what a gentleman was. Even the most punctilious men of the time did
not, like Grandison, hesitate to visit a sick person, because it would
involve travelling on Sunday; nor did they, as he, refuse to have their
horses' tails docked, because nature had humanely given those tails as
a protection against flies. The Grandisonian manners are not to be
taken as a picture of contemporary fashion. Richardson was unacquainted
with aristocratic habits, and his high-flown love scenes were purely
ideal. When he goes into high life, said Chesterfield, "he mistakes the
modes." Not long before Sir Charles was making his formal and courtly
addresses to Miss Byron, Walpole had written to George Montagu: "'Tis
no little inducement to wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is
not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward
for it. You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women
with no more deference than they do their coach horses." Such was the
state of things which the example of Sir Charles Grandison was intended
to remedy.

The moral design is an important element in Richardson's novels, but
the extraordinary popularity of these works was owing to other causes.
Richardson had known how to move his reader's heart, and how to give to
his characters a deep personal interest. He had attempted to introduce
"a new species of writing," and public enthusiasm testified to his
success. Colly Cibber read "Clarissa" before its publication, and was
wrought up into a high state of excitement by the story. "What a
piteous, d----d, disgraceful pickle you have placed her in!" he wrote
to Richardson. "For God's sake, send me the sequel, or--I don't know
what to say! * * * My girls are all on fire and fright to know what can
possibly have become of her." And when he heard that Clarissa was to
have a miserable end, he wrote the author: "God d----n him, if she
should."[165] Mrs. Pilkington was not less distressed: "Spare her
virgin purity, dear sir, spare it! Consider if this wounds both Mr.
Cibber and me (_who neither of us set up for immaculate chastity_),
what must it do with those who possess that inestimable treasure?"[166]
Miss Fielding, the sister of the novelist of that name, thus described,
in a letter to its author, her feelings on reading "Clarissa": "When I
read of her, I am all sensation; my heart glows. I am overwhelmed; my
only vent is tears." One Thomas Turner, who kept a village shop in
Sussex, t