Creation of this
kind we practise every day; we are continually piecing together our
fragmentary evidence about the people around us and moulding their
images in thought. It is the way in which we make our world;
partially, imperfectly, very much at haphazard, but still perpetually,
everybody deals with his experience like an artist. And his talent,
such as it may be, for rounding and detaching his experience of a man
or a woman, so that the thing stands clear in his thought and takes
the light on every side--this can never lie idle, it is exercised
every hour of the day.
As soon as he begins to hear of Clarissa, therefore, on the first page
of Richardson's book, the shaping, objectifying mind of the reader is
at work on familiar material. It is so easy to construct the idea of
the exquisite creature, that she seems to step from the pages of her
own accord; I, as I read, am aware of nothing but that a new
acquaintance is gradually becoming better and better known to me. No
conscious effort is needed to make a recognizable woman of her, though
in fact I am fitting a multitude of small details together, as I
proceed to give her the body and mind that she presently possesses.
And so, too, with the lesser people in the book, and with their
surroundings; so, too, with the incidents that pass; a succession of
moments are visualized, are wrought into form by the reader, though
perhaps very few of them are so well made that they will last in
memory.
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