed his story to moral instructions, warnings, &c., — the very motive with me, of the story's being written at all." In spite of himself, Richardson was an artist of the first class; otherwise, instead of writing a great novel, he would merely have written a moral tale. And the moral of Clarissa is by no means negative ; it is not simply, as was Richardson's original purpose in composing Pamela, to warn attractive girls against rakes ; if that were all to be learned from the perusal of Clarissa, the mountain would have laboured only to bring forth a mouse. Nor, as Mrs. Barbauld remarks, is any moral teaching contained in the fact that Clarissa resisted the advances of Lovelace ; her virtue was so impregnable that she could laugh an assault to scorn. The moral is, as Mrs. Barbauld finely says, "that virtue is trium- phant in every situation ; that in circumstances the most painful and degrading, in a prison, in a brothel, 86 RICHARDSON in grief, in distraction, in despair, it is still lovely, still commanding, still the object of our veneration." As Pamela was named by its author, Virtue Re- warded, we may, as has often been said, call this masterpiece Virtue Triumphant. When Lady Bradshaigh insisted that eternal bliss in heaven was not so satisfying a reward (to her mind) for Clarissa, as a little earthly feUcity, Richardson wisely responded, "Clarissa has the greatest of triumphs even in this world. The greatest, I will venture to say, even in and after the outrage, and because of the outrage, that ever woman had." Across the title-page of one of his most striking and powerful novels, Thomas Hardy wrote "a PtTRE WOMAN FAITHFULLY PRESENTED." But many shook their heads when Tess, over- whelmed by calamities, returned to her seducer, and Mr. Hardy was forced from his customary re- serve of the artist to the platform of the advocate in order to defend his heroine. Richardson never had to defend the purity of Clarissa, and no one can imagine any stress of grief or terror that would have placed her acquiescent in the power of Lovelace. Whatever the lovely Tess may have been, Clarissa is certainly "a pure woman faithfully presented." All discussions of the characters in this immortal book begin and end with the heroine. It is the suf- 87 ESSAYS ON BOOKS fering of the innocent, and not of the guilty, that inspires the deepest emotions of pity and fear. We may with justice put into the mouth of Clarissa the infinitely mournful words of Cordelia : We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have incurred the worst. In the month of November 1753, appeared, in both octavo and duodecimo form, the first four volumes of a work, which for some time many sentimental women had eagerly awaited. The title-pages read as follows : The History of Sir Charles Grandison, in a Series of Letters published from the Originals. By the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa. In the same November number of the Gentleman's Magazine which contained the first announcement of the issue of this novel, we find the following words, evidently inspired by Richardson himself, and containing in a condensed form his apology and purpose. "In this work, of which 4 volumes only are published, the author has com- pleated a plan of which Pamela and Clarissa are parts. In Pamela he intended to exhibit the beauty and superiority of virtue in an unpolished mind, with the temporary reward which it frequently obtains, and to render the character of a Ubertine contemp- tible. His chief design in Clarissa was to shew the 88 RICHARDSON excellence of virtue, tho' in this life it should not be rewarded, and to represent the life of a libertine, with every adventitious advantage, as an object not only of detestation, but of horror. In Sir Charles Grandison, he proposed to display the superiority of virtue in yet another light; and by exhibiting the character and actions of a man of true honour, to shew that every natural and accidental advan- tage is improved by virtue and piety ; that these polish elegance, heighten dignity, and produce uni- versal love, esteem and veneration. How far this important design is effected, the world will soon be able to judge, as the last volimies, will be published in the beginning of the year." This promise was speedily fulfilled; in Decem- ber the fifth octavo and the fifth and sixth duo- decimo volumes appeared, and in March 1754, the publication of the whole work was completed by the issue of the sixth octavo and the seventh duodecimo volumes. We see by the important statement quoted above from the Gentleman's Magazine, that Richardson's aim in his last novel was to show the beauty of hoU- ness in a more positive manner than he had before attempted. He had portrayed the allurements of vice in Mr. B. and in Lovelace, and the wisdom and glory of resistance in Pamela and Clarissa ; to crown his Hfework A GOOD MAN was necessary, 89 ESSAYS ON BOOKS who should have all the natural advantages of the rake, combined with supreme moral excellence; the whole building, fitly framed together, constitut- ing an ideal standard of human conduct. That seven stout volumes should be necessary to make clear this paragon merely illustrates Richardson's method. It would have saved some time had he not written at all, but merely referred enquirers to a few verses in the Gospel according to Matthew, where the same purpose is fairly well accomplished in considerably less space. But no doubt Richard- son knew that in his day — it may still be true — there are many persons who would rather read a novel, even in seven volumes, than a single chapter of the Bible. Although the Httle printer always followed his own instincts in the end, he was ever ready to listen to his multitudinous advisers. His shrewdness is never seen to better advantage than when he pre- tends to consider, with seriousness and dehberation, advice that he secretly knows is not worth the paper on which it is written. One of his friends, deceived by the courteous gravity with which Rich- ardson listened to every trivial suggestion, became alarmed lest in the multitude of counsellors he should lose his safety, so he inconsistently joined their number by advising the novelist to take no advice. "I wish you would take up a resolution 90 RICHARDSON (which perhaps may be new to you) of neither trust- ing others, nor distrusting yourself, too much. If you bundle up the opinions of bad judges in your head, they will only be so much lumber in your way." Now although The History of Sir Charles Grandi- son was apparently written "by request," we may be sure that if he had not felt the spur to composi- tion in his own mind, he would not have constructed such a work merely to please his friends. That he was urged is, however, sufficiently clear. After the publication of Clarissa, letters began to flow in, beseeching him to add to his works the portrait of a good man. On i6 December 1749, Lady Brads- haigh wrote, "You are ever ready, Sir, to ac- knowledge an obligation upon my strongly soliciting you to resume your pen, yet will you not give me the least satisfaction, not a glimmering of hope? Won't you. Sir? . . . I behave there never was a fine character drawn without having its admirers (even amongst the most profligate) if not its imita- tors. And as I know with the good man you would connect the fine gentleman, it might, I hope, be thought worthy of