nts
which, if they have never found such monumental expression as the
praises, have been sometimes widely entertained. These objections--as
regards interest--fasten partly on the address-digressions, partly on
the great inset-episode of "The Man of the Hill:" as regards morality on
a certain alleged looseness of principle in that respect throughout, and
especially on the licence of conduct accorded to the hero himself and
the almost entire absence of punishment for it. As for the first, "The
Man of the Hill" was partly a concession to the fancy of the time for
such things, partly a following of such actual examples as Fielding
admitted--for it need hardly be said that the inset-episode, of no or
very slight connection with the story, is common both in the ancients
and in Cervantes, while it is to be found as long after Fielding as in
the early novel-work of Dickens. The digression-openings are at least as
satisfactory to some as they are unsatisfactory to others; it is even
doubtful whether they annoy anybody half so much as they have delighted
some excellent judges. The other point is well worn: but the wearing has
not taken off its awkwardness and unsavouriness. Difference of habit and
manners at the time will account for much: but the wiser apologists will
simply say that Fielding's attitude to certain deviations from the
strict moral law was undoubtedly very indulgent, provided that such
deviations were unaccompanied by the graver and more detestable vices of
cruelty, treachery, and fraud--that to vice which was accompanied by
these blacker crimes he was utterly merciless; and that if he is thus
rather exposed to the charge of "compounding by damning"--in the famous
phrase--the things that he damned admit of no excuse and those that he
compounded for have been leniently dealt with by all but the sternest
moralists.

Such things are, however (in the admirable French sense),
_miseres_--wretched petty cavils and shallows of criticism. The only
sensible thing to do is to launch out with Fielding into that deep and
open sea of human character and fate which he dared so gloriously.
During the curious phase of literary opinion which the last twenty years
or so have seen, it has apparently been discovered by some people that
his scheme of human thought and feeling is too simple--"toylike" I think
they call it--in comparison with that, say, of Count Tolstoi or of Mr.
Meredith, that modern practice has reached a finer techniq