Any one might think that a meeting would immediately have followed these communications, and that the novel-writer and the novel-reader would have presented themselves to each other’s gaze for admiration, at the time and place appointed, and thus the affair which their letters have left upon record might have been satisfactorily wound up in one volume. But this did not accord with the sentimental typographical taste of the times, which required the dilution of an idea into seven or eight volumes to make it palatable. For we are told that a young Cantab, who, when asked if he had read Clarissa, replied, “D---n it, I would not read it through to save my life,” was set down as an incurable dunce. And that a lady reading to her maid, whilst she curled her hair, the seventh volume of Clarissa, the poor girl let fall such a shower of tears that they wetted her mistress’s head so much, she had to send her out of the room to compose herself. Upon the maid being asked the cause of her grief, she said, “Oh, madam, to see such goodness and innocence in such distress,” and her lady rewarded her with a crown for the answer. January the 9th (1749–50) has arrived—the tantalizing Lady Bradshaigh, the unknown Mrs. Belfour has been in London six weeks, and the novelist begins “not to know what to think” of his fair correspondent’s wish to see him. “May be so,” he writes, “But with such a desire to be in town three weeks; on the 16th December to be in sight of my dwelling, and three weeks more to elapse, yet I neither to see or hear of the lady; it cannot be that she has so strong a desire.” Let any one imagine the ridiculousness of the situation of “dear, good, excellent Mr. Richardson” at this time. He had, he confesses, “Such a desire to see one who had seen the King, that” (he speaking of himself, says) “though prevented by indisposition from going to my little retirement on the Saturday, that I had the pleasure of your letter, I went into the Park on Sunday (it being a very fine day) in hopes of seeing such a lady as you describe, contenting myself with dining as I walked, on a sea biscuit which I had put in my pocket, my family at home, all the time, knowing not what was become of me.—A Quixotte! “Last Saturday, being a fine warm day, in my way to North End, I walked backwards and forwards in the Mall, till past your friend’s time of being there (she preparing, possibly, for the Court, being Twelfth Night!) and I again was disappointed.” On the 28th January, nineteen days after this was written, Lady Bradshaigh, in a letter full of satirical banter, which, however, it may be questionable if Richardson did not receive as replete with the highest compliments to his genius, says,