Richardson lived the admired of a circle of ladies,--to whose sex he had
paid so noble a tribute,--the hero of tea-drinkings at his house on
Parson's Green; his books gave him fame, but his shop--in the back office
of which he wrote his novels, when not pressed by business--gave him money
and its comforts. He died at the age of seventy-two, on the 4th of July,
1761.
He was an unconscious actor in a great movement which had begun in France.
The brilliant theories of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and
Dalembert--containing much truth and many heresies--were felt in England,
and had given a new impetus to English intellect; indeed, it is not
strange, when we come to consider, that while Richardson's works were
praised in English pulpits, Voltaire and the French atheists declared that
they saw in them an advance towards human perfectibility and
self-redemption, of which, if true, Richardson himself was unconscious.
From the amours of men and women of fashion, aided by intriguing
maid-servants and lying valets, Richardson turned away to do honor to
untitled merit, to exalt the humble, and to defy gilded vice.
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