wit will be
somewhat dulled in the process. He will thus become capable of being a
bore--a thing which is impossible to any unsophisticated Frenchman. In
this way we might obtain a literary product so anomalous in appearance
as 'Clarissa'--a story in which a most affecting situation is drawn with
extreme power, and yet so overlaid with twaddle, so unmercifully
protracted and spun out as to be almost unreadable to the present
generation. But to complete Richardson, we must inoculate him with the
propensities of another school: we must give him a liberal share of the
feminine sensitiveness and closeness of observation of which Miss Austen
is the great example. And perhaps, to fill in the last details, he
ought, in addition, to have a dash of the more unctuous and offensive
variety of the dissenting preacher--for we know not where else to look
for the astonishing and often ungrammatical fluency by which he is
possessed, and which makes his best passages remind us of the marvellous
malleability of some precious metals.

Anyone who will take the trouble to work himself fairly into the story
will end by admitting Richardson's power. Sir George Trevelyan records
and corroborates a well-known anecdote told by Thackeray from Macaulay's
lips. A whole station was infected by the historian's zeal for
'Clarissa.' It worked itself up into a 'passion of excitement,' and all
the great men and their wives fought for the book, and could hardly read
it for tears. The critic must observe that Macaulay had a singular taste
for reading even the trashiest novels; and, that probably an Indian
station at that period was in respect of such reading like a thirsty
land after a long drought. For that reason it reproduced pretty
accurately the state of society in which 'Clarissa' was first read, when
there were as yet no circulating libraries, and the winter evenings were
long in the country and the back parlours of tradesmen's shops.
Probably, a person eager to enjoy Richardson's novels now would do well
to take them as his only recreation for a long holiday in a remote place
and pray for steady rain. On those conditions, he may enter into the old
spirit. And the remark may suggest one moral, for one ought not to
conclude an article upon Richardson without a moral. It is that a
purpose may be a very dangerous thing for a novelist in so far as it
leads him to try means of persuasion not appropriate to his art; but
when, as with Richardson, it implie