most permanent facts of life are to be found in the smallest circles.  Two men and a woman may furnish either the tragedian or the comedian with the most satisfying theme.  And so, although his range was limited, Richardson knew very clearly and very thoroughly just that knowledge which was essential for his purpose.  Pamela, the perfect woman of humble life, Clarissa, the perfect lady, Grandison the ideal gentleman—­these were the three figures on which he lavished his most loving art.  And now, after one hundred and fifty years, I do not know where we may find more satisfying types.

He was prolix, it may be admitted, but who could bear to have him cut?  He loved to sit down and tell you just all about it.  His use of letters for his narratives made this gossipy style more easy.  First he writes and he tells all that passed.  You have his letter. She at the same time writes to her friend, and also states her views.  This also you see.  The friends in each case reply, and you have the advantage of their comments and advice.  You really do know all about it before you finish.  It may be a little wearisome at first, if you have been accustomed to a more hustling style with fireworks in every chapter.  But gradually it creates an atmosphere in which you live, and you come to know these people, with their characters and their troubles, as you know no others of the dream-folk of fiction.  Three times as long as an ordinary book, no doubt, but why grudge the time?  What is the hurry?  Surely it is better to read one masterpiece than three books which will leave no permanent impression on the mind.

It was all attuned to the sedate life of that, the last of the quiet centuries.  In the lonely country-house, with few letters and fewer papers, do you suppose that the readers ever complained of the length of a book, or could have too much of the happy Pamela or of the unhappy Clarissa?  It is only under extraordinary circumstances that one can now get into that receptive frame of mind which was normal then.  Such an occasion is recorded by Macaulay, when he tells how in some Indian hill station, where books were rare, he let loose a copy of “Clarissa.”  The effect was what might have been expected.  Richardson in a suitable environment went through the community like a mild fever.  They lived him, and dreamed him, until the whole episode passed into literary history, never to be forgotten by those who experienced it.  It is tuned, for every ear.  That beautiful style is so correct and yet so simple that there is no page which a scholar may not applaud nor a servant-maid understand.