the first edition to be the work of Richardson
himself, although in the revised version he indicates that it was
composed by someone else. In this instance due acknowledgment may have
been easy; but in many other places it may have been extraordinarily
difficult for the author/editor to disentangle his own words and ideas
from those of his friends.

In preparing the Preface and Postscript Richardson was faced with a
genuine problem. He realised that his achievement in _Clarissa_ was of
sufficient magnitude and novelty to demand some theoretical defence and
explanation. But he realised also that he was himself inadequate to the
task. 'The very great Advantage of an Academical Education, I have
wanted,'[4] he confessed to Mr. D. Graham of King's College. He lacked
that familiarity with literature and with the conventions of literary
criticism which would have made it easy for him to produce the analysis
of his novel which he felt was needed. No wonder he told Graham that 'of
all the Species of Writing, I love not Preface-Writing;'[5] and it is
not surprising that, both before and after the publication of
_Clarissa_, he should have besieged his friends with requests for their
opinions of the novel.

In making these requests he was not simply seeking flattery. What he
needed were sympathetic critics who could clothe in acceptable language
statements which he would recognise as expressing the truth about his
masterpiece. _Hints of Prefaces_, especially if read in the context of
the numerous replies Richardson received, reveals very plainly the
extent to which he was aware of what he wanted from his correspondents.
Most, unfortunately, were sadly incapable of producing a _critical_
account of the novel. In this company Skelton and Spence were brilliant
exceptions; and Richardson's adoption of their statements, apparently to
the exclusion of all others, indicates the soundness of his own critical
intuitions. Equally interesting is his treatment of Warburton's Preface.
Although he did not reprint this in the third and fourth editions, one
paragraph from it is preserved in _Hints of Prefaces_.[6] Significantly,
it is the only paragraph in Warburton's essay which has something to say
about the distinctive qualities of _Clarissa_.

In formulating all these critical statements Richardson is concerned
less with developing a theory of fiction for its own sake than with
justifying his action in writing a novel. His main defence, of