although each endeavours to pursue its own course, are in every case
more influenced by the winds and tides, which are common to the
element which they all navigate, than by their own separate exertions.
And it is thus in the world, that, when human prudence has done its
best, some general, perhaps national, event, destroys the schemes of
the individual, as the casual touch of a more powerful being sweeps
away the web of the spider.

Many excellent romances have been composed in this view of human life,
where the hero is conducted through a variety of detached scenes, in
which various agents appear and disappear, without, perhaps, having
any permanent influence on the progress of the story. Such is the
structure of Gil Blas, Roderick Random, and the lives and adventures
of many other heroes, who are described as running through different
stations of life, and encountering various adventures, which are only
connected with each other by having happened to be witnessed by the
same individual, whose identity unites them together, as the string of
a necklace links the beads, which are otherwise detached.

But though such an unconnected course of adventures is what most
frequently occurs in nature, yet the province of the romance writer
being artificial, there is more required from him than a mere
compliance with the simplicity of reality,--just as we demand from the
scientific gardener, that he shall arrange, in curious knots and
artificial parterres, the flowers which "nature boon" distributes
freely on hill and dale. Fielding, accordingly, in most of his novels,
but especially in Tom Jones, his _chef-d'oeuvre_, has set the
distinguished example of a story regularly built and consistent in all
its parts, in which nothing occurs, and scarce a personage is
introduced, that has not some share in tending to advance the