people; and I would rather make them my friends by indulging them in it, than my enemies, by endeavouring, and that to no purpose, to undeceive them.

There are little attentions, likewise, which are infinitely engaging, and which sensibly affect that degree of pride and self-love which is inseparable from human nature; as they are unquestionable proofs of the regard and consideration which we have for the person to whom we pay them. As for example, to observe the little habits, the likings, the antipathies, and the tastes of those whom we would gain; and then take care to provide them with the one, and to secure them from the other, giving them genteelly to understand, that you had observed they liked such a dish, or such a room, for which reason you had prepared it or, on the contrary, that having observed they had an aversion to such a dish, a dislike to such a person, &c., you had taken care to avoid presenting them. Such attention to such trifles flatters self-love much more than greater things, as it makes people think themselves almost the only objects of your thoughts and

care.

These are some of the arcana's necessary for your initiation in the great society of the world. I wish I had known them better at your age; I have paid the price of three-and-fifty years for them, and shall not grudge it, if you reap the advantage. Adieu.

Personal Dignity.

There is a certain dignity of manners absolutely necessary to make even the most valuable character either respected or respectable.

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate familiarity will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man. Indiscriminate familiarity either offends your superiors, or else dubs you their dependent and led captain. It gives your inferiors just but troublesome and improper claims of equality. A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit. Whoever is admitted or sought for in company upon any other account than that of his merit and manners is never respected there, but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we will ask another, because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever is bade (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.

This dignity of manners which I recommend so much to you, is not only as different from pride as true courage is from blustering, or true wit from joking, but is absolutely inconsistent with it; for nothing vilifies and degrades more than pride. The pretensions of the proud man are oftener treated with sneer and contempt than with indignation; as we offer ridiculously too little to a tradesman who asks ridiculously too much for his goods; but we do not haggle with one who only asks a just and reasonable price.

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate

disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity.

Vulgar, low expressions, awkward motions and address, vilify, as they imply either a very low turn of mind, or low education and low company.

Frivolous curiosity about trifles and a laborious attention to little objects, which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man; who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz, very sagaciously, marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still.

A certain degree of exterior seriousness in looks and motions gives dignity without excluding wit and decent cheerfulness, which are always serious themselves. A constant smirk upon the face and a whiffling activity of the body are strong indications of futility. Whoever is in a hurry shews that the thing he is about is too big for him. Haste and hurry are very different things.

Detached Thoughts.

Men who converse only with women are frivolous, effeminate puppies, and those who never converse with them are bears.

The desire of being pleased is universal. The desire of pleasing should be so too. Misers are not so much blamed for being misers as envied for being rich.

Dissimulation to a certain degree is as necessary in business as clothes are in the common intercourse of life; and a man would be as imprudent who should exhibit his inside naked, as he would be indecent if he produced his outside so.

Hymen comes whenever he is called, but Love only when he pleases.

An abject flatterer has a worse opinion of others, and, if possible, of himself, than he ought to have.

A woman will be implicitly governed by the man whom she is in love with, but will not be directed by the man whom she esteems the most. The former is the result of passion, which is her character; the latter must be the effect of reasoning, which is by no means of the feminine gender.

The best moral virtues are those of which the vulgar are, perhaps, the best judges.

A fool never has thought, a madman has lost it; and an absent man is for the time without it.

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.

In spite of his courtly accomplishments, Chesterfield was of unimposing presence and rather distinctly plain-looking. Some of his other correspondence, memoirs, speeches, essays, and contributions to the press were published in two volumes in 1777. All the miscellaneous works appeared in four volumes in 1779. Lord Mahon (afterwards Earl Stanhope) published the Letters and other pieces in five volumes in 1845-53, and Mr Bradshaw in three volumes in 1892. And the whole series of two hundred and thirty-six letters written to the Earl's godson and successor were published in 1890 by Lord Carnarvon. Oddly enough the godson, like the son, was ill qualified to profit by Chesterfield's counsel. He was good-natured and shrewd, fond of field sports and a country life, and rather decidedly defective in breeding. Another edition of the Letters by Mr C. Strachey appeared in 1901. Innumerable selections from the Letters have been published not merely in English, but in Dutch, German, and Spanish. Sainte-Beuve's Critical Essay on Chesterfield (Eng. trans. 1870), W. Ernst Browning's Wit and Wisdom of Lord Chesterfield (1874) and his Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield (1893), and Churton Collins's Essays and Studies (1895).

See

Samuel Richardson.

