health! Ah! and now for ever pale and cold!' She then tells a long story, explaining away the indications of perfidy, on the strength of which he had quitted her; and the scene ends in this very dramatic and truly touching manner. of books, a multitude of rolls had been inserted. Nobody was in the hall. The rising sun shone through the window, right on Wilhelm, and kindly saluted him as he came in. Be seated!' cried a voice, which seemed to issue from the altar. Wilhelm placed himself in a small arm-chair, which stood against the tapestry where he had entered. There was no seat but this in the room; Wilhelm was obliged to take it, his eyes. though the morning radiance dazzled him; the chair stood fast, he could only keep his hand before But now the curtain, which hung down above the altar, went asunder with a gentle rustling; and showed, within a picture-frame, a dark empty aper "Good, dear Barbara!' cried Wilhelm, spring-ture. A man stept forward at it, in a common dress; ing up, and seizing the old woman by the hand, saluted the astonished looker-on, and said to him: we have had enough of mummery and prepara-Do you not recognise me?'"' tion! Thy indifferent, thy calm, contented tone betrays thee. Give me back my Mariana! She is living! she is near at hand! Not in vain didst thou choose this late lonely hour to visit me; not in vain hast thou prepared me by thy most delicious narrative. Where is she? where hast thou hid her? I believe all, I will promise to believe all. Thy object is attained. Where hast thou hid her? Let me light thee with this candle,-let me once more see her fair and kindly face!' "He had pulled old Barbara from her chair: she stared at him; tears started to her eyes; wild pangs of grief took hold of her. What luckless error,' cried she, leaves you still a moment's hope? Yes, I have hidden her-but beneath the ground! neither the light of the sun nor any social taper shall again illuminate her kindly face. Take the boy Felix to her grave, and say to him: There lies thy mother, whom thy father doomed unheard." The heart of Mariana beats no longer with impatience to behold you. Not in a neighbouring chamber is she waiting the conclusion of my narrative, or fable; the dark chamber has received her, to which no bridegroom follows, from which none comes to meet a lover." She cast herself upon the floor beside a chair, and wept bitterly." She then shows him some of the poor girl's letters, which he had refused to receive, and another which she had addressed to him on her deathbed. One of the former is as follows. "Thou regardest me as guilty-and so I am; but not as thou thinkest. Come to me! It involves the safety of a soul, it involves a life, two lives, one of which must ever be dear to thee. This, too, thy suspicion will discredit; yet I will speak it in the hour of death; the child which I carry underneath my heart, is thine. Since I began to love thee, no other man has even pressed my hand: O that thy love, that thy uprightness, had been the companions of my youth!" After this he sends the boy and Mignon to his new love, Theresa, and goes back himself to Lothario, by whom, and his energetic friends, the touching tale he had to tell "is treated with indifference and levity." And now comes the mystery of mysteries. After a great deal of oracular talk, he is ordered, one morning at sunrise, to proceed to a part of the castle to which he had never before found access; and when he gets to the end of a dark hot passage, he hears a voice call "Enter!" and he lifts a tapestry and enters!"The hall, in which he now stood, appeared to have at one time been a chapel; instead of the altar be observed a large table raised some steps above the floor, and covered with a green cloth hanging over it. On the top of this, a drawn curtain seemed s if it hid a picture; on the sides were spaces beautifully worked, and covered in with fine wire netting, like the shelves of a library; only here, instead We have not room, however, for the detail of all this mummery. A succession of figures, known and unknown, present themselves;among others, the ghost of Hamlet. At last, after a pause, "The Abbé came to view, and placed himself Come hither!' cried he behind the green table. to his marvelling friend. He went, and mounted up the steps. On the green cloth lay a little roll. to heart; it is of weighty import.' Wilhelm lifted, Here is your Indenture,' said the Abbé; take it opened it, and read: discover. "INDENTURE. sion transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to master. time. Now, look round you among these cases.' Enough!' cried the Abbé; the rest in due "Wilhelm went and read the titles of the rolls. With astonishment, he found Lothario's Apprenticeship, Jarno's Apprenticeship, and his own Apprenticeship placed there, with many others whose names he did not know. May I hope to cast a look into these rolls?' In this chamber, there is now nothing hid from you.' May I put a question?' 