302

RICHARDSON'S CORRESPONDENCE.

(OCTOBER, 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 LETITIA 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 inportant 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 Helio

CLASSES OF NOVELS.

303

dorus 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.

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. can introduce a letter or a story whenever he finds it convenient, and can make use of the dramatic or conversation style as often as the subject requires it. In

He

304

BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARDSON.

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 sympathize. 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 certainly overlooked this obvious distinction, when she 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 part of the other sex, or assist them in the composition of their love-letters. The following passage, extracted by Mrs. Barbauld from one of the suppressed letters, is more curious and interesting, we think, than any thing in those that are published.

"As a bashful and not forward boy, I was an early favourite with all the young women of taste and reading in the neighbourhood. Half a dozen of them, when met to work with their needles, used, when they got a book they liked, and thought I should, to borrow me to read to them; their mothers sometimes with them; and both mothers and daughters used to be pleased with the observations they put me upon making.

"I was not more than thirteen, when three of these young women, unknown to each other, having an high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me their love-secrets in order to induce me to give them copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters; nor did any of them ever know that I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even to repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection; and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word, or that expression, to be softened or changed. One highly gratified with her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting love has said, when I have asked her direction-I cannot tell you what to write; but (her heart on her lips) you cannot write too kindly. All her fear was only that she should incur slight for her kindness."-vol. i. Introduction, p. xxxix. xl.

We add Mrs. Barbauld's observation on this passage, for the truth of the sentiment it contains, though more inelegantly written than any other sentence in her performance.

"Human nature is human nature in every class; the hopes and the fears, the perplexities and the struggles, of these low-bred girls in probably an obscure village, supplied the future author with those ideas which, by their gradual development, produced the characters of a Clarissa and a Clementina; nor was he probably happier, or amused in a more lively manner, when sitting in his grotto, with a circle of the best informed women in England about him, who in after times courted his society, than in reading to these girls in, it may be, VOL. I.

X

306

ORIGIN OF PAMELA.

a little back shop, or a mantua-maker's parlour with a brick floor." p. xl. xli.

During his apprenticeship, he distinguished himself only by exemplary diligence and fidelity; though he informs us, that he even then enjoyed the correspondence of a gentleman, of great accomplishments, from whose patronage, if he had lived, he entertained the highest expectations. The rest of his worldly history seems to have been pretty nearly that of Hogarth's virtuous apprentice. He married his master's daughter, and succeeded to his business; extended his wealth and credit by sobriety, punctuality, and integrity; bought a residence in the country; and, though he did not attain to the supreme dignity of Lord Mayor of London, arrived in due time at the respectable situation of Master of the Worshipful Company of Stationers. In this course of obscure prosperity, he appears to have continued till he had passed his fiftieth year, without giving any intimation of his future celebrity, and even without appearing to be conscious that he was differently gifted from the other flourishing traders of the metropolis. He says of himself, we observe, in one of these letters-"My business, till within these few years, filled all my time. I had no leisure; nor, being unable to write by a regular plan, knew I that I had so much invention, till I almost accidentally slid into the writing of Pamela. And besides, little did I imagine that any thing I could write would be so kindly received by the world." Of the origin and progress of this first work he has himself left the following authentic account.

"Two booksellers, my particular friends, entreated me to write for them a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. Will it be any harm, said I, in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well as indite? They were the more urgent with me to begin the little volume for this hint. I set about it; and, in the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue; the above story recurred to my thought: and hence sprung Pamela." -Introd. p. liii.