"Unfortunate _Tom Jones_! how sadly has he mortify'd Two sawcy Correspondents of your making! They are with me now: and bid me tell you, You have spoil'd 'em Both, for Criticks.--Shall I add, a Secret which they did not bid me tell you?--They, Both, fairly _cry'd_, that You shou'd think it possible they you'd approve of Any thing, in Any work, that had an _Evil Tendency_, in any Part or Purpose of it. They maintain their Point so far, however, as to be convinc'd they say, that _you_ will disapprove this over-rigid Judgment of those Friends, who you'd not find a Thread of Moral Meaning in Tom Jones, quite independent of the Levities they justly censure.--And, as soon as you have Time to read him, for yourself, tis there, pert Sluts, they will be bold enough to rest the Matter.--Mean while, they love and honour you and your opinions." To this the author of _Clarissa_ replied by writing a long epistle deploring the pain he had given the "dear Ladies," and minutely justifying his foregone conclusions from the expressions they had used. He refers to Fielding again as "a very indelicate, a very impetuous, an unyielding-spirited Man;" and he also trusts to be able to "bestow a Reading" on _Tom Jones_; but by a letter from Lady Bradshaigh, printed in Barbauld, and dated December 1749, it seems that even at that date he had not, or pretended he had not, yet done so. In another of the unpublished South Kensington letters, from a Mr. Solomon Lowe, occurs the following:--"I do not doubt"--says the writer--"but all Europe will ring of it [_Clarissa_]: when a Cracker, that was some thous'd hours a- com-posing, [Footnote: _Vide Tom Jones_, Book xi. chap. i.] will no longer be heard, or talkt-of." Richardson, with business-like precision, has gravely docketed this in his own handwriting,--"Cracker, T. Jones."