Samuel Richardson

“ Still, whatever may have to be said as to Richardson’s subjects, he is never coarse in his treatment of them. The pursuit of Pamela by Mr. B., or of Clarissa by Lovelace, through eight volumes, may weary; it does not corrupt. No man or maid on earth could lay it to his charge that he or she had been corrupted by these books, while no man on earth could read “Clarissa” without being touched by the noble ending. If “Clarissa” had never been written we should have said that the good-natured, fussy, essentially middle-class bookseller, Samuel Richardson, was unable to draw a lady ”

“ If we enter the borough of Fulham at the Hammersmith end, we come upon one of the most interesting associations of the whole district, just before the North End Road makes a decided bend. [Pg 36] Here are two houses, formerly one, called the Grange, in which the novelist Samuel Richardson passed the greater part of his life. This pompous, vain little man, who never to the end of his life abated one whit of his savage envy of his successful contemporaries, was endowed with the genius of originality which prompted him to write as no one had ever thought of writing before. ”

“ When we had dined, and retired into the adjoining drawing-room, I had another schooling-bout: Emily was even saucy. But I took it all: yet, in my heart, was vexed at Lord G——'s perverseness.
At last, in came the honest man. He does not read this, and so cannot take exceptions, and I hope you will not, at the word honest.
So lordly! so stiff! so solemn!—Upon my word!—Had it not been Sunday, I would have gone to my harpsichord directly. He bowed to Lord and Lady L——, and to Emily, very obligingly; to me he nodded.—I nodded again; but, like a good-natured fool, smiled. He stalked to the chimney ”

“ At that she went into the great parlour, where my master was talking very pleasantly with the ladies; and she said, Sir, here is a good tight old man, that wants to see you on business of life and death, he says, and is very earnest. Ay, said he, Who can that be?—Let him stay in the little hall, and I’ll come to him presently. They all seemed to stare; and Sir Simon said, No more nor less, I dare say, my good friend, but a bastard-child. If it is, said Lady Jones, bring it in to us. I will, said he.
Mrs. Jewkes tells me, my master was much surprised, when he saw who it was ”

“ Jewkes is returned from her visit: Well, said she, I would have you set your heart at rest; for Mr. Williams will do very well again. He is not half so bad as he fancied. O these scholars, said she, they have not the hearts of mice! He has only a few scratches on his face; which, said she, I suppose he got by grappling among the gravel at the bottom of the dam, to try to find a hole in the ground, to hide himself from the robbers. His shin and his knee are hardly to be seen to ail any thing. ”

“ Sir Simon is a gentleman who indulges himself in a pleasant vein, and, I believe, as well as you, has been a great rake and libertine:" (You'll excuse me, Sir Simon, because I am taking your part) , "but what then? You see it is all over with him now. He says, that he must, and therefore he will be virtuous: and is a man for ever to hear the faults of his youth, when so willing to forget them?"
"Ah! but, Sir, Sir," said the bold slut, "can you say he is willing to forget them?—Does he not repine in this very letter, that he must forsake them ”

“ The great-grandson of Samuel Richardson, one of the earliest colonists most influential in shaping the destiny of the province, and of John Bevan, a noted preacher of the Society of Friends, who had abandoned wealth and position in Wales, to accompany in the cause of truth his “esteemed friend William Penn;” [1] the son of a prominent Quaker, and closely related to the Hudsons, Emlens, Morrises, Rawles, and others of the leading families of that sect in Philadelphia, there were few who could claim a more honorable or more virtuous ancestry. ”

“ I was exceedingly affected, says he, upon the occasion, but was ashamed to be surprised into such a fit of unmanly weakness—so ashamed, that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and to guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in—her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford! —That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; ”

“ Give me your hand, said he, my poor girl; you walk too fast, (for, indeed, I wanted to be out of their gazing) . I did so, with a courtesy, and he led me up the steps of the alcove, and, in a most gentleman-like manner, presented me to the ladies, and they all saluted me, and said, They hoped to be better acquainted with me: and Lady Darnford was pleased to say, I should be the flower of their neighbourhood. Sir Simon said, Good neighbour, by your leave ”

“ This, good sir, said I, accounts well to me for your conduct in that case, and for what you said to me and Mrs. Jewkes on that occasion: And I see more and more how much I may depend upon your honour and goodness to me.—But I will tell you all the truth. And then I recounted to him the whole affair of the gipsy, and how the letter was put among the loose grass, etc. And he said, The man who thinks a thousand dragons sufficient to watch a woman, when her inclination takes a contrary bent, will find all too little ”

“ Illustrations of the manners and customs of that Grub Street of which Johnson was to become an inmate are only too abundant. The best writers of the day could tell of hardships endured in that dismal region. Richardson went on the sound principle of keeping his shop that his shop might keep him. But the other great novelists of the century have painted from life the miseries of an author's existence. ”

“ Tomlinson, be seated.
He took his chair over against her. I stood behind her's that I might give him agreed-upon signals, should there be occasion for them.
As thus—a wink of the left eye was to signify push that point, Captain.
A wink of the right, and a nod, was to indicate approbation of what he had said.
My fore-finger held up, and biting my lip, get off of that, as fast as possible.
A right-forward nod, and a frown, swear to it, Captain.
My whole spread hand, to take care not to say too much on that particular subject. ”

“ Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state even of the ablest men, who at that time depended for subsistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and 5 Thomson, were certainly four of the most distinguished persons that England produced during the eighteenth century. ”

“ Johnson's preference of the sentimentalist to the man whose humour and strong sense were so like his own, shows how much his criticism was biassed by his prejudices; though, of course, Richardson's external decency was a recommendation to the moralist. Hawkesworth's intimacy with Johnson seems to have been chiefly in the period between the Dictionary and the pension. ”

“ In other words, such is the desire which every one has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour. You and I, Belford, have been very kind to the world, in furnishing it with opportunities to gratify its devil. ”

“ Oh! return, return, thou only charmer of my soul! return to thy adoring Lovelace! What is the light, what the air, what the town, what the country, what's any thing, without thee? Light, air, joy, harmony, in my notion, are but parts of thee; and could they be all expressed in one word, that word would be CLARISSA.
O my beloved CLARISSA, return thou then; once more return to bless thy LOVELACE, who now, by the loss of thee, knows the value of the jewel he has slighted; and rises every morning but to curse the sun that shines upon every body but him! ”

“ MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. KENSINGTON, WEDNESDAY NOON.
Like Æsop's traveller, thou blowest hot and cold, life and death, in the same breath, with a view, no doubt, to distract me. How familiarly dost thou use the words, dying, dimness, tremor? Never did any mortal ring so many changes on so few bells. Thy true father, I dare swear, was a butcher, or an undertaker, by the delight thou seemest to take in scenes of death and horror. Thy barbarous reflection, that thou losest her not by thy own fault, is never to be forgiven. ”

“ There, with a soul filled with musing, do I number the surrounding monuments of mortality, and contemplate the present stillness of so many once busy vanities, crowded all into one poor vaulted nook, as if the living grudged room for the corpse of those for which, when animated, the earth, the air, and the waters, could hardly find room. ”

“ Samuel Johnson.
Gough-square, 16 March."
In the margin of this letter, there is a memorandum in these words: "March 16, 1756, sent six guineas. Witness, Wm. Richardson." For the honour of an admired writer it is to be regretted, that we do not find a more liberal entry. To his friend, in distress, he sent eight shillings more than was wanted. Had an incident of this kind occurred in one of his romances, Richardson would have known how to grace his hero; but in fictitious scenes, generosity costs the writer nothing. ”

“ If you love to see features that glow, though the heart is frozen, and never yet was thawed; if you love fine sense, and adages flowing through teeth of ivory and lips of coral; an eye that penetrates all things; a voice that is harmony itself ”

“ Wit, like a luxurious vine, Unless to virtue's prop it join, Firm and erect, tow'rd heaven bound, Tho' it with beauteous leaves and pleasant fruit be crown'd, It lies deform'd, and rotting on the ground. ”

“ Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons: Echoes, the very leavings of a voice, Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves. Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, And sweat with our imagination's weight. ”

“ To be serious, Belford, I must acknowledge, that all our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sort and sizes, proportioned to our years and views: but then is not a fine woman the noblest trifle, that ever was or could be obtained by man?—And to what purpose do we say obtained, if it be not in the way we wish for?—If a man is rather to be her prize, than she his? ”

“ Money, sir, is not my chief good: May God Almighty desert me, whenever it is! and whenever, for the sake of that, I can give up my title to that blessed hope which will stand me in stead, at a time when millions of gold will not purchase one happy moment of reflection on a past misspent life! ”

“ Your handsome husbands, my dear, make a wife's heart ache very often: and though you are as fine a person of a woman, at the least, as he is of a man, he will take too much delight in himself to think himself more indebted to your favour, than you are to his distinction and preference of you. ”

“ I hope, as he assures me, he was not guilty of indecency; but have reason to bless God, who, by disabling me in my faculties, empowered me to preserve my innocence; and, when all my strength would have signified nothing, magnified himself in my weakness. ”

“ and whom we fear more than love, we are not far from hating: and having less command of his passions than the other, he was evermore the subject of his perhaps indecent ridicule: so that every body, either from love or fear, siding with his antagonist, he had a most uneasy time of it while both continued in the same college.—It was the less wonder therefore that a young man who is not noted for the gentleness of his temper, should resume an antipathy early begun, and so deeply rooted. ”

“ Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest, in one of thy three letters before me, to entertain thee with?—And thou tellest me, that, when I have least to narrate, to speak, in the Scottish phrase, I am most diverting. A pretty compliment, either to thyself, or to me. To both indeed!—a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a head. ”

“ To die, dear Doctor, when, like my poor friend, we are so desirous of life, is a melancholy thing. We are apt to hope too much, not considering that the seeds of death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up, till, like rampant weeds, they choke the tender flower of life; which declines in us as those weeds flourish. ”

“ For, Sir, there is a pride and self-love natural to human minds, that will seldom be kept so low, as to make them humbler than they ought to be. ”

“ But after all, it will be found, I believe, that be the language and behaviour ever so obsequious, it is all designed to end alike—The English, the plain English, of the politest address, is,—"I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: pray be so good as to let me be your master,"—"Yes, and thank you too," says the lady's heart, though not her lips, if she likes him. ”

“ You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are they) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable?—Is true happiness any part of your family view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; ”