ne the tender RHYMES I give
Are fictions: but my FEARS and HOPES I deem
Are FABLES all; deliriously I live,
And life's whole course is one protracted dream.
Eternal Power! when shall I wake to rest
This wearied brain on TRUTH'S immortal breast?

RICHARDSON.

The censure which the Shakspeare of novelists has incurred for the
tedious procrastination and the minute details of his fable; his slow
unfolding characters, and the slightest gestures of his personages, is
extremely unjust; for is it not evident that we could not have his
peculiar excellences without these accompanying defects? When characters
are fully delineated, the narrative must be suspended. Whenever the
narrative is rapid, which so much delights superficial readers, the
characters cannot be very minutely featured; and the writer who aims to
instruct (as Richardson avowedly did) by the glow and eloquence of his
feelings, must often sacrifice to this his local descriptions.
Richardson himself has given us the principle that guided him in
composing. He tells us, "If I give speeches and conversations, I ought
to give them justly; for the _humours_ and _characters_ of persons
cannot be known unless I _repeat_ what they say, and their _manner_ of
saying."

Foreign critics have been more just to Richardson than many of his own
countrymen. I shall notice the opinions of three celebrated writers,
D'Alembert, Rousseau, and Diderot.

D'Alembert was a great mathematician. His literary taste was extremely
cold: he was not worthy of reading Richardson. The volumes, if he ever
read them, must have fallen from his hands. The delicate and subtle
turnings, those folds of the human heart, which require so nice a touch,
was a problem which the mathematician could never solve. There is no
other demonstration in the human heart, but an appeal to its feelings:
and what are the calculating feelings of an arithmetician of lines and
curves? He therefore declared of Richardson that "La Nature est bonne A
imiter, mais non pas jusqu'a l'ennui."

But thus it was not with the other two congenial geniuses! The fervent
opinion of Rousseau must be familiar to the reader; but Diderot, in his
eloge on Richardson, exceeds even Rousseau in the enthusiasm of his
feelings. I extract some of the most interesting passages. Of Clarissa
he says, "I yet remember with delight the first time it came into my
hands. I was in the country. How deliciously was I affec