Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/563

Rh R I C K I G 543 at Peterborough another tractate from his pen, entitled Super Symbolum. Of neither of these works, however, does any known copy now exist. Of the Speculum the main value may be said to be of a negative character, in that it affords the most conclusive proof of the spuriousness of another work attributed to Richard and long accepted by the learned world as his. This was the De Situ Britannix, an elaborate forgery relating to the antiquities of Roman Britain which first appeared at Copenhagen in the year 1758. It was printed along with the works of Gildas and Nennius, under the editorship of Charles Julius Bertram, professor of English in the academy of Copenhagen in the middle of the last century, with the following special title : " Rlchardi Corinensis monachi Westmonasteriensis de situ Britannise libri duo. E Codici MS. descripsit, Notisque et Indice adornavit Carolus Bertram." This forgery was accepted as genuine >j a well-known antiquary of the last century, Dr William Stukeley, and under the sanction of his authority continued for a long time to be regarded in the same light by numerous scholars and antiquaries. Among their number were Gibbon, John Whitaker, Richard Gougli, and Lingard. On the other hand, critics of a later date, such as J. J. Conybeare, Dr Guest, Wex, Raine, and Woodward, from time to time gave expression, on various grounds, to a contrary con- clusion. All doubt on the subject may, however, be held to have been effectually set at rest by the masterly and exhaustive exposure of the whole fraud drawn up by Professor Mayor in the preface to the edition above referred to of the Speculum. He has there not only demonstrated, from the external and internal evidence alike, the spuriousness of the whole treatise, but in a collation (extending to nearly a hundred pages) of numerous passages with corresponding passages in classical mediaeval authorities, has also traced out the various sources from whence Bertram derived the terminology and the facts which he reproduced in the De Situ. "To say nothing," says Professor Mayor, ' ' of antiquaries whose canons of criticism are so lax that they cite a supposed monk of 1400 A.D. as authority for events of 1000 B.C., we find a forger alike contemptible as penman, Latinist, historian, geographer, critic, imposing upon members of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, and of the two ancient universities, of the youthful Society D. U. K., on the writers of Germany and Denmark, of England, and of Scotland, the last bribed by the invention of Vespasiana." (J. B. M. ) RICHARD OP ST VICTOR (ob. c. 1173), a Scot by birth, was subprior of his convent in 1159 and prior in 1162, and was a friend of St Bernard, to whom some of his books are dedicated. The tendency of his mysticism has been characterized in vol. xvii. p. 132. Of his works, which embrace exegesis, moral and dogmatic subjects, and mystical contemplation, the first edition appeared at Paris in 1528, the best at Rouen in 1650. RICHARDSON, SIB JOHN (1787-1865), naturalist, was born at Dumfries on November 5, 1787, and died near Grasmere on June 5, 1865. He became a surgeon in the navy in 1807, and is known by his share in the arctic explorations of Parry and Franklin, 1819-22 and 1825-26 (see POLAR REGIONS, vol. xix. p. 319), and in the Franklin search expedition of 1848-49 (ib., p. 321), but especially by his Fauna or eali- Americana (1829-37, 4 vols. 4to). He also wrote Arctic Searching Expedition (1851), and other works on the zoology of the Arctic regions. He was knighted in 1846. RICHARDSON, SAMUEL (1689-1761), as the inventor or the accidental discoverer of a new literary form, the modern novel of domestic life and manners, is entitled to a more prominent place in history than his powers, whether of thought or style, would justify. He stumbled on novel writing by accident and late in life. The son of a Derby- shire joiner (born in 1689), he had been apprenticed at the age of seventeen to a London printer (Wilde of Stationers' Hall), had spent some years as a press reader or proof corrector not a bad position for acquiring some know- ledge of literature had married his master's daughter, and acquired an extensive business, trying his hand occasionally in composition as a writer of prefaces and dedications to the books that he printed. When he was near the age of fifty some bookseller friends of his, struck perhaps by the excellence of his letters, had suggested to him that he should compose a "familiar letter- writer " " a little volume of letters, in common style, on such sub- jects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. " Richardson improved upon the suggestion. As it happened, he had had a singular experience in the way of writing letters for others. When he was a boy of thirteen three young women who could not write had employed him to conduct their correspondence with their sweethearts, which he did, he tells us, much to the satisfaction of his employers and without betraying their confidence. It occurred to him, turning over the project of the booksellers in his mind, and reverting to this early experience, that he might tell a story in a series of letters which would serve equally well as models for letter-writing and at the same time cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes. Accordingly, the publication being for country readers, he chose a country girl, Pamela, in the service of a young squire Mr B. (Fielding after- wards expanded the initial to " Booby "), and made- her relate in letters to her friends her experiences from day to day and week to week in very trying circumstances. Friends write to advise Pamela in her difficulties, and so the story is carried on with circumstantial minuteness, Pamela describing with the most careful elaboration every particular of what happens to her, and adding her own reflexions, surmises, and appeals for approbation and counsel. The natural effect of this method is that, if We have any sympathy with the heroine, we get intensely interested in her perplexities, the very fulness of the details and the close truth to nature with which the novelist follows every turn in the girl's thoughts com- pelling us to read on. This effect was fully realized in days when the voluminous moralizing was more in har- mony with the general taste than it is now, and the, kind of thing was new and fresh. The success of Pamela was immediate and widespread, and extended at once far beyond the circle of country cousins for whom it was designed. It is said that ladies at Ranelagh Gardens were to be seen holding up one to another their copies of Pamela to show that they had in their possession the most popular book of the day. The industrious antiquary has cast doubt upon this anecdote, pointing out that Ranelagh Gardens were not open to the public till eighteen months after Pamela had begun to run through many editions. Vauxhall, however, was open if Ranelagh was not, and the incident may have been observed there. At any rate the fact expressed by the anecdote is true enough, that the novel was at once and universally popular. Pamela, the first of one long line of novels, was published in November 1740. In January 1741 the following appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine : '"Several encomiums on a series of Familiar Letters, published but last month, entitled Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, came too late for this magazine, and we believe there will be little occasion for inserting them in our next, because a second edition will then come out to supply the demands of the country, it being judged in town as great a sign of want of curiosity not to have read Pamela as not to have seen the French and Italian Dancers." This testimony is hardly less quaint and significant than the accredited anecdote. It was thus that this industrious prosperous printer, a stout, rosy, vain, precise little man, carrying himself with sensitive dignity, not at all the kind of man that might have been expected to be a fashionable novelist, stumbled in the natural course of his business upon a new species of composition for which he had an unsuspected genius.