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greatest writer is the one who has produced the largest family of
immortal children. Those of whom it can be said that they have really
added a new type to the fictitious world are indeed few in number.
Cervantes is in the front rank of all imaginative creators, because he
has given birth to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Richardson's literary
representatives are far indeed below these; but Richardson too may boast
that, in his narrower sphere of thought, he has invented two characters
that have still a strong vitality. They show all the weaknesses
inseparable from the age and country of their origin. They are far
inferior to the highest ideals of the great poets of the world; they are
cramped and deformed by the conventionalities of their century and the
narrow society in which they move and live. But for all that they stir
the emotions of a distant generation with power enough to show that
their author must have pierced below the surface into the deeper and
more perennial springs of human passion. These two characters are, of
course, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison; and I may endeavour shortly
to analyse the sources of their enduring interest.

Sir Charles Grandison has passed into a proverb. When Carlyle calls
Lafayette a Grandison-Cromwell, he hits off one of those admirable
nicknames which paint a character for us at once. Sir Charles Grandison
is the model fine gentleman of the eighteenth century--the master of
correct deportment, the unimpeachable representative of the old school.
Richardson tells us with a certain _naivete_ that he has been accused of
describing an impossible character; that Sir Charles is a man absolutely
without a fault, or at least with faults visible only on a most
microscopic observation. In fact, the only fault to which Sir Charles
himself pleads guilty, in seven volumes, is that he once rather loses
his temper. Two ruffians try to bully him in his own house, and even
draw their swords upon him. Sir Charles so far forgets himself as to
draw his own sword, disarm both of his opponents and turn them out of
doors. He cannot forgive himself, he says, that he has been 'provoked by
two such men to violate the sanctity of his own house.' His only excuse
is, 'that there were two of them; and that tho' I drew, yet I had the
command of myself so far as only to defend myself, when I might have
done with them what I pleased.' According to Richardson, this venial
offence is the worst blot on Sir Ch