Jokes are often more Severe, and do more Mischief, than more Solid Objects -- to obviate some, why not omit P 175 -- _betwixt Fear and Delight_ -- and P 181 -- _I made shift to eat a bit of_ etc. _but I had no Appetite to any thing else_.[8] In the light of this letter, the second edition of _Pamela_ attests a curious fact: while Hill pontificates in the introduction about ignoring such vulgarity of mind, Richardson has tiptoed back to Volume Two and changed the questioned passages. From the second edition forward, Pamela trembles during her wedding not “betwixt Fear and Delight” but “betwixt Fear and Joy”; and although Richardson leaves Pamela her shift on page 181, he changes her remark about appetite: “I made shift to get down a bit of Apple-pie, and a little Custard; but that was all.” By omitting the specific objections from his summary, Richardson managed at one stroke to save his righteousness in the introduction and his face in the text. Hill’s authorship of the introductory letters is easily established. Anna Laetitia Barbauld includes Hill’s signature with a reduced version of the one which here begins on page xvi (December 17, 1740).[9] Thereafter, Richardson’s italicized remarks, two of them added in later editions, provide the links: “_Abstract of a second Letter from the same Gentleman_,” etc. With wonderful indirection, Richardson had sent a copy of _Pamela_ to Hill’s daughters, along with some other books, and, as Hill writes Mallet, “without the smallest _hint_, that it was _his_, and with a grave apology, as for a _trifle_, of too light a species.”[10] Hill thanked Richardson in the letter of December 17, 1740. Hill asks who on earth the author might be, hinting, the while, by returning Richardson’s own phrase, that he understands that it is Richardson himself: “this _Trifle_ (for such, I dare answer for the _Author_, His Modesty misguides him to think it).” Though Hill tells Mallet that Richardson was “very loth ... a long time, to confess it,” Richardson did not dally long. By December 29, 1740, he has confirmed Hill’s guess. On that date Hill writes: Acquainted with the amiable goodness of your heart, I can foresee the pleasure it will give you, to have given another pleasure: and you heap it on me in the noblest manner, by the joy you make me feel, at finding _Pamela’s_ incomparable author is the person I not only hop’d to hear was so, but whom I should have been quite griev’d, disturb’d, and mortified, not to have really found so. Yet, I confess, till I began to read, I had not the least notion of it. But I presently took notice, that whatever _Pamela_ thought, said, or did, was all transfusion of your own fine spirit. And as I know not if there lives another writer, who could furnish her with such a sapid sweetness as she fills the table with, I could not therefor chuse but name _you_ to my hope, as moulder of this maiden model.[11]