imitation. It is a character we want, I am sorry to say it ; but few there are who deserve it. Do but try. Sir, what good you can do this way ; and let me have to brag, that I was in- strumental in persuading you to it." To this sup- 91 ESSAYS ON BOOKS plication, Richardson replied under date of 9 January 1750, as follows : "Dear lady ! what shall I say ? To draw a character that the better half of the world, both as to number and worthiness, I mean the women, would not Kke ; after such a recep- tion too as Mr. Hickman has met with, after such kindness shewn to that of Lovelace." Yet, either at the very time of sending this half-negative an- swer, or, at all events, very shortly after, Richardson was busy with not only the plan, but the execution, of the work so ardently desired ; for by the month of March, portions of the manuscript were privately circulating among his intimate friends, like the "sugred sonnets" of Shakespeare. This throws a curious Hght on his letter to Mrs. Dewes, dated 20 August 1750: "All together, time of life too ad- vanced, I fear I shall not be able to think of a new work. And then the task, as I have written to Mrs. Donnellan, is a very arduous one. To draw a man that good men would approve, and that young ladies, in such an age as this, will think amiable, — tell me, Madam, is not that an arduous task?" We cannot help smiling as we read these words, and we borrow the drunken porter's language to exclaim, "Faith, here's an equivocator." We even know with considerable accuracy just how far he had progressed, for in a letter to Lady Bradshaigh, dated 24 March 1750, he says, "But 92 RICHARDSON my Harriot ! — and do you, can you like the girl ? I have designed her to keep the middle course, be- tween Pamela and Clarissa ; and between Clarissa and Miss Howe ; or rather, to make her what I woidd have supposed Clarissa to be, had she not met with such persecutions at home, and with such a tormentor as Lovelace. She interests her readers so far, as to make them wish her to have a good man. "But who is the good man that you think you see at a Httle distance ? — In truth he has not peeped out yet." Richardson continued to favour his friends by sending them portions of the manuscript, and every morning, in his beloved grotto at North End, he read what he had written to a select circle. On 27 May 1750, Colley Cibber wrote, labouring imder great excitement : "I have Just finished the sheets you favoured me with ; but never found so strong a proof of your sly Hi-nature, as to have hung me up upon tenters, till I see you again. Z — ds ! I have not patience till I know what's become of her. — Why, you ! I don't know what to call you ! — Ah ! Ah ! you may laugh if you please : but how will you be able to look me in the face, if the lady should never be able to shew hers again? What piteous, d — d, disgraceful, pickle have you plunged her in ? For God's sake send me the sequel ; or — I don't know what to say ! — After all, there is one 93 ESSAYS ON BOOKS hint in your narration, that convinces me, Greville, though he was seen to hght from his chair at home, must be the man that has had the good or bad dis- posal of her. My girls are all on fire and fright to know what can possibly become of her. — Take care ! — If you have betrayed her into any shock- ing company, you will be as accountable for it, as if you were yourself the monster that took delight in her calamity. Upon my soul I am so choaked with suspense, that I won't tell you a word of the vast delight some had in Miss Byron's company, till you have repeated it, by letting me see her again without the least blemish upon her mind, or person ; though, 'till you brought her to this plunge, I could have kissed you for every character that was so busy about her. But — O Lord ! send me some more, and quickly, as you hope ever to see, or hear again, from your delightfully uneasy Friend and Servant, C. Gibber." Three years later, under date of 6 June 1753, Gibber sent a particularly characteristic note, show- ing his unabated interest in the outcome of the novel. "Sir, The deUcious meal I made of Miss Byron on Sunday last, has given me an Appetite for another slice of her off from the spit, before she is served up to the Publick table ; if about 5 oclock 94 RICHARDSON tomorrow afternoon, will not be inconvenient Mrs Brown, & I will come, and nibble upon a bit more of her : But pray let your whole family, with Mrs Richardson at the head of them, come in for their share." When Richardson essayed to write Grandison, he was at a double disadvantage. He chose a hero, instead of a heroine : and he forsook the familiar fields of low and middle-class Ufe, and ventured into the strange domain of aristocratic society. He felt like Samson shorn of his strength; and the chief criticisms that are to-day leveled against this work, were made in advance by the author himself. In one of his many letters on this subject, he says, "How shall a man obscurely situ- ated, never dehghting in pubHc entertainments, nor in his youth able to frequent them, from narrowness of fortune, had he had a taste for them ; one of the most attentive of men to the calls of his business ; his situation for many years producing little but prospects of a numerous family ; a business that sel- dom called him abroad, where he might in the course of it, see and know a Httle of the world, as some em- ployments give opportunities to do ; naturally shy and sheepish, and wanting more encouragement by smiles, to draw him out, than any body thought it worth their while to give him ; and blest, (in this he will say blest), with a mind that set him above a 95 ESSAYS ON BOOKS sought-for dependence, and making an absolute reliance on Providence and his own endeavours. How, I say, shall such a man pretend to describe and enter into characters in upper life ? How shall such a one draw scenes of busy and yet elegant trifling ? "Miss M. is of opinion, that no man can be drawn, that will appear to so much advantage as Harriot : I own that a good woman is my favourite character ; and that I can do twenty agreeable things for her, none of which would appear in a striking hght in a man. Softness of heart, gentleness of manners, tears, beauty, will allow of pathetic scenes in the story of the one, which cannot have place in that of the other." Richardson certainly understood both his powers and his limitations. The question of how Sir Charles should act in af- fairs of honour gave Richardson not a httle trouble, and he doubtless anticipated the smiles of twentieth- century critics. It was proper that Colonel Morden should fight Lovelace, for the Colonel was only an admirable, not an ideal character ; but in the case of Grandison, it would never do to have him engage in duels, nor would his refusal to fight free him from the imputation of cowardice. Richardson held very positive views concerning the vice of duelling, and yet his ideal man must be ideally brave. Dr. Delany, writing in 1751, said, "I think you have 96 RICHARDSON many difficulties to encounter for your fine gentle- man, an epithet not often understood; as little known. And no part more difficult than to make him brave, and avoid duelling, that reigning curse. Some vanity you must give him, of shewing his bravery, that he may dare to refuse that wicked, mean, fashionable vice. A proper fortitude of mind, and command of his passions, will