ppen to a hundred other characters. He exhibits the ridiculous
accidents and reverses to which human life is liable, not "the stuff" of
which it is composed. He seldom probes to the quick, or penetrates beyond
the surface; and, therefore, he leaves no stings in the minds of his
readers, and in this respect is far less interesting than Fielding. His
novels always enliven, and never tire us: we take them up with pleasure,
and lay them down without any strong feeling of regret. We look on and
laugh, as spectators of a highly amusing scene, without closing in with
the combatants, or being made parties in the event. We read Roderick
Random as an entertaining story; for the particular accidents and modes of
life which it describes have ceased to exist: but we regard Tom Jones as a
real history; because the author never stops short of those essential
principles which lie at the bottom of all our actions, and in which we
feel an immediate interest--_intus et in cute_. Smollett excels most as
the lively caricaturist: Fielding as the exact painter and profound
metaphysician. I am far from maintaining that this account applies
uniformly to the productions of these two writers; but I think that, as
far as they essentially differ, what I have stated is the general
distinction between them. Roderick Random is the purest of Smollett's
novels: I mean in point of style and description. Most of the incidents
and characters are supposed to have been taken from the events of his own
life; and are, therefore, truer to nature. There is a rude conception of
generosity in some of his characters, of which Fielding seems to have been
incapable, his amiable persons being merely good-natured. It is owing to
this that Strap is superior to Partridge; as there is a heartiness and
warmth of feeling in some of the scenes between Lieutenant Bowling and his
nephew, which is beyond Fielding's power of impassioned writing. The whole
of the scene on ship-board is a most admirable and striking picture, and,
I imagine, very little if at all exaggerated, though the interest it
excites is of a very unpleasant kind, because the irritation and
resistance to petty oppression can be of no avail. The picture of the
little profligate French friar, who was Roderick's travelling companion,
and of whom he always kept to the windward, is one of Smollett's most
masterly sketches. Peregrine Pickle is no great favourite of mine, and
Launcelot Greaves was not worthy of the geni