'Ask not,' said the Abbé. Hail to thee, young man! Thy apprenticeship is done; Nature has pronounced thee free.'"' When he afterwards inspects this roll, he finds "his whole life delineated with large, the elective affinities prevail. Theresa begins sharp strokes, and a number of bland and to cool to her new love; and, on condition of general reflections!" We doubt whether | Natalia undertaking to comfort Wilhelm, conthere is any such nonsense as this, any sents to go back to her engagements with Lowhere else in the universe. thario-and the two couples, and some more, are happily united. it After this illumination, the first step he takes, with the assent of these oracular sages, is to propose for Theresa, in a long letter. But while waiting for her answer, he is sent by Lothario to visit his sister, to whose care, appears, poor Mignon had been transferred by Theresa. This sister he takes, of course, for the Countess from whom he had parted so strangely in the castle, and is a little embarrassed at the thought of meeting her. But he discovers on the road that there is another sister; and that she is the very healing angel who had given him the great coat when wounded in the forest, and had haunted his fancy ever since. "He entered the house; he found himself in the most earnest, and, as he almost felt, the holiest place, which he had ever trod. A pendent dazzling lustre threw its light upon a broad and softly rising stair, which lay before him, and which parted into two divisions at a turn above. Marble statues and This is the ultimate catastrophe-though they who seek it in the book will not get at it quite so easily-there being an infinite variety of other events intermingled or premised. There is the death of poor Mignon-and her musical obsequies in the Hall of the Pastthe arrival of an Italian Marchese, who turns out to be her uncle, and recognises his brother in the old crazy harper, of whom, though he has borne us company all along, we have not had time to take notice-the return of Philina along with a merry cadet of Lothario's house, as sprightly and indecorous as everthe saving of Felix from poisoning, by his drinking out of the bottle instead of the glass and the coming in of the Count, whom Wilhelm had driven into dotage and piety by wearing his clothes-and the fair Countess, who is now discovered to have suffered for years from her momentary lapse in the castle the picture of her husband having, by a most apt retribution, been pressed so hard to her breast in that stolen embrace, as to give pain at the time, and to afflict her with fears of cancer for very long after! Besides all this, there are the sayings of a very decided and infallible gentleman called Jarno-and his final and not very intelligible admission, that all which our hero had seen in the hall of the castle was "but the relics of a youthful undertaking, in which the greater part of the initiated were once in deep earnest, though all of them now viewed it with a smile." Many of the passages to which we have now alluded are executed with great talent; and we are very sensible are better worth extracting than many of those we have cited. But it is too late now to change our selections busts were standing upon pedestals, and arranged in niches; some of them seemed known to him. The impressions of our childhood abide with us, even in their minutest traces. He recognised a Muse which had formerly belonged to his grandfather." He finds poor Mignon in a wretched state of health-and ascertains that it is a secret passion for him that is preying on her delicate form. In the mean time, and just as his romantic love for Natalia (his fair hostess) has resumed its full sway, she delivers him Theresa's letter of acceptance-very kind and confiding, but warning him not to lay out any of his money, till she can assist and direct him about the investment. This letter perplexes him a little, and he replies, with a bad grace, to the warm congratulations of Natalia when, just at this moment Lothario's friend steps in most opportunely to inform them, that Theresa had been discovered not to be and we can still less afford to add to them. the daughter of her reputed mother!-and On the whole, we close the Look with some that the bar to her union with Lothario was feelings of mollification towards its faults, therefore at an end. Wilhelm affects great and a disposition to abate, if possible, some magnanimity in resigning her to his prior part of the censure we were impelled to beclaims-but is puzzled by the warmth of her stow on it at the beginning. It improves cerlate acceptance-and still more, when a still tainly as it advances-and though nowhere more ardent letter arrives, in which she sticks probable, or conversant indeed either with to her last choice, and assures him that "her natural or conceivable characters, the inventdream of living with Lothario has wandered ive powers of the author seem to strengthen far away from her soul;" and the matter by exercise, and come gradually to be less seems finally settled, when she comes post- frequently employed on childish or revolting haste in her own person, flies into his arms, subjects. While we hold out the work thereand exclaims, "My friend-my love-my fore as a curious and striking instance of that husband! Yes, for ever thine! amidst the diversity of national tastes, which naskes a warmest kisses"--and he responds, "O my writer idolized in one part of polished Europe, Theresa!"