Suffice it as agreed and out of controversy that _Joseph Andrews_ started as a parody of _Pamela_ and that, whether in addition or in substitution, it turned to something very different.

It is not quite so uncontroversial, but will be asserted here as capable of all but demonstration, that the "something different" is also something much greater.

There is still not very much plot--the parody did not necessitate and indeed rather discouraged that, and what there is is arrived at chiefly by the old and seldom very satisfactory system of _anagnorisis_--the long-lost-child business.

But, under the three other heads, Joseph distances his sister hopelessly and can afford her much more than weight for sex.

It has been said that there are doubtfully in Richardson anywhere, and certainly not in _Pamela_, those startling creations of personality which are almost more real to us than the persons we know in the flesh.