amela's little heart is registered, and registered
probably enough: nor could the registry have been effected, perhaps, in
any other way that should be in the least probable so well as by the
letter and journal method. Of course this analysis was not quite new; it
had existed in a sort of way in the heroic novel: and it had been
eminently present in the famous _Princesse de Cleves_ of Madame de la
Fayette as well as in her French successors. But these stories had
generally been as short as the heroics had been long: and no one had
risen (or descended) to anything like the minuteness and fullness of
Richardson. As was before pointed out in regard to the letter-system
generally, this method of treatment is exposed to special dangers,
particularly those of verbosity and "overdoing"--not to mention the
greater one of missing the mark. Richardson can hardly be charged with
error, though he may be with excess, in regard to Pamela herself in the
earlier part of the book--perhaps even not in regard to Mr. B.'s
intricacies of courtship, matrimonial compliment, and arbitrary temper
later. But he certainly succumbs to them in the long and monstrous scene
in which Lady Davers bullies, storms at, and positively assaults her
unfortunate sister-in-law before she is forced to allow that she _is_
her sister-in-law. Part of course of his error here comes from the
mistake with which Lady Mary afterwards most justly reproached
him--that he talked about fine ladies and gentlemen without knowing
anything about them. It was quite natural for Lady Davers to be
disgusted, to be incredulous, to be tyrannical, to be in a certain sense
violent. But it is improbable that she would in any case have spoken and
behaved like a drunken fishfag quarrelling with another in the street:
and the extreme prolongation of the scene brings its impropriety more
forcibly into view. Here, as elsewhere (a point of great importance to
which I may invite attention), Richardson follows out, with
extraordinary minuteness and confidence, a wrong course: and his very
expertness in the process betrays him and brings him to grief. If he had
run the false scent for a few yards only it would not matter: in a chase
prolonged to something like "Hartleap Well" extension there is less
excuse for his not finding it out. Nevertheless it would of course be
absurd not to rank this "knowledge of the human heart" among the claims
which not only gave him but have kept his reputation. I do