Samuel Richardson, the First Modern English Novelist.Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was born in Derbyshire. When he was only thirteen years old some of the young women of the neighborhood unconsciously began to train him for a novelist by employing him to conduct their love correspondence. This training partly accounts for the fact that every one of his novels is merely a collection of letters, written by the chief characters to each other and to their friends, to narrate the progress of events.

At the age of fifteen Richardson went to London and learned the printer's trade, which he followed for the rest of his life.

When he was about fifty years old, some pub

lishers asked him to prepare a letter writer which would be useful to country people and to others who could not express themselves with a pen. The idea occurred to him of making these letters tell a connected story. The result was the first modern novel, Pamela, published in four volumes in 1740. This was followed by Clarissa Harlowe, in seven volumes, in 1747-48, and this by Sir Charles Grandison, in seven volumes, in 1753.

The affairs in the lives of the leading characters are so minutely dissected, the plot is evolved so slowly and in a way so unlike the astonishing bounds of the old romance, that one is tempted to say that Richardson's novels progress more slowly than events in life. One secret of his success depends on the fact that we feel that he is deeply interested in all his characters. He is as much interested in the heroine of his masterpiece, Clarissa Harlowe, as if she were his own daughter. He has the remarkable power of so thoroughly identifying himself with his characters that, after we are introduced to them, we can name them when we hear selections read from their letters.

The length and slow development of his novels repel modern readers, but there was so little genuinely interesting matter in the middle of the eighteenth century that many were sorry his novels were no longer. The novelty of productions of this type also added to their interest. His many faults are largely those of his age. his readers with his didactic aims. He is narrow and prosy. He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches the morality of direct utility.

He wearies

The drama and the romance had helped to prepare the way for the novel of everyday domestic life. While this way seemed simple, natural, and inevitable, Richardson was the first to travel in it. Defoe had invested fic

titious adventure with reality. Richardson transferred the real human life around him to the pages of fiction. The ascendancy of French influence was noteworthy for a con

siderable period after the Restoration. England could now repay some of her debt. Richardson exerted powerful influence on the literature of France as well as on that of other continental nations.

Henry Fielding, 1707-1754. The greatest novelist of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest that England ever produced, was Henry Fielding, who was born in Sharpham Park, Somersetshire. After graduating at the University of Ley

den, he became a playwright, a lawyer, a judge of a police court, and, most important of all, a novelist, or a historian of society, as he preferred to style himself.

When Richardson's Pamela appeared, Fielding determined to write a story caricaturing its morality and sentiment, which he considered hypocritical. Before he had

gone very far he discovered where his abilities lay, and, abandoning his narrow, satiric aims, he wrote Joseph Andrews (1742), a novel far more interesting than Pamela. Jonathan Wild the Great (1743) tells the story of a rogue who was finally hanged. In 1749 appeared Fielding's masterpiece, Tom Jones, and in 1751 his last novel, Amelia.

Richardson lacks humor, but Fielding is one of the greatest humorists of the eighteenth century. Fielding is also a master of plot. From all literature, Coleridge selected, for perfection of plot, The Alchemist, Edipus Tyrannus, and Tom Jones.

Fielding's novels often lack refinement, but they palpitate with life. His pages present a wonderful variety of characters, chosen from almost all walks of life. He could draw admirable portraits of women. Thackeray says of Amelia, the heroine of the novel that bears her name:

"To have invented that character, is not only a triumph of art, but it is a good action. They say it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and loved her, and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character in English fiction. . . . I admire the author of Amelia, and thank the kind master who introduced me to that sweet and delightful companion and friend. Amelia, perhaps, is not a better story than Tom Jones, but it has the better ethics; the prodigal repents at least before forgiveness, whereas that odious broad-backed Mr. Jones carries off his beauty with scarce an interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings. .. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace.” 1

...

The "prodigal" to whom Thackeray refers is Captain Booth, the husband of Amelia, and "Mr. Jones" is the hero of Tom Jones. Fielding's wife, under the name of Sophia Western, is also the heroine of Tom Jones. It is probable that in the characters of Captain Booth and Tom Jones, Fielding drew a partial portrait of himself. He

1 The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century.

seems, however, to have changed in middle life, for his biographer, Austin Dobson, says of him: "He was a loving father and a kind husband; he exerted his last energies in philanthropy and benevolence he expended his last ink in defence of Christianity."

Fielding shows the eighteenthcentury love of satire. He hates that hypocrisy which tries to conceal itself under a mask of morality. In the evolution of the plots of his novels, he invariably puts such characters in positions that tear away their mask. He displays almost savage pleasure in making them ridiculous. Perhaps the lack of spirituality of the age finds the most ample expression in his pages;

LAURENCE STERNE

but Chaucer's Parish Priest and Fielding's Parson Adams are typical of those persisting moral forces that have be

queathed a heritage of power to England.

Sterne and Smollett. With Richardson and Fielding it is customary to associate two other mid-eighteenth century novelists, Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) and

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771). From a drawing by B. Westmacott.
Between 1759 and 1767

Sterne wrote his first novel, The Life and Opinions of

Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which presents the delight