-and kisses in return. In spite who could not be tolerated in another, we of all this, however, Lothario and his friends would be understood as holding it out as an come to urge his suit; and, with the true Ger- object rather of wonder than of contempt;: man taste for impossibilities and protracted and though the greater part certainly could agonies, the whole party is represented as not be endured, and indeed could not have living together quite quietly and harmonious- | been written in England, there are many pasly for several weeks-none of the parties sages of which any country might reasonably pressing for a final determination, and all of, be proud, and which demonstrate, that if taste them occupied, in the interval, with a variety be local and variable, genius is permanent and of tasks, duties, and dissertations. At last universal. CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. (October, 1804.) The Correspondence of SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles THE public has great reason to be satisfied, we think, with Mrs. Barbauld's share in this publication. She has contributed a very well written Introduction; and she has suppressed about twice as many letters as are now presented to our consideration. Favourably as we are disposed to think of all for which she is directly responsible, the perusal of the whole six volumes has fully convinced us that we are even more indebted to her forbearance than to her bounty. and of his sitting down, after his adventures There is something rather childish, we think, in all this investigation; and the problem of comparative probability seems to be stated purely for the pleasure of the solution. No reader was ever disturbed, in the middle of an interesting story, by any scruple about the means or the inducements which the narrator may be presumed to have had for tellThe fair biographer unquestionably posses- ing it. While he is engaged with the story, ses very considerable talents, and exercises such an inquiry never suggests itself; and her powers of writing with singular judgment when it is suggested, he recollects that the and propriety. Many of her observations are whole is a fiction, invented by the author for acute and striking, and several of them very his amusement, and that the best way of fine and delicate. Yet this is not, perhaps, communicating it must be that by which he the general character of her genius; and it is most interested and least fatigued. To us must be acknowledged, that she has a tone it appears very obvious, that the first of the and manner which is something formal and three modes, or the author's own narrative, is heavy; that she occasionally delivers trite and by far the most eligible; and for this plain obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity reason, that it lays him under much less reof important discoveries, and sometimes at-straint than either of the other two. He can tempts to exalt and magnify her subject by introduce a letter or a story whenever he a very clumsy kind of declamation. With finds it convenient, and can make use of the all those defects, however, we think the life dramatic or conversation style as often as and observations have so much substantial the subject requires it. In epistolary writing merit, that most readers will agree with us there must be a great deal of repetition and stage, to the intolerable burden of an insipid in thinking that they are worth much more egotism; and we must submit, as on the than all the rest of the publication. confidant, with whose admiration of the hero's epistles the reader may not always be disposed to sympathize. There is one species of novel indeed (but only one), to which the epistolary style is peculiarly adapted; that is, the novel, in which the whole interest depends, not upon the adventures, but on the characters of the persons represented, and in which the story is of very subordinate importance, and only serves as an occasion to draw forth the sentiments and feelings of the agents. The Heloise of Rousseau may be considered as the model of this species of writing; and Mrs. Barbauld certainly overlooked this obvious distinction, when she asserted that the author of that extraordinary work is to be reckoned among the imitators of Richardson. In the Heloise, there is scarcely any narrative at all; and the interest may be said to consist altogether in the eloquent ex pression of fine sentiments and exalted passion. All Richardson's novels, on the other hand, are substantially narrative; and the letters of most of his characters contain little more than a minute journal of the conversations and transactions in which they were successively engaged. The style of Richard. son might be perfectly copied, though the She sets off indeed with a sort of formal dissertation upon novels and romances in general; and, after obligingly recapitulating the whole history of this branch of literature, from the Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus to the Gil Blas and Nouvelle Heloise of modern times, she proceeds to distinguish these performances into three several classes, according to the mode and form of narration adopted by the author. The first, she is pleased to inform us, is the narrative or epic form, in which the whole story is put into the mouth of the author, who is supposed, like the Mase, to know every thing, and is not obliged to give any account of the sources of his i formation; the second is that in which the hero relates his own adventures; and the third is that of epistolary correspondence, where all the agents in the drama successively narrate the incidents in which they are principally concerned. It was with Richardson, Mrs. Barbauld then informs us, that this last mode of novel writing originated; and she enters into a critical examination of its advantages and disadvantages, and of the comparative probability of a person dispatching a narrative of every interesting incident or conversation in his life to his friends by the post, 16 L epistolary form. were to be dropped; but no | society, than in reading to these girls in, it may be, imitation of the Heloise could be recognised, a little back shop, or a mantua-maker's parlour with a brick floor."