uch as to offer my humble opinion, unless he were pleased to command it
from me.'

Even one of Richardson's abject lady-correspondents was revolted by this
exaggerated servility. But narrow as his vision might be in some
directions, his genius is not the less real. He is a curious example of
the power which a real artistic insight may exhibit under the most
disadvantageous forms. To realise his characteristic power, we should
take one of the great French novelists whom we admire for the exquisite
proportions of his story, the unity of the interest and the skill--so
unlike our common English clumsiness--with which all details are duly
subordinated. He should have, too, the comparative weakness of French
novelists, a defective perception of character, a certain unwillingness
in art as in politics to allow individual peculiarities to interfere
with the main flow of events; for, admitting the great excellence of his
minor performers, Richardson's most elaborately designed characters are
so artificial that they derive their interest from the events in which
they play their parts, rather than give interest to them--little as he
may have intended it. Then we must cause our imaginary Frenchman to
transmigrate into the body of a small, plump, weakly printer of the
eighteenth century. We may leave him a fair share of his vivacity,
though considerably narrowing his views of life and morality; but we
must surround him with a court of silly women whose incessant flatteries
must generate in him an unnatural propensity to twaddle. It is curious,
indeed, that he describes himself as writing without a plan. He compares
himself to a poor woman lying down upon the hearth to blow up a wretched
little fire of green sticks. He had to live from hand to mouth. But the
absence of an elaborate scheme is not fatal to the unity of design. He
watches, rather than designs, the development of his plot. He has so
lively a faith in his characters that, instead of laying down their
course of action, he simply watches them to see how they will act. This
makes him deliberate a little too much; they move less by impulse than
from careful reflection upon all the circumstances. Yet it also implies
an evolution of the story from the necessity of the characters in a
given situation, and gives an air of necessary deduction to the whole
scheme of his stories. All the gossiping propensities of his nature will
grow to unhealthy luxuriance, and the fine edge of his