The fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless expectation,
but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like
those with which the Liliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal
palace. Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would
he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa,
the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting
in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles--she
is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however
intensely they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the
imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson; but
it is extracted from a _caput mortuum_ of circumstances: it does not
evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like Ariel confined in a
pine-tree, and requires an artificial process to let it out. Shakespeare
says:
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished... our gentle flame
Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
Each bound it chafes.
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