"Stealing in the great doctrines of Christianity": Samuel Richardson as Journalist

"Stealing in the great doctrines of Christianity": Samuel Richardson asJournalist John A. Dussinger In this general depravity, when even the Pulpit has lost great part of its weight, and the Clergy are considered as a body of interested men, the Author thought he should be able to answer it to his own heart, be the success what it would, if he threw in his mite towards introducing a Reformation so much wanted: And he imagined, that ifin an age given up to diversion and entertainment, he could steal in, as may be said, and investigate the great doctrines of Christianity under the fashionable guise of an amusement ... .' Tojudge by his explicit statements, Samuel Richardson believed diat his greatest work offiction was no less than an experiment in supplementing, if not supplanting, the role of the professional clergy of his time. Both in his letter to Lady Bradshaigh and in his Postscript, Richardson quotes the same couplet from George Herbert 's "The Church Porch": "A verse may find him who a sermon flies / And turn delight into a sacrifice."2 Poetry, we are to understand, 1 Postscript to Clarissa, 3rd ed. (1751), 8:279. See the facsimile ofthe third edition ofSamuel Richardson, Clarissa. Or, VieHistory ofa YoungLady, ed. Florian Stuber, The Clarissa Project, 8 vols (New York: AMS Press, 1990). References to the first edition of 1748 are supplemented with references to the modernized edition of Claiissa or Tlie History ofa YoungIjidy, ed. Angus Ross (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985). 2 George Herbert, "The Church-Porch," 11. 5-6. George1leibeil: The CompleteEnglish Poems, ed. John Tobin (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 6. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 15, Number 3-4, April-July 2003 452 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION Clarissa resigned to her fate, vol. 7 ofSamuel Richardson, ClarisseHarlawe: traduction complète, trans. Pierre Le Tourneur (1736-1788) (Genève: Manget Barde, Paris: Moutard, Merigot lejeune, 1785-86). Engraving no. 15, opposite p. 512, by Daniel Nicolaus Chodowiecki (1726-1801). Reproduced by permission of McMaster University Library. STEALING IN THE GREAT DOCTRINES453 may somehow convert the unbeliever when conventional religious discourse fails. For this reason, Richardson's bold claim ofwriting a "Religious Novel"3 does not imply that it was meant specifically for Christians, no matter how inspiring they may find it. As Florian Stuber points out, some ofRichardson's most devoted readers were sceptics, such as Denis Diderot and Adam Smith.'1 The "great doctrines ofChristianity" diat Richardson intended to inculcate were not to interfere widi the aesdietic process ofreading—with its capacity for "amusement." Since at the time he made these observations about religion Richardson was mainly concerned with an audience that had tearfully pleaded witii him not to carry out the death of the heroine, evidently the "great doctrines" referred to centred on the rationale of undeserved suffering in the worldly sense and the necessity offuture rewards and punishment. In 1750 Richardson wrote to Lady Bradshaigh : "Calamity is the test of virtue, and often the parent of it, in minds that prosperitywould ruin. What is meant, think you, Madam, by the whole Christian doctrine of the Cross? Ask the people who frequentVauxhall and Ranelagh iftiiey found themselves fiddled and danced and merry into virtue? What meant the Royal Prophet when he said that it was good for him to be afflicted?" (Carroll, p. 151). Not content with Richardson's general purpose here ofjustifying the ways of God to mankind, some recent commentators on this "Religious Novel" have interpreted a much more intricate, suasive form of mysticism derived from the German mystic Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) and posited against the prevailing deistic or rationalistic theology of the early century. In her influential essay, Rosemary Bechler emphasized that during the composition of Clarissa Richardson "collaborated closely on the printing and publication ofa series of texts" with William Law, John Freke, and John Byrom, and that these three evangelicals were readers of the early novel drafts and Samuel Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh, 1748: "Such are the Lessons I endeavour to inculcate by an Example in natural Life. And the more irksome these Lessons are to the Young, the Gay, and die Healthy, the more necessary are they to be inculcated. AVerse may find him...