Review (X, 159-60) that the author was Alexander Campbell, who also wrote A Free and Candid Examination of Lord Bolingbroke’s Letters on History (1753). The pro-Bolingbroke and deistic sentiments of the Critical Remarks lend color to this attribution. Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes (II, 277) says under the year 1755 that William Bowyer printed a few copies of two pamphlets on Grandison, one by Francis Plumer and one by Dr. John Free. To Plumer is attributed A Candid Examination of the History of Sir Charles Grandison (April 1754; 3rd ed., 1755), and the inference might then be that Free was the author of the Critical Remarks, even though the date 1755 given by Nichols is not right, since these two are the only known early Grandison pamphlets. But Free’s orthodox religious views seem to eliminate him as a possibility. Whoever the author was, his references to Henry and Sarah Fielding are decidedly friendly, and he speaks well of Mason, Gray, Dodsley, and Pope.

The Remarks represents a type of pamphlet occasionally called forth by works which engaged the general attention of the town, such as the great novels of the period; thus before the Grandison pamphlets we have Pamela Censured, Lettre sur Pamela, An Examen of the History of Tom Jones, An Essay on the New Species of Writing Founded by Mr. Fielding, and Remarks on Clarissa. Usually these fugitive essays are hostile to the work they discuss, and represent the attempt of some obscure writer to turn a shilling by exposing for sale a title page which might catch the eye with a well known name. The J. Dowse who sold the Critical Remarks was an obscure pamphlet-shop proprietor, not a prominent bookseller. Richardson and his correspondents were of course irritated at both the Grandison pieces: Mrs. Sarah Chapone was indignant at the Critical Remarks, venturing the absurd suggestion that Fielding might be the author (Victoria and Albert Museum, Forster Collection, Richardson MSS., XIII, 1, ff. 102-03, letter of 6 April 1754); and Lady Bradshaigh and Richardson considered the more favorable Candid Examination an unfriendly work (Forster Collection, Richardson MSS., XI, ff. 98, 100-02). Yet these obscure publications give an interesting view of some current approaches and reactions before opinion has taken a set form, and help us to get access to the contemporary reading public.

The present author airs some cynical and skeptical views in religion and ethics which are not of great critical interest. His ideas about “sentimental unbelievers” and “political chastity,” his simulated disapproval of contemptuous references to the clergy, the attack on John Hill’s Inspector to which he devotes his Postscript—these points are little to our purpose. As to literary opinions, he falls into the usual way of judging fiction by its supposed overt intellectual and moral effects. His admiration for Clarissa is based on his acceptance of the complete idealization of the heroine, and of Richardson’s declared intention to show “the distresses that may attend the misconduct both of parents and children in relation to marriage.” In formal literary criticism he is pompous and scholastic. He approves the plot of Clarissa in terms of the Iliad, but judges subtle and complex characters by an over-simplified standard of decorum and censures Lovelace as an intricate combination of Achilles and Ulysses! His unnecessary labors to show that Richardson is not really Homeric illustrate the sterile application of epic canons to the novel that vitiates much early criticism of fiction.

In general, he represents the reader with pretensions to culture which make him feel superior to Richardson’s novels. He thinks they have been attracting too much attention, yet finds himself forced to attend to what he professes to despise. The

class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="iii" id="pgepubid00006"/> stories are far too long, he complains, and Richardson pads them to increase the profits of authorship. (The Candid Examination concurs on this point, and both writers agree that Clarissa should have been in five volumes instead of eight.) The Remarks echoes the common complaint that Richardson is responsible for the flood of new fiction, and prophesies that his novels will be merely the first in a succession of ephemeral best sellers. All in all, we have here a fairly common pattern of opinion: Pamela is low and has no sound moral; Grandison is tedious and excessively mannered; Clarissa at its best must be admitted to be supreme, despite moralistic objections to the Mother Sinclair scenes and to the character of Lovelace. The pamphleteer’s silences are sometimes significant: Pamela is not condemned as a scheming little minx, and he does not seem to be much interested in her; despite his approval of Fielding and his preference of Allworthy to Grandison, he shows little interest in the Fielding-Richardson opposition, even omitting the Tom Jones-Grandison antithesis which seemed obvious to many; he passes over the admired Italian story, the madness of Clementina, and the issues raised by Sir Charles’ proposed marriage with a Catholic; nor does he offer the familiar comment, soon to become a cliché, on the excessive idealization of Sir Charles.

