ge itself go off smartly and briskly: there may be
more sequence than connection--there is _some_ connection, as in the
case of that most unlucky and ill-treated person the Rev. Mr.
Williams--but the sequence is rapid and unbroken, and the constituents
of it as it were jostle each other--not in any unfavourable sense, but
in a sort of rapid dance, "cross hands and down the middle," which is
inspiriting and contagious. He lost this faculty later: or rather he
allowed it to be diluted and slackened into the interminable episodes of
the not dissimilar though worse-starred plot against Clarissa, and the
_massacrant_ trivialities of the Italian part of _Grandison_. But he had
it here: and it is not a fair argument to say (as even in these days I
have known it said) that Pamela's honour is a commodity of too little
importance to justify such a pother about it.

This may bring us to the characters. They also are not of the absolutely
first class--excepting, as to be discussed later, the great attempt of
Lovelace, Richardson's never are. But they are an immense advance on the
personages that did duty as persons in preceding novels, even in Defoe.
"Mr. B." himself is indeed not very capital. One does not quite see why
a man who went on as long as he did and used the means which he
permitted himself to use, did not go on longer or use them more
thoroughly. But Richardson has at least vindicated his much-praised
"knowledge of the human heart" by recognising two truths: first, that
there are many natures (perhaps most) who are constantly tempted to
"over-bid"--to give more and more for something that they want and
cannot get; and, secondly, that there are others (again, perhaps, the
majority, if not always the same individuals) who, when they are
peremptorily told _not_ to do a thing, at once determine to do it. It
was to Lady Davers mainly that Pamela owed her escape from the fate of
Clarissa, though she would hardly have taken, or had the chance of
taking, that fate in the same way. As for the minor characters, at least
the lower examples are more than sufficient: and Mrs. Jewkes wants very
little of being a masterpiece. But of course Pamela herself is the
cynosure, such as there is. She has had rather hard measure with critics
for the last century and a little more. The questions to ask now are,
"Is she a probable human being?" and then, "Where are we to find a
probable human being, worked out to the same degree, before?" I say