1895, Nov, 27, Fire in the Estate Pudist. Or, Forre Forrey BOUND. JUN 20 1910 HARVARD LONDON: SAMUEL RICHARDSON. (ОСТОВЕК, 1804.) The Correspondence of SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison; selected from the original Manuscripts bequeathed to his Family. To which are prefixed, a Biographical Account of that Author, and Observations on his Writings. By ANNA LÆTITIA BARBAULD. 6 vols. 8vo. Phillips, London: 1804. THE public has great reason to be satisfied, we think, with Mrs. Barbauld's share in this publication. She has contributed a very well written Introduction; and she has suppressed about twice as many letters as are now presented to our consideration. Favourably as we are disposed to think of all for which she is directly responsible, the perusal of the whole six volumes has fully convinced us that we are even more indebted to her forbearance than to her bounty. The fair biographer unquestionably possesses very considerable talents, and exercises her powers of writing with singular judgment and propriety. Many of her observations are acute and striking, and several of them very fine and delicate. Yet this is not, perhaps, the general character of her genius; and it must be acknowledged, that she has a tone and manner which is something formal and heavy; that she occasionally delivers trite and obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity of important discoveries, and sometimes attempts to exalt and magnify her subject by a very clumsy kind of declamation. With all those defects, however, we think the life and observations have so much substantial merit, that most readers will agree with us in thinking that they are worth much more than all the rest of the publication. She sets off indeed with a sort of formal dissertation upon novels and romances in general; and, after obligingly recapitulating the whole history of this branch of literature, from the Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus to the Gil Blas and Nouvelle Heloise of modern times, she proceeds to distinguish these performances into three several classes, according to the mode and form of narration adopted by the author. The first, she is pleased to inform us, is the narrative or epic form, in which the whole story is put into the mouth of the author, who is supposed, like the Muse, to know every thing, and is not obliged to give any account of the sources of his information; the second is that in which the hero relates his own adventures; and the third is that of epistolary correspondence, where all the agents in the drama successively narrate the incidents in which they are principally concerned. It was with Richardson, Mrs. Barbauld then informs us, that this last mode of novel writing originated; and she enters into a critical examination of its advantages and disadvantages, and of the comparative probability of a person despatching a narrative of every interesting incident or conversation in his life to his friends by the post, and of his sitting down, after his adventures are concluded, to give a particular account of them to the public. CLASSES C NOVELS. There is something rather childish, we think, in all this investigation; and the problem of comparative probability seems to be stated purely for the pleasure of the solution. No reader was ever disturbed, in the middle of an interesting story, by any scruple about the means or the inducements which the narrator may be presumed to have had for telling it. While he is engaged with the story, such an inquiry never suggests itself; and when it is suggested, he recollects that the whole is a fiction, invented by the author for his amusement, and that the best way of communicating it must be that by which he is most interested. and least fatigued. To us it appears very obvious, that the first of the three modes, or the author's own narrative, is by far the most eligible; and for this plain reason, that it lays him under much less restraint than either of the other two. He can introduce a letter or a story whenever he finds it convenient, and can make use of the dramatic or conversational style as often as the subject requires it. In epistolary writing there must be a great deal of repetition and egotism; and we must submit, as on the stage, to the intolerable burden of an insipid confidant, with whose admiration of the hero's epistles the reader may not always be disposed to sympathise. There is one species of novel indeed (but only one) to which the epistolary style is peculiarly adapted; that is, the novel in which the whole interest depends, not upon the adventures, but on the characters of the persons represented, and in which the story is of very subordinate importance, and only serves as an occasion to draw forth the sentiments and feelings of the agents. The Heloise of Rousseau may be considered as the model of this species of writing; and Mrs. Barbauld B certainly overlooked this obvious distinction, when s asserted that the author of that extraordinary work is to be reckoned among the imitators of Richardson. In the Heloise there is scarcely any narrative at all; and the interest may be said to consist altogether in the eloquent expression of fine sentiments and exalted passion. All Richardson's novels, on the other hand, are substantially narrative; and the letters of most of his characters contain little more than a minute journal of the conversations and transactions in which they were successively engaged. The style of Richardson might be perfectly copied, though the epistolary form were to be dropped; but no imitation of the Heloise could be recognised, if it were not in the shape of letters. After finishing her discourse upon Novels, Mrs. Barbauld proceeds to lay before her readers some account of the life and performances of Richardson. The biography is very scanty, and contains nothing that can be thought very interesting. He was the son of a joiner in Derbyshire; but always avoided mentioning the town in which he was born. He was intended at first for the Church; but his father, finding that the expense of his education would be too heavy, at last bound him apprentice to a printer. He never was acquainted with any language but his own. From his childhood he was remarkable for invention, and was famous among his schoolfellows for amusing them with tales and stories which he composed extempore, and usually rendered, even at that early age, the vehicle of some useful moral. He was constitutionally shy and bashful; and instead of mixing with his companions in noisy sports and exercises, he used to read and converse with the sedate |