wn early plays, or put the faulty Captain Booth beside such an
unredeemed scamp as Peregrine Pickle.

It is clear, in short, that the aim of Fielding (whether he succeeds or
not) is the very reverse of that attributed to him by M. Taine. 'Tom
Jones' and 'Amelia' have, ostensibly at least, a most emphatic moral
attached to them; and not only attached to them, but borne in mind and
even too elaborately preached throughout. That moral is the one which
Fielding had learnt in the school of his own experience. It is the moral
that dissipation bears fruit in misery. The remorse, it is true, which
was generated in Fielding and in his heroes was not the remorse which
drives a man to a cloister, or which even seriously poisons his
happiness. The offences against morality are condoned too easily, and
the line between vice and virtue drawn in accordance with certain
distinctions which even Parson Adams could scarcely have approved. Vice,
he seems to say, is altogether objectionable only when complicated by
cruelty or hypocrisy. But if Fielding's moral sense is not very
delicate, it is vigorous. He hates most heartily what he sees to be
wrong, though his sight might easily be improved in delicacy of
discrimination. The truth is simply that Fielding accepted that moral
code which the better men of the world in his time really acknowledged,
as distinguished from that by which they affected to be bound. That so
wide a distinction should generally exist between these codes is a
matter for deep regret. That Fielding in his hatred for humbug should
have condemned purity as puritanical is clearly lamentable. The
confusion, however, was part of the man, and, as already noticed, shows
itself in one shape or other throughout his work. But it would be unjust
to condemn him upon that ground as antagonistic or indifferent to
reasonable morality. His morality is at the superior antipodes from the
cynicism of a Wycherley; and far superior to the prurient sentimentalism
of Sterne or the hot-pressed priggishness of Richardson, or even the
reckless Bohemianism of Smollett.

There is a deeper question, however, beneath this discussion. The
morality of those 'great impartial artists' of whom M. Taine speaks
differs from Fielding's in a more serious sense. The highest morality of
a great work of art depends upon the power with which the essential
beauty and ugliness of virtue and vice are exhibited by an impartial
observer. The morality, for example, o