In the history of the English novel, Richardson owes his high place for a number of reasons:

(i) He enlarged the knowledge of human nature though his minute psycho-analysis of his character and thus become the founder of the modern novel, but more especially of the novel of sentiment.

(ii) His plots might be thin, but the story interest is greater than had ever been before.

(iii) His characters are not absolutely of the first class, but they are an immense advance on the personages that did duty as persons in earlier novels, even in Defoe.