the theater with Tom and hears Garrick play "Hamlet,"
thinks but poorly of the player because he only does what
anybody would do under the circumstances! All-worthy and Blifil
one may object to, each in his kind, for being conventionally
good and bad, but in numerous male characters in less important
roles there is compensation: the gypsy episode, for example, is
full of raciness and relish. And what a gallery of women we get
in the story: Mrs. Honour the maid, and Miss Western (who in
some sort suggests Mrs. Nickleby), Mrs. Miller, Lady Bellaston,
Mrs. Waters and other light-of-loves and dames of folly, whose
dubious doings are carried off with such high good humor that we
are inclined to overlook their misdeeds. There is a Chaucerian
freshness about it all: at times comes the wish that such talent
were used in a better cause. A suitable sub-title for the story,
would be: Or Life in The Tavern, so large a share do Inns have
in its unfolding. Fielding would have yielded hearty assent to
Dr. Johnson's dictum that a good inn stood for man's highest
felicity here below: he relished the wayside comforts of cup and
bed and company which they afford.

"Tom Jones" quickly crossed the seas, was admired in foreign
lands. I possess a manuscript letter of Heine's dated from Mainz
in 1830, requesting a friend to send him this novel: the German
poet represents, in the request, the literary class which has
always lauded Fielding's finest effort, while the wayfaring man
who picks it up, also finds it to his liking. Thus it secures
and is safe in a double audience. Yet we must return to the
thought that such a work is strictly less significant in the
evolution of the modern Novel, because of its form, its
reversion to type, than the model established by a man like
Richardson, who is so much more restricted in gift.

Fielding's fourth and final story, "Amelia," was given to the
world two years later, and but three years before his premature
death at Lisbon at the age of forty-nine--worn out by irregular
living and the vicissitudes of a career which had been checkered
indeed. He did strenuous work as a Justice these last years and
carried on an efficacious campaign against criminals: but the
lights were dimming, the play was nearly over. The pure gust of
life which runs rampant and riotous in the pages of "Tom Jones"
is tempered in "Amelia" by a quieter, sadder tone and a more
philosophic vision. It is in this way a less characteris