RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, a celebrated English sentimental
Richardson. sentimental novel-writer, born in 1688, was bred to the business of a printer, which he exercised all his life with eminence. Though he is said to have understood no language but his own, yet he acquired great reputation by his three epistolary novels, entitled Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison; which show an uncommon knowledge of human nature. His purpose being to promote virtue, his pictures of moral excellence are by much too highly coloured; and he has described his favourite characters such rather as we might wish them to be, than as they are to be found in reality. It is also objected by some, that his writings have not always the good effect intended: for that, instead of improving natural characters, they have fashioned many artificial ones; and have taught delicate and refined ladies and gentlemen to despise every one but their own self-exalted persons. But after all that can be urged of the ill effects of Mr Richardson's novels on weak minds, eager to adopt characters they can only burlesque; a sensible reader will improve more by studying such models of perfection, than of those nearer to the natural standard of human frailty, and where those frailties are artfully exaggerated so as to fix and misemploy the attention on them. A stroke of the palsy carried off Mr Richardson, after a few days illness, upon the 4th of July 1761. He was a man of fine parts, and a lover of virtue; which, for aught we have ever heard to the contrary, he showed in his life and conversation as well as in his writings. Besides the works above-mentioned, he is the author of an Æsop's Fables, a Tour through Britain, 4 vols. and a volume of Familiar Letters upon business and other subjects. He is said from his childhood to have delighted in letter writing; and therefore was the more easily led to throw his romances into that form; which, if it enlivens the history in some respects, yet lengthens it with uninteresting prate, and formalities that mean nothing, and on that account is sometimes found a little tedious and fatiguing.
The most eminent writers of our own country, and even of foreign parts, have paid their tribute to the transcendent talents of Mr Richardson, whose works have been published in almost every language and country of Europe. They have been greatly admired, notwithstanding every dissimilitude of manners, or every disadvantage of translation. The celebrated M. Diderot, speaking of the means employed to move the passions, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, mentions Richardson as a perfect master of that art: "How striking (says he), how pathetic are his descriptions! His personages, though silent, are alive before me; and of those who speak, the actions are still more affecting than the words."—The famous John-James Rousseau, speaking, in his letter to M. d'Alembert, of the novels of Richardson, asserts, "that nothing was ever written equal to, or even approaching them, in any language."—Mr Aaron Hill calls his Pamela a "delightful nursery of virtue."—Dr Warton speaks thus of Clementina: "Of all representations of madness, that of Clementina, in the History of Sir Charles Grandison, is the most deeply interesting. I know not whether even the madness of Lear is wrought up, and expressed, by so many little strokes of nature and passion. It is absolute pedantry to prefer and compare the madness of Orestes in Euripides to this of Clementina."—Dr John-
son, in his Introduction to the 97th number of the Rambler, which was written by Mr Richardson, observes, that the reader was indebted for that day's entertainment to an author, "from whom the age has received greater favours, who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue;" and, in his life of Rowe, he says, "The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into that of Lovelace; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness. It was in the power of Richardson alone to teach us at once esteem and detestation; to make virtuous resentment overpower all the benevolence which wit, and elegance, and courage, naturally excite; and to lose at last the hero in the villain."—Dr Young very pertinently observed, that Mr Richardson, with the mere advantages of nature, improved by a very moderate progress in education, struck out at once, and of his own accord, into a new province of writing, in which he succeeded to admiration. And what is more remarkable, that he not only began, but finished the plan on which he set out, leaving no room for any one after him to render it more complete: and that not one of the various writers that have ever since attempted to imitate him, have in any respect equalled, or at all approached near him. This kind of romance is peculiarly his own; and "I consider him (continues the doctor) as a truly great natural genius; as great and supereminent in his way as Shakespeare and Milton were in theirs."