From some unexplained circumstance, which certainly cannot be the lack of material, since there are no fewer than six huge volumes of his immoderate epistles in the Forster collection at South Kensington, Richardson has not hitherto found a place in any of the numerous series of short biographies. Until recently, the lengthy memoir which Mrs A. L. Barbauld prefixed in 1804 to her selection (also in six volumes) of his letters, remained the chief authority for his life; but in 1900 a careful biographical and critical study was published by Miss C. L. Thomson. Richardson's father, like Prior's, was a joiner; 'a very honest man (says his son), descended of a

family of middling note, in the County of Surrey;' his mother, a good woman, of a family not ungenteel.' At the time of the Monmouth rebellion the elder Richardson retired to Derbyshire, and here in 1689 Samuel Richardson was born. He was at first designed for the Church, but

his city residence, he had a country box at North End, Fulham, which he occupied from 1739, or earlier, to 1754, when he moved to Parson's Green. His three novels, the last of which was completed early in 1754 by the issue of the final volumes, were therefore written before he quitted North End. At Parson's Green, on the 4th July 1761, he died, and was buried in the middle aisle of St Bride's, Fleet Street, near the pulpit. Such a career, so laborious, so methodical, so monotonous, is not usually found to be fertile in incident; and the story of Richardson is the story of his works, the insensible preparation for which began betimes. As a child he was a letter-writer, and even a moral letter-writer. One of his schoolmates invited him,

He

means were wanting; and, with nothing more than 'common school learning,' he began life in 1706 as a printer's apprentice, his master being Mr John Wilde of Aldersgate Street. had selected this calling, he tells us, because he thought it would gratify his thirst for reading. In due time he became a compositor and corrector of the press, married, set up for himself (1719), printed newspapers, wrote 'honest dedications' and prefaces for the booksellers, and was made successively Printer of the Journals of the House of Commons, Master of the Stationers' Company, and finally King's Law Printer. His first London place of business was in Fleet Street itself. Afterwards he moved to Salisbury Square (then Court), where his last house (now demolished) was at No. 11, in the north-west corner, and his offices in the present Bell's Buildings. Besides

at a very early age, to attempt the history of a servant-man (virtuous) who married his young mistress; and before he was eleven he had spontaneously addressed a hortatory epistle to a backbiting widow of near fifty. His gift with the pen made him the chosen and willing scribe of the young women of the neighbourhood, for whose correspondence with their sweethearts he frequently supplied not only the words but the sentiments. 'I cannot tell you what to write,' said one impulsive girl, with her heart in her mouth, but you cannot write too kindly ;' and it is manifest that tasks of this sort must have greatly aided his minute insight into feminine character. He continued his habit, when he became a printer's apprentice, by a copious correspondence with an unnamed gentleman of similar tastes, who, 'had he lived, intended high things' for his young friend. At last, in 1739, when he was fifty, Messrs Rivington & Osborn, who had already made use of his pen, proposed to him to compile a kind of model letter-writer for the use of those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves.' Two or three of the epistles prepared for this purpose suggested

a separate story. 'And hence,' in the writer's own words, 'sprung Pamela!

Virtue Rewarded, the second title of Pamela, (whose name, by the way, is borrowed from Sidney's Arcadia), sufficiently indicates the object. of the book. But the precise author added further explanatory details. It was, he said, 'a series of familiar letters from a beautiful young damsel to her parents, published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the youth of both sexes.' It was besides 'a narrative which had its foundation in truth and nature; and, at the same time that it agreeably entertained by a variety of curious and affecting incidents, was entirely divested of all those images which, in too many pieces, calculated for amusement only, tend to inflame the minds they should instruct.' As to these last pretensions, it is possible that the modern reader, like the excellent Dr Watts, may have his doubts; but there can be no doubt as to the success of the book. Issued in two volumes in November 1740, by February it had reached a second edition, to be followed by a third in March, and a fourth in May. The Gentleman's Magazine, in a rapture of admiration, declared that it was '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 Southwark clergyman extolled it from the pulpit; the great Mr Pope was alleged to have said that it would 'do more good than many volumes of sermons,' and profaner persons went as far as to compare it with the Bible. Fine ladies at public gardens (Mrs Barbauld says Ranelagh, but Ranelagh was not opened) held up the popular tomes to one another 'to shew they had got the book that every one was talking of.' In short, its vogue was undeniable. It interested; it held the reader; it dealt with existing men and women; and it was as different as possible from the "huge folios of inanity,' the Clelias and the Cassandras, which then constituted the light reading of the period. Those who examine it now, while thoroughly recognising the sincerity of its intention, will probably be repelled both by its manner and its morality. They will also conclude that the prolonged defence of the heroine's chastity smacks unpleasantly of expediency and calculation. But it is a peculiarity of the writer's minute and exasperating method that its cumulative effect is difficult to resist. Attracting at first insensibly, it gradually fascinates, and finally absorbs. Moreover, its patient analysis of motive is akin to genius, and its knowledge of the female heart extraordinary from the outset. The quotation from Horace which Fielding afterwards applied to the author of Clarissa is already true of the author of this earlier book upon which he built up his own brilliant reputation :

