Many eminent men of his time were polite to Richardson after he had won fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a letter to his 'good sir'--a phrase equivalent to the two fingers of a dignified greeting--suggesting, in Pope's name and his own, a plan for continuing 'Pamela.' She was to be the ingenuous young person shocked at the conventionalities of good society. Richardson sensibly declined a plan for which he was unfitted; and in 1747 Warburton condescended to write a preface to 'Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out (very superfluously!) the nature of the intended moral. Warburton afterwards took offence at a passage in the same book which he took to glance at Pope; and Richardson was on friendly terms with two authors, Edwards, of the 'Canons of Criticism,' and Aaron Hill, who were among the multitudinous enemies of Warburton and his patron Pope. Hill's letters in the correspondence are worth reading as illustrations of the old moral of literary vanity. He expresses with unusual _naivete_ the doctrine, so pleasant to the unsuccessful, that success means the reverse of merit. Pope's fame was due to personal assiduities, and 'a certain bladdery swell of management.' It is already passing away. He does not speak from jealousy, for nobody ever courted fame 'with less solicitude than I.' But for all that, there will come a time! He knows it on a surer ground than vanity. Let us hope that this little salve to self-esteem never lost its efficacy. Surely of all prayers the most injudicious was that of Burns, that we might see ourselves as others see us. What would become of us? Richardson, as we might expect, was highly esteemed by Young of the 'Night Thoughts,' and by Johnson, to both of whom he seems to have given substantial proofs of friendship. He wrote the only number of the 'Rambler' which had a good sale, and helped Johnson when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase, which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs. Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered by her relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished 'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that she (Clarissa) must die, he said G---- d---- him if she should, and that he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees