differences of taste and time, the vogue of the Novel in
Richardson's day can easily be understood, and through all the
stiffness, the stilted effect of manner and speech, and the
stifling conventions of the entourage, a sweet and charming
young woman in very piteous distress emerges to live in
affectionate memory. After all, no poor ideal of womanhood is
pictured in Clarissa. She is one of the heroines who are
unforgettable, dear. Mr. Howells, with his stern insistence on
truth in characterization, declares that she is "as freshly
modern as any girl of yesterday or to-morrow. 'Clarissa
Harlowe,' in spite of her eighteenth century costume and
keeping, remains a masterpiece in the portraiture of that
ever-womanly which is of all times and places."

Lovelace, too, whose name has become a synonym for the fine
gentleman betrayer, is drawn in a way to make him sympathetic
and creditable; he is far from being a stock figure of villainy.
And the minor figures are often enjoyable; the friendship of
Clarissa with Miss Howe, a young woman of excellent good sense
and seemingly quite devoid of the ultra-sentiment of her time,
preludes that between Diana and her "Tony" in Meredith's great
novel. As a general picture of the society of the period, the
book is full of illuminations and sidelights; of course, the
whole action is set on a stage that bespeaks Richardson's
narrow, middle class morality, his worship of rank, his belief
that worldly goods are the reward of well-doing.

As for the contemporaneous public, it wept and praised and went
with fevered blood because of this fiction. We have heard how
women of sentiment in London town welcomed the book and the