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ACING up and down the library of the Athenæum club together, Macaulay and Thackeray came to talk of Richardson’s masterpiece. The great novelist asked the great historian whether he had ever read it. “Not read Clarissa!” cried out Macaulay. “If you have once thoroughly entered on Clarissa, and are infected by it, you can’t leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the Governor-general and the Secretary of government and the Commander-in-chief, and their wives. I had Clarissa with me; and as soon as they began to read it, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes and her scoundrelly Lovelace! The Governor’s wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited for it, and the Chief-justice could not read it for tears!".

No one who is familiar with Clarissa can wonder at Macaulay’s admiration of it, nor be unprepared