His beau ideal, Grandison, turns out the most impossible prig in
English literature. He is as insufferable as that later prig,
Meredith's Sir Willoughby in "The Egotist," with the difference
that the author does not know it, and that you do not believe in
him for a moment; whereas Meredith's creation is appallingly
true, a sort of simulacrum of us all. The best of the story is
in its portrayal of womankind; in particular, Sir Charles' two
loves, the English Harriet Byron and the Italian Clementina, the
last of whom is enamored of him, but separated by religious
differences. Both are alive and though suffering in the reader's
estimation because of their devotion to such a stick as
Grandison, nevertheless touch our interest to the quick. The
scene in which Grandison returns to Italy to see Clementina,
whose reason, it is feared, is threatened because of her grief
over his loss, is genuinely effective and affecting.

The mellifluous sentimentality, too, of the novelist seems to
come to a climax in this book; justifying Taine's satiric remark
that "these phrases should be accompanied by a mandolin." The
moral tag is infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales--though
perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. We are still
long years from that conception of art which holds that a
beautiful thing may be allowed to speak for itself and need not
be moraled down our throats like a physician's prescription. Yet
Fielding had already, as we shall see, struck a wholesome note
of satiric fun. The plot is slight and centers in an abduction
which, by the time it is used in the third novel, begins to pall
as a device and to suggest paucity of invention. The novel has
the prime merit of brevity; it is much shorter than "Clarissa
Harlowe," but long enough, in all conscience, Harriet being