Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/57

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
LEFT
39
RIGHT

.RICHARDSON 39 RICHARDSON marrying his master's daughter. From 1713 to 1719 he worked as a journeyman printer. In the latter year he opened an establishment of his own in the center, and later in the N. W. corner (No. 11) of Salisbury Square, then Salisbury Court. His printing office and ware- houses were in Blue Ball Court, on the E. side of the square. He printed more than one newspaper, and by the favor of Speaker Onslow ob- tained the printing of the journals of the House of Commons, 26 volumes of which passed through his establishment. He was over 50 when two bookselling friends invited him to prepare a volume of fa- miliar letters "in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those coun- try readers who were unable to indite for themselves." Hence sprung "Pamela," published in November, 1740. It consisted of "a series of familiar letters from a beautiful young damsel to her parents. Published in order to cultivate the prin- ciples of virtue and religion in the mind of the youth of both sexes." Its vogue, in a coarser and robuster age than ours, was extraordinary. Di- vines extolled her from their pulpits; fine ladies triumphantly exhibited her popular chronicles at places of amuse- ment; and in remote country villages, when at last she was happily married, her rustic admirers set the bells a-ringing. In February followed a second edition; a third succeeded in March, and a fourth in May. Grub street fastening promptly on this unexampled popularity, hastily put together for sequel a "Pamela in High Life," which had the unfortunate effect of seducing Richardson into two supplementary volumes, now forgotten; and then Henry Fielding produced what Richardson and his coterie regarded as the "lewd and ungenerous engraftment" of "Joseph Andrews." Eight years elapsed before Richardson published another novel — his masterpiece : "Clarissa; or the Adventures of a Young Lady," known generally as "Clarissa Har- lowe." Virtue, in this performance, was not "rewarded," but ruined. The heroine is nevertheless drawn with a tenacity of insight to which "Pamela" could scarcely pretend; and the chief male character, that of Lovelace, though more of an ab- straction, is scarcely inferior. Haying drawn the ideal woman in "Clarissa," Richardson proceeded, some five years later, to portray, in "Sir Charles Grandison," the perfect man — "the man of true honor." This is a work of much greater ability than "Pamela," but still far below "Clarissa." It has, moreover, no central story strong enough to reconcile the reader to the prolix im- peccability of its superfine hero. Besides a solitary essay in Johnson's "Rambler" (No. 97), and the voluminous but not very interesting correspondence pub- lished (with an excellent memoir) by Mrs. Barbauld in 1804, Richardson left no other literary remains of any impor- tance. In later life a nervous habit grew SAMUEL RICHARDSON upon him, which terminated in 1761 by a fit of apoplexy, of which he died. He has left his own portrait in his letters to Lady Bradshaigh; but it might also have been deduced from his letters. He was a sentimental, purring, methodical, well-meaning little man, domesticated and affectionate, whose fitting environment was feminine society of the sympathetic sort; and he has repaid the gentle ca- resses with which his worshipers tem- pered the wind of adverse criticism to his sensitive soul by depicting their sex in return with a patience, a discrimination, a sustained analysis of secret spring and motive which it has been given to no other male author, living or dead, to achieve. RICHARDSON, WILLIAM CUM- MINGS, an American architect, born at Concord, N. H., in 1854. After studying architecture at the Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology from 1873 to 1875, he worked as an assistant in various archi- tectural offices and made several trips abroad for further study. In 1881 he be- came a member of a firm of architects in Boston, which soon became one of the leading architectural firms in the United States. He designed many public and