d to recognise his greatness,
it must be because he has played on these unwary ones the same trick
that Garrick, in an immortal scene, played on his own Partridge. There
is so little parade about Fielding (for even the opening addresses are
not parade to these good people: they may disconcert or even disgust,
but they do not dazzle them), that his characters and his scenes look
commonplace. They feel sure that "if they had seen a ghost they would
have looked in the very same manner and done just as he does." They are
sure that, in the scene with Gertrude, "Lord, help them! any man--that
is any good man--that had such a mother would have done exactly the
same."

Well! in a way no doubt they are right; and one may imitate the wisdom
of Mr. Jones on the original occasion in not saying much more to them.
To others, of course, this is the very miracle of art--a miracle, as far
as the art of prose fiction is concerned, achieved in its fullness for
practically the first time. This is the true _mimesis_--the re-creation
or fresh creation of fictitious reality. There were in Fielding's time,
and probably ever since have been, those who thought him "low;" there
were, even in his own time, and have been in varying, but on the whole
rather increased, degree since, those who thought him immoral: there
appear to be some who think (or would like it to be thought that they
think) him commonplace and obvious. Now, as it happens, all these
charges have been brought against Nature too. To embellish, and correct,
and heighten, and extra-decorate her was not Fielding's way: but to
follow, and to interpret, and to take up her own processes with results
uncommonly like her own. That is his immense glory to all those who can
realise and understand it: and as for the others we must let them alone,
joined to their own idols.

In passing to the third of this great quartette, we make a little
descent, but not much of one, while the new peak to which we come is
well defined and separated, with characters and outlines all its own. It
may be doubted whether any competent critic not, like Scott, bribed by
compatriotism, ever put Smollett above Fielding, or even on a level with
him. Thackeray, in one of the most inspired moments of his rather
irregularly-inspired criticism, remarks, "I fancy he did not invent
much," and this of itself would refer him to a lower class. The writer
of fiction is not to refuse suggestion from his experience; on the
contr