Lady Mary's view of his childlike enjoyment of the moment has been, I
think, much exaggerated by posterity, and was probably not a little
mistaken by the lady herself. There are two moods in which the motto is
_Carpe diem_, one a mood of simply childish hurry, the other one where
behind the enjoyment of the moment lurks, and in which the enjoyment of
the moment is not a little heightened by, that vast ironic consciousness
of the before and after, which I at least see everywhere in the
background of Fielding's work.

The man, however, of whom we know so little, concerns us much less than
the author of the works, of which it only rests with ourselves to know
everything. I have above classed Fielding as one of the four Atlantes of
English verse and prose, and I doubt not that both the phrase and the
application of it to him will meet with question and demur. I have only
to interject, as the critic so often has to interject, a request to the
court to take what I say in the sense in which I say it. I do not mean
that Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Fielding are in all or even in most
respects on a level. I do not mean that the three last are in all
respects of the greatest names in English literature. I only mean that,
in a certain quality, which for want of a better word I have chosen to
call Atlantean, they stand alone. Each of them, for the metaphor is
applicable either way, carries a whole world on his shoulders, or looks
down on a whole world from his natural altitude. The worlds are
different, but they are worlds; and though the attitude of the giants is
different also, it agrees in all of them on the points of competence and
strength. Take whomsoever else we may among our men of letters, and we
shall find this characteristic to be in comparison wanting. These four
carry their world, and are not carried by it; and if it, in the language
so dear to Fielding himself, were to crash and shatter, the inquiry,
"_Que vous reste-t-il?_" could be answered by each, "_Moi!_"