His best points do not follow from his jejune critical principles, but from close reading that forces him at times to admit that he is interested even while he carps and cavils. His predictions about the last volume of Grandison show that the story has at least carried him along. His admiration for the character of Clarissa, though based on his approval of idealization, is really a tribute to Richardson’s art, and his qualification that Clarissa is “rather too good, at least too methodically so,” is fair enough, as is the comment about Grandison’s “showy and ostentatious” benevolence and his excessive variety of accomplishments. The judgment about Richardson’s incessant emphasis on sex anticipates much later criticism, and is made at first hand, though connected with the stock comment that modern tragedies dwell too exclusively on the passion of love. There is truth in the observation that Mr. B— and Lovelace think nothing can be done with women except by bribery, corruption, and terror, that Richardson is unable to describe a plausible seducer. The author of the Candid Examination seems to take up this cue when he says of the same pair, “I am of Opinion, that neither of the two Gentlemen conducted themselves so, as to overcome an ordinary Share of Virtue” (p. 24). Nevertheless the discussion in the Critical Remarks is thrown out of balance by exaggerated talk about the portrayal of licentious scenes.

One important observation is that Grandison duplicates some of the principal characters in Clarissa: Charlotte Grandison is Anna Howe; her much-enduring husband Lord G— is Mr. Hickman (the writer expands G— to “Goosecap” on the model of Fielding’s Mr. Booby); Pollexfen is Lovelace. This is self-evident, but may have been suggested by the conversation in which Harriet Byron calls Charlotte “a very Miss Howe,” while Charlotte refers to Lord G— as “a very Mr. Hickman” (Grandison, 1754, II, 7-8). The Candid Examination, in a postscript commenting on the last volume of Grandison, repeats the charge of duplication in a rather odd way: “The Conduct and Behaviour of Sir Charles and his Lady, after the Marriage, is an Imitation of that of Mr. B— and Pamela; but does not equal the Original” (p. 42).

The pamphleteer has more to say about Charlotte than about Harriet, Sir Charles, or Clementina, the characters with whom later

criticism has been chiefly concerned. Charlotte’s “whimsical” or “arch” way evidently got on his nerves. He catches up a phrase which Harriet applies to her, “dear flighty creature,” and derisively repeats it several times. Contemporary readers paid her considerable attention. The Candid Examination names among the fine things in the book “a Profusion of Wit and Fancy in Lady G—’s Conversation and Letters,” and thinks that Harriet at times treats her levity too severely (pp. 6, 14-16). The author of Louisa: Or, Virtue in Distress (1760) remarks that Lady G— is one of the most imitated of Richardson’s characters—“I have observed that most of our modern novels abound with a lady G—” (p. x). There were objections even among Richardson’s admirers, however, as by Mrs. Delany: “Miss Grandison is sometimes diverting, has wit and humour, but considering her heart is meant to be a good one, she too often behaves as if it were stark naught” (Autobiography and Correspondence, London, 1861, 1 Ser., III, 251). The evidence seems to show that early readers of Grandison did not isolate the principal characters, except perhaps Clementina, but considered them with due reference to the secondary characters and to the whole social context in which they appear.

Finally, this critic is irritated by the conversational and epistolary style which Richardson evolves in the process of “writing to the moment”; he is particularly vexed at the coined or adapted words which are sometimes italicized and dwelt on as characteristic of an individual. He cites only a few, such as Uncle Selby’s scrupulosities, but he has others in mind, both from Grandison and from Lovelace’s letters in Clarissa, and wonders whether such words as these will get into the dictionary. (It happened that Johnson was entering words from Clarissa in his Dictionary during these years.) He burlesques an epistle from Charlotte, slipping in a few of Lovelace’s locutions as well (pp. 47-48; cf. Grandison, 1754, VI, 288). The author of the Candid Examination distinguishes between what he considers the low mawkish talk of some of Richardson’s characters, which he condemns (pp. 11-12), and Richardson’s freedom in coining words, which he approves (p. 36). These slight instances may serve to remind us that many of Richardson’s early readers must have been keenly aware of his innovations in style, and that these developments form an important link in the 1750’s between Richardson and the further innovations of Sterne.

The present reproduction is made by permission from a copy in the University of Michigan Library.

Alan Dugald McKillop
The Rice Institute

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