the grand and prominent virtue of being at once and easily skippable.
There is about Cervantes and Le Sage, about Fielding and Smollett, none
of the treachery of the modern novelist, who induces the conscientious
reader to drag through pages, chapters, and sometimes volumes which have
nothing to do with the action, for fear he should miss something that
has to do with it. These great men have a fearless frankness, and almost
tell you in so many words when and what you may skip. Therefore, if the
"Curious Impertinent," and the "Baneful Marriage," and the "Man of the
Hill," and the "Lady of Quality," get in the way, when you desire to
"read for the story," you have nothing to do but turn the page till
_finis_ comes. The defence has already been made by an illustrious hand
for Fielding's inter-chapters and exordiums. It appears to me to be
almost more applicable to his insertions.

And so we need not trouble ourselves any more either about the
insertions or about the exordiums. They both please me; the second class
has pleased persons much better worth pleasing than I can pretend to be;
but the making or marring of the book lies elsewhere. I do not think
that it lies in the construction, though Fielding's following of the
ancients, both sincere and satiric, has imposed a false air of
regularity upon that. The Odyssey of Joseph, of Fanny, and of their
ghostly mentor and bodily guard is, in truth, a little haphazard, and
might have been longer or shorter without any discreet man approving it
the more or the less therefor. The real merits lie partly in the
abounding humour and satire of the artist's criticism, but even more in
the marvellous vivacity and fertility of his creation. For the very
first time in English prose fiction every character is alive, every
incident is capable of having happened. There are lively touches in the
Elizabethan romances; but they are buried in verbiage, swathed in stage
costume, choked and fettered by their authors' want of art. The quality