Even his scoundrelism is mostly, if not wholly, _pose_--which abominable thing indeed distinguishes him throughout, in every speech and every act, from the time when he sighs as he kisses Miss Arabella Harlowe's hand to the time when he says, "Let this expiate!" as that hallowed sword of Colonel Morden's passes through his rotten heart.

Now if Richardson had _meant_ this, it might be granted at once that Lovelace is one of the greatest characters of fiction: and I do not deny that _taken as this_, meant or not meant, he is great.

But Richardson obviously did _not_ mean it; and Hazlitt did not mean it; and none of the admirers mean it.

_They_ all thought and think that Lovelace is something like what Milton's Satan was, and what my Lord Byron would have liked to be.

This is very unfair to the Prince of Darkness: and it is even not quite just to "the noble poet." At the same time, the acute reader will have noticed, the acknowledgment that the fact that Richardson--even not knowing it and intending to do something else--did hit off perfectly and consummately the ideal of such a "prevailing party" (to quote Lord Foppington) as snobs and schoolgirls, is a serious and splendid tribute to his merits: as is also the fact that his two chief characters are characters still interesting and worth arguing about.