ch Richardson belonged. We take a seat in the old
gentleman's shop, or drop in to take a dish of tea with him at North
End, in Hammersmith. We learn to know them almost as well as we know the
literary circle of the next generation from Boswell or the higher social
sphere from Horace Walpole--and it is a pleasant relief, after reading
the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and
Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie
of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly
unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging
outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He
was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the
Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the
Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's
daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the
Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his
country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He
never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his
infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had
written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his
experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was
afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels.
We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of
whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths
in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have
long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted
into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or
constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous
little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a
'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each
of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without
help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often among
his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to
bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a
capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to
him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three
hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Shor