mela once
more

"Reconciles the new perverted man,"

to adapt the last line of _A Lover's Complaint_ to the situation.

_Grandison_, like _Clarissa_, has a much wider range of personage and
incident than _Pamela_, and is again double the length of it. No
detailed criticism of these enormous books (both of which are conducted
in the letter-form, though, in the latter case especially, with long
retrospects and narratives which rather strain the style) is possible
here. But a few remarks on the characters of Lovelace and Clarissa,
which have usually been regarded as Richardson's greatest triumphs, may
fitly precede some on his whole character as a novelist.

Admiration and sympathy, tempered with a few reserves, have been the
general notes of comment on Clarissa: and--as she goes through the long
martyrdom of persecution by her family for not marrying the man she does
not love; of worse persecution from the man whom she does love, but who
will not marry her, at least until he has conquered her virtue; and of
perhaps worst when she feels it her duty to resist his repentant and (as
such things go) honourable proffers after he has treacherously deprived
her of technical honour--compassion at least is impossible to refuse.
But "compassion," though it literally translates "sympathy" from Greek
into Latin, is not its synonym in English. It is a disagreeable thing to
have to say: but Clarissa's purity strikes one as having at once too
much questionable prudery in it and too little honest prudence: while
her later resolution has as much false pride as real principle. Even
some of her admirers admit a want of straightforwardness in her; she has
no passion, which rather derogates from the merit of her conduct in any
case; and though she is abominably ill-treated by almost everybody,
one's pity for her never comes very near to love.

Towards Lovelace, on the other hand, the orthodox attitude, with even
greater uniformity, has been shocked, or sometimes even unshocked,
admiration. Hazlitt went into frequently quoted raptures over the
"regality" of his character: and though to approve of him as a man would
only be the pretence of a cheap paradoxer, general opinion seems to have
gone various lengths in the same direction. There have, however, been a
few dissenters: and I venture to join myself to them in the very
dissidence of their dissent. Lovelace, it is true, is a most
astonishingly "succeeded" blend of a snob's fine gentle