riting, and that he could never lay the pen down while his inkhorn
supplied it.

He was delighted by his own works. No author enjoyed so much the bliss
of excessive fondness. I heard from the late Charlotte Lenox the
anecdote which so severely reprimanded his innocent vanity, which
Boswell has recorded. This lady was a regular visitor at Richardson's
house, and she could scarcely recollect one visit which was not taxed by
our author reading one of his voluminous letters, or two or three, if
his auditor was quiet and friendly.

The extreme delight which he felt on a review of his own works the works
themselves witness. Each is an evidence of what some will deem a violent
literary vanity. To _Pamela_ is prefixed a _letter_ from the _editor_
(whom we know to be the _author_), consisting of one of the most
minutely laboured panegyrics of the work itself, that ever the blindest
idolater of some ancient classic paid to the object of his frenetic
imagination. In several places there, he contrives to repeat the
striking parts of the narrative which display the fertility of his
imagination to great advantage. To the author's own edition of his
_Clarissa_ is appended an _alphabetical arrangement_ of the sentiments
dispersed throughout the work; and such was the fondness that dictated
this voluminous arrangement, that such trivial aphorisms as, "habits are
not easily changed," "men are known by their companions," &c., seem
alike to be the object of their author's admiration. This collection of
sentiments, said indeed to have been sent to him anonymously, is curious
and useful, and shows the value of the work, by the extensive grasp of
that mind which could think so justly on such numerous topics. And in
his third and final labour, to each volume of _Sir Charles Grandison_ is
not only prefixed a complete _index_, with as much exactness as if it
were a History of England, but there is also appended a _list_ of the
_similes_ and allusions in the volume; some of which do not exceed
_three_ or _four_ in nearly as many hundred pages.

Literary history does not record a more singular example of that
self-delight which an author has felt on a revision of his works. It was
this intense pleasure which produced his voluminous labours. It must be
confessed there are readers deficient in that sort of genius which makes
the mind of Richardson so fertile and prodigal.

INFLUENCE OF A NAME.

What's in a NAME? That which we call a