John Casey on Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson: A Biography T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Clarendon Press £6.50) One of the most striking signs of the decline of taste is the rise of the 'definitive ' biography. Now at last we have a ' definitive ' biography of Richardson. There have been previous lives and memoirs, but no one thought of producing something ' definitive' before. The reason why no one did ought, perhaps, to give the authors of the present work pause.
The best life of Samuel Richardson remains that of Austin Dobson. It is no doubt too much to hope that a modern biographer will have Dobson's robust sense of relevance. Richardson's life was not packed with incident — a fact which Dobson does not suppress : "Beyond the births successively of six children, all of whom but one, a boy, died in infancy, there is little to chronicle in Richardson's life for the next few years." Dobson's ac count of Richardson's life and works takes 200 pages. Eaves and Kimpel take over 700 rather larger pages (including notes). Yet very little of importance is added, either of fact or of interpretation. Indeed the authors, with a modesty that in any other circumstances would be commendable, do not even claim to have altered the picture of Richardson given by his earliest biographer Letitia Barbauld, whose edition of Richardson's Correspondence came out in 1804. What the authors do claim to have done — and this seems to constitute their notion of a ' definitive ' biography — is to have "pursued all the lines of investigation which we could think of as far as they led us." This was certainly a generously inclusive enterprise. A variety of methods is used to swell the book to its present inordinate length. Where there is little other biographical material available, the authors quote at length from the correspondence (that "melancholy farrago" as Jeffrey called it). There are lengthy sections on Richardson's friends — hardly any of whom, apart from Johnson, are persons of any interest beyond the fact of being friends of Richardson. There are critical chapters on each of the novels. These substantially consist of a judicious summary and discussion of the remarks of other critics. The authors do not themselves contribute criticism of any real interest or originality. There are four final chapters on Richardson's achievement, Richardson's personality, Richardson's general ideas and Richardson's reading and criticism. Again any new information is marginal, and these chapters mostly give the impression of padding.
In a sense it is unfair to blame the authors for this. There is nothing actually wrong with their book, except for its being tedious and unnecessary. A ' definitive ' biography was waiting to be written and they have written it. One can hardly expect them to raise the question as to whether they were significantly adding to what we already knew.
The common reader (who is not going to read Eaves and Kimpel anyway) would do better, if he wishes to know about Richardson's life, to read his correspondence, preferably ruthlessly edited. As Jeffrey said of Letitia Barbauld's edition of the Correspondence in six volumes "We are even more indebted to her forbearance than to her bounty." It is a pity we cannot say the same of the present biography.
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