r incidents and is connected with the
whole. Such a literary providence, if we may use such a word, is not to
be seen in any other work of fiction. You might cut out the half of Don
Quixote, or add, transpose, or alter any given romance of Walter Scott,
and neither would suffer. Roderick Random, and heroes of that sort, run
through a series of adventures, at the end of which the fiddles are
brought and there is a marriage. But the history of Tom Jones connects
the very first page with the very last, and it is marvellous to think
how the author could have built and carried all this structure in his
brain, as he must have done, before he began to put it to paper.

And now a word or two about our darling "Amelia," of which we have read
through every single word in Mr. Roscoe's handsome edition. "As for
Captain Booth, Madam," writes old Richardson to one of his toadies,
"Captain Booth has done his business. The piece is short, is as dead as
if it had been published forty years ago;" indeed, human nature is not
altered since Richardson's time; and if there are rakes, male and
female, as there were a hundred years since, there are in like manner
envious critics now as then. How eager they are to predict a man's fall,
how unwilling to acknowledge his rise! If a man write a popular work, he
is sure to be snarled at; if a literary man rise to eminence out of his
profession, all his old comrades are against him.

Well, in spite of Richardson's prophecies, the piece which was dead at
its birth is alive a hundred years after, and will live, as we fancy, as
long as the English language shall endure. Fielding, in his own noble
words, has given a key to the philosophy of the work. "The nature of
man," cries honest Dr. Harrison, "is far from being in itself evil; it
abounds with benevolence, and charity, and pity, coveting praise and
honor, and shunning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and
bad customs debauch our nature, and drive it headlong into vice." And
the author's tale is an exemplification of this text. Poor Booth's
habits and customs are bad indeed, but who can deny the benevolence, and
charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly being? His vices even, if
we may say so, are those of a man; there is nothing morbid or mawkish in
any of Fielding's heroes; no passionate pleasing extenuation, such as
one finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no
flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts