arles Grandison" where
Richardson is in the least like himself--in the least like the Richardson
of "Pamela" and "Clarissa." This character is Miss Charlotte Grandison,
the sister of Sir Charles, and later (after many vicissitudes) the wife
of Lord G. Miss Grandison's conduct falls infinitely beneath the high
standard attained to by the rest of Sir Charles's chosen friends. She is
petulant and loves to tease; is uncertain of what she wants; she is
lively and sarcastic, and, worse than all, abandons the rounded periods
of her brother and Miss Byron for free, not to say slang, expressions.
"Hang ceremony!" she often exclaims, with much reason, while "What a
deuce!" is her favourite expletive.

The conscientious reader heaves a sigh of relief when this young lady and
her many indiscretions appear on the scene; when Miss Grandison, like
Nature, "takes the pen from Richardson and writes for him." But I gather
that you, my dear Miss Somerville, never got far enough to make her
acquaintance, and therefore are still ignorant of the singular qualities
of her brother, Sir Charles--Richardson's idea of a perfect man, for both
brother and sister are introduced at almost the same moment.

Now it is nearly as difficult to realize that Sir Charles is a young man
of twenty-six, as it is to feel that his antithesis, the adorable Pepys
of the "Diary," was of that precise age. Sir Charles might be borne with
good-naturedly for a short time as an old gentleman who had become
garrulous from want of contradiction, but in any other aspect he would be
shunned conscientiously. Yet Richardson is not content with putting into
his mouth lengthy discourses tending chiefly, though expressed with mock
humility, to his own glorification; but he keeps all the other characters
perpetually dancing round the Baronet in a chorus of praise. "Was there
ever such a man, my Harriet, so good, so just, so noble in his
sentiments?" "Ah, my Lucy, dare I hope for the affection of the best of
men?" Some people would have begged their friends to cease making them
ridiculous, but not so Sir Charles.

But, my dear, trying as Sir Charles is at all moments, he is infinitely
at his worst when he attempts to be jocose, when he rallies the
step-mother of his friend Beauchamp in a sprightly manner, or exchanges
quips with Harriet's cousins at the house of "that excellent ancient,"
her grandmother. It is a mammoth posing as a kitten, though whatever he
says or doe