CHAPTER VI.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

N the first year of the reign of James II., 1685, an ingenious artisan-a joiner, who was a good draughtsman, and understood architecture-hastily left his business. in London, and took up his abode somewhere in Derbyshire. The execution of the Duke of Monmouth had terrified this humble man, whose name was Richardson; for he had received favours from the unhappy son of Charles II., and also from the Earl of Shaftesbury. He was suspected in that awful time; and, had he not found a secure hiding-place, would probably have been one of the sufferers whom Chief-Justice Jeffreys sent to the gallows, or to a life of field-labour in America. In 1689 Samuel Richardson was born. Though concealment from political motives was no longer necessary as regarded his father, he has carefully forborne to mention the precise place in Derbyshire where he first saw the light, and where he passed his childhood.

In 1753, the Rev. J. Stinstra, a Dutch minister, who had translated Clarissa,' wrote to this famous novelist: May I ask you--(although I am too bold my letter blushes not)-in what kind of life you have been conversant from your youth? Have you, as

fame reports, been constantly employed in bookselling? Whence did you attain so accurate a knowledge of the various dispositions of nature, and of the manners of mankind? What was the first occasion

of your application to writing? By what means have you compiled your immortal works? Did they flow from your invention? or, had you a model of a true action before your eyes, which you adorned with additional colourings?" To questions so searching and so flattering as these the complacent author replies without reserve, as to the facts of his early life. Out of these revelations let me call up the shadow of a precocious boy, in his obscure home in Derbyshire.

It is a summer afternoon; school is over; the village boys are playing at ball, or kite-flying, on the green, in front of a row of decent cottages. A matron, with laughing girls about her, looks out of her woodbine-covered lattice, and exclaims, "There is that poor little Gravity again, moping about by himself. Bring him in, Susan, and let us hear some of his fine stories." Susan runs out, and salutes the little fellow with, "Mr. Serious, why don't you play like the rest of your schoolfellows?" "I don't want to play, Miss." "Well, then, come in with me, and you shall have a glass of gooseberry-wine." Sammy Richardson takes her hand, and he, seated on a low stool, soon begins to tell a story of a servant-man preferred by a fine young lady for his goodness, to a lord who was a libertine. Two or three summers, and two or three winters, pass away, and still the little boy is in great request; for when half-a-dozen young

women are gathered together in a neighbourly fashion. to work with their needles, Sammy is reading to them, or telling fresh stories, "all of which carried with them an useful moral." He had a talent for letterwriting, from his earliest youth; and when scarcely eleven years old, got into some trouble for writing spontaneously an epistle, full of Scripture texts, to a widow of fifty, who pretended to a zeal for religion, and was a constant frequenter of church ordinances, but who was continually fomenting quarrels amongst all her acquaintances by backbiting and scandal. This was dangerous work for the critical boy, as his handwriting was known. He has attained his thirteenth year, having made no acquisitions of knowledge out of the range of the few English books that are within his reach. But he was gathering up materials, in a strange way, for the exercise of his future art. Let me view him as he is walking by the side of a streamlet under a Derbyshire hill, in earnest conversation with one of his "young women of taste and reading." She it is who is eloquent in talk; he is only an attentive listener. Another evening comes, and he is reading to her a manuscript, which she carefully puts into her pocket, and smiles a sweet farewell. Are they lovers? Has the bashful boy thus early declared his affection? It is not so; it ought not to be so. In a few weeks young Samuel has a private meeting with another young lady, and there is a similar earnest conference-sighs and tears on the maiden's part-silent acquiescence from the youth. Autumn succeeds to summer; the hedges and woods are getting bare of leaves; but far away

from prying eyes, a third damsel is wandering with the same youthful listener. It is not one meeting only with either of them at which these conferences are carried on. There is a mystery. When that boy has become a man of sixty-five he explains it to his reverend Dutch correspondent. "I was not more than thirteen when three of these young women, unknown to each other, having a high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me their love-secrets, in order to induce me to give them copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters: nor did any one of them ever know I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word or that expression to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, 'I cannot tell you what to write, but,' her heart on her lips, you cannot write too kindly.'" Mr. Stinstra expresses his opinion that the novelist is indebted to this secretaryship to young women for the characters he had drawn of his heroines. "This opportunity did little more for me," replies Mr. Richardson, "at so tender an age, than to point, as I may say, or lead my inquiries, as I grew up, into the knowledge of the female heart; and, knowing something of that, I could not be an utter stranger to that of man."

I must descend with Master Samuel from these altitudes, and follow him into the dead level of common life. In 1706 he was bound apprentice to Mr. John Wilde, described by Dunton as having "a very noble printing-house in Aldersgate Street." Looking back upon this period, Richardson says, "I served a diligent seven years to it; to a master who grudged every hour to me that tended not to his profit; even of those times of leisure and diversion which the refractoriness of my fellow-apprentices obliged him to allow them, and were usually allowed by other masters to their apprentices. I stole from the hours of rest and relaxation my reading times for improvement of my mind. I took care that even my candle was of my own purchasing, that I might not, in the most trifling instance, make my master a sufferer." That hard taskmaster called the lad "the pillar of his house." For six or seven years after the expiration of his apprenticeship Richardson continued at his trade, as a compositor, a reader, and part of the time as an overseer. Of frugal habits, he was at length enabled, having taken up his freedom in 1719, to become a master printer, in a small way, in a Court in Fleet Street. He afterwards removed to Salisbury Square, where we have seen Thomas Gent employed by him in 1723. He was truly then "the ingenious Mr. Richardson;" for he had become something more than a careful printer in his connexion with booksellers. He compiled Indexes, and wrote Prefaces, and what he terms "honest Dedications." His knowledge of the heart of man was probably extended by his acquaintance with the clever and profligate Duke of Wharton; for

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