for me; those were all the opportunities I had in my apprenticeship to carry it on. But this little incident I may mention; I took care that even my candle was of my own purchasing, that I might not, in the most trifling instance, make my master a sufferer, (and who used to call me the pillar of his house,) and not to disable myself by watching or sitting-up, to perform my duty to him in the day-time.”*

The correspondence betwixt Richardson and the gentleman who had so well selected an object of patronage, was voluminous; but at the untimely death of his friend, it was, at his particular desire, consigned to the flames.

Several years more were spent in the obscure drudgery of the printing-house ere Richardson took out his freedom, and set up as a Masterprinter. His talents for literature were soon discovered; and, in addition to his proper business, he used to oblige the booksellers, by furnishing them with prefaces, dedications, and such-like garnishing of the works submitted to his press. He printed several of the popular periodical papers of the day, and at length, through the interest of Mr Onslow, the Speaker, obtained the lucrative employment of printing the Journals of the House of Commons, by which he must have reaped considerable advantages, although he occasionally had to complain of delay of payment on the part of government.

Punctual in his engagements, and careful in the superintendence of his business, fortune, and respect, its sure accompaniment, began to flow in upon Richardson. In 1754, he was chosen Master of the Stationers' Company; and in 1760, he purchased a moiety of the patent of printer to the King, which seems to have added considerably to his revenue. He was now a man in very easy circumstances; and, besides his premises in Salisbury Court, he enjoyed the luxury of a villa, first at North-End, near Hammersmith, afterwards at Parsonsgreen.

Richardson was twice married; first to Allington Wilde, his mas

* Life of Richardson, vol. I. p. xli. xlii.

ter's daughter, and after her death, in 1731, to the sister of James Leake, bookseller, who survived her distinguished husband. He has made a feeling commemoration of the family misfortunes which he sustained, in a letter to Lady Bradshaigh. "I told you, madam, that I have been married twice; both times happily: you will guess so, as to my first, when I tell you that I cherish the memory of my lost wife to this hour and as to the second, when I assure you that I can do so without derogating from the merits of, or being disallowed by, my present, who speaks of her, on all occasions, as respectfully and affectionately as I do myself.

"By my first wife I had five sons and one daughter; some of them living, to be delightful prattlers, with all the appearances of sound health, lively in their features, and promising as to their minds; and the death of one of them, I doubt, accelerating, from grief, that of the otherwise laudably afflicted mother. I have had, by my present wife, five girls and one boy; I have buried of these the promising boy, and one girl four girls I have living, all at present very good; their mother a true and instructing mother to them.

"Thus have I lost six sons (all my sons) and two daughters, every one of which, to answer your question, I parted with with the utmost regret. Other heavy deprivations of friends, very near, and very dear, have I also suffered. I am very susceptible, I will venture to say, of impressions of this nature. A father, an honest, worthy father, I lost by the accident of a broken thigh, snapped by a sudden jirk, endeavouring to recover a slip passing through his own yard. My father, whom I attended in every stage of his last illness, I long mourned for. Two brothers, very dear to me, I lost abroad. A friend, more valuable than most brothers, was taken from me. No less than eleven affecting deaths in two years! My nerves were so affected with these repeated blows, that I have been forced, after trying the whole materia medica, and consulting many physicians, as the only palliative (not a remedy to be expected) to go into a regimen; and, for seven years past, have I forborne wine, and flesh, and fish; and, at this time, I and all my family are in mourning for a good sister, with whom neither I would

have parted, could I have had my choice. From these affecting dispensations, will you not allow me, madam, to remind an unthinking world, immersed in pleasures, what a life this is that they are so fond of, and to arm them against the affecting changes of it ?"*

But this amiable and excellent man was not deprived of the most pleasing exercise of his affections, notwithstanding the breaches which had been made among his offspring. Four daughters survived to render those duties which the affectionate temper of their father rendered peculiarly precious to him. Mary was married during her father's lifetime to Mr Ditcher, a respectable surgeon at Bath. His daughter Martha, who had been his principal amanuensis, became, after his decease, the wife of Edward Bridgen, Esq.; and Sarah married Mr Crowther, surgeon, in Boswell's Court. Anne, a woman of a most amiable disposition, but whose weak health had often alarmed the affection of her parents, survived, nevertheless, her sisters, as well as her parents. A nephew of Richardson paid him, in his declining years, the duties of a son, and assisted him in the conducting of his business, which concludes all it is necessary to say concerning the descendants and connections of this distinguished author.

