roe 



RICHARDSON 



received Trench styled it ' the best dictionary in 

 the language' and at that time it deserved the 

 praise. A later work wo." entitled On tlir Study of 

 LniHiuage: an Exposition ofTooke't Diversion* of 

 Parley (1854). 



Richardson, SIR JOHN, naturalist, waa born 

 at Dumfries, November 5, 1787, studied at Edin- 

 burgh University, became a navy-surgeon, served 

 in tin- Arctic expeditions of I'urrv nnl Franklin 

 (1819 .'-' an. I 1 S2.V27 ), as well as in the Franklin 

 search expedition of 1848-49, was knighted in 1846, 

 married thrice, and died near Crasmere, June 

 8, Isii.V The most valuable of In- books were 

 h'niiiiii IS'iraili Americana (4 vols. 18*20-37) and 

 Jr/il/ii/oloyif of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus and 

 I ,,,-< (i 844-48). There U a Life by the Rev. 

 .lo| m M'llraitli (1868). 



Kirliarilsoii. SAMTKI., novelist, was born in 

 liiv.i in Di-iby-hire. Like Matthew Prior, he was 

 thf -mi of a joiner ; Imt unlike him, he mode no 

 effort to obscure his origin. 'My father,' he said, 

 was a very honest mini, descended from a family 

 of middling note. My mother wax also a good 

 woman, of a family not ungenteel.' His career is 

 a curious exemplification of the truth of that 

 Horatian precept which Thackeray chose for the 

 motto of Esniond. It preserved to the end the 

 characteristics of its outsetting. The man who was 

 afterwards tlic moralist of Salisbury Court was 

 as a lioy the ' Gravity' and ' Serious ' of his school- 

 fellows ; the novelist who iienned the interminable 

 epistles of Clarissa and Harriet Myron was as a 

 youth the favoured and indefatigable amanuensis 

 of half the girls in the neighbourhood, acquiring in 

 this artless office something of that strange know 

 b-d^c of the minuter mechanism of the feminine 

 mind which is so conspicuous a feature of his 

 genius. He says of himself that he hail only 

 'common school-learning ;' Imt he a|>|>ears to have 

 been at Christ's Hospital. In 1706, at the age of 

 sixteen, he was bound by his own wish to John 

 Wilile of Stationers' Hall, a printer, with whom he 

 served the usual period. Allington Wilde, whose 

 daughter he married, wasal-oa printer, but was quite 

 a distinct person from his master. From 1713 to 

 1719 he worked as a journeyman printer. In the 

 latter year he opened an establishment of his own 

 in the centre, and later in the north-west corner 

 ( No. 11 (of Salisbury Square, then Salisbury <'ourt. 

 Mi- pi inlin^r oll'ice and warehouses were in Blue 

 Hall Court, on the ea-t -M" of the Square. In a 

 sober, methodical way he continued to prosper. 

 perfecting his faculty for letter-writing in various 

 ways, ana serving the humbler needs of literature 

 by diligent compilation of prefaces, indexes, adver- 

 tisements, ami the like. He printed more than one 

 newspaper, ami by the favour of Mr Sj>eaker 

 ( In-low obtained the printing of the journals of the 

 House of Commons, twenty six volumes of which 

 pa--''d through his establishment. Then, in 174(1. 

 came the opportunity which transformed him into 

 a literary celebrity. To use his own words, he 

 accidentally slid into the writing of Pamela.' lie 

 was over fifty when two liookselling friends invited 

 him to prepare a volume of familiar letters 'in a 

 common style, on such subjects as might be of use 

 to those country readers who were unable to indite 

 for themselves.' He caught at the idea, super 

 adding another. ' Will it he any harm,' he said, 

 'in a piece you want to be written so low, if e 

 should instruct them how they should think and 

 act in common cases?' Hence sprung J'mnela,' 



