Story were intended to be carried further." Richardson answers in four pages of minute type, and with the most admirable gravity. The story will not be continued, he says. As to its ending abruptly, he points out that, while Pamela was supposed to have taken place within thirty, and Clarissa within twenty years of their respective publications, Sir Charles Grandison is comparatively up to date, or, in less modern phrase, is brought down "pretty near to the present time" [1754]. It is, therefore, quite out of the question to carry the fortunes of the characters further at present, with any regard to probability. Lady Grandison, for instance, cannot go to Italy to visit the Porrettas before her lying-in,-"the heir of Sir Charles Grandison must not be needlessly, or for a compliment, exposed to dangers and difficulties;" Clementina, "her malady not returning," cannot marry the Count of Belvedere for a year, and so forth. As to the other characters, he has, he contends, done quite enough on their behalf. Everybody who deserves well, is rewarded; for the rest, "who cares for them?" With respect to the portrayal of Sir Charles in the parental character, he has entered into that subject pretty largely in Pamela, and it is besides easy to see that Sir Charles would be an excellent father of a family. "Permit me further to observe," he says finally, "that the conclusion of a single story is indeed generally some great and decisive event; as a Death or a Marriage: But in scenes of life carried down nearly to the present

1 The writer was not alone in this inquiry. "The Gottenburg translators" - says Mrs. Barbauld the work, supposing it incomplete." cxxxii.).

"sent for the rest of (Correspondence, 1804,

M

time, and in which a variety of interesting characters is introduced; all events cannot be decided, unless as in the History of Tom Thumb the Great [Fielding again!], all the actors are killed in the last scene; since persons presumed to be still living, must be supposed liable to the various turns of human affairs. All that can be expected therefore in such a work, if its ending is proposed to afford the most complete scene of felicity of which human life is capable, must be to leave the principal characters happy, and the rest with fair prospects of being so."

The other letter is headed- "Answer to a Letter from a Friend, who had objected to Sir Charles Grandison's Offer to allow his Daughters by Lady Clementina, had his Marriage with her taken Effect, to be educated Roman Catholics." Seeing the marriage never came to pass even in fiction, it might perhaps be thought that discussion on this question was superfluous, to say nothing of the fact that in his concluding Note to the novel, the author had seemed to deprecate, if not absolutely decline, any controversy of the kind. But as he received several anonymous letters to the effect that he should have exposed the iniquity of such compromise, he felt bound (and he was never loth) to make some reply. His defence, as usual, is not an entirely satisfactory one, inasmuch as he appears to be opposed to the compromise suggested. But he points out that something was surrendered by the other side as well; and also that, although the circumstances of the case compelled his hero "to make some concessions, in compassion to an excellent woman, who laboured under a disorder of mind on his account," his action was not countenanced by his judgment. Indeed, he implies

that he [Sir Charles] "thought himself not unhappy that a marriage, to be entered into upon such terms, took not effect; as well as that it was owing to Clementina herself, and not to him, that it did not; frequent as such compromises are in marriage-treaties between people of different persuasions." Whether this answer satisfied his correspondents, all of whom were laudably zealous for the interests of the Protestant cause, may be doubted. There is no doubt, however, that Richardson valued himself not a little, as Mrs. Barbauld says, upon his nice conduct of this matter, and particularly upon his liberality to the Catholic religion. One minor point in connection with this letter, is its citation of an expression which was later to become a household word. The phrase, "a Citizen of the World," is as old as Bacon's Essays; but it is interesting to find it in Richardson only a few years before Goldsmith made it the title of his collected "Chinese Letters." Sir Charles Grandison, says Lucy Selby, "is, in the noblest sense, a Citizen of the World."

By Richardson's admirers, Sir Charles Grandison was welcomed with an applause as great as that accorded to Pamela and Clarissa. Mr. Urban, reviewing the first four volumes only, but apparently with full knowledge of the whole, while admitting that the events and adventures were few, and that the narrative stood still too long, is eloquent as to their other merits. "All the recesses of the human heart are explored, and its whole texture unfolded. Such a knowledge of the polite world, of men and manners, may be acquired from an attentive perusal of this work as may in a great measure supply the place of the tutor and boarding-school. Young persons may learn how to

act in all the important conjunctures, and how to behave gracefully, properly, and politely, in all the common occurrences of life." His private correspond-] ents use stronger language. "I look upon you," says Dr. Young, who, it must be remembered, was the later author of The Centaur not Fabulous, "as a peculiar instrument of Providence, adjusted to the peculiar exigence of the times; in which all would be fine gentlemen, and only are at a loss to know what that means." Cibber rants as usual, and drags in Pope. "Since I was born I cannot say, that in all my reading of ancients and moderns, I ever met with such variety of entertainment; so much goodness of heart, and so indefatigable a capacity to give proofs of it. . . I had rather have the fame that your amiable zeal for it [virtue] deserves, than be preferred as a poet to a Pope, or his Homer." 1 "He [Sir Charles] shall be my master," says Mr. Edwards of Turrick; "and it will be my own very great fault, if I am not better for his lessons to the last day of my life." There is much more to the same effect in other letters, from which it is manifest that some of Richardson's readers of 1754 did not value their Grandison for the story alone. Perhaps the oddest example of this is contained in a letter included among the miscellaneous correspondence at South Kensington, and purporting to come from an

1 Cibber's language is extravagant; but it has been made worse than it deserves. In one of his letters to Richardson, of which Mrs. Barbauld prints a facsimile in her sixth volume, he expresses his desire to come" and nibble upon a bit more of Miss Byron, upon whom he has already made "a delicious meal." In the text the printers have substituted for "nibble" another and less appropriate word, with which he is usually, and unfairly, credited.

imprisoned debtor. Under date of 2nd May 1754, one "B. F." writes to Richardson to announce his conversion from libertinism, owing to the improving influence of Sir Charles Grandison, and the salutary monition conveyed by the dreadful catastrophe of Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. What five years' incarceration, with all its attendant want and indigence, could not effect, Richardson's "good man " has achieved; and for the future, virtue and honour are to be the standard and governor of all the writer's actions. This ingenuous effusion may, of course, have been bond fide. But, in all probability, it was speedily followed by some liberal gratuity from the fluttered and flattered author, which, as speedily, went the way of that guinea thoughtfully despatched every Monday by his friends. to another enforced resident in the Fleet Liberties, Mr. Richard Savage, by whom, as Johnson assures us, it was "commonly spent before the next Morning."

In the first of the two letters upon the subject of Sir Charles Grandison, to which reference has recently been made, Richardson states that the delay in issuing his final volume a delay which had caused some persons to imagine that "marvellous events, and violent catastrophes, were preparing" was occasioned "by the treatment I met with from Dublin." He has himself explained these circumstances in a pamphlet issued in September 1753, with the title, The Case of Samuel Richardson, of London, Printer, on the Invasion of his Property in the History of Sir Charles Grandison, before Publication, by certain Booksellers in Dublin. He had arranged with George Faulkner, the Dublin Bookseller, and friend of Swift, to take sheets of the work to be set up, and printed in Dublin. He had been