Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Leslie Stephen

Critical Essay by Leslie Stephen

SOURCE: "Richardson's Novels," in Hours in a Library, Smith, Elder, & Co., 1874, pp. 59-112.

In the following essay, Stephen argues that Richardson 's integration of "feminine " characteristics into his style—namely, propensities for letter-writing, flattery, idle chatter, and "the delicate perception, the sensibility to emotion, and the interest in small details"—is responsible for both the merits and defects of his works.

The literary artifice, so often patronised by Lord Macaulay, of describing a character by a series of paradoxes, is of course, in one sense, a mere artifice. It is easy enough to make a dark grey black and a light grey white, and to bring the two into unnatural proximity. But it rests also upon the principle which is more of a platitude than a paradox, that our chief faults often lie close to our chief merits. The greatest man is perhaps one who is so equably developed...
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