unhesitatingly that the answer to the first is "Yes," and the answer to
the second "Nowhere." The last triumph of originality and individuality
she does not indeed reach. Richardson had, even more than other men of
his century in England, a strong Gallic touch: and he always tends to
the type rather than the individual. Beatrix Esmond is a coquette of the
highest--almost of the heroic-poetic--class, but she is first of all
Beatrix Esmond. Blanche Amory is a middle-class minx, hardly heroic at
all, but she is first of all Blanche Amory. Becky Sharp is an
adventuress who would go pretty close to, and perhaps not stop at,
positive crime, but she is first of all Becky Sharp. Pamela Andrews is
not first of all--perhaps she is hardly at all--Pamela Andrews. There
might be fifty or five hundred Pamelas, while there could be only one of
each of the others. She is the pretty, good-natured, well-principled,
and rather well-educated menial, whose prudence comes to the aid of her
principles, whose pride does not interfere with either, and who has a
certain--it is hardly unfair to call it--slyness which is of the sex
rather than of the individual. But, as such, she is quite admirably
worked out--a heroine of Racine in more detail and different
circumstances, a triumph of art, and at the same time with so much
nature that it is impossible to dismiss her as merely artificial. The
nearest thing to her in English prose fiction before (Marianne, of
course, is closer in French) is Moll Flanders: and good as Moll is, she
is flat and lifeless in comparison with Pamela. You may call "my
master's" mistress (actually in the honourable sense, but never in the
dishonourable) again a minx, though a better minx than Blanche, if you
like. But there is no animal more alive than a minx: and you will
certainly not find a specimen of the species in any English novel
before.

As for description and dialogue, there is not very much of the former
in _Pamela_, though it might not be unfair to include under the head
those details, after the manner of Defoe (such as Pamela's list of
purchases when she thinks she is going home), which supply their own
measure of verisimilitude to the story. But there are some things of the
kind which Defoe never would have thought of--such as the touches of
the "tufts of grass" and the "pretty sort of wildflower that grows
yonder near the elm, the fifth from us on the left," which occur in the
gipsy scene. The dialogue plays