RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, the first great English novelist. was b. in Derby in the year 1689. His father, though originally connected with a higher grade of society, was a joiner. It was his ambition to educate his son for the church; lint for this the means were found deficient, and at the age of 17, with simply such an education as a country school could then furnish, the young man fared forth to London, where he became apprentice to one John Wilde, a printer. In the discharge of his business duties he was exact and careful, and on the expiration of his apprenticehip he became foreman of 31m'. Wilde's establishment. Some years afterward he started as printer on his own account in Salisbury court, Fleet street; and on finding his success assured he wedded .hiss Allington Wilde, the daughter of his late employer. After her death in 1731 he was ,again married to a Miss Leake. By each lady he was blessed with six children, of whom only four daughters along with their mother survived him. Throughout life, in his business relations, he was prosperous; very early he had influence to secure the lucra tive post of printer of the journals of the house of commons; in 1754 he became master of the stationer's company; and in 1760 he purchased the moiety of the patent of king's printer; hut died on July 4 of the year following.
Richardson's genius flowered late. Till he had turned 50 his relations with litera ture, except in the way of printing it, were of the most slight and amateur kind; but in 1740 he surprised the world with his Pamela, which had instant and great success. Its continuation, to which the author was stung by the attempt of some hungry scribe to make a meal or two by the issue of a pretended sequel, entitled Pamela in High Life, was, however, pronounced much inferior. 'Memorable in itself, the work is now to m‘,4 readers more so as having suggested to Fielding his Joseph. Andrews, originally conceived as a parody of Richardson's somewhat prudish moralities. Time exquisiteness of the satire was not appreciated by Richardson: and he never forgave Fielding for it, or could speak of him after with common temper or patience.
In 1748 he issued the first four volumes of The history of Clarissa Ilarlowe—by com mon consent his masterpiece—a work which in its progress to completion excited the most intense interest. His third and last great work, The History of Sir Charles Grail di
syn. was published in 1753. As a whole, this is less interesting thou its predecessors; and in his repreSentation of the life of the fashionable classes, of which he had no clear personal knowledge, the writer :ucceeds but indifferently.
Richardson's method of minute elaboration has in itself some tendency toward an effect of tedium; moreover, the epistolary vehicle which he has chosen, though with certain advantages of its own, does not subserve rapidity of movement; and as his stories run to immense length, their perusal involves some effort of patience.. But in the depth and simplicity of his sentiment, his profound knowledge of the heart, and mastery of elemental emotion, there are singular sources of attraction; and in virtue of the overwhelming effects of pathos in which the interest of his Ciari..y.ga culminates. a pl.tee must always be assigned him among the very few potent masters of genuine tragic passion.. Ills specialty lies in subtle analysis of the intricacies of female mind and emotion; and in this particular field he has scarcely perhaps been surpassed. A curious sort of passionless confidential intimacy with women, it seems from his earliest years to have been his instinct to cultivate; throughout life he was the center of a circle of female friends and admirers, who came to him with their little delicate secrets, as to a kind of lay father-confessor; and of the fruits of his nice observation of them he has given us' to the full in his novels. The success of these is said to have bred in him a somewhat inordinate vanity, the only little flaw in a character unusually blameless and amiable. Of works of less importance he published, besides occasional contributions to periodicals, The Aegotiatioiai of Sit' Thomas Roe in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte from 1621 to 1628 (1740, fol.); An Edition of _./Esop's Fables, with Reflections ; Pamtliar Letters to and from several Persons on Business and other Subjects ; and in 1804 there appeared his Correspondence Selected and Published, with a Biography by Anna Letitia Barbauld.