the most wonderful though the least generally
recognised things about him--inclines, in the interesting
Introduction-Dialogue to _The Fortunes of Nigel_, to put it on a level
with _Tom Jones_ itself as a perfectly constructed novel. But modern
criticism has, rightly or wrongly, been more dubious. Amelia is almost
too perfect: her very forgiveness (it has been suggested) would be more
interesting if she had not almost completely shut her eyes to there
being anything to forgive. Her husband seems to us to prolong the
irresponsibility of youth, which was pardonable in Tom, to a period of
life and to circumstances of enforced responsibility which make us
rather decline to honour the drafts he draws; and he is also a little
bit of a fool, which Tom, to do him justice, is not, though he is
something of a scatterbrain. Dr. Harrison, whose alternate wrath and
reconciliation supply the most important springs of the plot, is, though
a natural, a rather unreasonable person. The "total impression" has even
been pronounced by some people to be a little dull. What there is of
truth in these criticisms and others (which it would be long even to
summarise) may perhaps be put briefly under two heads. It is never so
easy to arouse interest in virtue as it is in vice: or in weak and
watered vice as in vice rectified (or _un_rectified) to full strength.
And the old requirement of "the quest" is one which will hardly be
dispensed with. Here (for we know perfectly well that Amelia's virtue is
in no danger) there is no quest, except that of the fortune which ought
to be hers, which at last comes to her husband, and which we are told
(and hope rather doubtfully) that husband had at last been taught--by
the Fool's Tutor, Experience--not utterly to throw away. But this
fortune drops in half casually at the last by a series of stage
accidents, not ill-machined by any means, but not very particularly
interesting.

Such, however, are the criticisms which Fielding himself has taught
people to make, by the very excellence of his success in the earlier
novels: and there is a certain comparative and relative validity in
them. But consider _Amelia_ in itself, and they begin to look, if not
positively unfounded, rather unimportant. Once more, the astonishing
truth and variety of scene and character make themselves felt--even more
felt--even felt in new directions. The opening prison scenes exceed
anything earlier even in Fielding himself, much more in an