Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754)   By: Anonymous

Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754)

With an Introduction by Alan Dugald McKillop

Publication Number 21 (Series IV, No. 3)

Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1950

GENERAL EDITORS

H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles

ASSISTANT EDITORS

W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale University JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London

INTRODUCTION

The present pamphlet was published in February 1754, after six volumes of Sir Charles Grandison had appeared and about a month before the appearance of the seventh and last volume. Though Grandison was technically anonymous, its authorship was generally known, and the pamphlet refers to Richardson by name. Sale's bibliography gives further details ( Samuel Richardson: A Bibliographical Record , New Haven, 1936, pp. 131 32), including the suggestion of the Monthly 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.