"Pamela," to 1765 is but a quarter century; yet within those
narrow time-limits the English Novel, through the labors of
Richardson and Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and Goldsmith, can be
said to have had its birth and growth to a lusty manhood and to
have defined once and for all the mold of this new and potent
form of prose art. By 1773 a critic speaks of the "novel-writing
age"; and a dozen years later, in 1785, novels are so common
that we hear of the press "groaning beneath their weight,"--which
sounds like the twentieth century. And it was all started
by the little printer; to him the praise. He received it in full
measure; here and there, of course, a dissident voice was heard,
one, that of Fielding, to be very vocal later; but mostly they
were drowned in the chorus of adulation. Richardson had done a
new thing and reaped an immediate reward; and--as seldom
happens, with quick recognition--it was to be a permanent reward
as well, for he changed the history of English literature.

One would have expected him to produce another novel post-haste,
following up his maiden victory before it could be forgotten,
after the modern manner. But those were leisured days and it was
half a dozen years before "Clarissa Harlowe" was given to the
public. Richardson had begun by taking a heroine out of low
life; he now drew one from genteel middle class life; as he was
in "Sir Charles Grandison," the third and last of his fictions,
to depict a hero in the upper class life of England. In Clarissa
again, plot was secondary, analysis, sentiment, the exhibition
of the female heart under stress of sorrow, this was everything.
Clarissa's hand is sought by an unattractive suitor; she rebels--a
social crime in the eighteenth century; whereat, her whole
family turn against her--father, mother, sister, brothers,