prevent his giving a challenge; and (a greater security than all) his christian virtue. But how to ward off a challenge, and preserve his character, is a task only to be un- dertaken by the author of Clarissa." How Rich- ardson cut this Gordian knot we all know. Per- haps there was no better way. The stock criticism that in creating Grandison, Richardson made, not a real man, but merely a pattern of all the virtues, was also foreseen by the novelist, and he did his best to overcome the diffi- culty. Writing to Miss Mulso, ii July 1751, he says, "Well, but, after all, I shall want a few un- premeditated faults, were I to proceed, to sprinkle into this man's character, lest I should draw z. fault- less monster. ... I would not make him guilty of too great refinements : I would draw him as a mortal. He should have all the human passions to struggle with ; and those he cannot conquer he shall endeavour to make subservient to the cause of virtue." And, in response to Miss Mulso's fear H 97 ESSAYS ON BOOKS that the ladies will think Grandison "too wise" to be attractive, Richardson playfully wrote, "Dear, dear girls, help me to a few monkey-tricks to throw into his character, in order to shield him from^con- tempt for his wisdom." Perhaps the most amusing advice which Richard- son received came from the Rev. Mr. Skelton, who insisted that in the same novel with the Good Man there should appear a Bad Woman. "I hope you intend to give us a bad woman, expensive, imperi- ous, lewd, and at last a drammer. This is a fruit- ful and a necessary subject, which will strike, and entertain to a miracle. You are so safe already with the sex, that nothing you can say of a bad woman will hinder your being a favourite, especially if now and then, when your she-devil is most a devil, you take occasion to remark how unlike she is to the most beautiful, or modest, or gentle, or polite part of the creation." It is quite possible that this rev- erend gentleman is responsible for the impossible character of Emily's mother, for Richardson always regarded the advice of the clergy as having great weight. At any rate, a year later, when Richard- son informed him that the bad woman had been in- cluded, this apostle of Christianity in reHgion and Naturalism in art wrote, " I am glad you have a bad woman, but sorry she does not shew herself. Is this natural? Did you ever know a bad woman that 98 RICHARDSON did not make a figure in her way ? No, no ; the devil always takes care that his confessors of that sex canonize themselves." How wide the experi- ence of the Rev. Mr. Skelton had been we can only conjecture. In view of the ultimate publication of Sir Charles Grandison in seven volumes, it is interesting to note that Richardson originally planned to make it a short story, to call it The Good Man, and not to have it published until after his death. "I have no thoughts," he writes to Lady Bradshaigh, "were I to finish this new piece, of having it pubhshed in my Hfe-time. The success of a writer's work is better insured, when the world knows they can be troubled with no more of his." A curious remark to come from the author of Pamela ! What he really feared was that Grandison was not up to the stand- ard of his previous works, a fear, on the whole, well grounded. He never recovered from the wonder aroused in his heart by the amazing success of Pamela and Clarissa; and he could not bear the thought that readers might say his genius was de- clining. No doubt this was one reason why he allowed such a variety of persons to read the manu- script. Writing to Lady Bradshaigh, 24 February 1753, he exclaims: "Think you, Madam, that all these honours done to my Clarissa, (nor has Pamela, the poor Pamela, been neglected by them), do not 99 ESSAYS ON BOOKS give me apprehensions for my new piece? indeed they do. A man of my time of life and infirmities should know when to give over. There would have perhaps been a greater assurance of a favourable reception, had I, as I once intended, left to executors the disposal of the piece." He was frightened also by the length of the book. On 21 June 1752, he writes, "The good man, alas ! I knew not what the task was which I undertook. He is grown under my hands from a thin gentleman, as I designed him, to a gigantic bulk." Again, two months later: "I hope I am in the last volume. It is run into prodigious length. When I can get to an end, I will revise, in hopes to shorten." Three months after this : " I am now going over it again, to see what I can omit : this is the worst of all my tasks, and what I most dreaded . Vast is the fabric ; and here I am under a kind of necessity to grasp it all, as I may say ; to cut off, to connect ; to re- scind again, and reconnect. Is it not monstrous, that I am forced to commit acts of violence, in or- der to bring it into seven twelve volumes, which I am determined it shall not exceed, let what will happen ? " This resolution he kept. Much against his will, he had to rush it through the press. Some scoundrelly booksellers in Dublin, by bribing the compositors, secured many of the sheets before the day of publication in London, and RICHARDSON issued a pirated edition in a mangled shape. The honest man was righteously angry, and sent out a full account of this treachery. But the mischief was irreparable ; he obtained no satisfaction, and his own copies sent to Ireland for sale, were driven from the market by the low price of the surreptitious edition. The composition of Joseph Andrews, and the piracy of Sir Charles Grandison were the two injuries that Richardson never forgave. Had he possessed a keener sense of humour, he might have enjoyed the fun in Fielding's parody, and enjoyed also the oddity of having a work, wherein was set forth the ideal combination of virtues, stolen by a gang of rascally printers. Sir Charles Grandison, in spite of its many ad- mirable qualities, is on the whole inferior to Rich- ardson's other books. Its inferiority to Clarissa is apparent. Many critics, on the other hand, rank it above Pamela, and a very pretty quarrel is still on, in the endeavour to decide, not which one of Rich- ardson's books is the best, but which is the worst. The false morality of Pamela has blinded many readers to the extraordinary power and charm of the story. If we omit the last two volumes of Pamela, which are not an integral part of the work and were added later by an unfortunate decision of the author, we shall surely find reasons enough to place it above Grandison in literary merit. Character- lOI ESSAYS ON BOOKS drawing, with all that expression includes, keenness of interest in the succession of events, freshness and force of epistolary style — in all these respects Pamela is distinctly superior. The hero of Grandi- son is so little less than the angels that he is a little more that human, and does not therefore strongly appeal to us ; as for the two women, we sympathise with both too deeply, to be wholly moved by the misfortunes of either. But the great blot on Rich- ardson's last novel is, apart from Clementina herself, the vast deserts of talk indulged in by her father, mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt, cousin, lover, governess, maid, and attendant father Con- fessor. This, on Richardson's part, was a little more than kin, and less than kind. To be sure, with an unconscious humour appreciated by all modern readers, Richardson