-p. xl. xli. if it were not in the shape of letters. After finishing her discourse upon Novels, During his apprenticeship, he distinguished Mrs. Barbauld proceeds to lay before her himself only by exemplary diligence and readers some account of the life and perform-fidelity; though he informs us, that he even ances of Richardson. The biography is very then enjoyed the correspondence of a gentle scanty, and contains nothing that can be man, of great accomplishments, from whose thought very interesting. He was the son of patronage, if he had lived, he entertained the a joiner in Derbyshire; but always avoided highest expectations. The rest of his worldly mentioning the town in which he was born. history seems to have been pretty nearly that He was intended at first for the church; but of Hogarth's virtuous apprentice. He married his father, finding that the expense of his his master's daughter, and succeeded to his education would be too heavy, at last bound business; extended his wealth and credit by him apprentice to a printer. He never was sobriety, punctuality, and integrity; bought a acquainted with any language but his own. residence in the country; and, though he did From his childhood, he was remarkable for not attain to the supreme dignity of Lord invention, and was famous among his school- Mayor of London, arrived in due time at the fellows for amusing them with tales and respectable situation of Master of the Worstories which he composed extempore, and shipful Company of Stationers. In this course usually rendered, even at that early age, the of obscure prosperity, he appears to have vehicle of some useful moral. He was con- continued till he had passed his fiftieth year, stitutionally shy and bashful; and instead of without giving any intimation of his future mixing with his companions in noisy sports celebrity, and even without appearing to be and exercises, he used to read and converse conscious that he was differently gifted from with the sedate part of the other sex, or assist the other flourishing traders of the metropolis. them in the composition of their love-letters. He says of himself, we observe, in one of The following passage, extracted by Mrs. these letters-"My business, till within these Barbauld from one of the suppressed letters, few years, filled all my time. I had no is more curious and interesting, we think, leisure; nor, being unable to write by a regu than any thing in those that are published. lar plan, knew I that I had so much invention, of Pamela. And besides, little did I imagine till I almost accidentally slid into the writing that any thing I could write would be so kindly received by the world." Of the origin and progress of this first work he has himself left the following authentic account. "As a bashful and not forward boy, I was an early favourite with all the young women of taste and reading in the neighbourhood. Half a dozen of them, when met to work with their needles, used, when they got a book they liked, and thought I should, to borrow me to read to them; their mothers sometimes with them; and both mothers and daughters used to be pleased with the observations they put me upon making. "Two booksellers, my particular friends, entreated me to write for them a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. Will it be any harm, said I, in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well as indite? They were the more urgent with me to begin the little volume for this hint. I set about it; and, in the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue; the above story recurred to my thought: and hence sprung Pamela."-Introd. p. liii. "I was not more than thirteen, when three of these young women, unknown to each other, having an high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me their love-secrets in order to induce me to give them copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters; nor did any of them ever know that I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even to repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection; and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word, or that expression, to be softened or changed. One highly gratified with her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction-I can- This publication, we are told, which inade not tell you what to write; but (her heart on her its first appearance in 1740, was received with lips) you cannot write too kindly. All her fear a burst of applause. Dr. Sherlock recomwas only that she should incur slight for her kind-mended it from the pulpit. Mr. Pope said it ness."-Vol. i. Introduction, p. xxxix. xl. We add Mrs. Barbauld's observation on this passage, for the truth of the sentiment it contains, though more inelegantly written than any other sentence in her performance. "Human nature is human nature in every class; the hopes and the fears, the perplexities and the struggles, of these low-bred girls in probably an obscure village, supplied the future author with those ideas which, by their gradual development, produced the characters of a Clarissa and a Clementina; nor was he probably happier, or amused in a more lively manner, when sitting in his grotto, with a circle of the best informed women in Eng. land about him, who in after times courted his would do more good than volumes of sermons; and another literary oracle declared, that if all other books were to be burnt, Pamela and the Bible should be preserved! Its success was not less brilliant in the world of fashion. "Even at Ranelagh," Mrs. Barbauld assures US, "it was usual for the ladies to hold up the volumes to one another, to show they had got the book that every one was talking of." And, what will appear still more extraordinary, one gentleman declares, that he will give it to his son as soon as he can read, that he may have an early impression of virtue.