y one else, as
examples of the presentation of the unfamiliar. Miss Matthews--whom
Fielding has probably abstained from working out as much as he might
lest she should, from the literary point of view, obscure Amelia--is a
marvellous outline; Colonels James and Bath are perfectly finished
studies of ordinary and extraordinary "character" in the stage sense. No
novel even of the author's is fuller of _vignettes_--little pictures of
action and behaviour, of manners and society, which are not in the least
irrelevant to the general story, but on the contrary extra-illustrate
and carry it out.

While, therefore, we must in no way recede from the position above
adopted in regard to Richardson, we may quite consistently accord an
even higher place to Fielding. He relieved the novel of the tyranny and
constraint of the Letter; he took it out of the rut of confinement to a
single or a very limited class of subjects--for the themes of _Pamela_
and _Clarissa_ to a very large extent, of _Pamela_ and _Grandison_ to a
considerable one, and of all three to an extent not small, are
practically the same. He gave it altogether a larger, wider, higher,
deeper range. He infused in it (or restored to it) the refreshing and
preserving element of humour. He peopled it with a great crowd of lively
and interesting characters--endowed, almost without regard to their
technical "position _in_ life," with unlimited possession _of_ life. He
shook up its pillows, and bustled its business arrangements. He first
gave it--for in matter of prose style Richardson has few resources, and
those rather respectable than transporting, and decidedly
monotonous--the attractions of pure literature in form, and in pretty
various form. He also gave it the attraction of pure comedy, only
legitimately salted with farce, in such personages as Adams and
Partridge; of lower and more farcical, but still admirable comedy in
Slipslop and Trulliber and Squire Western; of comedy almost romantic and
certainly charming in Sophia; of domestic drama in Amelia; of satiric
portraiture in a hundred figures from the cousins (respectable and
disreputable), Miss Western and Lady Bellaston, downwards. He stocked it
with infinite miscellanies of personage, and scene, and picture, and
phrase. As has happened in one or two other cases, he carried, at least
in the opinion of the present writer, the particular art as far as it
will go. He did not indeed leave nothing for his successors to do