His best points do not follow from his jejune critical principles, but from close reading that forces him at times to admit that he is interested even while he carps and cavils. His predictions about the last volume of _Grandison_ show that the story has at least carried him along. His admiration for the character of Clarissa, though based on his approval of idealization, is really a tribute to Richardson’s art, and his qualification that Clarissa is “rather too good, at least too methodically so,” is fair enough, as is the comment about Grandison’s “showy and ostentatious” benevolence and his excessive variety of accomplishments. The judgment about Richardson’s incessant emphasis on sex anticipates much later criticism, and is made at first hand, though connected with the stock comment that modern tragedies dwell too exclusively on the passion of love. There is truth in the observation that Mr. B-- and Lovelace think nothing can be done with women except by bribery, corruption, and terror, that Richardson is unable to describe a plausible seducer. The author of the _Candid Examination_ seems to take up this cue when he says of the same pair, “I am of Opinion, that neither of the two Gentlemen conducted themselves so, as to overcome an ordinary Share of Virtue” (p. 24). Nevertheless the discussion in the _Critical Remarks_ is thrown out of balance by exaggerated talk about the portrayal of licentious scenes. One important observation is that _Grandison_ duplicates some of the principal characters in _Clarissa_: Charlotte Grandison is Anna Howe; her much-enduring husband Lord G-- is Mr. Hickman (the writer expands G-- to “Goosecap” on the model of Fielding’s Mr. Booby); Pollexfen is Lovelace. This is self-evident, but may have been suggested by the conversation in which Harriet Byron calls Charlotte “a very Miss Howe,” while Charlotte refers to Lord G-- as “a very Mr. Hickman” (_Grandison_, 1754, II, 7-8). The _Candid Examination_, in a postscript commenting on the last volume of _Grandison_, repeats the charge of duplication in a rather odd way: “The Conduct and Behaviour of Sir _Charles_ and his Lady, after the Marriage, is an Imitation of that of Mr. B-- and _Pamela_; but does not equal the Original” (p. 42).