iting; and being solicited by a publisher to
write a series of familiar letters on the principal concerns of life,
which might be used as models,--a sort of "Easy Letter-Writer,"--he began
the task, but, changing his plan, he wrote a story in a series of letters.
The first volume was published in 1741, and was no less a work than
_Pamela_. The author was then fifty years old; and he presents in this
work a matured judgment concerning the people and customs of the day,--the
printer's notions of the social condition of England,--shrewd, clever, and
defective.

Wearied as the world had been by what Sir Walter Scott calls the "huge
folios of inanity" which had preceded him, the work was hailed with
delight. There was a little affectation; but the sentiment was moral and
natural. Ladies carried _Pamela_ about in their rides and walks. Pope,
near his end, said it was a better moral teacher than sermons: Sherlock
recommended it from the pulpit.

PAMELA, AND OTHER NOVELS.--_Pamela_ is represented as a poor servant-maid,
but beautiful and chaste, whose honor resists the attack of her dissolute
master, and whose modesty and virtue overcome his evil nature. Subdued and
reclaimed by her chastity and her charms, he reforms, and marries her.
Some pictures which are rather warmly colored and indelicate in our day
were quite in keeping with the taste of that time, and gave greater effect
to the moral lesson assigned to be taught.

In his next work, _Clarissa Harlowe_, which appeared in 1749, he has drawn
the picture of a perfect woman preserving her purity amid seductive
gayeties, and suffering sorrows to which those of the Virgin Martyr are
light. We have, too, an excellent portraiture of a bold and wicked, but
clever and gifted man--Lovelace.

His third and last novel, _Sir Charles Grandison_, appeared in 1753. The
hero, _Sir Charles_, is the model of a Christian gentleman; but is,
perhaps, too faultless for popular appreciation.

In his delineations of humbler natures,--country girls like
_Pamela_,--Richardson is happiest: in his descriptions of high life he has
failed from ignorance. He was not acquainted with the best society, and
all his grandees are stilted, artificial, and affected; but even in this
fault he is of value, for he shows us how men of his class at that time
regarded the society of those above them.

These works, which, notwithstanding their length, were devoured eagerly as
soon as they appeared, are little