ciously, and lopping off superfluities and
excrescences, without tenderness or remorse. Instead of
adding one volume to Clarissa, as originally printed, had
you taken three away, it might have been made a valuable
performance. The best, perhaps, the only way to correct
Grandison and Pamela, would be to make them pass thro' the
fire.

To conclude, I think your writings have corrupted our
language and our taste; that the composition of them all,
except Clarissa, is bad; and that they all, particularly
that, have a manifest tendency to corrupt our morals. I have
likewise shewn that your principal characters are all,
except Clarissa's, faulty, ridiculous, or unmeaning.
Grandison is an inconsistent angel, Lovelace is an absolute
devil, and Booby is a perfect ass; Pamela is a little pert
minx, whom any man of common sense or address might have had
on his own terms in a week or a fortnight, Harriet appears
to be every thing, and yet may be nothing, except a ready
scribe, a verbose letter-writer; and as to Clarissa,
I believe you will own yourself, that I have done you ample
justice. I now leave you seriously to contemplate the merit
of your performances, and shall only add, that I hope you
will have the candour not to impute these animadversions to
any spiteful envy conceived at your great reputation and
extraordinary success; yet, this I will say, that some
expressions might perhaps have been pointed with less
severity, had I not observed that your constant endeavours
are to render a certain set of men amongst us, the objects
of public hatred and detestation; for any thing you know to
the contrary they may be in the right, and you in the wrong,
at least, as I told you before, you are no proper judge in
the controversy, whether they are or not. At any rate this
conduct of yours must proceed either from a weakness of the
head, or a badness of the heart. A weakness in the head,
that your understanding still continues blinded with all
those prejudices, in their full strength, which you imbibed
in the years of your childhood, from the old women in the
nursery. A badness of the heart, that makes you imagine any
difference in opinions, merely speculative, ever can give
just occasion to an unfavourable distinction among members
of the same society, partakers of the same human nature, and
children of one common indulgent Parent, the almighty and
beneficent Creator of all things.

_I am_, &c.

_POSTSCRIPT._

After