sing turns of action ... indeed the
choicest Beauties of a _Romance_."

The two novels that d'Argens recommended had different fortunes in
England. D'Argens's book, _Memoires du Marquis de Mirmon, ou Le
Solitaire Philosophe_ (Amsterdam, 1736) was never translated into
English and apparently was not much read. But Claude Prosper Jolyot
de Crebillon, the younger, was extolled by Thomas Gray and Horace
Walpole, quoted by Sarah Fielding,[9] and had the honor, if one can
trust Walpole, of an offer of keeping from Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. His _Egaremens du Coeur et de l'Esprit_ (1736-38) was
translated in 1751[10] and is the novel which Yorick helped the
_fille de chambre_ slide into her pocket. Crebillon was damned,
however, in _The World_ (No. 19, May 10, 1753) in an essay that,
oddly enough, reminds one of d'Argens's Letter 35. The work referred
to in the third footnote on page 258 is _Le Chevalier des Essars et
la Comtesse de Berci_ (1735) by Ignace-Vincent Guillot de La
Chassagne. The last footnote on that page refers to G.H. Bougeant's
satire, _Voyage Merveilleux du Prince Fan-Feredin dans la Romancie_
(1735).

The preface which William Warburton was invited by Richardson to
supply for Volumes III and IV of _Clarissa_ when they first appeared
in 1748 has never, I think, been reprinted in full. Richardson
dropped it from the second edition (1749) of _Clarissa_, probably
because he relished neither its implication that he was following
French precedents nor its suggestion that his work was one "of mere
Amusement." In the "Advertisement" in the first volume of the second
edition he insisted that _Clarissa_ was "not to be considered as a
_mere Amusement_, as a _light Novel_, or _transitory Romance_; but
as a _History_ of LIFE and MANNERS ... intended to inculcate the
HIGHEST and _most_ IMPORTANT _Doctrines_."[11] Warburton, offended
in turn perhaps, thriftily salvaged more than half of the preface
(paragraphs 2 to 6) to use as a footnote in his edition of Alexander
Pope,[12] but he there made a striking change: not Richardson but
Marivaux and Fielding were praised as the authors who, with the
extra enrichment of comic art, had brought the novel of "real LIFE
AND MANNERS ... to its perfection."

The important principle of prose fiction which Richardson and
Warburton recognized--that there is power in a detailed picture of
the private life of the middle class--had been suggested earlier.
Mrs. Manley could not voice it,