to _Pamela_, on October 11, 1740.[4] Webster
owed (an obligation eventually forgiven) "a debt of 140 _l._ to my most
worthy Friend, Mr. _Richardson_, the _Printer_,"[5] and Richardson
reprints the letter using Webster's phrase: "To my worthy Friend, the
Editor of _Pamela_." These first two letters, de Freval's and Webster's,
respond to an author's request for criticism. The rest, new with the
second edition, are unsolicited.

All of these are the work of Aaron Hill, excepting only the anonymous
letter which Richardson summarizes, beginning on page xxi[6] -- sent to
Richardson in care of Charles Rivington, co-publisher of _Pamela_, on
November 15, 1740, the first gratuitous response to Richardson's book.
To advertisements in _The Daily Gazeteer_ (November 20) and _The London
Evening-Post_ (December 11-13), Richardson added a note:

An anonymous Letter relating to this Piece is come to the Editor's
Hand, who takes this Opportunity (having no better) most heartily to
thank the Gentleman for his candid and judicious Observations; and
to beg Favour of a further Correspondence with him, under what
Restrictions he pleases. Instruction, and not Curiosity, being
sincerely the Motive for this request.[7]

If the gentleman had answered, the introduction to _Pamela_ would
perhaps have been shorter. Some of Hill's acerbity may have been
absorbed from Richardson, hurt by the writer's silence.

The double-entendres mentioned on page xxii are given in the gentleman's
unpublished letter in the Forster collection, in the Victoria and Albert
Museum:

Jokes are often more Severe, and do more Mischief, than more Solid
Objects -- to obviate some, why not omit P 175 -- _betwixt Fear and
Delight_ -- and P 181 -- _I made shift to eat a bit of_ etc. _but I
had no Appetite to any thing else_.[8]

In the light of this letter, the second edition of _Pamela_ attests a
curious fact: while Hill pontificates in the introduction about ignoring
such vulgarity of mind, Richardson has tiptoed back to Volume Two and
changed the questioned passages. From the second edition forward, Pamela
trembles during her wedding not "betwixt Fear and Delight" but "betwixt
Fear and Joy"; and although Richardson leaves Pamela her shift on page
181, he changes her remark about appetite: "I made shift to get down a
bit of Apple-pie, and a little Custard; but that was all." By omitting
the specific objections from his summary, Richardson managed at o