not know that
he shows it much less in the later part of the first two volumes
(Pamela's recurrent tortures of jealous curiosity about Sally Godfrey
are admirable) or even in the dreary sequel. But analysis for analysis'
sake can have few real, though it may have some pretended, devotees.

The foregoing remarks have been designed, less as a criticism of
_Pamela_ (which would be unnecessary here), or even of Richardson (which
would be more in place, but shall be given in brief presently), than as
an account and justification of the book's position in the real subject
of this volume--the History of the English Novel. And this account will
dispense us from dealing, at corresponding length, with the individually
more important but historically subordinate books which followed. Of
these _Clarissa_, as few people can be ignorant, is a sort of enlarged,
diversified, and transposed _Pamela_, in which the attempts of a
libertine of more resolution and higher gifts than Mr. B. upon a young
lady of much more than proportionately higher station and qualities than
Pamela's, are--as such success goes--successful at last: but only to
result in the death of the victim and the punishment of the criminal.
The book is far longer than even the extended _Pamela_; has a much wider
range; admits of episodes and minor plots, and is altogether much more
ambitious; but still--though the part of the seducer Lovelace is much
more important than that of Mr. B.--it is chiefly occupied with the
heroine. In _Sir Charles Grandison_, on the contrary, though no less
than three heroines exist after a fashion and are carefully treated, the
author's principal object is to depict--in direct contrast to Mr. B. and
Lovelace--a "Good Man"--the actual first title of the book, which he
wisely altered. This faultless and insufferable monster is frantically
beloved by, and hesitates long between, two beauties, the Italian
Clementina della Porretta and the English Harriet Byron. The latter of
these carries him off (rather because of religious difficulties than of
any great predilection on his own part) and the piece ends with a
repetition, extension, and intensification of the bounties showered upon
Pamela by her husband, and her almost abject gratitude for them. Only of
course "the good man" could never be guilty of Mr. B.'s meditated
relapse from the path of rectitude, nor (one may perhaps add) does Miss
Byron seem to possess the insinuating astuteness by which Pa