e
fortunate, the other a martyr--to produce this time a virtuous hero, and
to depict "the character and actions of a man of true honor," as before,
in a series of familiar letters. There is more movement, more plot, in
this novel than in the previous ones; the hero is now in Italy, now in
England, and there is much more attempt than either in _Pamela_ or
_Clarissa_ to give the impression of a sphere in which a man of the
world may move. Grandison is, however, a slightly ludicrous hero. His
perfections are those of a prig and an egoist, and he passes like the
sun itself over his parterre of adoring worshippers. The ladies who are
devoted to Sir Charles Grandison are, indeed, very numerous, but the
reader's interest centres in three of them--the mild and estimable
Harriet Byron, the impassioned Italian Clementina della Porretta, and
the ingenuous ward Emily Jervois. The excuse for all this is that this
paragon of manly virtue has "the most delicate of human minds," and
that women are irresistibly attracted to him by his splendid perfections
of character. But posterity has admitted that the portrait is
insufferably overdrawn, and that Grandison is absurd. The finest scenes
in this interesting but defective novel are those in which the madness
of Clementina is dwelt upon in that long-drawn patient manner of which
Richardson was a master. The book is much too long.

Happy in the fame which "the three daughters" of his pen had brought
him, and enjoying prosperous circumstances, Richardson's life closed in
a sort of perpetual tea-party, in which he, the only male, sat
surrounded by bevies of adoring ladies. He died in London, of apoplexy,
on July 4, 1761. His manners were marked by the same ceremonious
stiffness which gives his writing an air of belonging to a far earlier
period than that of Fielding or Smollett; but his gravity and
sentimental earnestness only helped to endear him to the women. Of the
style of Richardson there is little to be said; the reader never thinks
of it. If he forces himself to regard it, he sees that it is apt to be
slipshod, although so trim and systematic. Richardson was a man of
unquestionable genius, dowered with extraordinary insight into female
character, and possessing the power to express it; but he had little
humor, no rapidity of mind, and his speech was so ductile and so
elaborate that he can scarcely compete with later and sharper talents.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] It is, however, now certai