the sixth
edition, but put them back in the seventh and eighth; and his
alterations show him giving in to criticism only by inches, if indeed
his changes to his introduction are not more simply those of any author
trimming (and with Richardson, ever so little) his early extravagances.

Richardson's stubbornness here suggests other reasons for his
substituting a table of contents for his introduction in the sixth
edition. To print both would have been too prolix, even for Richardson;
and it seems that the table of contents, detailing the entire action,
together with the change to big quarto volumes, are Richardson's efforts
to authenticate _Pamela_ in the face of Chandler's and Kelly's
unauthorized sequel, _Pamela's Conduct in High Life_, printed to
complete the two duodecimo volumes of Richardson's original story.
Richardson's sixth edition is the first in which his own additional two
volumes, written to forestall Chandler and Kelly, are included with the
first two as a complete four-volume unit. Twelve years later, in 1754,
his true _Pamela_ established, he reverted to his introductory letters.
Hill's death in 1750 may also have moved Richardson to restore the
introduction which was chiefly Hill's work, recalling both his friend
and _Pamela's_ greener days. In the eighth edition, at the end of his
life, Richardson still kept the introductory letters, though with some
final constrictions.

Richardson makes the first changes to his introduction in the fourth
edition. Excepting minor clarifications, all deal with Hill's answer to
the anonymous gentleman. The attitude toward this gentleman has
softened. The "rashest of All his Advices" becomes merely the "least
weigh'd" of his judgments, and his blindness becomes oversight. He is no
longer pedantic; he no longer makes vulgar allusions, but only fears
that they might be made.

In the fifth edition, Richardson seems chiefly concerned with
redundancy, but he also diminishes some of the praise. In deference to
the gentleman, it would seem, Richardson deletes his flattery of Hill on
pages xxix and xxxi, and "_some of the most beautiful Letters that have
been written in any Language_" become simply "_Letters_." Perhaps
Richardson's conscience was bothering him. Perhaps he had heard from his
anonymous correspondent after all: he now identifies the gentleman's
remarks as coming "_in a Letter from the Country_." Unless pure fancy,
this is new information, for the letter, now in