domestic scenes of profligate noblemen and colonels, and conversations where Mrs. Atkinson quotes Virgil and Horace as familiarly as if they had been written in her mother tongue. If we may believe Richardson, who had a spite against Fielding for representing Pamela as the sister of Joseph Andrews, and ridiculing her, the novel of 'Amelia' was not successful. He says in one of his letters in 1752: "Mr. Fielding has met with the disapprobation you foresaw he would meet with in his 'Amelia.' He is, in every paper he publishes under the title of the Covent Garden, contributing to his own overthrow. He has been overmatched in his own way by people whom he had despised, and whom he thought he had vogue enough from the success his spurious brat 'Tom Jones' so unaccountably met with, to write down."* And again: "Captain Booth" (Amelia's husband), "madam, has done his own business. . . . The piece, in short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago, as to sale. You guess that I have not read 'Amelia.' Indeed, I have read but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them. * 'Richardson's Letters,' vol. iii. p. 63. Booth in his last piece again himself. Amelia, even to her noselessness, is again his first wife. His brawls, his jars, his gaols, his spunging-houses, are all drawn from what he has seen and known."* However this may be, I think that of all the novels of that period, Amelia' is the one which gives the most generally truthful idea of the manners and habits of middle-class society then. There is little, if any, exaggeration or caricature, and I have no doubt that Fielding intended faithfully to depict society, such as he knew it, with its merits and its faults; its licentious manners, and domestic virtues; its brawls, its oaths, its prisons, and its masquerades. *This is bitter spite on the part of Richardson. Fielding describes Amelia as having her nose injured by a fall before her marriage. Dr. Johnson said: "Fielding's". 'Amelia' was the most pleasing heroine of all the romances; but that vile broken nose, never cured, ruined the sale of perhaps the only book which being printed off betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night.” SMOLLETT. EGRINE QUIXOTE.' CHAPTER IX. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIM AND FIELDING. — 'PER- THE jolly, riotous kind of life which I have spoken of as characteristic of one glass of novels of the last century is fully displayed in the pages of Smollett. He reflects, in many respects, the character of the age more fully than any other writer-its material pleasures, its coarse amusements, its hard drinking, loud swearing, and practical jokes. His heroes are generally libertines, full of mirth and animal spirits, who make small account of woman's chastity, and whose adventures are intrigues, and their merriment broad farce. Such are the chief features of 'Roderick Random' and 'Peregrine Pickle,' neither of which, however, is so offensive as the 'Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom,' the hero of which is a blackguard and a scoundrel, without a redeeming virtue. The French critic, M. Taine, whom I have already quoted, thus speaks of Smollett: "He exaggerates caricature; he thinks he amuses us in showing us mouths gaping to the ears, and noses half a foot long; he exaggerates a national prejudice or a professional trick until it absorbs the whole character. He flings together personages the most revolting with the most grotesque a Lieutenant Lismahago, half roasted by Red Indians; sea-wolves who pass their lives in shouting and travestying all their ideas into a sea jargon; old maids as ugly as she-asses, as withered as skeletons, and as acrid as vinegar; maniacs steeped in pedantry, hypochondria, misanthropy, and silence. Far from sketching them slightly, like Gil Blas, he brings into prominent relief each disagreeable trait, and overloads it with details, without considering whether they are too numerous, without reflecting that they are excessive, without feeling that they are odious, without seeing that they are disgusting. The public whom he addresses is on a level with his energy and roughness, and in order to shake such nerves a writer cannot strike too hard." * One of the chief differences between Smollett and Fielding is this-the scenes and adventures in Smollett's novels are laughable and farcical in themselves; but have little or no bearing upon the progress of the *'Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise,' vol. iv. P. 323. story. They are too much like the disconnected slides in a magic-lantern. But Fielding makes each separate adventure, especially in 'Tom Jones,' subservient to the plot, the issue of which is worked out with admirable consistency and skill. It will be sufficient, for the purpose of giving an idea of Smollett's humor, to take two of his stories, 'Peregrine Pickle' and 'Humphry Clinker.' Peregrine Pickle is the son of Gamaliel Pickle, and at his birth his mother conceived an unnatural aversion to him, which she continued to feel until her death. He is adopted by an uncle, Commodore Trunnion, who, with his friend and companion Lieutenant Jack Hatchway (with a wooden leg), and his former boatswain Tom Pipes, has retired from the navy and ensconced himself not far from his brother's house near the sea-side, in a habitation which is called the · Garrison, defended by a ditch, over which he had laid a drawbridge and planted his court-yard with patereroes continually loaded with shot. There is little doubt that Sterne took the idea of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim in Tristram Shandy' from Commodore Trunnion and Jack Hatchway. The Commodore gives every thing a nautical turn, and hardly ever speaks without uttering a volley of oaths. Smollett himself had been a surgeon's mate, and was per |