writings more miscellaneous still, so as to give in little a
complete idea of Fielding's various powers and experiments. Two
difficulties beset this part of the task--want of space and the
absence of anything so markedly good as absolutely to insist on
inclusion. The Essay on Conversation, however, seemed pretty
peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which
Fielding was very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong
traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not now
very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and
well-drawn. The book would not have been complete without a
specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. The Champion, his
first attempt of this kind, has not been drawn upon in
consequence of the extreme difficulty of fixing with absolute
certainty on Fielding's part in it. I do not know whether
political prejudice interferes, more than I have usually found it
interfere, with my judgment of the two Hanoverian-partisan papers
of the '45 time. But they certainly seem to me to fail in
redeeming their dose of rancor and misrepresentation by any
sufficient evidence of genius such as, to my taste, saves not
only the party journalism in verse and prose of Swift and Canning
and Praed on one side, but that of Wolcot and Moore and Sydney
Smith on the other. Even the often-quoted journal of events in
London under the Chevalier is overwrought and tedious. The best
thing in the True Patriot seems to me to be Parson Adams' letter
describing his adventure with a young "bowe" of his day; and this
I select, together with one or two numbers of the Covent Garden
Journal. I have not found in this latter anything more
characteristic than Murphy's selection, though Mr. Dobson, with
his unfailing kindness, lent me an original and unusually
complete set of the Journal itself.