desired to follow.

Although the popularity of Fielding's first novel was considerable, it
did not, to judge by the number of editions, at once equal the
popularity of the book by which it was suggested. _Pamela_, as we have
seen, speedily ran through four editions; but it was six months before
Millar published the second and revised edition of _Joseph Andrews;_ and
the third did not appear until more than a year after the date of first
publication. With Richardson, as might be expected, it was never popular
at all, and to a great extent it is possible to sympathise with his
annoyance. The daughter of his brain, whom he had piloted through so
many troubles, had grown to him more real than the daughters of his
body, and to see her at the height of her fame made contemptible by what
in one of his letters he terms "a lewd and ungenerous engraftment," must
have been a sore trial to his absorbed and self-conscious nature, and
one which not all the consolations of his consistory of feminine
flatterers--"my ladies," as the little man called them--could wholly
alleviate. But it must be admitted that his subsequent attitude was
neither judicious nor dignified. He pursued Fielding henceforth with
steady depreciation, caught eagerly at any scandal respecting him,
professed himself unable to perceive his genius, deplored his "lowness,"
and comforted himself by reflecting that, if he pleased at all, it was
because he had learned the art from _Pamela_. Of Fielding's other
contemporary critics, one only need be mentioned here, more on account
of his literary eminence than of the special felicity of his judgment.
"I have myself," writes Gray to West, "upon your recommendation, been
reading Joseph Andrews. The incidents are ill laid and without
invention; but the characters have a great deal of nature, which always
pleases even in her lowest shapes. Parson Adams is perfectly well; so is
Mrs. Slipslop, and the story of Wilson; and throughout he [_the author_]