At the age of fifteen Richardson went to London and learned the printer’s trade, which he followed for the rest of his life.  When he was about fifty years old, some publishers asked him to prepare a letter writer which would be useful to country people and to others who could not express themselves with a pen.  The idea occurred to him of making these letters tell a connected story.  The result was the first modern novel, Pamela, published in four volumes in 1740.  This was followed by Clarissa Harlowe, in seven volumes, in 1747-48, and this by Sir Charles Grandison, in seven volumes, in 1753.

The affairs in the lives of the leading characters are so minutely dissected, the plot is evolved so slowly and in a way so unlike the astonishing bounds of the old romance, that one is tempted to say that Richardson’s novels progress mere slowly than events in life.  One secret of his success depends on the fact that we feel that he is deeply interested in all his characters.  He is as much interested in the heroine of his masterpiece, Clarissa Harlowe, as if she were his own daughter.  He has the remarkable power of so thoroughly identifying himself with his characters that, after we are introduced to them, we can name them when we hear selections read from their letters.

The length and slow development of his novels repel modern readers, but there was so little genuinely interesting matter in the middle of the eighteenth century that many were sorry his novels were no longer.  The novelty of productions of this type also added to their interest.  His many faults are largely those of his age.  He wearies his readers with his didactic aims.  He is narrow and prosy.  He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches the morality of direct utility.

The drama and the romance had helped to prepare the way for the novel of everyday domestic life.  While this way seemed simple, natural, and inevitable, Richardson was the first to travel in it.  Defoe had invested fictitious adventure with reality.  Richardson transferred the real human life around him to the pages of fiction.  The ascendancy of French influence was noteworthy for a considerable period after the Restoration.  England could now repay some of her debt.  Richardson exerted powerful influence on the literature of France as well as on that of other continental nations.

[Illustration:  HENRY FIELDING. From the original sketch by Hogarth.]

Henry Fielding, 1707-1754.—­The greatest novelist of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest that England ever produced, was Henry Fielding, who was born in Sharpham Park, Somersetshire.  After graduating at the University of Leyden, he became a playwright, a lawyer, a judge of a police court, and, most important of all, a novelist, or a historian of society, as he preferred to style himself.