has properly grouped his characters in his list of Dramatis Persona; he calls them, with a felicity of expression that we cannot but admire, MEN, WOMEN, and ITAL- IANS. This impossible Italian menagerie is an affliction that the patient reader — and Richardson has no readers that are otherwise — should have been spared. The roll-call of this family strikes ter- ror to the heart of one who has read the book, as he remembers the flood of talk in which he was so often engulfed. Their capacity to bore simply cannot be overestimated ; it was doubtless their conversation, RICHARDSON rather than the loss of Sir Charles, that drove Clementina to madness. The "general" is an un- mitigated ass ; and how eagerly we long to have the Chevalier Grandison for once forget his resolution on duelling, and drive the cold steel through this preposterous cad. Poor Jeronymo we dismiss rather in sorrow than in anger ; he is not so intol- erable as the general, and yet it is with mixed feel- ings that we watch by his bedside. His recovery wiU mean more talk. We can only say to him in the language of the old play "Go by, Jeronymo ; go by." While Richardson was condensing his novel, in order to contract it into seven volumes, we can but wonder at the opportunities he neglected. It is the only novel he wrote that is really too long ; for while all attempts at condensing Clarissa — from Aaron Hill to Mrs. Humphry Ward — have proved failures, Sir Charles Grandison might easily be im- proved not only by omitting most of the scenes in Italy, but by omitting the entire last volume. Yet it is possible that the fault may lie with us, and that we have failed to grasp the full artistic design of this monumental work. For Richardson certainly un- derstood his purpose better than we do, and in the Preface he wrote, regarding the immense number of letters in these seven volumes : " As many, however, 103 ESSAYS ON BOOKS as could be spared, have been omitted. There is not one episode in the whole, nor, after SIR CHARLES GRANDISON is introduced, one letter inserted but what tends to illustrate the principal design." In spite of serious faults, Sir Charles Grandison is a great novel. • In many places the plot is managed with consummate skill, and with a sure eye for dra- matic effect. Nothing could be better than the first appearance of the hero. Impatient as we are to see him, he enters the stage at precisely the right instant of time. We can scarcely repress an in- stinct to cheer. This skilful introduction of Sir Charles was no lucky accident ; it had been care- fully studied by the author. Writing to Lady Bradshaigh, who, in reading the manuscript, had enquired when the hero was to appear, he said, "He must not appear till, as at a royal cavalcade, the drums, trumpets, fifes and tabrets, and many a fine fellow, have preceeded him, and set the spectators agog, as I may call it. Then must he be seen to enter with an eclat ; while the mob shall be ready to cry out huzza, boys !" Furthermore, Richardson's management of the plot shows great skill in holding the reader in sus- pense. It is as impossible for us to tell how the story will end, as it was for Sir Charles himself to know which of the two women he would ultimately 104 RICHARDSON marry. Harriet Byron's agony of doubt, with the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick, forms one of the most convincing successions of scenes in fic- tion. Richardson had obtained an immense ad- vantage in holding the interest of the readers of Grandison by his treatment of Clarissa ; for the ruth- less ending of that story filled every one who followed Miss Byron's misfortunes with the keenest alarm. They knew that the author was fully capable of blasting her hopes and theirs, and they could only wait, and not forecast, the outcome. Had Rich- ardson ended Clarissa happily, no one would have read Grandison with much anxiety for Harriet. Herein lies something of the power of the writer of tragedies; we follow the fate of Mr. Hardy's heroines with the sharpest apprehension, while the wildest adventures of mere romantic heroes do not disturb our inward calm. Sir Charles himself caimot be dismissed as a mere prig. He is richly dressed, has elaborate manners, enjoys high social rank, but is a man for all that. The fact that he actually loved two excellent women, and that he would probably have succeeded in be- ing happy with either, gave great trouble to Rich- ardson's feminine admirers. Lady Bradshaigh bounced off her chair as she read this part of the story. But the situation was really by no means impossible. It would have been perfectly true to ESSAYS ON BOOKS life, though it would have killed this or any other novel, had the hero met a third woman, of equal charm of person and character, and ultimately married her. Such utterly unromantic facts con- stantly happen, and Richardson was endeavouring to show that even the passion of love, in an ideal man, may be partially guided by reason and good judgment — nay, that in time, it may be wholly controlled. But Sir Charles is no iceberg; and the difference — not fully understood by himself — between his pity for Clementina, and his love for Harriet, is wonderfully well portrayed by Richard- son. Had Sir Charles never met Miss Byron, and also had he succeeded in his treaty with the Italian family, he would never have imagined that he could love any one but Clementina, and would have been wholly happy with her. That marriage apparently proving hopeless, his passionate love for Harriet is not only possible, it is natural ; and his proposal even then to marry Clementina came simply from his extraordinarily nice sense of honour, the struggle that it cost him being terrible in its intensity. For as lookers-on often see points in the game hidden from the players, it is evident to the reader that in his second Italian journey, and even while treating with the family of Clementina, Harriet Byron pos- sesses the hero's heart. The relation of Sir Charles to these two women, in spite of the adverse criticism io6 RICHARDSON it has aroused, seems to be only an exhibition of Richardson's skill, and his knowledge of human nature. The madness of Clementina, though a little too fully elaborated, is deeply affecting. In a time when the authority of the classics was greater than it is to-day, Thomas Warton said : "I know not whether even the madness of Lear is wrought up and expressed by so many little strokes of nature and passion. It is absolute pedantry to prefer and compare the madness of Orestes, in Euripides, to this of Clementina." It is curious, that as it was the composition of a Complete-Letter- Writer that led Richardson to write Pamela, so, one of the minor objects of his last novel was to furnish for the imsophisticated a man- ual of etiquette. In the same number of the Gentle- man's Magazine that contained the first announce- ment of the appearance of Sir Charles Grandison, there was a letter to Mr. Urban, defending the length and minuteness of incident in the work. The writer then adds : "All the recesses of the hu- man heart are explor'd, and its whole texture un- folded. Such a knowledge of the poHte world, of men and manners, may be acquired from an atten- tive perusal of this work as may in a great measure supply the place of the tutor and the boarding school. Young persons may learn how to act in all 107 ESSAYS ON BOOKS the important