as to seem childish, and much interpretation that makes us feel
that the higher possibilities of men and women are not as yet
even dreamed of. In this novel, Fielding makes fuller use than
he had before of the essay link: the chapters introductory to
the successive books,--and in them, a born essayist, as your
master of style is pretty sure to be, he discourses in the
wisest and wittiest way on topics literary, philosophical or
social, having naught to do with the story in hand, it may be,
but highly welcome for its own sake. This manner of pausing by
the way for general talk about the world in terms of Me has been
used since by Thackeray, with delightful results: but has now
become old-fashioned, because we conceive it to be the
novelist's business to stick close to his story and not obtrude
his personality at all. Thackeray displeases a critic like Mr.
James by his postscript harangues about himself as Showman,
putting his puppets into the box and shutting up his booth:
fiction is too serious a matter to be treated so lightly by its
makers--to say nothing of the audience: it is more, much more
than mere fooling and show-business. But to go back to the
eighteenth century is to realize that the novel is being newly
shaped, that neither novelist nor novel-reader is yet awake to
the higher conception of the genre. So we wax lenient and are
glad enough to get these resting-places of chat and charm from
Fielding: it may not be war, but it is nevertheless magnificent.

Fielding in this fiction is remarkable for his keen observation
of every-day life and character, the average existence in town
and country of mankind high and low: he is a truthful reporter,
the verisimilitude of the picture is part of its attraction. It
is not too much to say that, pictorially, he is the first great