has passed three editions. I do not
forgive him his disrespect of old china, which is below nobody's taste,
since it has been the D. of Argyll's, whose understanding has never been
doubted either by his friends or enemies.

"Richardson never had probably money enough to purchase any, or even a
ticket for a masquerade, which gives him such an aversion to them;
though his intended satire against them is very absurd on the account of
his Harriet, since she might have been carried off in the same manner if
she had been going from supper with her grandmamma. Her whole behaviour,
which he designs to be exemplary, is equally blamable and ridiculous.
She follows the maxim of Clarissa, of declaring all she thinks to all
the people she sees, without reflecting that in this mortal state of
imperfection, fig-leaves are as necessary for our minds as our bodies,
and 'tis as indecent to show all we think, as all we have. He has no
idea of the manners of high life: his old Lord M. talks in the style of
a country justice, and his virtuous young ladies romp like the wenches
round a maypole. Such liberties as pass between Mr. Lovelace and his
cousins, are not to be excused by the relation. I should have been much
astonished if Lord Denbigh should have offered to kiss me; and I dare
swear Lord Trentham never attempted such an impertinence to you."

Lady Mary was in sore trouble about Richardson. She would not like him,
she was angry with him, yet could never away with him. When she heard of
an adventure at Lovere, she, who herself had a gift for novel-writing,
must needs send an account of it to Lady Bute, saying that it exactly
resembled and, she believed, was copied from _Pamela_. "I know not under
what constellation that foolish stuff was wrote, but it has been
translated into more languages than any modern performance I ever heard
of," she added. "No proof of its influence was ever stronger than this
story, which in Richardson's hands would serve very well to furnish out
seven or eight volumes: I shall make it as short as I can."

As an example of Lady Mary's skill in narrative, her account of the
Richardsonian adventure is well worth reprinting.

"Here is a gentleman's family, consisting of an old bachelor and his
sister, who have fortune enough to live with great elegance, though
without any magnificence, possessed of the esteem of all their
acquaintance, he being distinguished by his probity, and she by her
virtue. They are n