neither young nor women, whom its wit finds unintelligent, and its
wisdom leaves unconcerned.

But what a brave wit it is, what a wisdom after all, that is contained
in this wonderful novel! Where shall we find its like for richness of
reflection--for inexhaustible good-humour--for large and liberal
humanity! Like Fontenelle, Fielding might fairly claim that he had never
cast the smallest ridicule upon the most infinitesimal of virtues; it is
against hypocrisy, affectation, insincerity of all kinds, that he wages
war. And what a keen and searching observation,--what a perpetual
faculty of surprise,--what an endless variety of method! Take the
chapter headed ironically _A Receipt to regain the lost Affections of a
Wife_, in which Captain John Blifil gives so striking an example of Mr.
Samuel Johnson's just published _Vanity of Human Wishes_, by dying
suddenly of apoplexy while he is considering what he will do with Mr.
Allworthy's property (when it reverts to him); or that admirable scene,
commended by Macaulay, of Partridge at the Playhouse, which is none the
worse because it has just a slight look of kinship with that other
famous visit which Sir Roger de Coverley paid to Philips's _Distrest
Mother_. Or take again, as utterly unlike either of these, that
burlesque Homeric battle in the churchyard, where the "sweetly-winding
Stour" stands for "reedy Simois," and the bumpkins round for Greeks and
Trojans! Or take yet once more, though it is woful work to offer bricks
from this edifice which _has_ already (in a sense) outlived the
Escorial, [Footnote: The Escorial, it will be remembered, was partially
burned in 1872.] the still more diverse passage which depicts the
changing conflict in Black George's mind as to whether he shall return
to Jones the sixteen guineas that he has found:--

"_Black George_ having received the Purse, set forward towards the