Le Bossu, in his Treatise of the Epick Poem, gives his own restatement of this, and amplifies it by pointing to the particular virtues of the drama: by presenting characters directly to the spectators drama 'has no parts exempt from the Action,' and is thus 'entire and perfect'. Fielding was familiar with the Treatise, and it is possible that Richardson had also looked at Le Bossu to prepare himself for dealing with the epic theory of his rival.[24]

There were also precedents for placing the novel in the dramatic rather than the epic tradition. Congreve, when he wrote Incognita (1692), took the drama as his model. 'Since all Traditions must indisputably give place to the Drama,' he wrote in the Preface, 'and since there is no possibility of giving that life to the Writing or Repetition of a Story which it has in the Action, I resolved ... to imitate Dramatick Writing ... in the Design, Contexture, and Result of the Plot. I have not observed it before in a Novel.'[25] The analogy with drama had also been drawn by Henry Gally in his Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings (1725), who, after maintaining that 'the essential Parts of the Characters, in the Drama, and in Characteristic-Writings are the same,' goes on to praise the Tatler and the Spectator for the 'excellent Specimens in the Characteristic-Way' that they offered their readers.[26] Such acknowledgments of the dramatic potentialities in prose fiction were, however, unusual. The romances were modelled on the epic (Fielding, in fact, describes Joseph Andrews in his Preface as a 'comic Romance'); and the picaresque mode in which Smollett wrote had no obviously dramatic qualities. Richardson's advocacy of the novel in which action is presented rather than retailed seems, indeed, curiously modern: it is something Henry James would certainly have understood and approved.

In formulating his own theory of fiction Richardson had Fielding very much in mind. It would be surprising if he had not: the rivalry between the two novelists was open and recognised, although by the time Clarissa was published it had assumed the appearance of friendliness. Sarah Fielding's association with Richardson probably had something to do with this; but the reconciliation was largely her brother's own work. His just and generous praise of Clarissa—publicly in the Jacobite's Journal and privately in a letter to the author—[27] makes full and honourable amends for his mockery of Richardson in Shamela and Joseph Andrews. If he had not published Tom Jones all might have been well. But Richardson could not forgive his old enemy for achieving a triumph in his chosen field so soon after the publication of his own masterpiece. He abused Fielding covertly in letters to his friends; and his revisions of the Preface and Postscript were designed in part to counter the claims for the comic prose epic advanced in Tom Jones and elsewhere. Hints of Prefaces reveals this more clearly than the published versions of the Preface and Postscript: Richardson unfortunately lacked the courage and confidence to press home the attack.

Hints of Prefaces bears no date, but there is evidence that it was assembled after the first edition of Clarissa had appeared and, in part at least, after the publication of Tom Jones. Richardson refers directly at one point to 'this Second Publication',[28] and several sections in it are printed (either in full or in a condensed form) only in the revised Postscript. Hints of Prefaces therefore cannot be a discarded draft of the Preface and Postscript to the first edition. The final volumes of this first edition came out in December 1748, and Tom Jones was published in the following February. A letter from Skelton, dated June 10th, 1749,[29] which mentions an 'inclosed Paper' on Clarissa, indicates that his essay did not reach Richardson until after this date; and in the letter to Graham, from which I have already quoted, we find him in the May of 1750 still seeking assistance in the preparation of his Preface.

Apart from such evidence it is obvious that one section of Hints of Prefaces is directed specifically at Fielding. In pages [12] and [13] of the manuscript Richardson seems to be answering, consciously and in sequence, arguments brought forward in the Preface to Joseph Andrews; the Prefaces contributed by Fielding to the second edition of The Adventures of David Simple (1744), by his sister, Sarah, and its sequel, Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple (1747); and, of course, the introductory chapters in Tom Jones. Richardson begins this part of Hints of Prefaces with a discussion of the three kinds of romance: those that offer us 'Ridicule; or Serious Adventure; or, lastly, a Mixture of both'. He admits 'that there are some Works under the First of these Heads, which have their Excellencies,' but doubts 'whether Ridicule is a proper basis ... whereon to build instruction.'[30] The reference here seems clearly to be to the Preface to Joseph Andrews where Fielding presents his theory of the comic romance and the ridiculous. Richardson then proceeds to defend his epistolary method—a convention which Fielding had singled out for attack in his Preface to Familiar Letters, remarking that 'no one will contend, that the epistolary Style is in general the most proper to a Novelist, or that it hath been used by the best Writers of this Kind.'[31] Even if Richardson had not been a subscriber to Miss Fielding's small volume, he could scarcely have overlooked a challenge so unequivocal as this. In Clarissa he knew that the challenge had been answered triumphantly: among other things it is a complete vindication of the epistolary technique:

We need not insist on the evident Superiority of this Method to the dry Narrative; where the Novelist moves on, his own dull Pace, to the End of his Chapter and Book, interweaving impertinent Digressions, for fear the Reader's Patience should be exhausted...[32]

Tom Jones, with its books, chapters, critical interpolations, and ironical apologies to the reader, is the target here; and Richardson clearly longed to inflict a defeat on its author in the realm of theory as resounding as the one he believed he had achieved over him in practice. His nerve failed him, however, and his defence of the epistolary method as it finally appears in the revised Postscript is cursory and deceptively restrained: 'The author ... perhaps mistrusted his talents for the narrative kind of writing. He had the good fortune to succeed in the Epistolary way once before.'[33]

After completing Clarissa Richardson had a clear and conscious apprehension of the scope and unique qualities of his achievement. His ability to give an account of these things, however, was limited, though not so limited as he feared: for his theory of the novel to be fully understood, the final versions of his Preface and Postscript need to be read in conjunction with the hitherto unpublished Hints of Prefaces for Clarissa.

R. F. Brissenden
Australian National University
Canberra.