make him, a quarter of a century later, the prototype of Robert Lovelace. This surely can be no more than the exaggeration of the desire which must find an original for everything. That certain lines of Pope's character of Wharton in the Epistle to Lord Cobham, and notably

"Women and Fools must like him or he dies "-

might be applied to Clarissa's betrayer, is no doubt true; but they might also be applied with equal truth to Rowe's Lothario (a much more likely model for Lovelace!) or to the Don Juan of Molière. When Richardson drew his cold-blooded hero, Wharton had been dead for seventeen years; and he himself had been studying human nature in too many places to need to fall back upon his recollections of a meteoric rake of quality, whom he may never even have encountered in the flesh. For what knowledge does the anonymous setter-up of treasonable political matter obtain of the writer who prepares the "copy"! One has only to turn to the life of another, though perhaps humbler, contemporary printer, Thomas Gent of York, to note with what meticulous precautions, about this very time, this same Bishop of Rochester to whom reference. has been made, surrounded the issue of a private pamphlet. Gent never knew who his employer was, until he afterwards recognised him on his way to the Tower as a prisoner.

In 1724 Richardson moved from Fleet Street into Salisbury Square, or, as it was then called, Salisbury Court, where he occupied a house "in the centre" of the Court now no longer in existence. Oddly enough the next circumstance to be recorded in

his career comes from the records of the abovementioned Thomas Gent. "After this," says Gent, speaking of a date following the return of George I. from Hanover in 1724, "Mr. Woodfall [i.e. the first of that name] was so kind [as] to recommend me to the ingenious Mr. Richardson, in Salisbury Court; with whom I staid to finish his part of the Dictionary which he had from the booksellers, composed of English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew." But Richardson found a better friend than either Wharton or Henry Woodfall in Arthur Onslow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, through whom he was employed to print the Journals of the House, a first instalment of twenty-six volumes of which he duly completed. Mr. Onslow seems to have had a benevolent regard for his protégé, and frequently entertained him at that pleasant Ember or Imber Court by the Mole at Thames Ditton, which he had acquired in 1720 on his marriage to Miss Ann Bridges. But, as Mrs. Barbauld pertinently observes, "polite regards are sometimes more easily obtained than money from the court end of the town. Mr. R. did not find this branch of his business the one which yielded him the quickest returns. He thus writes to his friend Aaron Hill: As to my silence, I have been at one time exceedingly busy in getting ready some volumes of Journals, to entitle myself to a payment which yet I never had, no, not to the value of a shilling, though the debt is upwards of three thousand pounds, and though I have pressed for it, and been excessively pressed for the want of it."" His position as Printer of the Journals of the House of Commons must, nevertheless, have brought him work in other ways.

On the 25th January 1731, Martha Richardson died, her death being hastened by the death of one of her children, perhaps the boy William, who lived to be four years old. In the following year Richardson married Elizabeth Leake, sister of James Leake, a bookseller at Bath, and no doubt the "J. Leake," whose name appears, with those of Rivington and John Osborn, on the title-page of the book known generally as the Familiar Letters. By his second wife he had several daughters, four of whom, Mary, Martha, Anne, and Sarah, as will be seen hereafter, survived their father. A "promising boy," Samuel, was born in 1739 and died in 1740. Richardson seems to have been an affectionate father, and his many bereavements did not tend to improve his health, or diminish his nervous sensibility. From 1736 to 1737 he was the printer of the Daily Journal, and in 1738 of the Daily Gazetteer. In the former of these years he was also appointed printer to a so-called "Society for the Encouragement of Learning," which, among other things, was intended to make authors independent of publishers. But even a ducal President, titled Trustees, and a paid Secretary were ineffectual to float the enterprise, and it eventually collapsed for want of a Besant to keep it going.

"He, they say, who is not handsome by Twenty, strong by Thirty, wise by Forty, rich by Fifty, will never be either handsome, strong, wise, or rich." Thus writes Richardson at p. 92 of the Familiar Letters. At this date, the question of strength and good looks had, in his case, long been settled. He was a weakly and nervous valetudinarian, already wedded to a special diet. As to wisdom, he had learned a good deal of prudence and common sense in his business; and in

spite of deferred Government payments, must have been, at fifty, his age in 1739, well-to-do and comfortable as to his means. Already he had begun, after the fashion of the prosperous citizens of his day, to indulge himself with a country residence, to which, like the tradesman in No. xxxiii. of the Connoisseur, he retired from Saturday to Monday. One of the unpublished letters addressed to him in July 1736, speaks of a retreat called Corney House, which may have been a house of that name by the waterside at Chiswick, and may also have been in some other suburb. But in 1739 he took a lease of part of another house, then in the open country, close to Hammersmith turnpike; and now known as No. 111 (formerly No. 49), The Grange, North End Road, Fulham. The Grange had originally been built about 1714 by a certain John, or Justice Smith, on the site of two cottages dating from the time of Charles II. It consisted of two houses, in the northernmost of which Justice Smith lived until his death in 1725, at which time the other, or south house, was occupied jointly by the Countess of Ranelagh (widow of the first Earl of Ranelagh) and a Mr. Samuel Vanderplank, often mentioned in Richardson's letters. Richardson,

as already stated, took up his residence in the North House in 1739. It was well arranged and roomy (he says in one of his letters that he could make ten beds, and give guests a separate parlour); and, as to its environment, naturally far less hedged in by buildings than it is at present. The annual rent he paid to Mr. Vanderplank was twenty-five pounds. At the back of the house was a pleasant garden, which contained an historical grotto or summer-house, where, as

we shall see, he was wont to work and read his productions to his admirers. Of this grotto no trace is now left, and it is supposed to have disappeared in 1801. In vol. iv. of Mrs. Barbauld's edition of the correspondence, there is an engraving of the twin houses. by T. Richards, which shows them as they looked about 1800, but alterations in the windows, the addition of a balcony, and the facing of the northern portion with stucco have made it difficult to reconcile its past with its present appearance. The name, The Grange, dates from 1836. What its first name was, and what especially was its name when, from 1739 to 1754, its tenant was Richardson, have not been ascertained. One of the novelist's correspondents, a Mr. Reich, of Leipzig - who must have visited him towards the close of his tenancy, since he refers to Sir Charles Grandison as already existent speaks of it as "Selby House"; but as this is the house in which the Miss Byron of the novel spent her girlhood, it is doubtful whether it was more than a playful appellation. Such as it was, however, the northern half of The Grange was Richardson's country home for fifteen years, or until he moved to Parson's Green. He kept one maid-servant there all the year round; he sent others to stay there when they were out of health; and as he grew older, he lived there himself for much longer periods than the mere week-ends which had at first been the limits of his escape from the bustle of Salisbury Court.1

1 The Grange, after other tenants, was, from 1867 to 1898, the residence of Sir E. Burne-Jones, Bart., the distinguished painter. It is now in the occupation of Mr. Fairfax Murray. Many of the above particulars as to the history of the house are derived from vol. ii. of the exhaustive Fulham Old and New of Mr. Charles James Feret, 1900.

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