in contrasting the book with Fielding’s work, it should not be forgotten that, irreproachable though it seemed to the author’s admirers, good Dr. Watts complained (and with reason) of the indelicacy of some of the scenes.
But, for the moment, we are more concerned with the effect which Pamela produced upon Henry Fielding, struggling with the “eternal want of pence, which vexes public men,” and vaguely hoping for some profitable opening for powers which had not yet been satisfactorily exercised. To his robust and masculine genius, never very delicately sensitive where the relations of the sexes are concerned, the strange conjunction of purity and precaution in Richardson’s heroine was a thing unnatural, and a theme for inextinguishable Homeric laughter. That Pamela, through all her trials, could really have cherished any affection for her unscrupulous admirer would seem to him a sentimental absurdity, and the unprecedented success of the book would sharpen his sense of its assailable side. Possibly, too, his acquaintance with Richardson, whom he knew personally, but with whom he could have had no kind of sympathy, disposed him against his work. In any case, the idea presently occurred to Fielding of depicting a young man in circumstances of similar importunity at the hands of a dissolute woman of fashion. He took for his hero Pamela’s brother, and by a malicious stroke of the pen turned the Mr. B. of Pamela into Squire Booby. But the process of invention rapidly carried him into paths far beyond the mere parody of Richardson, and it is only in the first portion of the book that he really remembers his intention. After chapter x. the story follows its natural course, and there is little or nothing of Lady
