which had appeared in November 1740, two months earlier, and had already attained an extraordinary popularity. “Several Encomiums (says Mr. Urban) on a Series of Familiar Letters, publish’d but last month, entitled PAMELA or Virtue rewarded, came too late for this Magazine, and we believe there will be little Occasion for inserting them in our next; because a Second Edition will then come out to supply 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.” A second edition was in fact published in the following month (February), to be speedily succeeded by a third in March and a fourth in May. Dr. Sherlock (oddly misprinted by Mrs. Barbauld as “Dr. Slocock”) extolled it from the pulpit; and the great Mr. Pope was reported to have gone farther and declared that it would “do more good than many volumes of sermons.” Other admirers ranked it next to the Bible; clergymen dedicated theological treatises to the author; and “even at Ranelagh”—says Richardson’s biographer—“those who remember the publication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up the volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew that they had got the book that every one was talking of.” It is perhaps hypercritical to observe that Ranelagh Gardens were not opened until eighteen months after Mr. Rivington’s duodecimos first made their appearance; but it will be gathered from the tone of some of the foregoing commendations that its morality was a strong point with the new candidate for literary fame; and its voluminous title-page did indeed proclaim at large that it was “Published in order to cultivate the Principles
