And _Truth_ held out each character to test,
When _Genius_ spoke: Let _Fielding_ take the pen!
Life dropt her mask, and all mankind were men."

There were others, however, who would scarcely have echoed the laudatory
sentiments of Mr. Cawthorn. Among these was again the excellent
Richardson, who seems to have been wholly unpropitiated by the olive
branch held out to him in the _Jacobite's Journal_. His vexation at the
indignity put upon _Pamela_ by _Joseph Andrews_ was now complicated by a
twittering jealousy of the "spurious brat," as he obligingly called _Tom
Jones_, whose success had been so "unaccountable." In these
circumstances, some of the letters of his correspondents must have been
gall and wormwood to him. Lady Bradshaigh, for instance, under her _nom
de guerre_ of "Belfour," tells him that she is fatigued with the very
name of the book, having met several young ladies who were for ever
talking of their Tom Jones's, "for so they call their favourites," and
that the gentlemen, on their side, had their Sophias, one having gone so
far as to give that all-popular name to his "Dutch mastiff puppy." But
perhaps the best and freshest exhibition (for, as far as can be
ascertained, it has never hitherto been made public) of Richardson's
attitude to his rival is to be found in a little group of letters in the
Forster collection at South Kensington. The writers are Aaron Hill and
his daughters; but the letters do not seem to have been known to Mrs.
Barbauld, whose last communication from Hill is dated November 2, 1748.
Nor are they to be found in Hill's own Correspondence. The ladies, it
appears, had visited Richardson at Salisbury Court in 1741, and were
great admirers of _Pamela_, and the "divine _Clarissa_." Some months
after _Tom Jones_ was published, Richardson (not yet having brought
himself to read the book) had asked them to do so, and give him their
opinion as to its merits. Thereupon Minerva and Astraea, who despite