art of _Pamela_, Richardson avoided these dangers fairly if
not fully; in the second part he succumbed to them; in his two later
novels, though more elaborate and important plots to some extent bore up
the expansion, he succumbed to them almost more. Pains have been taken
above to show how the first readers of _Pamela_ might rejoice in it,
because of its contrast with the character of the seventeenth-century
novel which was most read--the Scudery or "heroic" romance. It is not, I
think, too severe to say that nothing but the parallel with that
romance, and the tolerance induced by familiarity with it, could make
any one put up with the second part of _Pamela_ itself, or with the
inhumanly prolonged divagation of _Clarissa_ and _Grandison_. Nor, as
has been hinted, is the solace of the letters--in the opportunity of
setting forth different tempers and styles--here much taken.

There is no doubt that one main attraction of this letter-plan (whether
consciously experienced or not does not matter) was its ready adaptation
to Richardson's own special and peculiar gift of minute analysis of
mood, temper, and motive. The diary avowedly, and the letter in reality,
even though it may be addressed to somebody else, is a continuous
soliloquy: and the novelist can use it with a frequency and to a length
which would be intolerable and impossible on the stage. Now soliloquy is
the great engine for self--revelation and analysis. It is of course to a
great extent in consequence of this analysis that Richardson owes his
pride of place in the general judgment. It is quite possible to lay too
much stress on it, as distinguishing the novel from the romance: and the
present writer is of opinion that too much stress has actually been
laid. The real difference between romance _per se_ and novel _per se_
(so far as they are capable of distinct existence) is that the romance
depends more on incident and the novel more on character. Now this
minute analysis and exhibition, though it is one way of drawing or
constructing character, is not the only, nor even a necessary, one. It
can be done without: but it has impressed the vulgar, and even some who
are not the vulgar, from Dr. Johnson to persons whom it is unnecessary
to mention. They cannot believe that there is "no deception"--that the
time is correctly told--unless the works of the watch are bared to them:
and this Richardson most undoubtedly does. Even in his 'prentice work,
every flutter of P