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and assures him that "her dream of living with Lothario has wandered far away from her soul;" and the matter seems finally settled, when she comes post-haste in her own person, flies into his arms, and exclaims, "My friend my love-my husband! Yes, for ever thine! amidst the warmest kisses" and he responds, "O my Theresa! — and kisses in return. In spite of all this, however, Lothario and his friends come to urge his suit; and, with the true German taste for impossibilities and protracted agonies, the whole party is represented as living together quite quietly and harmoniously for several weeks -none of the parties pressing for a final determination, and all of them occupied, in the interval, with a variety of tasks, duties, and dissertations. At last the elective affinities prevail. Theresa begins to cool to her new love; and, on condition of Natalia undertaking to comfort Wilhelm, consents to go back to her engagements with Lothario- and the two couples, and some more, are happily united.

This is the ultimate catastrophe - though they who seek it in the book will not get at it quite so easily there being an infinite variety of other events intermingled or premised. There is the death of poor Mignon- and her musical obsequies in the Hall of the Past — the arrival of an Italian Marchese, who turns out to be her uncle, and recognises his brother in the old crazy harper, of whom, though he has borne us company all along, we have not had time to take notice - the return of Philina along with a merry cadet of Lothario's house, as sprightly and indecorous as ever-the saving of Felix from poisoning, by his drinking out of the bottle instead of the glass-and the coming in of the Count, whom Wilhelm had driven into dotage and piety by wearing his clothes-and the fair Countess, who is now discovered to have suffered for years from her momentary lapse in the castle - the picture of her husband having, by a most apt retribution, been pressed so hard to her breast in that stolen embrace, as to give great pain at the time, and to afflict her with fears of cancer for very long after! Besides all this, there are the sayings of a

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very decided and infallible gentleman called Jarno— and his final and not very intelligible admission, that all which our hero had seen in the hall of the castle was "but the relics of a youthful undertaking, in which the greater part of the initiated were once in deep earnest, though all of them now viewed it with a smile."

Many of the passages to which we have now alluded are executed with great talent; and we are very sensible are better worth extracting than many of those we have cited. But it is too late now to change our selections — and we can still less afford to add to them. On the whole, we close the book with some feelings of mollification towards its faults, and a disposition to abate, if possible, some part of the censure we were impelled to bestow on it at the beginning. It improves certainly as it advances and though nowhere probable, or conversant indeed either with natural or conceivable characters, the inventive powers of the author seem to strengthen by exercise, and come gradually to be less frequently employed on childish or revolting subjects. While we hold out the work therefore as a curious and striking instance of that diversity of national tastes, which makes a writer idolized in one part of polished Europe, who could not be tolerated in another, we would be understood as holding it out as an object rather of wonder than of contempt; and though the greater part certainly could not be endured, and indeed could not have been written in England, there are many passages of which any country might reasonably be proud, and which demonstrate, that if taste be local and variable, genius is permanent and universal.

302

RICHARDSON'S CORRESPONDENCE.

(OCTOBER, 1804.)

The Correspondence of SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Author of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison; selected from the original Manuscripts bequeathed to his Family. To which are prefixed, a Biographical Account of that Author, and Observations on his Writings. By ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD. 6 vols. 8vo. Phillips, London: 1804.

THE public has great reason to be satisfied, we think, with Mrs. Barbauld's share in this publication. She has contributed a very well written Introduction; and she has suppressed about twice as many letters as are now presented to our consideration. Favourably as we are disposed to think of all for which she is directly responsible, the perusal of the whole six volumes has fully

convinced us that we are even more indebted to her forbearance than to her bounty.

The fair biographer unquestionably possesses very considerable talents, and exercises her powers of writing with singular judgment and propriety. Many of her observations are acute and striking, and several of them very fine and delicate. Yet this is not, perhaps, the general character of her genius; and it must be acknowledged, that she has a tone and manner which is something formal and heavy; that she occasionally delivers trite and obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity of inportant discoveries, and sometimes attempts to exalt and magnify her subject by a very clumsy kind of declamation. With all those defects, however, we think the life and observations have so much substantial merit, that most readers will agree with us in thinking that they are worth much more than all the rest of the publication.

She sets off indeed with a sort of formal dissertation upon novels and romances in general; and, after obligingly recapitulating the whole history of this branch of literature, from the Theagenes and Chariclea of Helio

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dorus to the Gil Blas and Nouvelle Heloise of modern times, she proceeds to distinguish these performances into three several classes, according to the mode and form of narration adopted by the author. The first, she is pleased to inform us, is the narrative or epic form, in which the whole story is put into the mouth of the author, who is supposed, like the Muse, to know every thing, and is not obliged to give any account of the sources of his information; the second is that in which the hero relates his own adventures; and the third is that of epistolary correspondence, where all the agents in the drama successively narrate the incidents in which they are principally concerned. It was with Richardson, Mrs. Barbauld then informs us, that this last mode of novel writing originated; and she enters into a critical examination of its advantages and disadvantages, and of the comparative probability of a person despatching a narrative of every interesting incident or conversation in his life to his friends by the post, and of his sitting down after his adventures are concluded, to give a particular account of them to the public.

There is something rather childish, we think, in all this investigation; and the problem of comparative probability seems to be stated purely for the pleasure of the solution. No reader was ever disturbed, in the middle of an interesting story, by any scruple about the means or the inducements which the narrator may be presumed to have had for telling it. While he is engaged with the story, such an inquiry never suggests itself; and when it is suggested, he recollects that the whole is a fiction, invented by the author for his amusement, and that the best way of communicating it must be that by which he is most interested and least fatigued. To us it appears very obvious, that the first of the three modes, or the author's own narrative, is by far the most eligible; and for this plain reason, that it lays him under much less restraint than either of the other two. can introduce a letter or a story whenever he finds it convenient, and can make use of the dramatic or conversation style as often as the subject requires it. In

He

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BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARDSON.

epistolary writing there must be a great deal of repetition and egotism; and we must submit, as on the stage, to the intolerable burden of an insipid confidant, with whose admiration of the hero's epistles the reader may not always be disposed to sympathize. There is one species of novel indeed, (but only one), to which the epistolary style is peculiarly adapted; that is, the novel, in which the whole interest depends, not upon the adventures, but on the characters of the persons represented, and in which the story is of very subordinate importance, and only serves as an occasion to draw forth the sentiments and feelings of the agents. The Heloise of Rousseau may be considered as the model of this species of writing; and Mrs. Barbauld certainly overlooked this obvious distinction, when she asserted that the author of that extraordinary work is to be reckoned among the imitators of Richardson. In the Heloise, there is scarcely any narrative at all; and the interest may be said to consist altogether in the eloquent expression of fine sentiments and exalted passion. All Richardson's novels, on the other hand, are substantially narrative; and the letters of most of his characters contain little more than a minute journal of the conversations and transactions in which they were successively engaged. The style of Richardson might be perfectly copied, though the epistolary form were to be dropped; but no imitation of the Heloise could be recognised, if it were not in the shape of letters.

After finishing her discourse upon Novels, Mrs. Barbauld proceeds to lay before her readers some account of the life and performances of Richardson. The biography is very scanty, and contains nothing that can be thought very interesting. He was the son of a joiner in Derbyshire; but always avoided mentioning the town in which he was born. He was intended at first for the church; but his father, finding that the expense of his education would be too heavy, at last bound him apprentice to a printer. He never was acquainted with any language but his own. From his childhood, he was remarkable for invention, and was famous among his schoolfellows for