whether borrowing it from Lucian or not, had been fond of it;
their French followers, of whom the chief were Fontenelle and Le
Sage, had carried it northwards; the English essayists had almost
from the beginning continued the process of acclimatization.
Fielding therefore found it ready to his hand, though the present
condition of this example would lead us to suppose that he did
not find his hand quite ready to it. Still, in the actual
"journey," there are touches enough of the master--not yet quite
in his stage of mastery. It seemed particularly desirable not to
close the series without some representation of the work to which
Fielding gave the prime of his manhood, and from which, had he
not, fortunately for English literature, been driven decidedly
against his will, we had had in all probability no Joseph
Andrews, and pretty certainly no Tom Jones. Fielding's
periodical and dramatic work has been comparatively seldom
reprinted, and has never yet been reprinted as a whole. The
dramas indeed are open to two objections--the first, that they
are not very "proper;" the second, and much more serious, that
they do not redeem this want of propriety by the possession of
any remarkable literary merit. Three (or two and part of a
third) seemed to escape this double censure--the first two acts
of the Author's Farce (practically a piece to themselves, for the
Puppet Show which follows is almost entirely independent); the
famous burlesque of Tom Thumb, which stands between the Rehearsal
and the Critic, but nearer to the former; and Pasquin, the
maturest example of Fielding's satiric work in drama. These
accordingly have been selected; the rest I have read, and he who
likes may read. I have read many worse things than even the
worst of them, but not often worse things by so good a writer as
Henry Fielding. The next question concerned the selection of