Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/564

Rh 544 R I C R I C The fame of Pamela made him a great personal favourite, especially with women, of whose hearts and fancies he had shown a knowledge so intimate. Several ladies of quality made a pet of him, deluged him with questions and con- fidences, and urged him to write more. Under this flatter- ing encouragement, the sedate author, still keeping his head and following his own plans amidst a multitude of counsellors, produced Clarissa Harlowe (1749), a model of every virtue in higher life, and Sir Charles Grandison (1753), his ideal of a perfect gentleman. Clarissa is universally acknowledged to be his masterpiece. An anec- dote was given by Macaulay which shows how entrancing the story may become to readers once fairly caught by the current of it. He took the whole eight volumes with him, when he was in India, to a hill station during the hot sea- son, and one day lent the first volume to the governor's wife. She read it and lent it to the governor's secretary, and went to Macaulay for the second. Thus all the eight volumes passed from hand to hand, and for a week or more the whole station was in a ferment over the fortunes of Clarissa, the readers anxiously waiting their turn for the successive volumes. Bichardson is long-winded and prolix to a degree ; but that, in spite of all his faults, he had the art of interesting his own generation was abun- dantly proved, and apparently his greatest novel is still capable in favourable circumstances of exerting its spell. Richardson has long received the honour of being regarded as the founder of the English novel, but of late it has been customary to go a little farther back and trace the beginnings of the novel in the papers of Addison and Steele in the Tatter and the Spectator. The novel, it is said, was developed, not created, by Richardson. Now this is hardly fair to the ingenious printer, if it is meant to deny him any of the credit generally given to originators of new forms in literature. It is true that the novel was developed and not created, but it is not more true of Richardson's novel than of any other new species of composition, such as Marlowe's tragedy, or Scott's romantic tale, or Byron's personal epic. All alike are not created but developed in this sense that they have strongly marked affinities with kinds of writing immediately anterior to them. Thus in the novel of manners there are two elements there is description of ordinary character, and there is plot-interest, i. e. , there is a story. Both of these elements are found in the genera- tion before Richardson. But not in combination. It was he that combined them in his novel of manners, and therefore he is entitled to the praise of being the father of a new species of composition. There is abundance of description of manners in the Spectator and there are many delicate studies of character. And the general reader in the days of Queen Anne and of George I. had abundance of stories to choose from tales of scandal, of crime, of high-flown romance. But it had not occurred to anybody before Richardson to make a heroine out of such a character as Jenny Simper, or a hero out of her baronet Sir Anthony Love, or a story out of incidents within the probabilities of ordinary life. The epistolary form in which his stories were cast, and which remains as a memorial of their first suggestion, was abandoned by Richardson's first great follower and satirist, Fielding ; but it was Richardson that led the way into the new field of literature. He lived long enough to see many imitators. Within twelve years of the publication of Pamela, the Monthly Review began to complain of the labour of reading the multitude of novels submitted to its judgment, and the master- pieces of Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne were produced before his death in 1761. His correspondence was published in six volumes in 1804. (W. M.) EICHELIEU, ARMAND DU PLESSIS, CARDINAL DE (1585-1642), the greatest French statesman of the 17th century. As the chief events of his life have been recorded in connexion with the sketch of his political career in the article FRANCE (vol. ix. pp. 567-570), it only remains briefly to mention here some matters of second- ary importance. In the early days of his courtiership when he retired for a time to Avignon Richelieu wrote two religious works which attained to considerable popu- larity Principaux points de la foy defendus contre Vescrit adresse au roy par les quatre ministres de Charenton (1617), and La methods la plus facile et assuree de convertir ceux qui sont separes de VEglise (Paris, 1651). After he became master of France, his desire for distinction as a man of letters and especially as a dramatic author led him to resort to various devices that were as undignified and ludicrous as they were high-handed and arbitrary. In the life of Corneille it has already been told how he employed " five poets " to " wash his dirty linen " (as Voltaire described the similar service he rendered to Frederick the Great), and how he attempted to revenge himself on Corneille, the greatest of the five, by causing the French Academy to pass a hostile verdict on the Cid. Even this high treason against art may perhaps be for- given in consideration of the practical services the cardinal rendered to the cause of literature. Les Thuileries, La Grande Pastorale, Mirame, and the other plays, over whose fate he trembled as over the result of an embassy or a campaign, have long been forgotten ; but a permanent interest attaches to his Memoires and correspondence (though owing to his way of working with substitutes and assistants it has been a difficult task to settle how much of what passes under his name is authentic) : Memoire d'Armand du Plessis de Richelieu, eveque de Lucon ecrit de sa main, Vannee 1607 ou 1610, alors qu'il meditait de paraUre d, la cour, 'edited by Armand Baschet, 1880; L'Histoire de la Mere et du Fils, (i.e., of Mary de' Medici and Louis XIII. ), Amsterdam, 1730, extending from 1610 to 1624, frequently attributed to M6zeray ; Memoires from 1624-1638, published in Petitot's collection (Paris, 1823) ; Journal de M. le Cardinal de Richelieu, 1630- 1631 (Amsterdam, 1664, 2 vols.); Testament politique du Cardinal de Richelieu (Paris, 1764); Les lettres, instruc- tions diplomatiques, et papiers d'etat du Cardinal de RicJielieu, collected and edited by M. Avenel, and forming five volumes of the Collection de documents inedits sur Vhistoire de France (Paris, 1853-56). Besides the older works of Aubery (1660) and Leclerc (1694) see A. Jay, Hist, du minister ede Richelieu, 1815 ; Capefigue, Richelieu, Mazarin, la Fronde, &c., 1844 ; Caillet, L' administration en France sous Richelieu, 1860; Martineau, Le Cardinal de Richelieu, 1865; Topin, Louis XIII. et Richelieu, 1877 ; Sainte-Beauve, Causeries du lundi, vol. vii. RICHELIEU, Louis FRANCOIS ARMAND DU PLESSIS, Due DE, marshal of France and grand-nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, was born in Paris, 13th March 1696, and died in the same city 8th August 1788. Besides his reputation as the most scandalous Lovelace of a scandalous age, he attained, in spite of a deplorably defec- tive education, distinction as a diplomatist and general. As ambassador to Vienna (1725-1729) he settled in 1727 the preliminaries of peace; in 1745 he helped to gain the victory of Fontenoy ; three years afterwards he made a brilliant defence of Genoa; in 1756 he expelled the English from Minorca by the capture of the San Felipe fortress; and in 1757-1758 he closed his military career by those pillaging campaigns in Hanover which pro- cured him the sobriquet of Petit Pere de la Maraude. In his early days he was thrice imprisoned in the Bastille, in 1711 at the instance of his stepfather, in 1716 in consequence of a duel, and in 1719 for his share in Alberoni's conspiracy against the Regent. He was thrice married : first, against his will, at the age of fourteen to Mademoiselle de Noailles ; secondly, in 1734, by the in- trigues (according to the witty Frenchman's own account) of Voltaire, to Mademoiselle de Guise ; and thirdly, when he was eighty-four years old, to an Irish lady. Marshal Richelieu's Memoires published by Soulavie in nine volumes (1790) are partially spurious. RICHELIEU, ARMAND EMMANUEL DU PLESSIS, Due DE (born 25th September 1766, died 17th May 1822), grandson of the marshal, is remembered mainly as the enlightened and heroic governor of Odessa (1803-1813) who guided the city through the terrible years of the plague, and as the minister of foreign affairs under Louis