3 - The part of the serpent The second instalment, April 1748

Summary

Lovelace the principal Male Character in the Celebrated Romance of Clarissa is evidently a Copy of Rowe's Lothario in the fair Penitent this D.^r Johnsons owns But adds ‘that the Imitator has excell'd his original in the Moral Effect of this Fiction Lothario w.^th gaiety which cannot be hated & Bravery which cannot be Despised retains too much of the Reader's Kindness, it was in the Power of Richardson alone to teach us at once Esteem & Detestation.’ But D.^r Beattie another formidable Critic & the friend of D.^r Johnson is of a very different Opinion.

‘Richardson's Lovelace says he whom the Reader ought to abominate for his Crimes is adorned w^r youth Beauty Eloquence Wit & every intellectual & bodily accomplishment, is there not then reason to apprehend that some Readers will be more inclined to admire the gay profligate than to fear his Punishment’ – so contentious a Science is criticism & so little reference have the opinions of the Learned in Matters of Taste to any common Standard. –

MS note in Clarissa, 4th edn (1759), British Library

Representation and disruption: two controversies

Richardson's sense of the intricacy of social relations was not always so acute as in Clariss's first instalment. His earliest known book, The Apprentice's Vade Mecum, is a straightforward and rigorous conduct manual, dealing not with the familial relations that were to preoccupy him as novelist but with a social category of pressing importance to his activities as Citizen and Master Printer.