Note 131 — Chapter VI · THE MASK TORN OFF AT LAST

Letter of W. E. H. Lecky, Esq., to W. J. F., Athenæum Club, London, July 5, 1888. Richardson, the popular author of 'Pamela,' was then a specially familiar name, and one which would readily occur to a well-read man who divulged the secrets of a real Pamela. The plot in the stories of Samuel Richardson is developed by letters, a branch of composition in which Samuel Turner was au fait. There seems a strange irony in this spy describing, under the nom de plume of Richardson, a new 'History of Pamela' and her struggles. Dr. Madden says that, after the death of her husband, Pamela returned in painfully straitened circumstances to Hamburg, the only place to which she could with prudence go. Madden little dreamt that the fugitive's retreat was the serpent's lair.