of Sir Charles Grandison has passed into a proverb, and its mention calls up to the mind a man of the most dignified deportment, of the most delicate consideration for women, and of the most elaborate manners.  But it must be remembered that in Sir Charles, our author drew the portrait of what a gentleman should be, and not of what a gentleman was.  Even the most punctilious men of the time did not, like Grandison, hesitate to visit a sick person, because it would involve travelling on Sunday; nor did they, as he, refuse to have their horses’ tails docked, because nature had humanely given those tails as a protection against flies.  The Grandisonian manners are not to be taken as a picture of contemporary fashion.  Richardson was unacquainted with aristocratic habits, and his high-flown love scenes were purely ideal.  When he goes into high life, said Chesterfield, “he mistakes the modes.”  Not long before Sir Charles was making his formal and courtly addresses to Miss Byron, Walpole had written to George Montagu:  “’Tis no little inducement to wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it.  You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach horses.”  Such was the state of things which the example of Sir Charles Grandison was intended to remedy.

The moral design is an important element in Richardson’s novels, but the extraordinary popularity of these works was owing to other causes.  Richardson had known how to move his reader’s heart, and how to give to his characters a deep personal interest.  He had attempted to introduce “a new species of writing,” and public enthusiasm testified to his success.  Colly Cibber read “Clarissa” before its publication, and was wrought up into a high state of excitement by the story.  “What a piteous, d——­d, disgraceful pickle you have placed her in!” he wrote to Richardson.  “For God’s sake, send me the sequel, or—­I don’t know what to say! * * * My girls are all on fire and fright to know what can possibly have become of her.”  And when he heard that Clarissa was to have a miserable end, he wrote the author:  “God d——­n him, if she should."[165] Mrs. Pilkington was not less distressed:  “Spare her virgin purity, dear sir, spare it!  Consider if this wounds both Mr. Cibber and me (who neither of us set up for immaculate chastity), what must it do with those who possess that inestimable treasure?"[166] Miss Fielding, the sister of the novelist of that name, thus described, in a letter to its author, her feelings on reading “Clarissa”:  “When I read of her, I am all sensation; my heart glows.  I am overwhelmed; my only vent is tears.”  One Thomas Turner, who kept a village shop in Sussex, thus recorded in his diary the impression produced upon him by the death of Clarissa:  “Oh, may the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life in such a manner as my exit may in some measure be