What was the secret by which the stout little printer excited such enthusiasm and won such eulogy? How did he appeal to natures so different as the worldly Lord Chesterfield, the country shopkeeper, and the impassioned Diderot? Richardson was the first novelist to stir the heart and to move the passions, and his power was the more striking that it was new. His study of human nature had begun early in life. "I was not more than thirteen," he says, "when three young women, unknown to each other, having an high opinion of my taciturnity, revealed to me their love secrets, in order to induce me to give them copies to write after, or correct, for answers to their lovers' letters. * * * I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time when the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection; and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directed _this_ word, or _that_ expression, to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's fervor and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, _I cannot tell you what to write; but_ (her heart on her lips) _you cannot write too kindly_."[171] With such an apprenticeship, Richardson had come to possess a very delicate perception of character, and especially of female character. There was a certain effeminacy in his own nature which made him understand women better than men. His best creations are Pamela and Clarissa. Lovelace and Grandison are drawn from the outside; they are less real and natural. But Richardson leads his reader into the inmost recesses of his heroines' hearts. He is at home in describing the fears, the trials, and the final childlike rejoicings of Pamela. He attains to a high tragic effect in the death of Clarissa, a scene which Sir James Mackintosh ranked with Hume's description of the death of Mary Stuart. In this power to touch the heart and to move the passions of his reader lay the charm of Richardson's writing. But to paint perfection, rather than to study nature, was his object in "Sir Charles Grandison," and therefore that novel was less powerful in the author's day, and is less interesting in ours than "Pamela" and "Clarissa." We no longer need the example of the pompous Sir Charles to dissuade us from indecent language and drunkenness in a lady's drawing-room, and we can only laugh at the studied propriety of his faultless intercourse with Miss Byron: