Walpole, quoted by Sarah Fielding,[9] and had the honor, if one can
trust Walpole, of an offer of keeping from Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu. His _Égaremens du Coeur et de l'Esprit_ (1736-38) was
translated in 1751[10] and is the novel which Yorick helped the
_fille de chambre_ slide into her pocket. Crébillon was damned,
however, in _The World_ (No. 19, May 10, 1753) in an essay that,
oddly enough, reminds one of d'Argens's Letter 35. The work referred
to in the third footnote on page 258 is _Le Chevalier des Essars et
la Comtesse de Berci_ (1735) by Ignace-Vincent Guillot de La
Chassagne. The last footnote on that page refers to G.H. Bougeant's
satire, _Voyage Merveilleux du Prince Fan-Férédin dans la Romancie_
(1735).

The preface which William Warburton was invited by Richardson to
supply for Volumes III and IV of _Clarissa_ when they first appeared
in 1748 has never, I think, been reprinted in full. Richardson
dropped it from the second edition (1749) of _Clarissa_, probably
because he relished neither its implication that he was following
French precedents nor its suggestion that his work was one "of mere
Amusement." In the "Advertisement" in the first volume of the second
edition he insisted that _Clarissa_ was "not to be considered as a
_mere Amusement_, as a _light Novel_, or _transitory Romance_; but
as a _History_ of LIFE and MANNERS ... intended to inculcate the
HIGHEST and _most_ IMPORTANT _Doctrines_."[11] Warburton, offended
in turn perhaps, thriftily salvaged more than half of the preface
(paragraphs 2 to 6) to use as a footnote in his edition of Alexander
Pope,[12] but he there made a striking change: not Richardson but
Marivaux and Fielding were praised as the authors who, with the
extra enrichment of comic art, had brought the novel of "real LIFE
AND MANNERS ... to its perfection."