tration into the true
essence of all objects of our contemplation.' Perhaps we may say that it
is chiefly a question of method whether a writer should portray men or
angels--the beings, that is, of everyday life--or beings placed under a
totally different set of circumstances. The more vital question is
whether, by one method or the other, he shows us a man's heart or only
his clothes; whether he appeals to our intellects or imaginations, or
amuses us by images which do not sink below the eye. In scientific
writings a man may give us the true law of a phenomenon, whether he
exemplifies it in extreme or average cases, in the orbit of a comet or
the fall of an apple. The romance-writer should show us what real men
would be in dreamland, the writer of 'histories' what they are on the
knifeboard of an omnibus. True insight may be shown in either case, or
may be absent in either, according as the artist deals with the deepest
organic laws or the more external accidents. The 'Ancient Mariner' is an
embodiment of certain simple emotional phases and moral laws amidst the
phantasmagoric incidents of a dream, and De Foe does not interpret them
better because he confines himself to the most prosaic incidents. When
romance becomes really arbitrary, and is parted from all basis of
observation, it loses its true interest and deserves Fielding's
condemnation. Fielding conscientiously aims at discharging the highest
function. He describes, as he says in 'Joseph Andrews,' 'not men, but
manners; not an individual, but a species.' His lawyer, he tells us, has
been alive for the last four thousand years, and will probably survive
four thousand more. Mrs. Tow-wouse lives wherever turbulent temper,
avarice, and insensibility are united; and her sneaking husband wherever
a good inclination has glimmered forth, eclipsed by poverty of spirit
and understanding. But the type which shows best the force and the
limits of Fielding's genius is Parson Adams. He belongs to a
distinguished family, whose members have been portrayed by the greatest
historians. He is a collateral descendant of Don Quixote, for whose
creation Fielding felt a reverence exceeded only by his reverence for
Shakespeare.[14] The resemblance is, of course, distant, and consists
chiefly in this, that the parson, like the knight, lives in an ideal
world, and is constantly shocked by harsh collision with facts. He
believes in his sermons instead of his sword, and his imagination is
te