truly say that I bestowed a more than ordinary Pains in her Education; in which I will venture to affirm, I followed the Rules of all those who are acknowledged to have writ best on the Subject; and if her Conduct be fairly examined, she will be found to deviate very little from the strictest Observation of all those Rules; neither Homer nor Virgil pursued them with greater Care than myself, and the candid and learned Reader will see that the latter was the noble model, which I made use of on this Occasion.
“I do not think my Child is entirely free from Faults. I know nothing human that is so; but surely she doth not deserve the Rancour with which she hath been treated by the Public. However, it is not my Intention, at present, to make any Defence; but shall submit to a Compromise, which hath been always allowed in this Court in all Prosecutions for Dulness. I do, therefore, solemnly declare to you, Mr. Censor, that I will trouble the World no more with any Children of mine by the same Muse.”
Whether sincere or not, this last statement appears to have afforded the greatest gratification to Richardson. “Will I leave you to Captain Booth?” he writes triumphantly to Mrs. Donnellan, in answer to a question she had put to him. “Captain Booth, Madam, has done his own business. Mr. Fielding has overwritten himself, or rather under-written; and in his own journal seems ashamed of his last piece; and has promised that the same Muse shall write no more for him. The piece, in short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale.” There is much to the same effect in the worthy little printer’s correspondence; but enough has been quoted to show how intolerable to the super-sentimental creator of the high-souled and heroic Clarissa was his rival’s plainer and more practical picture of matronly virtue and modesty. In cases of this kind, parva seges satis est, and Amelia has long since outlived