-After faithfully reciting these and other testimonies of the CORRESPONDENCE OF SAMUEL RICHARDSON. high estimation in which this work was once held by all ranks of people, Mrs. Barbauld subjoins some very acute and judicious observations both on its literary merits and its moral tendency. We cannot find room for the whole of this critique; but there is so much good sense and propriety in the following passage, that we cannot refrain from inserting it. "So long as Pamela is solely occupied in schemes to escape from her persecutor, her virtuous resistance obtains our unqualified approbation; but from the moment she begins to entertain hopes of marrying him, we admire her guarded prudence, rather than her purity of mind. She has an end in view, an interested end; and we can only consider her as the conscious possessor of a treasure, which she is wisely resolved not to part with but for its just price. Her staying in his house a moment after she found herself at liberty to leave it, was totally unjustifiable: her repentant lover ought to have followed her to her father's cottage, and to have married her from thence. The familiar footing upon which she condescends to live with the odious Jewkes, shows also, that her fear of offending the man she hoped to make her husband, had got the better of her delicacy and just resentment; and the same fear leads her to give up her correspondence with honest Mr. Williams, who had generously sacrificed his interest with his patron in order to effect her deliverance. In real life, we should, at this period, consider Pamela as an interesting girl: but the author says, she married Mr. B. because he had won her affection: and we are bound, it may be said, to believe an author's own account of his characters. But again, it is quite natural that a girl, who had such a genuine love for virtue, should feel her heart attracted to a man who was endeavouring to destroy that virtue? Can a woman value her honour infinitely above her life, and hold in serious detestation every word and look contrary to the nicest purity, and yet be won by those very attempts against her honour to which she expresses so much repugnance? -His attempts were of the grossest nature; and previous to, and during those attempts, he endeavHe puts on oured to intimidate her by sternness. the master too much, to win upon her as the lover. Can affection be kindled by outrage and insult? Surely, if her passions were capable of being awakened in his favour, during such a persecution, the circumstance would be capable of an interpretation very little consistent with that delicacy the author meant to give her. The other alternative is, that the married him for cious observations upon this popular and "The plot, as we have seen, is simple, and no She then makes some excellent remarks on the conduct of the story, and on the characters that enliven it; on that of the heroine, she observes, "In one instance, however, Clarissa certainly sins against the delicacy of her character, that is, in allowing herself to be made a show of to the loose companions of Lovelace. But, how does her character rise, when we come to the more distressful scenes; the view of her horror, when, deluded by the pretended relations, she re-enters the fatal house; her temporary insanity after the outrage, in which she so affectingly holds up to Lovelace the liwhen she first sees her ravisher, after the perpetracence he had procured, and her dignified behaviour tion of his crime! What finer subject could be presented to the painter, than the prison scene, where she is represented kneeling amidst the gloom and were, the dark chamber, her face reclined on her horror of that dismal abode; illuminating, as it crossed arms, her white garments floating round her in the negligence of woe; Belford contemplating 'The gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares.' Indeed, the excessive humility and gratitude ex- her with respectful commiseration: Or, the scene pressed by herself and her parents on her exaltation, of calmer but heart-piercing sorrow, in the interview shews a regard to rank and riches beyond the just Colonel Morden has with her in her dying momeasure of an independent mind. The pious good-ments! She is represented fallen into a slumber, in man Andrews should not have thought his virtuous daughter so infinitely beneath her licentious master, who, after all, married her to gratify his own passions. Introd. pp. lxiii.-lxvi. The first part of this work, which concludes with the marriage of the heroine, was written in three months; and was founded, it seems, on a real story which had been related to Richardson by a gentleman of his acquaintance. It was followed by a second part, confessedly very inferior to the first, and was ridiculed by Fielding in his Joseph Andrews; an offence for which he was never forgiven. Within eight years after the appearance of Pamela, Richardson's reputation may be said to have attained its zenith, by the successive publication of the volumes of his Clarissa. We have great pleasure in laying before our enders a part of Mrs. Barbaul 's very judi her elbow-chair, leaning on the widow Lovick, There is something in virgin purity, to which the imagination willingly pays homage. In all ages, something saintly has been attached to the idea of unblemished chastity; but it was reserved for honour and disgrace, and to throw a splendour around the violated virgin, more radiant than sho possessed in her first bloom. He has drawn tho Richardson to overcome all circumstances of dis. 1 |