late for this Magazine, and we believe there will be little Occasion for
inserting them in our next; because a Second Edition will then come out
to supply the Demands in the Country, it being judged in Town as great a
Sign of Want of Curiosity not to have read _Pamela_, as not to have seen
the _French_ and _Italian_ Dancers." A second edition was in fact
published in the following month (February), to be speedily succeeded by
a third in March and a fourth in May. Dr. Sherlock (oddly misprinted by
Mrs. Barbauld as "Dr. Slocock") extolled it from the pulpit; and the
great Mr. Pope was reported to have gone farther and declared that it
would "do more good than many volumes of sermons." Other admirers ranked
it next to the Bible; clergymen dedicated theological treatises to the
author; and "even at Ranelagh"--says Richardson's biographer--"those who
remember the publication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up
the volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew that they had got the book
that every one was talking of." It is perhaps hypercritical to observe
that Ranelagh Gardens were not opened until eighteen months after Mr.
Rivington's _duodecimos_ first made their appearance; but it will be
gathered from the tone of some of the foregoing commendations that its
morality was a strong point with the new candidate for literary fame;
and its voluminous title-page did indeed proclaim at large that it was
"Published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion
in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes." Its author, Samuel Richardson,
was a middle-aged London printer, a vegetarian and water-drinker, a
worthy, domesticated, fussy, and highly-nervous little man. Delighting
in female society, and accustomed to act as confidant and amanuensis for
the young women of his acquaintance, it had been suggested to him by
some bookseller friends that he should prepare a "little volume of
Letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those
country readers, who were unable to indite for themselves." As Hogarth's
Conversation Pieces grew into his Progresses, so this project seems to