The private life of Richardson has nothing to detain the biographer. We have mentioned the successive opportunities which cautiously, yet ably improved, led him to eminence in his highly respectable profession. He was unceasingly industrious; led astray by no idle views of speculation, and seduced by no temptations to premature expenditure. Industry brought independence, and, finally, wealth in its train; and that well-won fortune was husbanded with prudence, and expended with liberality. A kind and liberal master, he was eager to encourage his servants to persevere in the same course of patient labour by which he had himself attained fortune; and it is said to have been his common practice to hide half-a-crown among the types, that it might reward the diligence of the workman who should first be in the office in the morning. His hospitality was of the most unlimited, as well as the most

* Life of Richardson, vol. I. p. xlviii. xlix. 1.

judicious kind. One of his correspondents describes him as sitting at his door like an old patriarch, and inviting all who passed by to enter, and be refreshed;—and this, says Mrs Barbauld, "whether they brought with them the means of amusing their host, or only required his kind notice and that of his family." He was generous and benevolent to distressed authors, a class of men with whom his profession brought him into contact; and had occasion, more than once, to succour Dr Johnson during his days of poverty, and to assist his efforts to force himself into public notice. The domestic revolutions of his life, after mentioning the losses he had sustained in his family, may be almost summed up in two great events. He changed his villa, in which he indulged, like other wealthy citizens, from North-End to Parsons-Green; and his printing establishment, from the one side of Salisbury-Court to the other; which last alteration, he complains, did not meet Mrs Richardson's approbation.

If we look yet closer into Richardson's private life, (and who loves not to know the slightest particulars concerning a man of his genius?) we find so much to praise, and so very little deserving censure, that we almost think we are reading the description of one of the amiable characters he has drawn in his own works. A love of the human species, a desire to create happiness and to witness it; a life undisturbed by passion, and spent in doing good; pleasures which centered in elegant conversation, in bountiful hospitality, in the exchange of all the kindly intercourse of life, marked the worth and unsophisticated simplicity of the good man's character. He loved children, and knew the rare art of winning their attachment; for, partaking in that respect the sagacity of the canine race, they are not to be deceived by dissembled attention. A lady, who shared the hospitality of Richardson, and gives an excellent account of the internal regulation of his virtuous and orderly family, remembers creeping to his knee, and hanging on his words, as well as the goodnature with which he backed her petitions, to be permitted to remain a little longer when she was summoned to bed, and his becoming her guarantee, that she would not require the servant's assistance to put her to bed, and to extinguish the candle. Tri

fling as these recollections may seem, they are pleasing proofs that the author of Clarissa was, in private life, the mild good man which we wish to suppose him.

The predominant failing of Richardson seems certainly to have been vanity-vanity naturally excited by his great and unparalleled popularity at home and abroad, and by the continual and concentered admiration of the circle in which he lived. Such a weakness finds root in the mind of every one who has obtained general applause, but Richardson fostered and indulged its growth, which a man of firmer character would have crushed and restrained. The cup of Circe converted men into beasts; and that of praise, when deeply and eagerly drained, seldom fails to make wise men in some degree fools. There seems to have been a want of masculine firmness in Richardson's habits of thinking, which combined with his natural tenderness of heart in inducing him to prefer the society of women; and women, from the quickness of their feelings, as well as their natural desire to please, are always the admirers, or rather the idolaters, of genius, and generally its willing flatterers. Richardson was in the daily habit of seeing, conversing, and corresponding with many of the fair sex; and the unvaried, and, it would seem, the inexhaustible theme, was his own writings. Hence, Johnson, whose loftier pride never suffered him to cherish the meaner foible of vanity, has passed upon Richardson, after a just tribute to his worth, the severe sentence recorded by Boswell:-"I only remember that he expressed a high value for his talents and virtues: But that his perpetual study was to ward off petty inconveniences, and to procure petty pleasures; that his love of continual superiority was such, that he took care always to be surrounded by women, who listened to him implicitly, and did not venture to contradict his opinions; and that his desire of distinction was so great, that he used to give large vails to Speaker Onslow's servants, that they might treat him with respect." An anecdote, which seems

Life of Richardson, vol. I. p. clxxi. clxxii.-This character was given at the house of a venerable Scottish Judge, now no more, who was so great an admirer of Sir Charles Grandison, that he was said to read that work over once every year in the course of his life.