made and a man who can merely
tell the hour on the dial-plate." He called Fielding a "barren rascal."
"Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's
than in all 'Tom Jones.'" Some one present here mildly suggested that
Richardson was very tedious. "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "if you were
to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so great that
you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and
consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." After all,
it must be considered that, old-fashioned as Richardson's novels have
now become, the old printer dissected the human heart with profound
knowledge and exquisite care, and that in the back shop in Salisbury
Court, amid the jar of printing-presses, the quiet old citizen drew his
ideal beings with far subtler lines and touches than any previous
novelist had done.

[Illustration: FLEET STREET, THE TEMPLE, ETC., FROM A MAP OF LONDON,
PUBLISHED 1720.]

On one occasion at least Hogarth and Johnson met at Richardson's house.

"Mr. Hogarth," says Nichols, "came one day to see Richardson, soon after
the execution of Dr. Cameron, for having taken arms for the house of
Stuart in 1745-46; and, being a warm partisan of George II., he
observed to Richardson that certainly there must have been some very
unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this particular case
which had induced the king to approve of an execution for rebellion so
long after the time it was committed, as this had the appearance of
putting a man to death in cold blood, and was very unlike his majesty's
usual clemency. While he was talking he perceived a person standing at a
window in the room shaking his head and rolling himself about in a
ridiculous manner. He concluded he was an idiot, whom his relations had
put under the care of Mr. Richardson as a very good man. To his great
surprise, however, this figure stalked forward to where he and Mr.
Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argument, and burst
out into an invective against George II., as one who, upon all
occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous; mentioning many instances,
particularly that, where an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a
court martial, George II. had, with his own hand, struck his name off
the list. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence that Hogarth
looked at him in astonishment, and actually imagined that this idiot had
been