of his court cackle out an
affrighted chorus. Fielding proposes to write a book in ridicule of the
author, whom he disliked and utterly scorned and laughed at; but he is
himself of so generous, jovial, and kindly a turn that he begins to like
the characters which he invents, can't help making them manly and pleasant
as well as ridiculous, and before he has done with them all loves them
heartily every one.

Richardson's sickening antipathy for Harry Fielding is quite as natural as
the other's laughter and contempt at the sentimentalist. I have not
learned that these likings and dislikings have ceased in the present day:
and every author must lay his account not only to misrepresentation but to
honest enmity among critics, and to being hated and abused for good as
well as for bad reasons. Richardson disliked Fielding's works quite
honestly: Walpole quite honestly spoke of them as vulgar and stupid. Their
squeamish stomachs sickened at the rough fare and the rough guests
assembled at Fielding's jolly revel. Indeed the cloth might have been
cleaner: and the dinner and the company were scarce such as suited a
dandy. The kind and wise old Johnson would not sit down with him.(155) But
a greater scholar than Johnson could afford to admire that astonishing
genius of Harry Fielding: and we all know the lofty panegyric which Gibbon
wrote of him, and which remains a towering monument to the great
novelist's memory. "Our immortal Fielding," Gibbon writes, "was of the
younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their origin from the
Counts of Hapsburgh. The successors of Charles V may disdain their
brethren of England: but the romance of _Tom Jones_, that exquisite
picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the
Imperial Eagle of Austria."

There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge. To have your
name mentioned by Gibbon, is like having it written on the dome of St.
Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it.

As a picture of manners, the novel of _Tom Jones_ is indeed exquisite: as
a work of construction quite a wonder: the by-play of wisdom; the power of
observation; the multiplied felicitous turns and thoughts; the varied
character of the great Comic Epic keep the reader in a perpetual
admiration and curiosity.(156) But against Mr. Thomas Jones himself we
have a right to put in a protest, and quarrel with the esteem the author
evidently has for that character. Charle