'A mere trifle, sir; not worth repeating!' The mortification of Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day. Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much." All very fine, we may now say; but we are not going to quarrel with the honest printer, son of a carpenter, who had passed all his days in obscurity, because, when he came to the end of them, the discovery that he was somebody made him palpitate, and he was not proud enough to conceal it.

He surrounded himself with folks who enjoyed his society, who ministered to his love of praise, and who listened to his stories in their progress. These were chiefly ladies, who rustled their silks about the kindly old man and plied him with letters. But among them were to be found some of the other sex, and, notably, that jaded reprobate, Colley Cibber. Colley would get the loose sheets of Sir Charles Grandison to read, and say at one time: "I have just finished the sheets you favoured me with; but never found so strong a proof of your sly nature, as to have hung me upon tenters, till I see you again. Z-ds! I have not patience, till I know what's become of her. Why, you!-I don't know what to call you!-Ah! ah! you may laugh if you please; but how will you be able to look me in the face, if the lady should ever be able to show hers again? What piteous, d-d, disgraceful pickle have you plunged her in?

VOL. I.

d

For God's sake send me the sequel; or-I don't know what to say." Then again: "The delicious meal I made of Miss Byron on Sunday last, has given me an appetite for another slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon will not be inconvenient, Mrs. Brown and I will come and piddle upon a bit more of her; but pray let your whole family, with Mrs. Richardson at the head of them, come in for their share.”

It is chiefly, however, by women that Richardson was surrounded. They loved his purity and his goodness; and they were not backward in giving him the incense which men rarely offer to men. One lady indeed expressed a wish that he were himself a lady; and for her wish she gave an odd Hibernian reason. "I am more and more charmed with your Clarissa," she says; "it is indeed a noble character; but, I fear, nowhere to be met with except in your letters. What a pity it is you are not a woman, and blest with means of shining as she did; for a person capable. of drawing such a character would certainly be able to act in the same manner, if in a like situation!" It is to be feared, however, that if Richardson were indeed a woman, neither this Cleomira, nor the other fair dames who gathered around him, would have been so lavish of their admiration. As it was, the novelist led a pleasant life

among them, with much tea-drinking and buttered toast. With one of his fair friends, Lady Bradshaigh, he held for some time a correspondence, which was on her side anonymous. She was shy in discovering herself, not knowing what manner of man Richardson was apart from authorship; and he drew his own portrait for her as follows:-"I go through the park once or twice a week to my little retirement; but I will for a week together be in it every day three or four hours, at your command, till you tell me you have seen a person who answers to this description: namely, short; rather plump than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about five feet five inches; fair wig; lightish cloth coat, all black besides ; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support, when attacked by sudden tremors or startings, and dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking directly fore-right, as passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish faced, and ruddy cheeked; at sometimes looking to be about sixtyfive, at other times much younger; a regular even

pace, stealing away ground, rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance lively-very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he looks down and supercilious, and as if he would be thought wise, but perhaps the sillier for that: as he approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet, and thence he raises it up, pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at all worthy of observation) that from her air, and (the last beheld) her face, he sets her down in his mind as so or so, and then passes on to the next object he meets; only then looking back, if he greatly likes or dislikes, as if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a piece, in the one light or in the other. Are these marks distinct enough, if you are resolved to keep all the advantages you set out with? And from this odd, this grotesque figure, think you, madam, that you have anything to apprehend? anything that will not rather promote than check your mirth? I dare be bold to say (and allow it too) that you would rather see this figure than any other you ever saw, whenever you should find yourself graver than you wish to be."

Not a commanding figure-is he?-this squat

citizen, with little pig's eyes dotted in his fat bulbous face. And to talk to him, slow of speech as he is, we are as little impressed by the strength of his mind as by the dignity of his presence. Call this man great! I venture to do so, and even to claim for him the veneration of his countrymen. But in doing so, I am bound to say frankly, that I lay no stress on his intellectual eminence. Nay, for that matter, I may at once make a clean breast of it and say, that having read a good many novels in my time, I am not at all struck with their intellectual grasp, nor feel that great force of thought is needed in them for the attainment of extraordinary success. It is not to be denied that there are great intellectual novelists. No one can read Fielding, or Scott, or Thackeray (to speak only of the dead) without feeling in their works a great intellectual momentum. But is it their intellectual momentum, the breadth of their thinking, and the fulness of their culture, that is the chief constituent of their success? Not so; it is a knack of storytelling which they share in common with men and women, whose minds are, as compared with theirs, what our Yankee friends would call one-horse minds. In driving a novel, six horses are not much better than one. Perhaps the one-horse novel will overtake the six-horse vehicle on the road. It is not always the most powerful minds that most enthral