man and of the
fine gentleman of a silly and rather unhealthy-minded schoolgirl. He
is--it is difficult to resist the temptation of dropping and inserting
the h's--handsome, haughty, arbitrary, as well as rich, generous after a
fashion, well descended, well dressed, well mannered--except when he is
insolent. He is also--which certainly stands to his credit in the bank
which is not that of the snob or the schoolgirl--no fool in a general
way. But he is not in the least a gentleman except in externals: and
there is nothing really "great" about him at all. Even his scoundrelism
is mostly, if not wholly, _pose_--which abominable thing indeed
distinguishes him throughout, in every speech and every act, from the
time when he sighs as he kisses Miss Arabella Harlowe's hand to the time
when he says, "Let this expiate!" as that hallowed sword of Colonel
Morden's passes through his rotten heart. Now if Richardson had _meant_
this, it might be granted at once that Lovelace is one of the greatest
characters of fiction: and I do not deny that _taken as this_, meant or
not meant, he is great. But Richardson obviously did _not_ mean it; and
Hazlitt did not mean it; and none of the admirers mean it. _They_ all
thought and think that Lovelace is something like what Milton's Satan
was, and what my Lord Byron would have liked to be. This is very unfair
to the Prince of Darkness: and it is even not quite just to "the noble
poet."

At the same time, the acute reader will have noticed, the acknowledgment
that the fact that Richardson--even not knowing it and intending to do
something else--did hit off perfectly and consummately the ideal of such
a "prevailing party" (to quote Lord Foppington) as snobs and
schoolgirls, is a serious and splendid tribute to his merits: as is also
the fact that his two chief characters are characters still interesting
and worth arguing about. Those merits, indeed, are absolutely
incontestable. His immediate and immense popularity, abroad as well as
at home, would not necessarily prove much, though it must not be
neglected, and historically, at least, is of the first importance. But
he does not need it.

For, as should have been sufficiently shown, he did very great
things--first by gathering up the scattered means and methods which had
been half ignorantly hit on by others, and co-ordinating them into the
production of the finished and complete novel; secondly (though less) by
that infusion of elaborate "minor