ldsmith--potent names, evoking some of the
pleasantest memories open to one who browses in the rich meadow
lands of English literature.

CHAPTER IV

DEVELOPMENTS; SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS

The popularity of Richardson and Fielding showed itself in a
hearty public welcome: and also in that sincerest form of
flattery, imitation. Many authors began to write the new
fiction. Where once a definite demand is recognized in
literature, the supply, more or less machine-made, is sure to
follow.

In the short quarter of a century between "Pamela" and "The
Vicar of Wakefield," the Novel got its growth, passed out of
leading strings into what may fairly be called independence and
maturity: and by the time Goldsmith's charming little classic
was written, the shelves were comfortably filled with novels
recent or current, giving contemporary literature quite the air
so familiar to-day. Only a little later, we find the Gentleman's
Magazine, a trustworthy reporter of such matters, speaking of
"this novel-writing age." The words were written in 1773, a
generation after Richardson had begun the form. Still more
striking testimony, so far back as 1755, when Richardson's
maiden story was but a dozen years old, a writer in "The
Connoisseur" is facetiously proposing to establish a factory for
the fashioning of novels, with one, a master workman, to furnish
plots and subordinates to fill in the details--an anticipation
of the famous literary menage of Dumas pere.

Although there was, under these conditions, inevitable imitation
of the new model, there was a deeper reason for the rapid
development. The time was ripe for this kind of fiction: it was
in the air, as we have already tried to suggest. Hence, other
fiction-makers began to experiment with the form, this being
especially true of Smollett. Out of many novelists, feeble or
truly called, a few of the most important must be mentioned.

I

The Scotch-born Tobias Smollett published his first fiction,
"Roderick Random," eight years after "Pamela" had appeared, and
the year before "Tom Jones"; it was exactly contemporaneous with
"Clarissa Harlowe," A strict contemporary, then, with Richardson
and Fielding, he was also the ablest novelist aside from them, a
man whose work was most influential in the later development. It
is not unusual to dismiss him in a sentence as a coarser
Fielding. The characterization hits nearer the bull's eye than
is the rule with such sayings,