conjunctures, and how to behave gracefully, properly, and politely, in all the com- mon occurrences of life." The fact that Richard- son could not shake himself wholly free from the manual-of-etiquette style in which he began his literary career, accounts not only for many of the stilted conversations that disfigure his works, but goes far toward explaining why the character of Sir Charles is so offensive to many readers. A hero who is to set styles in language and in dress must never forget himself ; and a man who never forgets himself cannot be wholly admirable. Sir Charles Grandison, although many of its pages are aglow with the fire of genius, does not reach, either in art or in moral instruction, the highest success. Its artistic defects are manifest; and its failure as an edifying work may be summed up by saying that it called the righteous, and not the sinners, to repentance. Richardson himself felt this, for discussing this very book, he said : " Good people may approve the morality of my writings. But good people want not such for themselves; and what bad ones have they converted?" The difficulty is, of course, that Sir Charles, instead of converting, only irritates the ungodly. There was one fair saint who saw no fleck of fail- ure in the work. The lovely Frau Klopstock wrote : "You have since written the manly Clarissa, with- io8 RICHARDSON out my prayer : oh you have done it, to the great joy and thanks of all your happy readers. Now you can write no more, you must write the history of an Angel." Had Richardson elected to under- take this task, he could have found no better sub- ject than the beautiful woman who suggested it. Romances had been more or less common and popular in England since the time of Malory's wonderful Morte Darthur, printed by Caxton in 1485. But the English novel was not born until the eighteenth century — that century of begin- nings ; and its father was no less a personage than Daniel Defoe. It is true that the structure of his works is singularly bare and crude. He had no conception of the proper handling of a plot. All that is implied by the expression "evolution of a story," so beautifully exemplified in The Scarlet Letter, is conspicuous in Defoe mainly by its ab- sence. Events in Defoe's novels succeed one another merely in chronological order, Kke the pages of a diary. But he was the first man in Eng- land to write a genuine realistic novel, showing, in the form of a story, the development of a charac- ter taken from actual contemporary life. If Moll Flanders (1722) is not in every respect as properly classed by the term "reahstic novel" as is Esther Waters (1894), what terminology can be invented 109 ESSAYS ON BOOKS to place it more accurately? Defoe might hon- estly have adapted Joseph Hall's saying, and cried, " I first adventure : follow me who list, And be the second English noveUst." We cannot, therefore, concur with a common opinion that the first man in England to write novels was Samuel Richardson. He was the sec- ond, not the first; but of the modern analytical novel, he was the true progenitor. Defoe's method was realistic, but not psychological. Richardson, on the other hand, studied and portrayed with tireless assiduity the secrets of the soul. For al- though his avowed object was didactic, no sooner did he begin to write than he became absorbed in the faithful delineation of human hearts. Richardson was wise in selecting the epistolary style, for at that once great art — now lost — he was a master hand. He, like, many others in eigh- teenth-century times, wrote private letters with the same care that manuscript was prepared for the press. He made copies of his correspondence — both letters sent and received ; they circulated among his intimate friends, and were enjoyed in concert, as an evening party enjoys a good book read aloud. The hurry and worry of more modern times, and, above all, cheap postage, have quite destroyed that once fine art. RICHARDSON Richardson knew also the value of the epis- tolary method for soul-revelation. The minds and hearts of all his prominent characters were to be laid absolutely bare before the reader, and there is no instrument like a confidential letter for this process of vivisection. We do not need the authority of Schopenhauer to be told that a letter is the surest key to the writer's personality ; for in a long letter it is more difi&cult to conceal one's actual sentiments, than by the tone of the voice or the expression of the features. "There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face." It is not quite true to say, with Mrs. Barbauld, that Richardson invented the manner of writing stories in letters ; and yet he may fairly be called the originator of the epistolarj' novel. No one had ever used this style with anything like the effect attained by Richardson. As M. Texte re- marks, in Richardson "the epistolary novel has really become what it should be, a form of the ana- lytical novel. If it is not this, it is nothing, and the originahty of Richardson consists in the very fact that he made it such." He adopted this method, of course, not altogether by conscious choice, but partly by accident and necessity. If he had not begun the Complete-Letter- Writer, he might never have begun Pamela; and, although no gulf among III ESSAYS ON BOOKS books is wider than the gulf separating etiquette- manuals from realistic novels, Richardson found the crossing easy and natural. At the outset of his literary career, Richardson was certainly not a conscious artist; that was to come with the extraordinary development of his unsuspected powers. How surprising^ different in the attitude towards his art is the Preface to Pamela from the Preface to Clarissa! In the latter, he says, "All the letters are written while the hearts of the writers must be supposed to be wholly engaged in their subjects (the events at the time generally dubious) : so that they abound not only with critical situations, but with what may be called instantaneous descriptions and reflections (proper to be brought home to the breast of the youthful reader ;) as also with affect- ing conversations ; many of them written in the dialogue or dramatic way." The man who penned those words had become a self-conscious artist; and his excitement while in the fever of composi- tion reminds one of the well-known anecdotes of later novelists. He wept bitterly over Clarissa's fate, as Thackeray sobbed at the exit of Colonel Newcome, and as Hawthorne's voice involuntarily rose and fell while reading to his wife the final declaration of Dimmesdale. It was the combination of the Philistine and the RICHARDSON Artist in this man that partly explains the variety of persons whom he impressed. That Lady Montagu, and the maid curling her mistress's hair, should have each sobbed over Clarissa is a sig- nificant fact. Horace Walpole saw in him only the didactic Philistine, and therefore despised him; Dr. Young and Thomas Edwards saw in him only the didactic PhiKstine, and therefore admired him; Colley Gibber and Diderot saw in him the great Artist, and worshipped him. Richardson's personahty was a singular union of qualities usually contrary, and much in his writing and in its effect can be explained only by keeping in mind the double nature of the man. For it is beyond dispute that this solemn pater- familias, drinking tea with sentimental women, and