It is not, I think, too severe to say that nothing but the parallel with that romance, and the tolerance induced by familiarity with it, could make any one put up with the second part of _Pamela_ itself, or with the inhumanly prolonged divagation of _Clarissa_ and _Grandison_.

Nor, as has been hinted, is the solace of the letters--in the opportunity of setting forth different tempers and styles--here much taken.
There is no doubt that one main attraction of this letter-plan (whether consciously experienced or not does not matter) was its ready adaptation to Richardson's own special and peculiar gift of minute analysis of mood, temper, and motive.

The diary avowedly, and the letter in reality, even though it may be addressed to somebody else, is a continuous soliloquy: and the novelist can use it with a frequency and to a length which would be intolerable and impossible on the stage.

Now soliloquy is the great engine for self--revelation and analysis.

It is of course to a great extent in consequence of this analysis that Richardson owes his pride of place in the general judgment.