LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CLARISSA HARLOWE, VOLUME I. * HAD I NOT CAUGHT HOLD OF A PROP WHICH SUPPORTED THE MRS. LÆTITIA PILKINGTON Engraved by Hopwood from a drawing by Slater. AARON HILL xxviii Engraved by R. Newton from a drawing by G. Clint, A.R.A. "MR. SOLMES CAME IN BEFORE WE HAD DONE TEA. MY UNCLE ANTHONY I RESENTED HIM TO ME AS A GENTLEMAN HE HAD "HOW DO YOU THINK BELLA EMPLOYED HERSELF WHILE I WAS WRITING? WHY, PLAYING GENTLY UPON A HARPSICHORD RICHARDSON'S INFLUENCE Nothing is more interesting or instructive to the student of literary development than to notice how often the mightiest influences in literature are unconscious in their origin. The whole English Romantic movement, which shaped the literature of the nineteenth century, and which reached its first climax in Sir Walter Scott, began with a total absence of conscious aim and method. Such is the case also in the history of the sentimental novel in England. When, a half-century old, Samuel Richardson turned from his Complete-Letter-Writer to construct the history of Pamela, nothing could have been farther from his thoughts than the results that were finally accomplished from so unpretentious a beginning. The success of his novel astonished him, but to its far-reaching consequences he was naturally blind. A temporary fad, like the extraordinary vogue of Rudyard Kipling a few years ago, must pass entirely away before we can see what, if any, its results are to be. And Pamela was distinctly a fad. In the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1741, we read, "Several encomiums on a Series of Familiar Letters, published but last month, entitled PAMELA or Virtue Rewarded, came too late for this Magazine, and we believe there will be little Occasion for inserting them in our next; because a Second Edition will then come out to supply the Demands in the Country, it being 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". Such was the manner in which fashionable society |