apparently foreordained to be a milksop, was in actuaHty one of the most stern and uncompro- mising realists that ever handled a pen. Once at his desk, all tincture of squeamishness vanished. His realism was bolder and more honest than Field- ing's and shrank from nothing that might lend additional power to the scene, or that might deepen the shades of character. He refused abso- lutely to follow advice that conflicted with his aim and method. He knew his work was original in design, plan, and treatment, and he fuUy trusted only the instincts of his own heart. A friend wrote, I "3 ESSAYS ON BOOKS speaking of the critics who wished him to introduce changes, "Another defect in those that are called the best Judges is, that they generally go by rules of art; whereas yours is absolutely a work of nature. One might, for instance, as well judge of the beauties of a prospect by the rules of architec- ture, as of your Clarissa by the laws of novels and romances. A piece quite of a new kind must have new rules, if any ; but the best of all is, following nature and common sense. Nature, I think, you have followed more variously, and at the same time more closely, than anyone I know. For Heaven's sake, let not those sworn enemies of all good works (the critics) destroy the beauties you have created." Richardson's Realism, where it does not conflict with his didacticism, is indeed absolute. In begin- ning his career as a novelist, he forsook everything that was generally understood by the term Fiction. Romantic adventures, supernatural machinery, remote countries, the characters and customs of chivalry, and the splendour of historical setting, he resolutely brushed aside. He took his own country, his own time ; and instead of selecting for protagonist a princess, he selected a housemaid. This is Realism, as distinguished from Romanti- cism; and though there was a moral basis to his story, the realistic method was as uncompromising 114 RICHARDSON as Zola's. Richardson often received such advice as the following, and what he thought of it, his novels sufficiently show. "I am glad to hear your work is what you call long. I am excessively impatient to see it. And shall certainly think it too short, as I did Clarissa, although it should run out into seven folios. The wotld will think so too, if it is sufficiently larded with facts, inci- dents, adventures, &c. The generality of readers are more taken with the driest narrative of facts, if they are facts of importance, than with the purest sentiments, and the noblest lessons of morality. Now, though you write above the taste of the many, yet ought it not to be, nay, is it not, your chief design, to benefit the many ? But how can you cure their mental maladies, if you do not so wrap up your physic as to make it pass their palates? . . . Therefore stuff your works with adventures, and wedge in events by way of prim- ings." A good motto for Richardson's novels may be found in what he said just before the appearance of Grandison. "I think the characters, the senti- ments, are all different from any of those in my two former pieces, though the subjects are still love and nonsense, men and women." Love and nonsense, men and women — the phrase indicates fully the subject-matter and the exclusive aim of "5 ESSAYS ON BOOKS the avowed realist. " Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " there is more knowledge of the heart in one let- ter of Richardson's, than in all ' Tom Jones.' " Erskine : " Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." Johnson : "Why, sir, if you were to read Richard- son for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself." The Doctor's remarks, as usual, are worth serious reflection. Fielding was a novelist of manners; in that sense a realist. But Richardson was an analyst, a psychologist, and he cared nothing for the course of the story so long, as with infinite patience, he followed accurately the windings of the heart. In this respect, Clarissa is Uke Anna Karenina. The abundance of detail destroys the artistic contour of the story, but it represents what these two men endeavoured to represent — life. The Prolixity of Richardson's novels is insepa- rable from their subject and manner of composition. They are, in truth, works of prodigious length. To have read Clarissa entirely through is in itself an achievement, like having cUmbed the Matter- horn. Richardson was fully conscious of the immense mass of words he had written, and knew that it would lose him many readers. "Every reader must judge for him or herself, as to the supposed prolixity," he said, "I am contented that he or she should." Sometimes he seems to suspect ii6 RICHARDSON the yawns of future generations. "Have I not written a monstrous quantity ; nineteen or twenty close written volumes?" ffis method of composi- tion necessitated this, for instead of filling up a framework, he wrote one letter, without knowing what he would say in the next. I frankly confess I admire his courage and lack of amenity in launch- ing such leviathans. In a day when we are greeted by so-called dramatic stories, whose sole claim to popularity lies in their abihty to furnish enough fighting to keep the reader breathless, it is refresh- ing by way of contrast to see Richardson writing "the history of a young lady" in seven volumes. The same unflinching courage that made him lead his readers into a brothel, made him persevere through a tremendously long journey. He feared the charge of Indehcacy as little as the complaint of Tediousness. He set out to accompKsh a certain result in his own way. All English novelists who have lived since 1748 have learned something from Richardson. Jane Austen, though her keen sense of humour and hatred of cant made her see plainly his faults, studied him and his methods with the utmost zeal. Her astonishing power in representing the man- ners and conversations of actual people was largely developed by Richardson. What is true of her is true of all the great masters of English fiction. 117 ESSAYS ON BOOKS The honest printer made an impression on the history of the novel far deeper and more lasting than his best fonts of type could produce. Nothing is more interesting or instructive to the student of Hterary development than to notice how often the mightiest influences in Uterature are unconscious in their origin. The whole English Romantic movement, which shaped the literature of the nineteenth century, and which reached its first climax in Sir Walter Scott, began with a total absence of conscious aim and method. Such is the case also in the history of the sentimental novel in England. When, a half -century old, Samuel Richardson turned from his Complete- Letter- Writer to construct the history of Pamela, nothing could have been farther from his thoughts than the results that were finally accomplished from so unpretentious a beginning. The success of his novel astonished him, but to its far-reaching consequences he was naturally blind. A temporary fad must pass entirely away before we can see what, if any, its results are to be. And Pamela was distinctly a fad. In the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1741, we read, "Several encomiums on a Series of Familiar Letters, published but last m,onth, entitled Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, came too late for this Magazine, and we believe there will 118 RICHARDSON be