LIFE

OF

SAMUEL RICHARDSON,

WITH

REMARKS ON HIS WRITINGS.

THERE is no period in the history of any country, at all advanced in elegant literature, in which fictitious adventures have not made a large part of the reading men have most delighted in. They have been grafted upon the actions of their heroes, they have been interwoven with their mythology, they have been moulded upon the manners of the age, and, in return, have influenced not a little the manners of the next generation, by the principles they have insinuated, and the sensibilities they have exercised

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exercised. A spirit of adventure, a high sense of honour, of martial glory, refined and romantic passion, sentimental delicacy, or all the melting sensibilities of humanity, have been, in their turns, inspired by this powerful engine, which takes so strong a hold on the fancy and the passions of young readers. Adorned with the embellishments of poetry, they produce the epic; more concentrated in the story, and exchanging narrative for action, they become dramatic ; allied with some great moral end, didactic, as in the Telemaque of Fenelon, and the Belisaire of Marmontel. They are often the vehicles of satire, as in the Candide and Babouc of Voltaire, and the Gulliver's Travels of Swift. They take a tincture from the learning and politics of the times, and are often made use of successfully to attack or to recommend the prevailing systems of the day. We have seen liberty and equality recommended from one publication, and French principles exposed in

another.

another. When the range of this kind of writing is so extensive, and its effect so great, it is evident that it ought to hold no mean rank among the productions of genius; and, in truth, there is hardly any department of literature in which we shall meet with more fine writing than in the best productions of this kind. It is not easy therefore to say, why the poet should have so high a place allotted him in the temple of Fame, and the romance-writer so low a one, as, in the general estimation, he is confined to; for his dignity as a writer has by no means been measured by the pleasure he affords to his readers; yet the invention of a story, the choice of proper incidents, the ordonnance of the plan, the exhibition of the character, the gradual development of a plot, occasional beauties of description, and, above all, the power exercised over the reader's heart, by filling it with the successive emotions of love, pity, joy, anguish, transport, or indignation,

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tion, together with the grave impressive moral resulting from the whole, imply talents of the highest order, and ought to command our warmest praise. There is no walk in which taste and genius have more distinguished themselves, or in which virtuous and noble sentiments have come out with greater lustre, than in the splendid fictions, or pathetic tales, with which France, Germany, Switzerland, and our own country, have adorned the annals of their literature. A history of romance writing, under all its various forms, would be an acceptable present to the public, if given by a man of taste and sufficient reading. (But there are some periods which make, as it were, a new era in this kind of writing, and those productions are more particularly deserving our attention which stand at the head of a class, and have diverted the taste of the public into some new channel. Of this kind are the writings of Mr. Richardson, whose name, on the

present