Pectus inaniter angit,
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet
Ut Magus.

(HOR. EPIST. II. i.)

The story of Fielding's Joseph Andrews, and the connection with Pamela of what Richardson not unnaturally styled its 'lewd and ungenerous engraftment,' belongs, however, to our account of Fielding. Of the other works which owe their origin to Richardson's book, it is only necessary to recall the names. Pamela's Conduct in High Life, Pamela Censured, Anti-Pamela, The Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, &c., had nevertheless this effect, that they prompted the author to produce two supplementary volumes. 'Second parts are never good,' says the bachelor Samson Carrasco in Don Quixote; and these supplementary volumes, which appeared in December 1741, were no exception to the rule. They were dull, they were heavy, and they were 'less a continuation than the author's defence of himself.' But two years later he was already engaged upon a far greater work than Pamela, the book entitled Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady, of which the further object, as particularised upon the title-page, was to show 'the Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children in Relation to Marriage.' The first two volumes were published in November 1747; and in April and December of the following year the book was completed by five more. Notwithstanding its extent, it is Richardson's masterpiece. Its subject is not, like that of Pamela, 'virtue rewarded,' but rather virtue hunted down and outraged. That the author has rendered such a theme endurable through so many pages-which pages, moreover, cover only a period of eleven months-is an unanswerable proof of his genius. And not only is his heroine one of the most beautiful, as she is the noblest and purest of her sex; but her creator, whose strength hitherto had not lain in the delineation of men, has achieved, in her seducer, Lovelace (whether he built him on the lines of Rowe's Lothario or not), one of the most attractive villains of fiction. In addition to this, the book, as a narrative, straggles less than its predecessor; there is no wandering from the plain path of the story, and no dallying with details which retard the carrying onward of the climax. Unhasting, unresting, unrelenting, the author progresses to his foreseen conclusion with all the inexorable impetus of Fate. Clarissa, or (as it is popularly and erroneously called) Clarissa Harlowe, was, and deserved to be, a success. From persons of quality like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Hervey, down to the seamstress behind her Cheapside or Ludgate counter, the little printer's book set all England sobbing ; and the wave of sentiment spread from England to the Continent, where the sorrows of Richardson's heroine delighted the great critic Diderot, and stimulated the super-sensitised spirit of Rousseau. Jean-Jacques, who remembered Clarissa in his Nouvelle Héloise, declared that nothing equal to or approaching it had been written in any language; while Diderot placed its author on the

same shelf with Moses and Homer, Euripides and Sophocles. History, he said, painted individuals; Richardson had painted the human species. In Germany, Klopstock, Gellert, and Wieland added their voices to the chorus. The book was promptly translated into German, Dutch, and French-the French translator being none else than the Abbé Prévost, himself the author of another epochmaking novel, Manon Lescaut. Prévost had already translated the first two volumes of Pamela, and he also made a version of Grandison.

He dis

Six years elapsed before Richardson again came forward as a novelist. In Clarissa he had intended the portrait of a good woman; in his next and last work he essayed the (to him) more difficult task of depicting a good man-‘a man of true honour.' Sir Charles Grandison (whose surname has become synonymous with a certain frigid and formal politeness) represents the beau-ideal of a perfect gentleman and Christian. approves of duelling as fervently as Steele, declines to dock the tails of his horses, and comports himself generally, on all occasions, including the Macheath-like dilemma of loving two ladies at once, with a most edifying discretion. But, although he is drawn with strokes as minute and patient, he never quite 'comes off' in the same way as Clarissa. He is too superfine, too courteous, too impeccable for 'human nature's daily food;' and one can understand, and even excuse, the burst of unwonted levity with which M. Taine eventually dismisses him: 'He is great, he is generous, he is delicate, he is pious, he is irreproachable; he has never done a dirty action or been betrayed into a false gesture. His conscience and his wig are intact. So be it. He shall be canonised and stuffed.' But if the hero of the book never attains to the faultless monsterhood at which the author aimed, in the feminine characters, Clementina, Harriet Byron, Charlotte Grandison, and so forth, he is again at his best. And though Sir Charles Grandison does not equal Clarissa, it is immeasurably superior to Pamela.

