X.

LETTERS OF AUTHORS.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

BESIDES the rich collections of State Papers and Historical Despatches which have been discovered in the different public offices, and the still more curious bundles of family epistles (such as the Paxton correspondence) which are every now and then disinterred from the forgotten repositories of old mansions, there is no branch of literature in which England is more eminent than the letters of celebrated men.

From the moment in which Mason by a happy inspiration made Gray tell his own story, and by dint of his charming letters contrived to produce from the uneventful life of a retired scholar one of the most attractive books ever printed, almost every biographer of note has followed his example. The lives of Cowper, of Byron, of Scott, of Southey, of Charles Lamb, of Dr. Arnold, works full of interest and of vitality, owe their principal charm to this source. Nay, such is the reality and identity belonging to letters written at the moment and intended only for the eye of a favourite friend, that it is probable that any genuine series of epistles, were the writer ever so little dis

tinguished, would, provided they were truthful and spontaneous, possess the invaluable quality of individuality which so often causes us to linger before an old portrait of which we know no more than that it is a Burgomaster by Rembrandt, or a Venetian Senator by Titian. The least skilful pen when flowing from the fulness of the heart, and untroubled by any misgivings of after publication, shall often paint with as faithful and life-like a touch as either of those great

masters.

Of letter-writers by profession we have indeed few, although Horace Walpole, bright, fresh, quaint, and glittering as one of his own most precious figures of Dresden china, is a host in himself. But every here and there, scattered in various and unlikely volumes, we meet with detached letters of eminent persons which lead us to wish for more. I remember two or three of David Hume's which form a case in point: one to Adam Smith, who had asked of him the success of his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," in which he dallies with a charming playfulness with an author's anxiety, withholding, delaying, interrupting himself twenty times, and at last pouring out without stint or measure the favourable reception of the work; another to Dr. Robertson, who appears to have requested his opinion of his style, bantering him on certain Scottish provincialisms and small pedantries-"a historian, indeed! Have you an ear?"-mixed with praise so graceful and kindness so genuine, that the most susceptible of vanities could not have taken offence.

Every now and then, too, we fall upon a long correspondence which the writer's name has caused to be

published, but which, from a thousand causes, is certain to fall into oblivion although containing much that is curious. Such is "The Life and Letters of Samuel

Richardson."

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I suspect that the works from whence that great name is derived are in this generation little more than a tradition; and that the "Clarissa" and the Sir Charles Grandison," which, together with the Spectators," formed the staple of our great grandmother s libraries, find almost as few readers amongst their descendants as the "Grand Cyrus" or "The Princess of Cleves."

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As far as "Clarissa" is concerned, great tragedy as the book unquestionably is, I do not wonder at this. Considering the story and plan of the work, the marvel is rather that mothers should have placed it in their daughters' hands as a sort of manual of virtue, and that at Ranelagh, ladies of the highest character should have held up the new volumes as they came out, to show to their friends that they possessed the book of which all the world were talking, than that it should now be banished from the boudoir and the drawing room. But as my friend, Sir Charles Grandison, has no other sin to answer for than that of being very long, very tedious, very oldfashioned, and a prig, I cannot help confessing that, in spite of these faults, and perhaps because of them, I think there are worse books printed now-a-days, and hailed with delight amongst critics feminine than the seven volumes that gave such infinite delight to the Beauties of the Court of George the Second.

As pictures of manners I suspect them to be worthless. Richardson was a citizen in an age in

which the distinctions of caste were far more strictly observed than now-a-days; and the printer of Salisbury Court, even when retired to his villa at North End, had seen but little of the brilliant circles which he attempted to describe, and was altogether deficient in the airy grace and bright and glowing fancy which might have supplied the place of experience. Compared with the comic dramatists, Congreve and Farquhar, who have left us such vivid pictures of the Mirabels and Millamants, the Archers, and Mrs. Sullens of that day, Richardson's portraits are, like himself, stiff, prim, hard, ungainly, awkward. In manners, he utterly fails; but in character, in sentiment, and above all in the power of bringing his personages into actual every-day life, he leaves every writer of his time far behind him. Somebody has said of him very happily-so happily that I suppose it must have been Hazlitt," that the effect of reading his books is to acquire a vast accession of near relations." And it is true. Grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and cousins multiply upon us; we not only become acquainted with the people, but with their habitations; Selby House and Shirley Manor are as familiar to us as our own dwelling; and we could find our way to the cedar-parlour blindfold.

It was a cause or a consequence of, Richardson's popularity that he lived amongst a perfect flowergarden of young ladies, feeding upon their praises, always a dangerous diet for authors, and talking and writing of little else than his different works. His own family consisted of three daughters of whom (although his domestic character stands very high) we hear little, whilst of Miss Highmore, Miss Mulso,

Miss Westcomb, the Miss Fieldings, and the Miss Colliers, and their several lovers, we hear a great deal. There is even a coloured engraving, curiously inartistic, representing Richardson a smug and comely little old man sitting in the summer-house which he called his grotto, reading his manuscript to a party of three fair damsels and their future husbands.

The lady who seems to have interested him most, whose letters with his rejoinders do actually fill a volume and a half of the six of which the collection consists, and might easily the editor says have been extended to six more, is a certain Lady Bradshaigh, the wife of Sir Roger Bradshaigh of the Haigh, Lancashire, who wrote to him first under the feigned name of Balfour, and continued to address him under that appellation for a considerable time.

The occasion of her first letter, was the suspense in which the admirers of " Clarissa" were left as to her fate, by the publication of the work in separate portions and at lengthened intervals. The story of the book may be told in very few words. It consists of the betrayal of the heroine by her lover, a libertine, drawn with admirable spirit and skill, and endowed with so many fine qualities of person and intellect, that many of the author's friends implored as if they had been real persons for the reformation of Lovelace and the happiness of his fair mistress.

Upon this hint spoke Lady Bradshaigh; and her earnestness and pertinacity is really a thing to wonder at. She sank upon her knees, she begged, she reasoned, she threatened, she stormed. There was not a weapon in the female armoury that she did not force into her service, and her ardour and fervency