little Occasion for inserting them in our next, because a Second Edition will then come out to sup- ply the Demands in the Country, it being Judged in Town as great a sign of Want of Curiosity not to have read Pamela, as not to have seen the French and Italian Dancers." Such was the manner in which fashionable society took up the fortunes of the fictitious housemaid; and when other Uterary sensations appeared, Pamela was neglected by this class of readers. But Richardson, in this book, and in the two others which succeeded it, made an appeal to, and an impression on the emotional side of humanity which was by no means to pass away. The Sentimental Novel had been created and was to appear in a variety of forms, growing side by side with the ever increasing Romantic movement. Lady Bradshaigh, in a characteristic postscript to a letter of Harriet Byron proportions, written 9 January 175Q, begged to know the proper meaning of the new expression sentimental. "Pray, Sir, give me leave to ask you (I forgot it before) what, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue amongst the polite, both in town and country ? In letters and common conversation, I have asked several who make use of it, and have generally received for answer, it is — it is — sentimental. Everything clever and agreeable is comprehended in that word ; but am 119 ESSAYS ON BOOKS convinced a wrong interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and agreeable can be so common as this word. I am frequently astonished to hear such a one is a sentimental man; we were a sentimental party; I have been taking a sentimental walk. And that I might be reckoned a little in the fashion, and, as I thought, show them the proper use of the word, about six weeks ago, I declared I had just received a senti- mental letter. Having often laughed at the word, and found fault with the application of it, and this being the first time I ventured to make use of it, I was loudly congratulated upon the occasion: but I should be glad to know your interpretation of it." And so should we. But Richardson doubtless discovered his own inability to define a word with such various connotation, or he never would have been guilty of neglecting a lady's postscript. The first and most striking evidence of Richard- son's influence upon English fiction appeared in a way that must have made him momentarily regret that he had ever written at all. Although Joseph Andrews is certainly not a sentimental novel, it must be classed among the results of Pamela; and Richardson was willing to believe that the great popularity of his rival was really due to himself — that he was the unwilling father of Field- 120 RICHARDSON ing's good fortune. " The Pamela," he said, "which he abused in his Shamela," [showing that Richardson believed Fielding to have been the author of "Conny Keyber's" parody] "taught him how to write to please, tho' his manners are so different. Before his Joseph Andrews (hints and names taken from that story, with a lewd and ungenerous engraftment) the poor man wrote without being read." But Richardson was responsible for something else than Fielding, so curiously does Divinity shape our ends. As it was the philosophy of the devout Berkeley that brought into being the writ- ings of the great sceptic Hume, so the novels of the prim printer were immensely influential in producing Tristram Shandy and The Sentimental Journey, the latter of which Richardson was for- tunate enough not to live to see. The famous starling was meant to appeal, and did appeal to a generation that had read Clarissa with swimming eyes. Those were golden days for the sentimental writers, for before the tears on the faces of Sterne's readers were fairly dried, appeared Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771), and the lachrymose foun- tains flowed afresh. English Hterature at that period was simply moist, and though we caU many of those books, like the Man of Feeling, and the Fool of Quality, dry, it is, under the circumstances, 121 ESSAYS ON BOOKS hardly a happy appellation. More than that, Richardson's sentiment prepared English readers for Ossian, the mighty influence of which on nations and individuals is one of the most striking facts in literary history. Nay, the influence of the didactic printer may be worked out even. in such extraordinary religious movements as the Wesleyan revival, which found the fields white for the har- vest. The river of Sentiment, rising from the not too clear well in Pamela, became a veritable flood, overrunning with resistless force not only England, but France and Germany as well. The direct influence of Richardson in Germany was exceedingly great. We have seen how emo- tional women like Frau Klopstock devoured his novels. Klopstock himself wrote an ode on Clarissa's Death, and the novel was translated in eight volumes by Dr. Haller, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Gottingen. Gellert, the pro- fessor of rhetoric at Leipsic, translated Pamela and ^^V Charles Grandison, and he remarked, "I have formerly wept away some of the most remarkable hours of my life, in a sort of delicious misery, over the seventh volume of Clarissa and the fifth of Grandison." In a sort of delicious misery — the words should not be forgotten, for they precisely express the sensation aroused and enjoyed by contemporary readers of Richardson, 122 RICHARDSON and of the sentimental literature that followed in his wake of tears. "Immortal is Homer," shouted this German scholar, "but among Christians the British Richardson is more immortal still," a dehghtful expression ; for the writer's enthusiasm must make us forgive the comparative of such an adjective. A number of German noveUsts essayed stories in the Richardsonian manner, but it was not only in the third and fourth rate writers that the influence of the Englishman may be seen. Wie- land, who had read Pamela in French, was charmed, and after the perusal of Grandison, he turned the fortunes of Clementina into a play, and thought of composing a book which should be called Letters from Charles Grandison to his pupil Emily Jervois. We can only imagine the gush of sentiment flowing from a volume with such a title. Lessing was profoundly influenced by Richard- son, for, in his hatred of the French domination of the theatre, he greeted everything English with enthusiasm. Those who have attentively read Lessing's prose play Miss Sara Sampson may easily detect the influence of our English novelist. Richardson was even parodied in Germany, and Grandison der Zweite (i 760-1 762) is proof that there were readers enough and to spare of the struggles of Sir Charles. An edition of Grandison der Zweite appeared so late as 1803. 