r
the skirts of his coat; ... looking directly fore-right as
passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either
hand of him; hardly ever turning back; of a light brown
complexion, smoothish faced and ruddy cheeked, looking about
sixty-five; a regular, even pace, a gray eye, sometimes lively--very
lively if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he loves and
honors!

Such innocent philandering is delicious; there is a flavor to it
that presages the "Personals" in a New York newspaper. "Was ever
lady in such humor wooed?" or shall we say it is the novelist,
not the lady, who is besieged!

"Pamela" ran through five editions within a year of its
appearance, which was a conspicuous success in the days of an
audience so limited when compared with the vast reading public
of later times. The smug little bookseller must have been
greatly pleased by the good fortune attending his first venture
into a new field, especially since he essayed it so late in life
and almost by accident. His motive had been in a sense
practical; for his publishers had requested him to write a book
"on the useful concerns of life"--and that he had done so, he
might have learned any Sunday in church, for divines did not
hesitate to say a kind word from the pulpit about so
unexceptionable a work.

One of the things Richardson had triumphantly demonstrated by
his first story was that a very slight texture of plot can
suffice for a long, not to say too long, piece of fiction, if
only a free hand be given the story-teller in the way of
depicting the intuitions and emotions of human beings; dealing
with their mind states rather than, or quite as much as, their
actions. This was the modern note, and very speedily was the
lesson learned; the time was apt for it. From 1742, the date of
"Pamela," to 1765 is but a quarter century; yet within those
narrow time-limits the English Novel, through the labors of
Richardson and Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and Goldsmith, can be
said to have had its birth and growth to a lusty manhood and to
have defined once and for all the mold of this new and potent
form of prose art. By 1773 a critic speaks of the "novel-writing
age"; and a dozen years later, in 1785, novels are so common
that we hear of the press "groaning beneath their weight,"--which
sounds like the twentieth century. And it was all started
by the little printer; to him the praise. He received it in full
measure;