SOURCE: “The Epistolary Format of Pamela and Humphry Clinker,” in A Provision of Human Nature: Essays on Fielding and Others in Honor of Miriam Austin Locke, edited by Donald Kay, The University of Alabama Press, 1977, pp. 145-54.

In the following essay, Jeffrey compares Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker, and argues that by using letters, the heroines of the two novels are able to create their own portraits of themselves and construct stable, artistic versions of reality that are less painful than their real lives.

Samuel Richardson would doubtless disapprove the mating of his first heroine with Smollett's last protagonist, but they are not, in some ways, such a strange pair. Pamela in 1740 is the heroine of the first great epistolary novel, while Humphry in 1771 is the titular hero of the last. Both begin as servants, both moralize throughout their novels, and both find themselves elevated...