123 ESSAYS ON BOOKS In Wilhelm Meister, in a discussion that arose upon the novel and the drama, we find the follow- ing words : " But in the novel, it is chiefly senti- ments and events that are exhibited ; in the drama, it is characters and deeds. The novel must go slowly forward ; and the sentiments of the hero, by some means or other, must restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. . . . The novel-hero must be suffering, at least he must not in a high degree be active; in the dramatic one, we look for activity and deeds. Grandison, Clarissa, Pamela, the Vicar of Wakefield, Tom Jones himself, are, if not suffering, at least retard- ing personages ; and the incidents are all, in some sort, modelled by their sentiments." Even had Goethe not named the characters of Richardson in this passage, there could have been no doubt concerning the novels he had chiefly in mind. And the immense contribution that Goethe made to the Sentimental movement in his Sorrows of Werther (1774) was in a large measure the indirect result of the writings of Richardson. For while Goethe was more directly affected by Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise (1760), Rousseau might never have written his book at all had it not been for the appearance of Clarissa. Mr. Birrell remarks, "Without Cla- rissa there would have been no Nouvelle Heloise, and had there been no Nouvelle Heloise, everyone 124 RICHARDSON of us would have been somewhat different from what we are." This remark leads us to dwell lastly on Richard- son's influence in France. It is a curious fact that Frenchmen — the exact opposite of Richardson in the respective emphasis they place on Art and Morality — should have been even more profoundly influenced by the puritanical printer than the men and women of his own nation. The influence of Richardson in France has received so adequate treatment by M. Joseph Texte, in his admirable work, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme litteraire', that it may be discussed here only briefly. M. Texte remarks, "It has been truly said that Clarissa Harlowe is to La Nouvelle Helotse what Rousseau's novel is to Werther: the three works are inseparably connected, because the bond be- tween them is one of heredity." In 1742, Des- fontaines greeted Pamela with delight, pointed out its striking originality in subject and treatment, and declared that it would be a good pattern for French writers. This started a fierce controversy, and M. Texte suggests that it was out of resentment that Desfontaines translated Joseph Andrews. But the French public would not listen to Fielding, insisting that he was unworthy to be mentioned in the same breath with his intended victim. On 26 July 1742, Crebillon wrote to Chesterfield, 125 ESSAYS ON BOOKS "But for Pamela, we should not know here what to read or to say." Sequels, imitations, dramatisa- tions, and parodies appeared in French ; Richard- son's waiting maid was the reigning sensation, and continued to enjoy an extraordinary vogue until the appearance of Prevost's translation of Clarissa — curious, indeed, the relations between Richard- son and the author^of Manon Lescautl Clarissa aroused the most intense interest, and it was every- where mightily cried up. Prevost's translations were not either accurate or fully complete, for the author of Manon Lescaut found the realism of Richardson too uncompromising ; he omitted some of the most powerful passages in Clarissa, and softened many others. Yet, in spite of this treatment, he regarded his author with reveren- tial admiration. The death of Richardson was the signal for the wildest eulogies from French critics. As M. Texte says, "Popular enthusiasm rose to frenzy." In twenty-four hours Diderot composed his famous eulogy, which, among utterances that can only be called rhapsodical, contained much valuable criti- cism. As an example of his enthusiasm, we may quote: "O Richardson! Richardson! first of men in my eyes, you shall be my reading on all occa- sions. ... I will sell my books, but I will keep you : you shall remain on the same shelf with 126 RICHARDSON Moses, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles; and I will read you by turns." And as an example of his insight : " You may think what you please of the details, but to me they will be interesting, if they be natural, if they display the passions, if they disclose characters. You say they are common, they are what we see every day. You are mistaken ; they are what pass before your eyes every day, without being seen by you." And, the emotion aroused by reading him is significantly described by Diderot exactly as we have found it affected the Professor Gellert. "II m'a laisse une melancholic, qui me plait & qui dure." While all the French people were still talking about Clarissa, in 1756 Rousseau began the com- position of La Nouvelle Heloise. Richardson's story had simply inspired him; he said that no novel that had ever been written in any language was comparable to Clarissa. Everyone noticed the similarity of the two works, and the source of Rousseau's book — which was also written in letters — was immediately pointed out. In 1761 La Nouvelle Heloise appeared in an English translation, and was read by Richardson during the last year of his life. He heartily disapproved of it, as he would of many other books that sprang from the seed he had sown, had he lived to see them flourish. Fielding, Sterne, Rousseau — an extraordinary 127 ESSAYS ON BOOKS result of the printer's didactic efforts ! Little did he dream that through the works of Rousseau the stream of his influence would continue to widen and deepen until it reached the awful cataract of the French Revolution. For that the quiet, God- fearing, conservative, conventional, law-abiding Richardson was one of the men who helped uncon- sciously but powerfully to bring about the greatest poHtical upheaval of modern times, is a fact no less extraordinary than true. Finally, from a great French artist in prose and verse, Richardson's Clarissa received the highest of all compliments. For Alfred de Musset called it le premier roman du monde. 128 Ill JANE AUSTEN Wednesday, the twelfth of September 1900, was a beautiful day. The sun shone brilliantly, and the air had quality. Early in the morning we said farewell to Salisbury's tall and crooked spire, and after a lunch at high noon we visited the splendid old Norman Abbey church at Romsey. During the afternoon our bicycles carried us over an excellent road fringed with beautiful trees, and at Hursley we entered the sacred edifice where saintly John Keble held forth the Word of Life. We did homage at his grave in the churchyard, and gazed without emotion at the house of Richard Cromwell. Over the downs we pedalled merrily, and late in the afternoon, under the level rays of the September sun, we entered the ancient capital of England, the cheerful city of Winchester. Deep in the evening we saw the massive grey Cathedral glorified by the moon. Hampshire rolled into the sunshine again on Thursday morning, and we visited the great Gothic church. The disappointment felt by most pil- grims at the rather forbidding exterior gave place K 129 ESSAYS ON BOOKS to solemn rapture as we stepped within the portal. The vault of the immense nave, the forest of columns, the Norman transepts, all seen through the dim religious light, made one realise that a mediaeval cathedral is the symbol of generations of human aspiration. It is a lapidary prayer. We visited the tomb of Joseph Warton, who led the eighteenth-century revolt against Pope Alex- ander, once thought to be infallible, we saw the grave of the gentle author of the Compleat Angler, and then we paused reverently by the last resting- place of Jane Austen. Hither she was borne on 24 July 1817, followed only by members of her family, who loved her for the purity and sweetness of her character. In the afternoon we sped northward to Steven- ton, the village made famous by her birth. The town is so small and otherwise insignificant as to have no railway station,