how he could project a mixed personage on the screen, if we had not
had Miss Matthews and Mrs. Atkinson--the last especially a figure full
of the finest strokes, and, as a rule, insufficiently done justice to
by critics.

And I have purposely left to the last a group of personages about whom
indeed there has been little question, but who are among the triumphs
of Fielding's art--the two Colonels and their connecting-link, the
wife of the one and the sister of the other. Colonel Bath has
necessarily united all suffrages. He is of course a very little
stagey; he reminds us that his author had had a long theatrical
apprenticeship: he is something too much _d'une piece_. But as a study
of the brave man who is almost more braggart than brave, of the
generous man who will sacrifice not only generosity but bare justice
to "a hogo of honour," he is admirable, and up to his time almost
unique. Ordinary writers and ordinary readers have never been quite
content to admit that bravery and braggadocio can go together, that
the man of honour may be a selfish pedant. People have been unwilling
to tell and to hear the whole truth even about Wolfe and Nelson, who
were both favourable specimens of the type; but Fielding the
infallible saw that type in its quiddity, and knew it, and registered
it for ever.

Less amusing but more delicately faithful and true are Colonel James
and his wife. They are both very good sort of people in a way, who
live in a lax and frivolous age, who have plenty of money, no
particular principle, no strong affection for each other, and little
individual character. They might have been--Mrs. James to some extent
is--quite estimable and harmless; but even as it is, they are not to
be wholly ill spoken of. Being what they are, Fielding has taken them,