set to work. And thus originated his first novel of Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded.
But not forthwith, as is sometimes supposed. Proceeding with the compilation of his model letter-writer, and seeking, in his own words, “to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out on service . . . how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue”—a danger which appears to have always abnormally preoccupied himf»he came to recollect a story he had heard twenty years earlier, and had often proposed to other persons for fictitious treatment. It occurred to him that it would make a book of itself, and might moreover be told wholly in the fashion most congenial to himself, namely, by letters. Thereupon, with some domestic encouragement, he completed it in a couple of months, between the 10th of November 1739 and the 10th of January 1740. In November 1740 it was issued by Messrs Rivington & Osborn, who, a few weeks afterwards (January 1741), also published the model letter writer under the title of Letters written to and for Particular Friends, on the most Important Occasions. Both books were anonymous. The letter-writer was noticed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January, which also contains a brief announcement as to Pamela, already rapidly making its way without waiting for the reviewers. A second edition, it was stated, was expected; and such was its popularity, that not to have read it was judged “ as great a sign of want of curiosity as not to have seen the French and Italian dancers”—i.e. Mme Chateauneuf and the Fausans, who were then delighting the town. In February a second edition duly appeared, followed by a third in March and a fourth in May. At public gardens ladies held up the book to show they had got it; Dr Benjamin Slocock of Southwark openly commended it from the pulpit; Pope praised it; and at Slough, when the heroine triumphed, the enraptured villagers rang the church bells for joy. The other volume of “familiar letters”' consequently fell into the background in the estimation of its author, who, though it went into several editions during his lifetime, never acknowledged it. Yet it scarcely deserves to be wholly neglected, as it contains many useful details and much shrewd criticism of lower middle-class life.
For the exceptional success of Pamela there was the obvious excuse of novelty. People were tired of the old “mouthy” romances about impossible people doing impossible things. Here was a real-life story, which might happen to any one—a story which aroused curiosity and arrested attention—which was not exclusively about “high life,” and which had, in addition, a moral purpose, since it was avowedly “ published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes.” Whether it had exactly this effect, or owed its good fortune chiefly to this proclamation, may be doubted. The heroine in humble life who resists the licentious advances of her master until he is forced to marry her, does not entirely convince us that her watchful prudence and keen eye for the main chance have not, in the long run, quite as much to do with her successful defence as her boasted innocence and purity. Nor is the book without passages which more than smack of an unpleasant prurience. Nevertheless, in its extraordinary gift of minute analysis; in its intimate knowledge of feminine character; in the cumulative power of its shuffling, loose-shod style, and, above all, in the unquestionable earnestness and sincerity of the writer, Pamela had qualities which—particularly in a dead season of letters—sufficiently account for its favourable reception by the contemporary public.
Such a popularity, of course, was not without its drawbacks. That it would lead to Anti-Pamelas, censures of Pamela and all the spawn of pamphlets which spring round the track of a sudden success, was to be anticipated. One of the results to which its rather sickly morality gave rise was the Joseph Andrews (1742) of Fielding (q.v.). But there are two other works prompted by Pamela which need brief notice here. One is the Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, a clever and very gross piece of raillery which appeared in April 1741, and by which Fielding is supposed to have preluded to Joseph Andrews. Fielding’s own works contain no reference to Shamela. But Richardson in his Correspondence, both printed and unprinted, roundly attributes it to the writer who was to be his rival; andit is also assigned to Fielding by other contemporaries (Hist. MSS. Commn., Rept; 12, App. Pt. IX. p. 204). All that can be said is, that Fielding’s authorship cannot be proved. If it could, it would go far to justify the after animosity of Richardson to Fielding—much farther, indeed, than what Richardson described as the “lewd and ungenerous engraftment” of Joseph Andrews. The second noteworthy result of Pamela was Pamela’s Conduct in High Life (September 1741), a spurious sequel by John Kelly of the Universal Spectator. Richardson tried to prevent its appearance, and, having failed, lset about two volumes of his. own, which followed in December, and professed to depict his heroine “ in her .exalted condition.” Butfthe public interest in Pamela had practically ceased with her marriage, and the author’s continuation, like other continuations—particularly continuations prompted by extraneous circumstances attracted no permanent attention.
About 1744 we begin to hear something of the progress of Richardson’s second and greatest' novel, Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady, usually miscalled Clarissa Harlowe. The first edition was in seven volumes, two of which came out in November 1747, two more in April 1748 and the last three in December. Upon the title-page of this, of which the mission was as edifying as that of Pamela, its object was defined as showing the distresses that may attend the misconduct both of parents and children in relation to marriage. Virtue, in Clarissa, is not “rewarded,” but hunted down and outraged. The heroine, no longer an opportunist servant-girl, is a most pure, refined and beautiful young woman, invested with every attribute to attract and charm, while her pursuer, Lovelace, the libertine hero of the book—a personage of singular dash and vivacity, in spite of his worthlessness—is drawn with extraordinary tenacity of power. The wronged Clarissa eventually dies of grief, and her cold-blooded betrayer, whom strict justice would have hanged, is considerately killed in a duel by her soldier cousin. Of the genius of the story there can be no doubt. Nor is there any doubt as to the ability shown in the delineation of the two chiel characters, to whom the rest are merely subordinate. The chief drawbacks of Clarissa are its merciless prolixity (seven volumes, which only cover eleven months); the fact' that (like Pamela) it is told by letters; and a certain haunting and uneasy feeling that many of the heroine’s obstacles are only molehills which should have been readily surmounted. As to its success, accentuated as this was' by its piecemeal method of publication, there has never been any question. Clarissa’s sorrows set all England sobbing, and her fame and her fate spread rapidly to the Continent.
Between Clarissa and Richardson’s next work appeared the Tom Jones of Fielding—a rival by no means welcome to the elder writer, although a rival who generously (and perhaps penitently) acknowledged Clarissa’s rare merits.
“Pectus inaniter angit
Irrrtat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet
Ut Magus,”
Fielding had written in the Jacobite’s Journal. But even this could not console Richardson for the popularity of the “ spurious brat” whom Fielding had made his hero, and his next effort was the depicting of a genuine fine-gentleman—a task to which he was incited by at chorus of feminine worshippers. In the History of Sir Charles Grandison, “by the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa” (for he still preserved the fiction of anonymity), he essayed to draw a perfect model of manly character and conduct. In the pattern presented there is, however, too much buckram, too much ceremonial—in plain words, too much priggishness—to make him the desired exemplar of propriety in excelsis. Yet he is not entirely a failure. still. less is- he to be regarded as no more than “the
