e, by a reflex action,
secured the vote of London. Posterity has fully sanctioned this
particular "judicium Paridis." The Sentimental Journey is a book sui
generis, and in the reliable kind of popularity, which takes concrete
form in successive reprints, it has far eclipsed its eighteenth-century
rivals. The fine literary aroma which pervades every line of this small
masterpiece is not the predominant characteristic of the Great Cham's
Journey. Nevertheless, and in spite of the malignity of the "Ossianite"
press, it fully justified the assumption of the booksellers that it
would prove a "sound" book. It is full of sensible observations, and is
written in Johnson's most scholarly, balanced, and dignified style. Few
can read it without a sense of being repaid, if only by the portentous
sentence in which the author celebrates his arrival at the shores of
Loch Ness, where he reposes upon "a bank such as a writer of romance
might have delighted to feign," and reflects that a "uniformity of
barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it
is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and waterfalls; and
that these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the
imagination nor enlarge the understanding." Fielding's contribution to
geography has far less solidity and importance, but it discovers to not
a few readers an unfeigned charm that is not to be found in the pages
of either Sterne or Johnson. A thoughtless fragment suffices to show
the writer in his true colours as one of the most delightful fellows in
our literature, and to convey just unmistakably to all good men and
true the rare and priceless sense of human fellowship.

There remain the Travels through France and Italy, by T. Smollett,
M.D., and though these may not exhibit the marmoreal glamour of
Johnson, or the intimate fascination of Fielding, or the essential
literary quality which permeates the subtle dialogue and artful
vignette of Sterne, yet I shall endeavour to show, not without some
hope of success among the fair-minded, that the Travels before us are
fully deserving of a place, and that not the least significant, in the
quartette.

The temporary eclipse of their fame I attribute, first to the studious
depreciation of Sterne and Walpole, and secondly to a refinement of
snobbishness on the part of the travelling crowd, who have an uneasy
consciousness that to listen to common sense, such as Smollett's, in
matters of