Besides the volume of model letters with which Pamela originated, a pamphlet dealing with the treatment he had experienced at the hands of the Dublin booksellers, and a paper in the Rambler (No. 97, on 'Virtuous Courtship'), in the introductory sentence to which Johnson describes him as an author who had 'enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue,' Richardson made no further contributions to literature of any import

substitute for equitation, the chamber-hobby or horse. He quitted London rarely, and then got no farther than Bath or Tunbridge Wells, where he might be seen in his flaxen wig, furtively shuffling along the side-walks, one hand in his bosom, the other at his chin or grasping his cane-head beneath his coat-tails, shyly distrustful of strangers, but brightening into a fluttered benignity upon the approach of Miss Highmore, Miss Fielding, Miss Mulso, Miss Talbot, Miss Collier, or some other member of the little consistory of feminine flatterers whom he called 'my ladies.'

His three novels, as already stated, belong to his residence at North End, which seems at one time to have been known, either actually or familiarly, as Selby House (Corr. i. clxvi.), after the Selby House' in Grandison. His favourite writing-place was a grotto or arbour in the middle of the garden at the back, where he had a seat with an inkhorn on the side. He has also an ink-pot let into the handle of his chair in Highmore's portrait. It was his practice to write his letters, either feigned or real, upon a little board which he held in his hand, and this is shown in another picture by Mason Chamberlin, which has been engraved. Some of his work must have been done at Salisbury Court; but it is probable that the greater part of Clarissa and Grandison had its birth in the grotto at North End. To this, says Mrs Barbauld, he used to retreat in the morning 'before the family were up; and, when they met at breakfast, he communicated the progress of his story, which, by that means, had every day a fresh and lively interest. Then began the criticisms, the pleadings, for Harriet Byron or Clementina; every turn and every incident was eagerly canvassed, and the author enjoyed the benefit of knowing beforehand how his situations would strike.' One of these sessions, which sometimes took place in the grotto itself, is depicted in a little sketch by Miss Highmore, where Richardson is shown reading the manuscript of Grandison to a circle of friends. These readings must have been invaluable to him in shaping and modifying the course of his story. They must also be responsible, in some measure, for its exceptional length, if, as he told Young, he was apt to add three pages for every one that he retrenched. But his prolixity was innate. It was a part of his minute method, and it is also part of his strength. 'You have,' said Aaron Hill, who tried vainly to abridge him, 'formed a style ... where verbosity becomes a virtue; because, in pictures which you draw with such a skilful negligence, redundance but conveys resemblance; and to contract the strokes would be to spoil the likeness.' This is the verdict of an admirer; but it is true. Richardson's style is not good; it is colloquial, it is pedestrian, it is diffuse. But it is also direct and unaffected, and, what is more, in the much-debated metaphor of Buffon, it is the man himself-the sentient being, homme

même.

one.

Pamela in Church.

Yesterday [Sunday] we set out, attended by John, Abraham, Benjamin, and Isaac, in fine new liveries, in the best chariot, which had been new cleaned and lined, and new-harnessed; so that it looked like a quite new But I had no arms to quarter with my dear lord and master's, though he jocularly, upon my taking notice of my obscurity, said that he had a good mind to have the olive-branch, which would allude to his hopes, quartered for mine. I was dressed in the suit I mentioned, of white, flowered with silver, and a rich head, and the diamond necklace, ear-rings, &c. I also mentioned before. And my dear sir, in a fine laced silk waistcoat, of blue paduasoy, and his coat a pearlcoloured fine cloth, with gold buttons and button-holes, and lined with white silk; and he looked charmingly indeed. I said I was too fine, and would have laid aside some of the jewels: but he said it would be thought a slight to me from him, as his wife; and though, as I apprehended, it might be that people would talk as it was, yet he had rather they should say anything, than that I was not put upon an equal foot, as his wife, with any lady he might have married.

It seems the neighbouring gentry had expected us, and there was a great congregation, for (against my wish) we were a little of the latest; so that, as we walked up the church to his seat, we had abundance of gazers and whisperers. But my dear master behaved with so intrepid an air, and was so cheerful and complaisant to me, that he did credit to his kind choice, instead of shewing as if he was ashamed of it; and as I was resolved to busy my mind entirely with the duties of the day, my intentness on that occasion, and my thankfulness to God for his unspeakable mercies to me, so took up my thoughts, that I was much less concerned than I should otherwise have been at the gazings and whisperings of the ladies and gentlemen, as well as the rest of the congregation, whose eyes were all turned to our seat. When the sermon was ended, we staid the longer because the church should be pretty empty; but we found great numbers at the church-doors, and in the church-porch; and I had the pleasure of hearing many commendations, as well of my person as my dress and behaviour, and not one reflection or mark of disrespect. Mr Martin, who is single, Mr Chambers, Mr Arthur, and Mr Brooks, with their families, were all there; and the four gentlemen came up to us before we went into the chariot, and in a very kind and respectful manner complimented us both; and Mrs Arthur and Mrs Brooks were so kind as to wish me joy. And Mrs Brooks said: 'You sent Mr Brooks, madam, home t' other day quite charmed with a manner which you have convinced a thousand persons this day is natural to you.' 'You do me great honour, madam,' replied I; 'such a good lady's approbation must make me too sensible of my happiness.' My dear master handed me into the chariot, and stood talking with Sir Thomas Atkyns at the door of it (who was making him abundance of compliments, and is a very ceremonious gentleman, a little too extreme in that way), and I believe to familiarise me to the gazers, which concerned me a little; for I was dashed to hear the praises of the country-people, and to see how they crowded about the chariot. Several poor people begged my charity; and I beckoned John with my fan, and said: 'Divide in the further church-porch that money

to the poor, and let them come to-morrow morning to me, and I will give them something more if they don't importune me now.' So I gave him all the silver I had, which happened to be between twenty and thirty shillings; and this drew away from me their clamorous prayers for charity.

Mr Martin came up to me on the other side of the chariot, and leaned on the very door, while my master was talking to Sir Thomas, from whom he could not get away, and said: 'By all that's good, you have charmed the whole congregation. Not a soul but is full of your praises. My neighbour knew, better than anybody could tell him, how to choose for himself. Why,' said he, 'the Dean himself looked more upon you than his book!' 'O sir,' said I, 'you are very encouraging to a weak mind.' 'I vow,' said he, 'I say no more than is truth. I'd marry to-morrow if I was sure of meeting with a person of but one-half of the merit you have. You are,' continued he-'and 'tis not my way to praise too. much-an ornament to your sex, an honour to your spouse, and a credit to religion. Everybody is saying so,' added he, for you have by your piety edified the whole church.'

As he had done speaking, the Dean himself complimented me, that the behaviour of so worthy a lady would be very edifying to his congregation, and encouraging to himself. Sir,' said I, 'you are very kind: I hope I shall not behave unworthy of the good instructions I shall have the pleasure to receive from so worthy a divine.' He bowed and went on.

Sir Thomas then applied to me, my master stepping into the chariot, and said: 'I beg pardon, madam, for detaining your good spouse from you. But I have been saying he is the happiest man in the world.' I bowed to him; but I could have wished him further, to make me sit so in the notice of every one which, for all I could do, dashed me not a little.

Mr Martin said to my master: 'If you'll come to church every Sunday with your charming lady, I will never absent myself, and she 'll give a good example to all the neighbourhood.' 'O my dear sir,' said I to my master, 'you know not how much I am obliged to good Mr Martin: he has by his kind expression made me dare to look up with pleasure and gratitude.' Said my master: My dear love, I am very much obliged, as well as you, to my good friend Mr Martin.' And he said to him: We will constantly go to church, and to every other place where we can have the pleasure of seeing Mr Martin.' Mr Martin said: 'Gad, sir, you are a happy man, and I think your lady's example has made you more polite and handsome too than I ever knew you before, though we never thought you unpolite neither." And so he bowed, and went to his own chariot; and as we drove away, the people kindly blessed us, and called us a charming pair. (From Pamela's journal, in Pamela.)

The Death of Lovelace-Translation of a letter from F. J. De la Tour. To John Belford, Esq., near Soho Square, London.

TRENT, December 18, N.S. Sir, I have melancholy news to inform you of, by order of the Chevalier Lovelace. He showed me his letter to you before he sealed it, signifying that he was to meet the Chevalier Morden on the 15th. Wherefore, as the occasion of the meeting is so well known to you, I shall say nothing of it here.