the connected story of a girl's life. Defoe had told an adventure
story of human life on a desert island, but Richardson would tell the story
of a girl's inner life in the midst of English neighbors. That sounds
simple enough now, but it marked an epoch in the history of literature.
Like every other great and simple discovery, it makes us wonder why some
one had not thought of it before.

RICHARDSON'S NOVELS. The result of Richardson's inspiration was _Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded_, an endless series of letters[216] telling of the trials,
tribulations, and the final happy marriage of a too sweet young maiden,
published in four volumes extending over the years 1740 and 1741. Its chief
fame lies in the fact that it is our first novel in the modern sense. Aside
from this important fact, and viewed solely as a novel, it is sentimental,
grandiloquent, and wearisome. Its success at the time was enormous, and
Richardson began another series of letters (he could tell a story in no
other way) which occupied his leisure hours for the next six years. The
result was _Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady_, published in eight
volumes in 1747-1748. This was another, and somewhat better, sentimental
novel; and it was received with immense enthusiasm. Of all Richardson's
heroines Clarissa is the most human. In her doubts and scruples of
conscience, and especially in her bitter grief and humiliation, she is a
real woman, in marked contrast with the mechanical hero, Lovelace, who
simply illustrates the author's inability to portray a man's character. The
dramatic element in this novel is strong, and is increased by means of the
letters, which enable the reader to keep close to the characters of the
story and to see life from their different view points. Macaulay, who was
deeply impressed by _Clarissa_, is said to have made the remark that, were
the novel lost, he could restore almost the whole of it from memory.

Richardson now turned from his middle-class heroines, and in five or six
years completed another series of letters, in which he attempted to tell
the story of a man and an aristocrat. The result was _Sir Charles
Grandison_ (1754), a novel in seven volumes, whose hero was intended to be
a model of aristocratic manners and virtues for the middle-class people,
who largely constituted the novelist's readers. For Richardson, who began
in _Pamela_ with the purpose of teaching his hearers how to write, ended
with the deliberate purpose