lease
possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow
accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson
shows the power which places him in the front rank of novelists, and
finds precisely the field in which his method is most effective and its
drawbacks least annoying. In the first place, in spite of his enormous
prolixity, the interest is throughout concentrated upon one figure. In
'Sir Charles Grandison' there are episodes meant to illustrate the
virtues of the 'next-to-divine man' which have nothing to do with the
main narrative. In 'Clarissa' every subordinate plot--and they
abound--bears immediately upon the central action of the story, and
produces a constant alternation of hope and foreboding. The last
volumes, indeed, are dragged out in a way which is injurious in several
respects. Clarissa, to use Charles II.'s expression about himself, takes
an unconscionable time about dying. But until the climax is reached, we
see the clouds steadily gathering, and yet with an increasing hope that
they may be suddenly cleared up. The only English novel which produces a
similar effect, and impresses us with the sense of an inexorable fate,
slowly but steadily approaching, is the 'Bride of Lammermoor'--in some
respects the best and most artistic of Scott's novels. Superior as is
Scott's art in certain directions, we scarcely feel the same interest in
his chief characters, though there is the same unity of construction. We
cannot feel for the Master of Ravenswood the sympathy which Clarissa
extorts. For in Clarissa's profound distress we lose sight of the
narrow round of respectabilities in which her earlier life is passed;
the petty pompousness, the intense propriety which annoy us in 'Sir
Charles Grandison' disappear or become pathetic. When people are dying
of broken hearts we forget their little absurdities of costume. A more
powerful note is sounded, and the little superficial absurdities are
forgotten. We laugh at the first feminine description of her dress--a
Brussels-lace cap, with sky-blue ribbon, pale crimson-coloured paduasoy,
with cuffs embroidered in a running pattern of violets and their leaves;
but we are more disposed to cry (if many novels have not exhausted all
our powers of weeping) when we come to the final scene. 'One faded cheek
rested upon the good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of which had
overspread it with a faint but charming flush; the other paler and
ho