{iiiblishcd in Novemlicr 1740. Ito title was an 

 'i-nrely as iu method: 'Pamela: or Virtue 

 Rewarded. In a series of familiar letters from 

 a beautiful young damsel to her parents. Pub- 

 lished in order to cultivate the principles of 



Mitue and religion in the mind of the youth of 

 both sexes. A narrative which has its foundation 

 in truth; and at the same time that it agreeably 

 entertains by a variety of curious and affecting 

 Incident*, U entirely divested of all those images 

 which, in too many pieces calculated for amii-i- 

 inent only, tend to int'ame tin- minds they should 

 instruct. The moral note is explicit enough on 

 the good printer's title-|>age ; but for all that 

 J'limelii is by no mean- m/ 111,11 m Jlii/i/iini. Its 

 vogue, in a coarser and minister age than ours, was 

 nevertheless, extraordinary. Not to have read of 

 Kichardson's exemplary heroine was ' as great a sign 

 of want of curiosity, a-s not to have seen the Flench 

 and Italian dancer-.' Divines extolled her from 

 their pulpits ; Pope declared she would do more good 

 than their discourses ; line ladies triumphantly ex- 

 hibited her popular chronicles at places of amuse- 

 ment ; and in remote country villages, when at last 

 she was happily manned, her rustic admirers set 

 the bells a-nnging. In February followed a second 

 edition ; a third succeeded in lurch, and a fourth 

 in May. (!rub Street, fastening promptly upon 

 this unexampled popularity, hastily put together 

 for sequel a fame/a in Ilii/li I, iff, which had the 

 unfortunate effect of seducing Richardson into two 

 supplementary volumes, now deservedly forgotten ; 

 and then Henrv Fielding fluttered the Salisbury 

 Court dovecote by producing what Richardson and 

 his coterie regarded as the ' lewd and ungenerous 

 engraftment* of Joseph Andrew*. Happily, how- 



rity, he s) dily 



character of 



ever, Iwth for Bich&ran 



discarded burlesque for the immor 

 Parson Abraham Adams. 



Eight years elapsed before Richardson published 

 another novel. But during this time, consoling 

 himself for the coarse sallies of the irreverent by the 

 'soft adulation' of a little circle, chiefly of the 

 gentler sex, who gathered round him in his sub- 

 urban home at Hammersmith, he continued, either 

 in his snug writing-closet or his summer bouse, to 

 work placidly at his masterpiece Clarissa ; or 

 the Adventures of a Young Latly, known generally 

 as Ctiirixxn llin-lnirr. Virtue, in this performance, 

 was not ' rewarded,' but ruined. The heroine is 

 nevertheless drawn with a tenacity of insight to 

 which Pamela could scarcely pretend ; and the 

 chief male character, that of Lovelace, though 

 more of an abstraction, is scarcely inferior. John- 

 son declared the book to be the first in the world 

 for its knowledge of the human heart; and even 

 Fielding did not refuse his tribute: 'Such sim 

 plicity, such manners, such deep penetration into 

 nature, such power to raise and alarm the passions, 

 few writers, either ancient or modern, have been 

 of (Jacobite ,lin->i<il . No. , r > ). Lesser 



voices swelled the chorus with greater energy, and 

 it was repeated across the Channel with (lallic 

 enthusiasm. The high-priest of sentiment, Diderot, 

 did not scruple to name its author with Homer and 

 F.uripidcs ; and as if to prove that this was no 

 momentary Anglomania, in our own day the poet 

 Alfred de Musset proclaimed it to be ' le premier 

 Ionian du moude. ' But from France also came its 

 compoctest condemnation. 'La nature,' said 

 l>'.\lemlert, 'est bonne a imiter, mais non pas 

 jusi|u'a 1'ennuL' 



Having drawn the ideal woman in Clarissa, 

 Richardson proceeded, some five years later, to 

 lirtray, in Sir Charles Grandison, the perfect man 

 ' the man of true honour. ' This is a work of much 

 greater ability than Pamela, but still far below 

 ( 'liirima. It has, moreover, no central story strong 

 enough to reconcile the reader to the prolix impec- 

 cability of its superfine hero, whom M. Taine, with 

 an unwonted Inn -i of critical levity, suggests should 

 l>e stuffed and canonised for his wearisome good 

 qualities. Besides a solitary essay in Johnson's 



