part,' he has the infinitesimal distinction of recalling, by its first line, the 'Ae fond kiss, and then we sever' of Burns. But-for all that he figures in the collections of Chalmers and Anderson-he is more eminent in his business than in his literary capacity. The man who, of our time, should produce the works of the leading poets, philosophers, fine gentlemen (if there were any), historians, and critics, and also contrive to acquire their esteem and affection, would certainly be entitled to rank as a remarkable personage. In such relations stood Robert Dodsley to the chief authors of his day. Besides reprinting old plays and establishing the Annual Register,' he published for Pope and Gray, for Johnson and Burke, for Spence and Warton, for Walpole and Chesterfield;—and none of them spoke ill of him. This is something; enough, it may be, to justify the dedication of these brief pages to his memory.

IT

RICHARDSON AT HOME.

Tis an old truth that we are often more keenly interested in shadows than in realities, and this is especially the case with certain fictitious characters. At Gad's Hill, for example, it is less Charles Dickens that we remember, writing his last novel in the garden-chalet which had been given him by Fechter the actor, than Shakespeare's Falstaff, 'larding the lean earth' in his flight from the wild Prince and Poins. When we walk in Chiswick Mall, it is probable that the never-existent Academy of Miss Barbara Pinkerton, where Becky Sharp flung the great Doctor's 'Dixonary' out of the carriage window into the garden, is far more present to us than the memories of Mr. Alexander Pope and his patron, Richard, Earl of Burlington, both of whom had 'local habitation' in the neighbourhood. If we visit the Charterhouse, Addison and Steele, and even Thackeray himself, do not force themselves so vividly upon our recollection as does the tall, bent figure of a certain Anglo-Indian colonel with a lean brown face, and a long white mous

tache, who said Adsum' for the last time as a pensioner within its precincts. And whether this be, or be not, the experience of the imaginative, it is certain that the present writer seldom goes print-hunting at Mr. Fawcett's in King Street, Covent Garden, without calling to mind the fact, not that those most painted and palpable realities, the four Iroquois Indian Kings of the 'Spectator,' once sojourned in that very thoroughfare at the sign of the Two Crowns and . Cushions,' but that it was at Mr. Smith's,' a glove shop in the same street, where 'stockings, ribbons, snuff, and perfumes' were also sold, that, under the disguise of Mrs. Rachel Clark, Clarissa Harlowe lay in hiding from Lovelace; and that hard by, in the adjoining Bedford Street, the most harassed of all heroines was subsequently pounced upon by the sheriff's officers as she was coming from morning prayers at St. Paul's, Covent Garden. What a subject for Mr. Orchardson or Mr. Marcus Stone! The Tuscan portico of Paul's, with its clock and bells; the battered, brass-nailed sedan-chair, spotted with damp, and browned by exposure to the sun, waiting, the head ready up, 'at the door fronting Bedford Street'; the broadshouldered and much-muffled minions of the law watching doggedly for their prey; the gathering

circle of spectators, half-sympathetic, half-censorious; and Clarissa-poor, hunted Clarissa!— trembling, terrified, and beautiful, appearing, with her white face peeping from her 'mob,' a step or two higher than the rest, upon the dark cavity of the church-door.

There are seven volumes of Clarissa Harlowe's lamentable history, and, according to Mrs. Barbauld, there were originally two more in the manuscript. Yet one of the author's correspondents, Miss Collier-the Margaret Collier who went with Henry Fielding to Lisbon-tells Richardson that she is reading the book for the fourth time! As one turns the pages, one almost grows incredulous. Did she really read all thatfour times? Did she really read those thirteen pages of the heroine's will, four several times? To doubt a lady, and a friend of Richardson to boot, is inexcusable; but, at all events, the exploit is scarcely one to be repeated in this degenerate age. Not that the only obstacle is the length of the story. Other writers-even writers of our own day-are long. If 'Pamela' is in four volumes, so is the Cloister and the Hearth'; if' Clarissa' and 'Sir Charles Grandison' are in seven volumes, there are eight of 'Monte Christo' and ten of Les Misérables,'

But there is length of time, and length of tedium. Besides words, and sentences, and paragraphs, and chapters, the masterpieces above-mentioned also contain, to a greater or lesser extent, abundance of plot, of movement, of incident, of character. Richardson is long with a minimum of these, and he is also deplorably diffuse, copious, long-winded, circumstantial. He plays his piece-to borrow a musical illustration-to the very slowest beat of the metronome. He can concentrate his thoughts upon his theme, but he cannot concentrate the expression of them; and, as he admitted to Young, for one page that he takes away he is apt to add three. What is worse, as MM. Janin and Prévost have proved in France, and Mrs. Ward and Mr. E. S. Dallas in England, you can no more cut him down now than his friends could do in his lifetime. Aaron Hill, who endeavoured to abridge the first seven letters of 'Clarissa,' confessed, after making the attempt, that he only spoilt them; and in casting about for an explanation of his failure, he happens upon the truth. 'You have,' he says, 'formed a style . . . where verbosity becomes a virtue; because, in pictures which you draw with such a skilful negligence, redundance but conveys resemblance; and to contract the strokes, would be to spoil the like